Do You Have Any Questions You're Afraid to Ask?

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Comments

  • Ardit, glad to see you're still around, man. It's been a long time.

    Wow, you've completely changed your Python Mega Course image. That's a big change.

    Did you hire a professional designer for that? Or run a contest on 99designs?

    I like the bold background colors. Makes it stand out. I love that your photo is there. (I assume that's you and not Twitter's Jack Dorsey or a professional model.) I might suggest that you make the photo of you bigger. Humans trust faces. 50% more Ardit, please.

    I like your course image better than Tim's or Jose's. Yours is SO much better. In fact, you definitely have the "top 1 or 2" course image on the entire page 1 of "python" search. I also like Angela's course image.

  • Wish you much success!

  • ardit
    ardit Posts: 80 storyteller rank

    @ScottDuffy
    , thanks for the feedback! Yeah, long time no see! I have been lurking here in the community, though.

    My old image had a number (10) in it, which was against the Udemy no-text-in-image rule.

    You are right. I look too sexy in this new image . I should replace it with something closer to reality. Otherwise, I will get a lot of refunds when students see me on video inside the course.

  • Good Job

  • Perfect! Thanks!

  • Hello @ScottDuffy
    ,

    I would really like to hear what do you think about my dilemma.

    I did ask it a few weeks ago in this other post and got 1 answer from Thor, but would really like to hear what you think.

    I have a course 8 hours long and is from 2018, didn't refresh the content and the videos were outdated.

    Because of that, I got bad reviews and the rating of the course went down to 3.4.

    Then I unpublished the course last year.

    Now I have started to record new videos that reflect the new version of the software that the course is all about and would like to publish it.

    Now my concern is should I publish it as a new course or update the existing one.

    In the existing one, there are 5306 students enrolled, with 97 reviews but 90% were free from the days when I was thinking that if I had lots of students it would look better.

    Would you go with creating a new course or would you update the existing one with all the new videos and materials?

    Thanks,

    Davor

  • P.S.

    And of course, I would be very grateful for your comments and advice on the course itself (I'm talking about my course on New Data Entry Forms. Don't want to break the rules by putting the link here)

  • New course makes more sense, send it as promotional announcement to existing course's students that this is latest updated course with these benefits etc. As long as they are interested students of that field they will be interested. Given all factors make sense to create new as now existing course is ranking low in Udemy algorithm and it will take you a lot to being those reviews back up. Make a fresh start.

  • Hi Scott, thanks a lot for starting this thread. I really much appreciate all your efforts.

    My question is related to one of your older courses.

    Udemy SEO: Winning the Udemy Search Engine – Unofficial

    Why did you take it offline and is there a possibility to still enroll in the course?

    Apart from that course, my question behind is:

    How can I optimize my course to get more reviews and to be shown on the udemy start page? I guess this would be good to make more sales. If I search for Excel in German I already rank on place 4. So I’m very happy with that. Of course higher would be even better, but I thought tp appear on the Udemy Start page might be even more interesting…

    To the background of my course:

    I have a new Excel course in German, which is online since 2 months. It's performing very good and I'm getting good reviews. But unfortunately not many.

    After family and friends and free coupons I have 200 paid enrollments in this course. From these enrollmetns I got a review rate of 8% so far.

    I know it’s just 2 months after the course launch, but I can see that this course behaves different than another course of me. I first thought maybe it's the topic, but when I have a look at the top performer in my category. He has a conversion rate of nearly 20 %.

    My assumption is, that the watchtime of my course is too low. leading to a low review rate. A lot of my students buy the course and then just watch 5 or 10 % or nothing at all. And I guess that to be shown on the Udemy start page you need to have a lot of watchtime and reviews. Or does the Udemy algorithm work different?

    If my assumption is right I would try to optimize for watchtime. (for the watchtime itself and in order to get more reviews) Which I would translate to make the course more interesting and more engaging and maybe get rid of boring parts.

    What do you think and how would you optimize? Or am I too impatient or on the wrong track?

    Thanks a lot in advance. I really much appreciate your work.

    Felix

  • Hi Max,

    I had a look in your course and I see a couple of things.

    The courses are very well produced and I guess this was a lot of effort.

    promo video of the habbits course: There are too many effects. this has two downsides: you need a lot of time and effort to produce and it draws attention away from your toppic.

    I guess you are a really cool guy and someone to have a lot of fun with. Even though your description on your instructors page sounds very self-focused and arrogant. and the same in the promo video of the habbits course.

    habbits course, video: create the action for your new habbit:

    cuts are too fast. draws attention away from the topic.

    also from the course and your profile you dont seem to me like an expert. I'm very honest on that, because I have the same problem too. I did a lot of things in my life and sometimes I do not know how to position myself. Anyway you need to give the student the feeling that you are an expert and that they can trust you.

    promo video of the other course. It starts quite strong but then gets a bit boring. Have a look here on how to create awesome promo:

    The Perfect Promo: Guide (udemy.com)

    To your sales: have a look in your analytics. are the conversion rates bad or did you not have traffic at all? (for organic traffic you need a good udemy ranking in the udemy search. and therefore a good thumbnail, title, number of reviews,.

    I would work on all of these. it's too much for now to go in every detail. if you dont know how feel free to aks again.

    for conversion rate you need a good promo video. proof, that students can trust you. good preview videos and maybe landingpage.

    once you fixed the causes for the conversion rate you need to get higher in the search ranking. therefore you need traffic. later organic traffic but to get started you might try free coupon codes. (but just if your course is good and this leads to good reviews). also a lot of people here say this is not a good strategy and I guess they are right! But maybe if you dont have other ideas how to promote your course its an easy way to start and later you probably get organic traffic from udemy. at least for the german course! for the english course: competition is very high. i guess the free coupons just work if you have an outstanding good course to get it going. otherwise this will just be a short peak in visibility. In german course quality can be a little bit less and you will still make sales.

    Don't get me wrong. My aim is not to critisize or blaim and I hope my feedback is not to harsh. I just say that because in my opinion this kind of things can be very easy to see or very hard to see at the same time. For others it's always easy to tell what is good and what not. But for oneself it's always difficult because everybody has his or her own blind spots. And i feel a bit related to you. Watch my content. I know that i used to have a lot of this kind of things. I changed a lot. But still I'm pretty sure you will find parts where you say it's obvious to change this and that. Try the experiment and watch a lot of stuff from the great instructors like scott duffy or phil ebiner. Then watch mine and see what is the difference. Then watch yours and ask yourself what you can change.

    hope that helps. Felix

  • Hi all! I'm totally new to this platform. Being totally blind, would it be possible creating courses without video lessons but just audio? Thanks for your help. Bye for now.

  • ScottDuffy
    ScottDuffy Posts: 888 rolemodel rank

    All courses must have a video component. The video must be moving and not a static image.

    Perhaps you can partner with a video editor (a trusted friend) to add some moving video to your audio like slides or relevant stock video in exchange for a portion of the revenue.

    Perhaps someone on this forum would be willing to help if you posted on the main message board (outside this thread) explaining your situation and asking for help.

    Don't just trust the first person who volunteers. Chat with them and get to know their motivations.