🎉 I just had my best month ever. Here's how. 🎉
November 2018 was a tough month to beat (Black Friday was a REALLY big deal back then,) but it finally happened!
We all know there are a lot of forces working against us lately, and I won't rehash them here. I think how you react to them is what's important. For me, they kicked me into high gear to try and compensate. I like what I do, and I want to keep doing it… and that means working a little harder now.
As always, success on Udemy is a long game. But here's the strategy that worked for me:
- Build up your customer base on the marketplace. This takes time, and having multiple courses you can cross-promote between. The more students you can send promotional announcements to, the more successful your subsequent course launches will be, and this effect keeps compounding over time. I've been doing this for nine years now.
- Be selective in the topics you teach. It was a lot easier to find in-demand, unsaturated topics nine years ago, but it's not impossible today. The world is changing quickly, and new hot topics are always emerging that present fresh opportunities. The step change you see in my graph late last year was from being first to market on a hot new certification exam, and what drove August into record territory was launching two more certification exam courses where again I was among the first to market. In addition to certification prep, my interview prep course also does well. You want to find topics where people have an urgent problem to solve (like passing an exam or interview) where you have relevant expertise, and be among the first to offer a comprehensive solution.
- Be yourself. Your students need to like you. Let your personality show as you teach; be relatable. I really don't think you can accomplish that with things like AI-generated scripts and voices.
- Team up. I've had the privilege of co-instructing with some of Udemy's top instructors, and this allows us to get comprehensive courses out the door quickly, and to cross-pollinate our audiences. Most top instructors only work with people they know, so old-fashioned in-person networking is the key there.
- Focus on what you control. You can see from the graph that Udemy Business is where most of the growth has been in the long run, but as instructors you have little control over the performance of your course once it is in the UB catalog. Producing topics that UB needs is certainly important as you want to be in there, but the marketplace is still the biggest lever you have. Your revshare is much higher in the marketplace, and your promotional announcements are only relevant to marketplace customers. Those promotional announcements are what drove last month's results for me, and they fueled a strong start for my new courses that will continue to pay dividends in the future. Your performance in UB is hard to move, but your performance in the marketplace does respond to your efforts.
Last month also pushed me over a significant lifetime revenue milestone, and I've crossed over 900,000 students now - almost all of them paid. I don't do free coupons.
What I also didn't do is external marketing. I've tried repeatedly and have never had a positive ROI on ads, and only minimal sales through YouTube, LinkedIn, and other free channels. Social media might be helpful when you are just starting out, but by the time you have your second course, cross-promotion using promotional announcements will be your most effective tool.
I should also point out that I've had my share of flops. Some of my courses only bring in around $20/month. Sometimes even your best efforts just don't resonate with what the marketplace needs. Again, it's the courses that solve a pressing need that do the best.
Success on Udemy does not come easily anymore, and it's only getting harder. But it's not impossible.
I'm currently recharging on a vacation and may be slow to respond, but happy to answer questions in the comments.
Comments
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Way to go!
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That is really inspiring! Thanks for being one of the very few highly successful Udemy instructors who take from their time to help other instructors and are engaged in this community.
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@FrankKane Amazing, we love to hear stories like this. 🙌
I think it’s especially helpful for instructors to hear about your experiences and strategies, especially the emphasis on patience, planning, and focusing on what can be controlled. Your story really highlights the long-term nature of success on this platform.
Thank you again for being such a valuable member of this community!
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That's awesome Frank, and great advice!
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Congratulations and great advice. It also happens that you are just a very competent and personable instructor. Some people, like yourself, just have a natural talent that works for online instruction.
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Congratulations, Frank !
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Congratulations Frank and thanks for sharing your highly valuable insights!
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Congratulations, @FrankKane that's very inspiring, especially in these times.
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Congratulations @FrankKane and your post really resonated with me. Like many my best month was April 2020 (Covid bump). However, I have beat that month 4 times this year and come close 3 other times. I was selective in topics like you mentioned and recently enjoyed an early mover advantage in an emerging category that matched my knowledge (At a fundamental not technical level), I was passionate about teaching it and I was myself which is more humorous (Or I like to think so) which resonated with students and there was a big student demand, particularly once it was added to Udemy Business (UB). So hit on 3 big areas (Instructor Knowledge/Instructor Passion/Big Student Demand). Maybe I was just lucky. My other long time top selling course is more marketplace focused so hoping for marketplace growth at some point although I understand the large UB customer strategic focus by Udemy. UB has grown for me from being about 15% of my sales to 54% as I have focused more on creating courses that would fit the UB catalog so that has had a significant impact. Like Frank, no marketing on my part and what little I tried to do failed. Plus, I just felt weird saying things on YouTube like "Don't forget to subscribe and smash that like button." Ugg. What I can control is making more courses which I love to do as a creative outlet (73 so far and submitted a new one minutes ago) and updating existing courses particularly my best sellers. Yes, I have flops as well like my recent "Behavioral Finance" course which is a topic I find fascinating and it has a 4.62 rating but students on Udemy are not interested as it makes $25 USD per month. Oh well. Maybe those flops are the price you pay to get your next winner. I am grateful for Udemy for many reasons, even though my friends and family think I am weird because I am an older guy making videos in my basement. Like everyone, I have concerns about the future and hope that Udemy succeeds wildly and all instructors, the face to the students, can have their best years ever and we will look back at this time as a challenging period before prosperity. This is a hard time for instructors and I know I am extra fortunate as I am in a stage of life where my plan B is I would just play even more Pickleball and not have to worry about a career pivot. Thank you Frank for your many awesome posts.
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Amazing @FrankKane Been following your journey and your posts. You have been a very valuable contributor here and other instructor communities. Thanks alot for sharing your journey and wish you the best forward! .
Just one question :How have the sales from Organic / Ads/Affiliates been as compared to prior years ?
Have they been flat or have you been able to buck the trend on Udemy Marketplace ?2 -
@FrankKane with all the negativity around the virtual Udemy water cooler this is exactly the post we all needed.
Thank you !!!!4 -
Congratulations @FrankKane. Hopefully you will be exceeding your new high very soon.
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@Mufaddal The top, light blue region of the graph shows my organic sales. We know Udemy has been investing in UB and not the marketplace for quite some time now, and until late last year you can see my marketplace sales in general were dwindling down. I managed to revive things by launching new certification prep courses; these have a broad appeal and strong demand outside of UB. Lots of individuals need to prepare for these exams, and that gave my marketplace sales a boost.
The marketplace really is the main opportunity for growth from an instructor standpoint. Our revshare is steady there, and we can run our own promotions there. I do hope Udemy decides to start investing in its growth again.
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@FrankKane While I'm glad to see you turning things around, and while it DOES give me hope that it's possible to succeed DESPITE Udemy, I do have to wonder about the wisdom of relying on the marketplace in the long term. Despite any vocal/written reassurances we get from Udemy itself regarding the marketplace, their actions indicate that they'd rather see it go away at some point.
Either way, congrats on the turnaround.
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@ThomasMitchell My take is that we have to strategize around the current reality. Right now the marketplace is still alive, and it's an important source of revenue for Udemy. Maybe that will change, but if it does I'll change my approach at that time.
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@FrankKane Fair enough. Congrats again.
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Last month has been pretty good, as far as UB minutes go. Hopefully this momentum will last, through the cuts next year, and the year after that.
Marketplace continues to be fairly flat for me, despite new Courses.
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how do you select a topic before creating a new course?
Do you use the Udemy marketplace insights or use other tools?
How do you translate your course to another language? I saw the strategy to create a course in English, but sell the same course in another language, like Portuguese or Spanish, is it a valid effort?
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@PedroLeite580 I rely more on my own common sense than the insights or opportunity tools if I'm honest. I know things like certification prep will always be high demand. I will however use marketplace insights to research the competitive landscape before starting, and just plain search to make sure I really am first to market - and if not, what the bar is that I need to exceed to be successful.
I have had a few courses translated from English to other languages, but none have performed especially well.
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From how many students did it start to grow steadily? What was your "boom" moment on sales? What did you do to achieve this?
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@PedroLeite Things took off for me after launching my second course. It was a topic in high demand at the time with no competition (Hadoop - it was a long time ago :P) and I was able to use the audience from my first course to help launch it. The ability to cross-promote is important. But it's still critical to find in-demand, underserved topics in order to build up and audience large enough for cross-promotion to be meaningful.
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Hi @FrankKane,
Congratulations on this amazing achievement 👏. We're excited to hear that everything is going so well. I'm sure the tips you've shared are super valuable, especially for some “newbies” here in the community.
Wishing you a relaxing and well-deserved vacation—you’ve certainly earned it!
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Congratulations on all your success! If it’s okay, I went and copied the information on how you got to where you did and put it in a private note, so I can follow the steps. Thank you for all your insights!
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That is really inspiring! Thanks for being one of the very few highly successful Udemy instructors who take from their time to help other instructors and are engaged in this community.
I feel attacked.
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Amazing approach to teaching! Thanks for you valuable insights @FrankKane!
Greetings,
- Krystian Wojtarowicz2 -
Congrats
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Merci pour votre message très édifiant pour nous mes nouveaux.
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very impressive and facts
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Congratulations @FrankKane! And thanks for sharing your experience.
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@FrankKane Congratulations. Very inspiring and valuable information. Thanks
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