Breakdown a topic in several courses or unify?

Hi all!

Happy to join this community.

I’m about to create my first course, I have around 8 hours of video material on one topic (Digital marketing for fashion/beauty industry) and I was wondering if it’s better to breakdown this content in 8 different courses for example or put everything in the same course.

What do you think?

Thanks,

Warmly,

Jordane

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Accepted answers

PythonicEducation

For sure make it one 8-hour megacourse. Since Udemy severely discounts all courses, students tend to value longer courses more. Simply because they believe that since pretty much all courses have the same price, they want to get as much content as they can for the same price. Of course we all know that longer course does not always mean more valuable in terms of information, but that is how most consumers think and make course purchases accordingly. Hope this helped.

ChrisBankes120

If you have eight one hour courses (for example) then that's 8 times the potential sales revenue. Students will finish the course more quickly and thus are more likely to give reviews as they've finished the course and good reviews will lead to Udemy marketing the course(s). If you have 8 x 1 hour courses it is unlikely that several get 1 star reviews from someone who just feels like being a pain. BUT if you have just one course and your initial reviews are unfavourable then that's it, potentially, all lost. (I put on a course done by another Instructor. I gave away coupons to people who had been on another course by the same Instructor. The first person enrolled, did 1%, misunderstood what the course was about and gave it 1 star. That course, 6 mths later has zero sales.)

Eight courses will allow you to flesh out sections as you see fit whereas with them all in one course, the course may be overbalanced in one particular area.

Eight courses might not ALL be pirated. One course…will.

Bear in mind students may enrol; and never do the course. 85% of my 240,000 + students have not looked at anything in a year. On some courses it's 99.5%. if they don't look, they don't review. With 8 small courses students are more likely to glance at the course and thus more likely to buy another, to leave a review etc etc.

With the eight hour course students who start it might never finish. Never finish, probably not review. Also some students dislike giving 5 stars if the course is unfinished. With 1 hour courses, IF they start then they'll probably finish.

8 courses in one particular area are likely to keep competitors out.

8 courses = 24 coupons to give away/sell.

8 hour course IS more value than 1 hour course - assuming the student wants to watch. But some students just enrol as it's on sale. Never look. Some enrol just to fast forward and get the life-changing Completion Certificate. (8 courses = 8 certificates.) I don't think value for money in terms of length makes a lot of difference. I had a 103 hour course on something and a competitor had a 1 hour course on the same subject. He sold more. The reason? People could fast forward and print - and change - their own 'internationally accredited certificate' plus the one hour course qualified the student (so the course description said ) to do something that I, naively, had stated could not be done in less than 4 years.

All comments

PythonicEducation

Jordane

Thank you for your response!

It makes sense but I won’t give away those 8hours + pdfs for only 20$ or 30€ which is the average I’ve seen on Udemy. It’s university grade (I’m already running that course in a School) so I was thinking to go around a 100$+ price bracket. Not sure if Udemy users are willing to pay that much since the average price is very low…

RonErez

To charge 100$ you can opt out of Udemy deals/promotions.

ChrisBankes120

Eight courses will allow you to flesh out sections as you see fit whereas with them all in one course, the course may be overbalanced in one particular area.

Eight courses might not ALL be pirated. One course…will.

8 courses in one particular area are likely to keep competitors out.

8 courses = 24 coupons to give away/sell.

ThomasMitchell

Udemy students aren’t paying you $100 for an 8-hour course. You’re lucky if you can get $20.

Jordane

@ChrisBankes120 thank you so much for taking the time to respond! You convinced me :)

ChrisBankes120

I'll add a bit…

8 x 1 hour courses means you COULD try different niches eg Marketing, Fashion, Teaching academics, Personal development etc etc - it does allow you to 'spread yourself'.

Also if you had an 8 hour course and you tweaked it to the effect of adding 30 minutes then 'very nice' but if you had a 1 hour course and added 30 minutes you COULD retitle, change the 1 hour element a bit, add your 30 minutes and wow! you now have NINE courses, one of which is 90 minutes.

You could send a promotion to students on ONE of the courses which includes a free coupon to one of the other '8' . (Obviously you couldn't do that with just one course.)

With 8 x 1 hour courses some of them may well appear on competitors page as in someone buys a course from a competitor and Udemy encourages them to buy another maybe from someone else. 8 courses =- more chance of being featured.

One of the 8 is lousy; terrible; appalling. So you change it, quickly. The sales of the other 7 are probably not affected.

8 courses probably bigger database to market to

8 courses you could say 'if you complete this course you can have any one of my other courses for free' (motivator). Obviously if you have 1 eight hour course…..

I have an 82 hour course on Death etc. A competitor's course is 45 minutes ( and apparently 'qualifies you') and gets more sales. So let's say in the niche you're aiming at there are 40 courses available. With the 8, there are now 48 and instead of a 1 in 41 you have a 1 in 6 chance of selling.

Downside/Upside

1 1 hour course is much easier to emulate and compete against. One of your 1-in-8 courses is doing well so a competitor quickly creates a competitor.

Let's reverse it. A competitor's course is doing well, so you can quickly tweak 1 of your 8 courses to compete.

8 hour courses: sales low so you massively boost with free coupons (bad idea). So you leave it at, say, 50 sales.

8 x 1 hour course: some do badly, some don't. All bring same revenue per course. The point is low enrolments for the 8 hour course is a deterrent; unlikely to have low for ALL the 8.

Your own profile: 8 courses: 1000 students. Versus 1 course : 1,000 students. Odd though it may seem the '8 courses' looks better.

I have a 90 hour Economics course. Launched in 2015 I think. IF I had made it 9 x 10 hour courses in 2015-2017 I'd probably dominate the Economics section.

A somewhat jaded view but…don't assume students want to watch and learn something. Plenty of courses di well and the Q/A is empty. In one of my courses I have 5,000+ posts in Q/A. A competitor who for a time sold more…the Q/A is empty. Q/A, despite my intentions, is NOT a selling point.

So, back to the jaded view: often students just want to have something they enrol in on impulse, maybe watch 10 minutes or so, collect a Completion Certificate (even better if it's 'Internationally Accredited' - costs $199 for unlimited courses and makes the courses look good and valuable even though it's a sham in my opinion) and move on to another course. So in a week or so they might have four of your 1 hour courses, very different names, and four Completion Certificates and feel good. (As will your bank account) So you could then introduce the magnificent 'Diploma in Digital Marketing' which is 'earned' by any student doing 4,5,6,7,8 of your courses.

Not so impressive if you've just one course.