I am interested in your story as first time instructor
Hello there!
Could anyone share his/her story of starting the journey as an instructor on Udemy or anywhere else. What motivated you and what was your Target to start this journey.
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I started on Udemy a few years ago. I'd been reading a magazine and one line mentioned 'Udemy' which I had never heard of. So I investigated. What particularly attracted me was that - apparently - I could get an MBA after 8 hours and Udemy confirmed that although the actual MBA was not awarded, certainly the syllabus was covered.
At the time I had no job, having decided to take a break from teaching Business and Economics. As a hobby I appeared in various student films. One of the students (Uni students) suggested I make a short course about Economics.
This I did. I sat and spouted for about 30 minutes. One take. I put it on Udemy as a free course, just for curiosity. (October 13th, 2015)
It stayed free for almost two years – I paid little attention to it as I was working in schools etc.
In September 2016 I made another course: Old Age and Depression. This was made with one of the actors I had appeared in films with, Peter Thomas. (Peter was a proper actor - he'd appeared in Dr Who and a whole host of famous films.)
Making the course was a lot of fun. I wrote the script, Peter did the anecdotes and ad-libs.
A few months later we made another course, Death, Grief and Healing (released January 2017). This again featured Peter, talking about death in the cinema as well as his own views on death. Sadly by the time the course was actually released, Peter had died (He died the week before, age 80). When the course is updated (it's gone from about 8 hours to 80+) it's quite weird looking at the old lectures and adding a few slides here and there.
A few months later I made another course about Business Studies. (May 2017)
My overall target was to have fun as writing, producing courses etc is really not that different to appearing in short films.
I also realised some other things along the way….
- The FREE Economics course was changed from FREE to Paid. A few thousand had enrolled (FREE) and by making it PAID it looked like I was making a LOT of money. So when I applied for jobs in schools, I'd point to the Economics course, the number of enrolments etc and say 'This is what I have been doing in the last year - it's virtually my full-time job….which I will stop if you offer me this position." Interestingly, too, earnings exceed $50,000 from the one Economics course so far.
- The Old Age course - which we all thought would be of interest to vast numbers of people, has in fact only earned $300 - and this is despite there being 2,000 more students enrolled than in the Economics course. I then realised how misleading student enrolments are - I'd always assumed that people enrolled to WATCH - which is certainly not true. Even for the Economics course, 44% have never watched anything - and many of them paid.
- For the Death, Grief and Healing course there were five of us involved. Of the five, three died before the launch, one had a stroke (me) and one had a breakdown. In a way, making and updating the course has become one of the ways we have coped with grief and sometimes this comes through in the Q/A where discussions are encouraged.
- The Business Studies - specifically 'A' level Business Studies - sold very few UNTIL I changed the name to pre-MBA (which was true, of course) and sales suddenly rose. I then left the 'pre' off the course title and sales revenue continued to rise even though I stressed and stressed that the course was NOT an MBA. I then was told by a student that really his reason for enrolling was nothing to do with the content of the course but he wanted a Completion Certificate with 'MBA' on it. I realised then how important a name is - and I see some Instructors have their own Diplomas which students can print out and, importantly EDIT, if they wish. I have multiple diplomas in Art Therapy in a variety of names - Donald Duck etc - as I am a student on someone else's Art Therapy course.
Over the years, as income grew - probably more by accident than design - I realised too that this 'hobby' was also a very useful claimable expense. Thus I could - and did - go on a cruise and as long as I made a course out of some of the filming there (sunset, beaches etc etc) I could claim part of the cruise against ALL my Udemy expenses. This was enlightening - I've scripted a course about pub crawls in case I ever need to increase my claimable expenses. (So far nearly all my Udemy earnings generate so many claimable expenses - petrol, food, rent, cruises, flights, camera equipment, internet etc - that I don't need to worry about tax. )
I have also realised that if you have - and this is just my view at my advanced years - a main focus on income then Udemy may well disappoint as it has become very very very competitive. There's a limit to how much longer a human with grey hair can compete against AI-based courses that are being churned out. Also it's all very well wandering round the countryside pontificating about art etc but courses that are less than 1% as long as mine but apparently make you an art therapist and you have a diploma to prove it, are very difficult to compete against.
So my aim is to enjoy making courses in areas that are of interest to me and hopefully are of interest to others. Going back to my original hobby in 2015 - acting - producing an 'educational performance' is somehow satisfying - and pays the rent on my house.
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I joined Udemy September 2022 although I talked about publishing a course for about 5-6 years before that. I completed my PhD in math and then actually had time to work on a course. Additionally I was on another platform that allowed courses no longer than 1.5-2 hours. So I made many 1.5 hour courses on the other platform and then combined it into one course. This is not an ideal way to plan things but it did help me breakdown the problem of creating a course because in the past I would start creating courses but never finish them.
That's it. I was lucky my first course was moderately successful, however the other eight courses I created afterwards don't sell much.
Nevertheless I did enjoy creating the courses. Kind of a bummer that currently there is a major drop in sales. Hopefully it's just temporary and things will pick up.
Happy course creation!
Ron
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I published my first course at the end of October 2015. I was introduced to Udemy by a previous employer who recommended creating online courses. After conducting a keyword search on the topic I was interested in, Udemy returned over 1000 courses on the subject. Initially, I considered abandoning the idea due to the high number of existing courses.
However, I chose to proceed and created a quick tips course on my topic as a small trial. A few months later, I started recording the original course I intended to create when first learning about Udemy. The initial enrollment and paying student numbers were slow, but about a year after publishing my first course, I decided to leave my full-time job to focus on Udemy and online courses.
Nearly ten years have passed since joining Udemy. Some courses have been successful and remained popular, while others have not sustained their initial success. Despite some courses not performing well, the process of creating these courses has provided valuable learning experiences and helps improve future courses and videos.
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