How Long to Your First Student

BillHuffhine
BillHuffhine Posts: 5 researcher rank
in First-time course creation

Hello everyone!

Well, I did it. My first course, Finding Yourself in the Five Seasons of Life, went live this evening, seven years after I first thought, “I can do this!”

So, how long did it take for you to get your first student, organically, after your course went live?

Comments

  • MindfulMelissa
    MindfulMelissa Posts: 4 researcher rank

    I'm also new. I got students I didn't know on my second day for my first course. I got a student within a few hours for my second course.

    When I look at my revenue feed though, a good portion of my income for my first full month came from my own referrals though versus the platform so I'm trying to focus on that for now.

  • TomMeurs221
    TomMeurs221 Posts: 4 researcher rank

    Hi!

    It took me a week to get my first student which was not a referral. Gotta be patient the first couple of weeks!

    Goodluck,

    Tom

  • RandyMinder
    RandyMinder Posts: 679 visionary rank

    Hi @BillHuffhine
    - This depends upon a number of things, such as:

    1. How many other courses are there teaching the same thing you are
    2. Overall demand for what you have to offer
    3. Price

    I took a look at your course and I don't think you are going to attract many students with a price of $49.95 for just a 1.5 hour course. You have to remember that students are accustomed to waiting for sales and then paying about $10 for a course, and much less in other countries. So, it's rather unlikely very many people are going to pay you $49.95. If they are interested, they will wait for the next sale and pick it up for much less. But, even then, they will have to be able to find your course among potentially hundreds of similar courses. I would suggest lowering your price to $19.95.

    Also, your title is a bit esoteric. I cannot tell, from your title, what exactly you are teaching. What specifically would someone put into the Udemy search bar to find your course?

    Finally, I would caution you that courses that are as short as yours get refunded pretty heavily, based on my own experience. It's common for students to feel like they really didn't get their money's worth for just a 1.5 hour course (actually less than that after the introduction etc.) so they will get a refund.

  • BillHuffhine
    BillHuffhine Posts: 5 researcher rank

    Hi Randy!

    Thank you for your feedback. I do see how I can make a change to the title to include more search-friendly terms. I'll make that change.

    I did a lot of looking around at other courses in my niche; titles, length, price, etc. I was surprised to see courses about the same length priced in the $70 to $80 range. That felt high to me. All of the stuff I've been watching on youtube from other instructors who've sold tens of thousands of dollars worth of courses say to not price your course below $100 and that people actually prefer shorter courses because we have shorter attention spans and people are more interested in the content and not the length. So much conflicting information out there! I've read so much, and watched so much through courses here and on Youtube, and so much information is inconsistent from instructor to instructor. Although my course has 1.5 hours of video content, if the student does the quizzes and assignments they'll spend closer to 2.5 to 3 hours with the course.

    I landed at $49.95 knowing that most of my sales will come in at the $12 to $20 price point though sales and promotions. I also have my course hosted on Thinkific where I'll keep all of the revenue versus splitting it like we do here. My thought is going after volume to the mass market here, with all of my own marketing strategies pointing to my Thinkific page.

    You've given some great feedback and I appreciate it!

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