My Journey as a Udemy Instructor: A Perspective for Newcomers

Col (Dr) Shabbar Shahid (Veteran)

When I retired from active Army service in 2020, I decided to pursue my lifelong passion for teaching. Like many new instructors, my journey had its fair share of challenges, learning curves, and moments of frustration. I’m sharing this experience for the benefit of new instructors who may be going through similar phases. Before I proceed, I would urge the readers to appreciate that doing something for money and pursuing a passion which also generates an income are two different things. I began with the later.

1. The Initial Struggles
I began with free webinars on zoom, but quickly realized that about 90% of registrants never showed up. Many who did attend seemed to view it as a personal favor rather than genuine interest. Although there were a few who appreciated my efforts, the motivation was not proportionate to the effort invested.

Next, I tried uploading free recorded videos on YouTube. Unfortunately, there were almost no learners, but I was flooded with marketing offers suggesting I had to pay for visibility otherwise YouTube would never surface my content. That was disheartening.

2. The Udemy Discovery
Thankfully, one fine day I discovered Udemy and published a free course since revenue generation was not on my mind at that moment. I just wanted to share my knowledge beyond borders. Initially, I was thrilled with the enrollments, but soon realized many were bots or inactive accounts. Some genuine learners assumed “free” meant “low quality,” which reflected in unfair ratings without comments.

One night at around 2 AM I woke up restless, almost on impulse, I put a price tag on my course and then engaged my self in other activities trying to forget Udemy and my course. To my pleasant surprise, within a few months the course was not only generating revenue but also received the “Highest Rated” badge. That single moment of recognition reignited my motivation.

3. Growth and Success
Since then, I’ve published 24 courses, many of which have received encouraging reviews and steady revenue. The journey has been immensely satisfying, not just financially, but because I know my content is genuinely reaching learners who value it.

4. The Current Challenges
However, things have shifted recently. With Udemy placing less emphasis on the marketplace, traction for new courses has slowed considerably. My last two courses, which I believe are excellent compilations of corporate knowledge and experience, have seen almost no uptake. I even offered to provide them free to Udemy’s corporate learners, but apart from a generic response, there was no real support. This has dimmed my enthusiasm for creating new content, and I’ve started shifting my focus elsewhere because I do have other options on hand.

5. My Message to New Instructors
I understand the frustration many new instructors may feel in today’s environment, where you put your heart and soul and also time in creating content which finds few takers in the market place. My advice is simple:-

If your primary goal is revenue, be prepared for persistence and patience. Success requires diligence and continuous effort. If you can, create content aligned to Udemy's Business needs and be patient. You may have to wait longer than what you can tolerate, but that is it.

If your primary goal is passion for teaching, know that the results may not always match the effort, but eventually the satisfaction of reaching learners will sustain you. This current phase is indeed challenging, but I believe Udemy will eventually regain momentum and so will you.

Wishing you all the best…

ChrisBankes120

I'll add my perspective. But before I start I want to stress that doing something for money and pursuing a passion which also generates an income are two different things. The ideal is pursuing a passion, producing a high quality course that continues the learning experience by having a highly active Q/A and also maximising income - this is difficult but not impossible.

1. My very first course was in Economics. One take, two cameras, put out for free. To my amazement (and naivety) I saw hundreds enrol. I didn't really notice that few were watching. Nevertheless I left the course for free, for a time and watched enrolments grow. Meanwhile I applied for - and succeeded in - getting jobs teaching Economics and when asked for evidence of recent teaching experience I'd point to my 'enormously popular' Economics course. I also changed it from 'Free' to 'Paid' and it certainly looked as though I was earning thousands. (The course subsequently became a Best seller for the next 8-9 years or so.
2. At the time (2015 onwards) I was busy being involved in putting on plays in London, making films, writing books as well as doing tutoring (in Economics and Business). One actor in particular i got to know very well. we jointly produced (I scripted, he presented and added anecdotes) a course about getting old (he was 79) . This was great fun and very interesting. 18,600 students enrolled in all these years - but takings less than $350.
3. We then decided to make a course about Death. Many of his friends had died, some quite famous. The lectures were slow, emotional and (I thought) very interesting. I also presented various lectures but speaking from research rather than shared experiences. That has fewer students (about 5400) but more revenue ($12,400). Sadly my co-presenter died before the course was launched.
4. I then decided to make a course about Business Studies - after all, I was an Examiner in it and a very experienced teacher. I had high hopes but sales were poor. Naively I had called it 'A' level Business Studies rather than something like 'Business Environment' or similar. Prior to this I had enrolled in a course called MBA in Business (or similar - it was a few years ago). I realised that a) it was not an MBA and b) thousands and thousands had enrolled. That gave me an idea. I changed the name of my course to pre-MBA and suddenly sales rose, quite fast. I'd made no changes to the course but - as one student told me - the important thing was that the Completion certificate had 'MBA' on it. There were still - and still are - students who 'did the whole course' inside 30 minutes or so and it is these students in particular, I suspect, who were attracted by the name. It dawned on me that there were very different categories of students - with a fair degree of overlap. (I've described these in another post but one important thing was that it was a mistake to assume that 100% of students bought the course to actually watch it, work at it and learn a lot.)
5. I then decided to make some more courses about Economics and for a time they sold well. I set a lot of homework and students seemed to enjoy the many active discussions. Maybe this was another category : students who wanted to participate?
6. My next move was to make three courses that I really thought students would love as potentially these courses would save lives. Subject : strokes and their prevention. I was able to approach these with some experience having had a TIA and also separately a mini-stroke. In fact I filmed some lectures with half of my face paralysed to demonstrate the effects. I was also heavily involved with stroke charities. I hired a production company and made - what I still believe - in cinematic terms an extremely professional series of courses. 56,000 students: $700 or so . Net loss. That was an important lesson: relevance comes before quality if you want to sell.
7. Round about that time i read an article in The Guardian about Art Therapy - something I'd never heard of. It looked very interesting and was something with plenty of resources. Also by adding an 'S' to 'Art' it became ArtS Therapy which would include acting, scriptwriting etc etc. I was also teaching Sociology at the time and running seminars for Psychology teachers so it seemed Art(s) Therapy would be very interesting for me and hopefully for other students. So far I've made 30+ courses on Art(s) Therapy - some earning $000s and some earning less than $100. But for all I have really enjoyed making them, learnt a lot myself and - importantly for me - have been able to involve students by setting art therapy exercises which students have then done and shared and discussed. I have also received messages from students saying how much the course is helping them etc etc. Great stuff.
8. I then learnt another very important lesson. There are organisations that 'accredit' courses - for a fee. $199 will get all your courses 'accredited'. The organisation is based very near me. I decided to send them some questions in particular how they actually 'accredit'. They blocked me. I then saw that a one hour course was on Udemy and according to the Course Description it made you a qualified Art Therapist. My courses - usually 15 hours + in length stressed that the course did NOT make you an Art Therapist - and I could see that sales could be lost. I looked at the Reviews and only TWO of the many many reviews criticised the fact that the course said it made you qualified. One of the reviewers also posted in the Q/A of that course about this but the post was deleted. This taught me that there are some students who like something that appears to be highly professional in terms of qualifications etc especially if they don't have to put any work in! I joined the course and the Q/A was almost empty whereas my course that was in direct competition had 3,000+ posts. So my job satisfaction involved having an active Q/A, involving students, encouraging sharing etc etc but clearly this takes time and doesn't - apparently - lead to more sales than a shorter course with no activity.
9. In later months and years I created many more courses - some to illustrate to someone how a course could be created inside 2 hours from scratch and still get highly positive reviews, some to raise ££ for charity, some to raise awareness, some with other students to help their University application, some just for fun ('Management by Cartoons') . My latest 'explorations' have been in Counselling. In part because I have recently been on a 6mth Counselling course myself, also because years of teaching in schools etc and doing voluntary work for many charities (I am very old) have meant I have been doing (untrained) counselling for some time. I was discussing courses with a potential co-Instructor last night and we looked at two courses. One of mine and one that is a direct competitor. Similar amount of enrolments. My course : 15 hours; the other one 1 hour. But the big difference was the Q/A. 5 posts in the other course; 600 in mine.

So, although I have said that a high quality, relevant course that makes money are not mutually inclusive, it depends on what you enjoy. If you enjoy making lectures you may make a very long course and if you enjoy many discussions and become involved, this is going to take a lot of time. If the aim is mainly $$ then you may have to cut back on involvement, may even have to cut back - or at least tailor - your passion to make courses that are more relevant.

Note: all the above refers only to courses in the Marketplace, not Udemy for Business - that's a whole different story.