New Course: 1000 Enrollments!

Jonathanwylie · 2025-01-28T18:01:11+00:00

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Hello! I created by first course, launched it, and created a coupon that I posted on LinkedIn. It was the 5 day coupon, free enrollment, with 1000 max uses. The next day, I checked my enrollment numbers and the coupon had already maxed out.

However, as great as 1000 enrollments sounds, nobody has completed any of the course, and they may never look at it again. So, for someone who is new to this, what is your best advice on coupon use? My hope was that a few people would sign up, take the course for free, and leave me some feedback, but it feels like 1000 hungry seagulls descended and devoured the coupon in next to no time.

I realize it has only been two days. Can I expect any of these 1000 enrollments to convert? Are coupons like this worth it? If so, what are my next steps? Email the students, welcome to the course, and encourage them to jump in and leave me a review?

Any advice appreciated.

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Comments

Niels

Don´t expect to much from free enrollments.

I used it once and it really backfired. Most of the people shared no real interest in the topic and just singned up for sth. free and gave mediocre ratings. The only thing it did for me was mess up my statistics.

I haven´t used any free coupons since than publicly.

Hope you´ll have a better experience with your audience.

Prof_Paul

You did the right thing! This will show in your student stats like you have 1,000 students! WHO wants to buy a course that only 7 people have bought … vs. a course with 1,007 Students? The 1,007 course appears to be a "Much Better" course!

Plus … It is a NUMBERS game … a certain percentage will take part of the course … a certain percentage will complete the course … a certain percentage will leave feedback. Don't plant a seed today … and come back tomorrow an see a tree! :)

I hope this helps Buddy!

Prof. Paul

1 Paul & Amber July 25th 2019 (SMALL).png

RonErez

You should be happy if any of these students ever begin the course. Personally I'd recommend always sharing paid coupons and never give out anything for free.

If however you do decide to share a free coupon then it should be under the condition that they check out the course, give you feedback and to please leave a review. In that case they might start your course.

This is just my experience and others may have had more success with freebies.

Good luck!

PuneetGupta453

Coupons do help drive enrollments, but they often don't lead to actual student engagement. From a business perspective, it might be worth limiting the use of free coupons—for instance, allowing a student to redeem only 10 free coupons per month. Some sort of logic like this could be applied. Creating paid coupons doesn't seem viable either, as Udemy's discounted prices often compete with them directly.

I've also stopped using coupons altogether, as they seem to impact engagement stats negatively. It feels like Udemy tracks these metrics internally, and lower engagement may reduce the course's visibility in search results. There’s definitely something like that at play!

Srijit

Below are my thoughts:

No doubt LinkedIn is a great platform to promote your course. However, I would suggest consider sharing in relevant groups or communities where people are more likely to be genuinely interested in your course topic. I mean, promote your coupon to a more targeted audience.
1000 free coupons is a large number. I suggest experimenting with smaller quantities to maintain exclusivity and generate more meaningful engagement.
Instead of releasing all coupons at once, stagger them over a few days or weeks. This allows you to gauge interest and make adjustments as needed.
Invite free enrollments for a basic course that includes a call to action to enroll in your advanced paid course. This can help you build a committed audience that’s more likely to engage with your content.
Meanwhile, you can send a warm, personalized welcome email to the students who enrolled with the coupon. Introducing yourself, briefly describing what they can expect from the course, and encouraging them to start the first lesson can have an impact.
I believe it's still early, so some of the 1000 enrollments might convert with a bit of follow up.

Good Luck and let me try this for my course as I got some idea.😊

Jonathanwylie

Thanks all. Lots of great advice and things to think about going forward. I look forward to implementing your recommendations in this course and in future projects. 😇

TimChui

My thoughts on this.

Free coupons are good for stats but, as mentioned often, need to be more targeted as in our social network.

Discount coupons are not that viable as Udemy have promotion all the time and are often better than ours. But it does serve as something to offer in our promotion.

Since the 100 Free coupon is for one month. Unless these are taken up then there’s not much point to activate the 1000 free coupons that last only 5 days.

Since free coupons are given in our social network to help build up our stats, I do this every time I have a new course or every month when I am entitled to. So, this group of social contact will just wait for free coupons and are unlikely to enroll for a paid course.

So for paid courses, you need to look outside of this group that you offer free coupons to.

Prof_Luiz_Valerio

This is a common question and it's normal that you raise this concern. Unfortunately, I believe that there's no easy and definitive answer. It's true that oftentimes these 1,000 enrollments will not trigger any sort of engagement such as the purchase of other courses you might be offering, positive reviews, and so forth. On the other hand, as said by Prof_Paul, having these numbers also helps to convey a good image to potential students. All in all, I tend to agree with the suggestion to limit the time you offer free coupons. Anyway, hope that my comments are helpful.

Paul_Imre

I did this. It backfired.
I had plenty of "low" reviews.
From the student data I could see that many were only interested in downloading the certificate.
It took about 18 months to recover.
Yes 1000 students look good. But with 1000 student and a poor rating?
I would not go down this route again.

Jonathanwylie

Thanks. I appreciate the additional feedback.

About a week after issuing the ill-fated coupon, I have one person who appears to have finished the course, one who is on 84%, and maybe 10 others who are 7% or less. The other 988 participants have zero engagement in the course.

With zero engagement, I don't have to worry about those low reviews tanking my feedback score, but I would much rather give away a paid course for free to people who actually want to watch the videos and learn something new! So, lesson learned there. Targeted coupons/networks for future courses.

Bharadwaj

I'm facing the same issue. I offered a free coupon with 1,000 enrollments, but some users are leaving low ratings without even watching the videos. Any suggestions on how to handle this?