Do You Have Any Questions You're Afraid to Ask?
Comments
-
Hi Scott,
One quick question.
I see that many instructors have two accounts and they kind of tag their courses on both of them.
For example, you have on your name and your website/company name.
What is the advantage of this?
0 -
Hi Scott!
Before I ask my question, I'd like to thank you for this post. Being new to teaching in Udemy, I find it just a tiny bit hard to reach out for help.Anyway, my question is about images. Is it even okay if I put images I got from Google on my slides?
My course is going to be a course for learning Spanish, and I like using images to make my slides pop and help as visuals. Pretty dumb question, I know. But I see other courses I'm in using their own images (which they themselves or an artist they hired made) and I'm not an artist nor have the money to hire a professional to do it for me. I don't know how it does, but not knowing stresses me out and I'd like to make sure it's okay to use images I got randomly from Google.
-Thank you in advance0 -
I wouldn't grab it from Google if I were you. Someone might own that image. The chances of someone caring are low, but there are people out there who make a career of suing people who take their images without permission.
I would find "creative commons 0" images. That means the person who took the picture is providing it for free to anyone to use.
Here is a search tool for "free to use" images:
https://search.creativecommons.org/
Over 500 million images they claim. Not all are great, but you can be sure they are safe to use.
1 -
It used to be I created courses under my name that I did NOT want under my company brand. You'll see there is a different number of courses under my name as my company.
For instance, I have a course with Phil Ebiner that is on the Scott Duffy account but not under the SoftwareArchitect account.
It's also a branding thing. I want people to know that I have a company and what the name of that company is.
0 -
Oh awesome! Thank you so much!
0 -
You can also use other free image tools such as pexels, as well as if you get a canva membership, they have most images you could need, plenty of free images portals out there.
1 -
Thank you @ScottDuffy
0 -
Hi Scott,
I see that many instructors provide professional captions/subtitles.
For those who have long courses, I feel it is very tedious or difficult to do it. Is there any easy way of doing this? Is there anything you would recommend?
And I see that some instructors provide subtitles in other languages. What is the easiest way of doing this?
0 -
Hi @ScottDuffy
Thanks much. You were right. My primary topic is interior design.
My main topic is "interior design". But it seems to be locked and I'm unable to change it to sketchup. Do you know how I can fix this? Should I reach out to Udemy?
0 -
Hi Scott,
thank you for reaching out to help us starters.I have two courses online now but it seems like there is only one student a month buying the one course and the other course gets almost no purchase for the first two months... Actually I wonder if I should create more courses, try to find out what I can improve on the old ones or start a youtube channel for 2 years to be able to promote the courses properly............
0 -
Hi @manishpaulsimon
yes, you should reach out to instructorsupport@udemy.com to request an update of your course category.0 -
Hi,
Many thanks for this post. I have a pretty dumb question. Whenever there is a following lady picture on the udemy landing page then my sales incredibly gets down. It's just a co-incidence or happens with other fellows as well.
I am sorry if i hurt anyone.
0 -
When this lady appears (along with this message) it means that Udemy is not running a sale and therefore courses are being sold at table price. However, students usually wait for sales. When there are sales running, they usually put images of different people (of various ethnicities, genders, cultures etc) along with a different message highlighting a discount
3 -
The poor innocent stock model is being blamed for poor sales.
I don't see a correlation between the image on the home page and my personal revenue. Maybe someone can track it.
2 -
One of your courses is in English and the other is in German.
It's likely that the German market is just a fraction of the English market on Udemy. Maybe only 5%. This is one factor that leads to low sales in German. The other factor is perhaps the topic of the course, which I interpret to be how to use video as a coach or therapist. It's an important topic, and I'm sure there are thousands of therapists that can use the training. But are those people searching on Udemy for courses? I don't know.
I think the image is great. It conveys what you are teaching. A+
I don't see anything wrong with this course given that I can't speak or read German.
What you need is more students. Is there a way to present your course in online groups and forums where therapists and coaches hang out? Is there a reddit forum or a German twitter hashtag for this? Find some enclave where these people hang out and say, "excuse me, but I have this thing that might be helpful to you. "
- - - -
Your English course seems important as well. Discipline and bad habits.
There is a fairly obvious typo on the landing page that my eye was drawn to immediately.
"You need a lot of discipline in order to get what you really want in live". This sentence is totally wrong.
There is irony there because the sentence is wrong.
The word probably should be "life" not "live". "Habits" is a tough category on Udemy. There are courses with 10,000s of students already in the marketplace. Some of the teachers are "famous" on the Internet. So what sets your course apart from those other courses?
So the problem you have here is differentiation.
You might have more success with "How to Break a Porn Addiction" or "How to Stop Snacking Throughout the Day" or "How to Reduce Your Online Shopping Habit" or "How to Go to the Gym Every Morning" than "how to abandon bad habits" in my view.
The riches are in the niches, they say. So how can the concepts of this course be targeted for a specific, popular bad habit? Find a topic that is underserved on Udemy.
OR find a way to make this course stand out. Since your partner is a respected therapist, this might not be easy. But TV infomercial Queen Susan Powter used to scream "STOP THE INSANITY!" which became her catch-phrase and made her stand out in the late-night infomercial wars.
I think it's a tough category. You need more students, more reviews, and a better message to say why your course is better than all the other habits courses. That's not going to happen if you do nothing.
Good luck!
2 -
Hi Scott,
thank you for your review and insights!
the riches are in the niches, makes sense, I will do that then. Going deeper more into the corners of the internet.
I wished I could do an internship at how to make great online courses..
0 -
I use a service called HappyScribe to create English captions. They are better than the Udemy captions because I can upload a list of words that are unique to my courses.
It costs me next to nothing. I think I paid $49 one time for the service on AppSumo.
0 -
The Auto captions are provided by Udemy.
1 -
Hi Scott,
I'm a big fan of your courses, thanks so much for all the helpful info I've got from them
I just published my first course yesterday, and am finding marketing it a really steep learning curve.
Would you possibly have 5 minutes to take a look and tell me some initial thoughts? Any feedback from such a Udemy Pro like yourself would be MASSIVELY appreciated.
I have three more courses nearly finished so any tips really would be great.
Thanks again for giving back to new instructors, really kind of you.
Paul
0 -
Hi @ScottDuffy
how do you spot a spam or a fake review? What are the different signs to look for to ascertain that the review is not genuine?0 -
Hi Paul,
On the whole, you've put together a nice short course. The course image is eye-catching, the title contains a clear value proposition, and the subtitle draws interest. I've watched the promo video, intro video, and one of the lessons. You're good at this.
There's no reason why someone who is looking for a career change would say no to watching even a bit of your course to get some tips from it.
If I can make two suggestions. One, you appear to have just chosen the first five lessons of the course as your free preview ones. Maybe there is another video or two within the course that you can expose for the free preview that gives potential students a feeling for your teaching style. I'd recommend choosing a different video (or two) for a free preview.
And two, am I correct to assume that the downloadable PDFs contain most of the lessons of the course? If so, you're leaving yourself open to students buying the course, downloading the PDF, and refunding the course. I'd ensure that there are enough videos in the course that teach things not covered by any downloadable PDF to make the videos a valuable companion to the workbook.
You clearly know a lot about creating a video course despite this being your first one.
In terms of marketing, what you need to do is get your course in front of people who can use it. I see you've probably given away 2500 free coupons, and that's OK I guess. But what you really need are people who are looking for a career change.
Where do you find people looking for a career change?
LinkedIn, likely. Twitter too. Perhaps Reddit. Job search boards. Maybe there are job search FB groups that allow these kinds of posts. I don't know the exact answer, but what you need is exposure to the right audience. Not just free coupons to random people who may not even need your advice, but actual interested students. Not free coupons, but place your product in front of the right people. The price is already right.
Is there someone who already has an audience, that might be willing to show this course to their audience?
You need reviews. Preferably good ones, but the course needs student activity. Watching videos, doing assignments, completing the course... Out of those 2500 free coupons, you need some of those people to watch the course and give feedback. Use educational announcements to encourage action.
Finally, if you can get some reviews, this might be the kind of thing Udemy Business is interested in. So once you meet the minimum qualifications for that, see if you can get their attention.
Good luck!
2 -
It's sort of like asking, how can you tell a photo is real and has not been Photoshopped? How can you tell if something is a Deep Fake?
I would say, humans (and now AI) can recognize certain patterns. When you compare the reviews of a course where you KNOW the reviews are real, next to a course where you suspect they are not real, you can see the difference.
1 hours ago - 5 STARS - Best instructer on Udemy. Amazing. Great.
2 hours ago - 5 STARS - Wonderfuil. Best.
2 hours ago - 5 STARS - Greate course. Realy GReat. Wonderfuil.
2 hours ago - 5 STARS - John Doe best teacher. Much best.3 days ago - 1 STAR - This course is awful. Avoid it. I want my money back. This instructor really knows nothing about the topic, and shouldn't be teaching at all.
I mean, you can just see a pattern.2 -
Hi Scott,
I really can't thank you enough for the tips and the time it took you to watch those vids and type out all of that hugely helpful advice. You are a very kind person! :-)))
I have actioned all of your fantastic suggestions.
A MASSIVE THANK YOU AGAIN, you have a fan for life in me! To get such great tips from such a pro like yourself is amazing!
Have a lovely rest of the week!
Paul
1 -
Hey @ScottDuffy
I really like your course images. What do you think of mine? Or should I just copy you? 0 -
@ScottDuffy
My questions were asked by others and answered here! Many thanks for taking time to do this for instructors. It is MOST appreciated.3 -
I thought of something: I've searched the forums and got other opinions, but: What is YOUR new instructor recommended strategy for Black Friday, Cyber Monday, and New Years?
I only have one course. I MIGHT be able to have a new one out by New Years. Any insights most appreciated.
0 -
Are we allowed to provide the pptx slides of our entire course for a student? A student asked if he could get the ppt slides. If it is allowed, I'm going to put a watermark before handling them tp this student
0 -
My guess is that particular image gets posted when there is no sale on Udemy. This image will definitely get us more sales.
.1 -
I do, sometimes.
What I provide is a PDF. And the PDF contains many links back to my course on Udemy in case some random person finds the PDF and is curious where to get the videos from...
1 -
1
