Honest Request for Feedback!
I have worked on Asian History 101 for over 18 months as a passion project. I published two days ago, with only two students in hand. I have now started giving free coupons.
What can I do to make this course marketable? There is more than 10 hours of content with fully decorated and detailed power points. What am I missing at this point? I need to take advantage of the 90 day new course period before it runs out.
Thank you for any suggestions~
Comments
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The first thing you need to do is to do a Udemy search on Asian History. When I did this search I got over 5,000 results back. Over 1,800 of those are rated 4.5 or higher.
Think about this objectively. Your course is competing against 5K other courses on a similar topic. Over 1,800 of these courses have a large following and are highly rated. How are students going to find your course and why would they purchase it even if they did find it?
This is the grim reality of trying to sell courses on Udemy. So many new instructors spend months creating a course and fail to realize there are already hundreds of highly rated courses existing on the same topic.
To be quite honest, for a new instructor like yourself, Udemy isn't going to be able to help you much, if at all. You are going to have to draw students to your course yourself. And, most of us instructors, me included, are not very good at doing that.
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Thank you for your answer but actually this response is not helpful at all.
Firstly I began this over a year ago, I looked at Asian History in the search and there was hardly anything. However I did want to make a half baked product I wanted to make a complete product, I think the search system changed in development
In addition my course is actually very different and being Asian-region focused and not being single country focused. I give a comprehensive summary analysis of the areas that were influenced by Dharamic Taoic religions, I make this clear in my first Unit. I used hundreds of academic sources to put this together. Very few other courses do this as they are prioritizing one country, one region or trying to do 'world history' (very bland). My course is packed with content (I actually think its closer to 20 hours than 10, the system did not read some of my uploads correctly). This course is a response to the monopoly Western History has on schools both as a subject and a theme. And no, most other courses in Udemy are not doing that.
Also these so called other courses are not similar at all, now a name change might be in order (maybe list specific countries) but the fact of the matter is my course is still different from everything else I have seen here.
What would be actually be helpful is instead of throwing 'grim reality' at me is giving suggestions on how to optimize certain things to make the uniqueness of the course more visible.
Thanks and Best!
May anyone else have specific advice/tips on marketing or anything I should specifically change about the ascetics of the course. That will be "objectively" appreciated.!
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So you are telling me that over the course of a year, 5,000 courses were added about Asian History? I hardly think so.
You said your course is packed with content. You don't think the 1,800 4.5+ rated courses are packed with content? Of course they are. They wouldn't be rated 4.5 or higher if they weren't.
BTW, what is helpful is a dose of reality on how things work on Udemy. I told you how I think you can start selling your course on Udemy. You cannot rely on Udemy at this point. You have to do the marketing yourself. You can jazz up the ascetics all you want but the fact is that your course probably will not be found by students coming to Udemy unless you draw them yourself because students conduct searches and your course won't appear anywhere near the top because it is too new. In a year this might not be the case. But it's reality at the moment.
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I did change the name to exclude the 'history' label. Turns out that many non history courses use the word 'history' for their description. Now mine appears close to the top in searches about Asia. (at least)
I apologize for being a bit hot headed earlier. I am actually still constantly tinkering with this, and I am open to any/all solutions (like changing the name).
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Thank you for responding again!
I changed the name, of the course. I think the word 'history' is what made the search criteria so large, and its not even because there are so many 'history' courses per say just that the word 'history' is being used in the description.
What advertising methods have you found successful?
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Regarding advertising methods, I wouldn't pay anything to advertise your course. Realistically you are going to earn, on average, between $1 and $5 for each sale of your course. Therefore, it makes little sense to pay to advertise.
I primarily advertise my courses on Reddit (in the appropriate subreddit) and on LinkedIn (in the appropriate group). I have done acceptably well on those sites. At least well enough to keep doing it.
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