Share experience

How long it took you to get your first 2000 students?

And what did you do to get them?

Did you make your course free for first time before making it paid ?

Please share your experience , help new instructors .

Comments

  • AnupShukla
    AnupShukla Posts: 465 mentor rank

    Hi

    Yes, I launched my course initially free for a month. It helped me get more than 2000 students. After a month, I made my course paid. I waited for approx. 100 reviews to see my performance, and then made corrections in my course accordingly.

  • you mean you got 2000 students in a month? after a month you made your course paid ? how much did you make from those 2000 students?

  • AnupShukla
    AnupShukla Posts: 465 mentor rank

    I am very new to Udemy platform. I haven't launched my 2nd course yet - it's still under development. So, no, I haven't earned anything from these 2000 yet in terms of money. But I got a traction! I can sell my other courses to these existing students. I can understand from these 2000 students what they like and dislike about my course, and I can keep their feedback in mind while I develop other courses.

  • Wow great! Please how long it takes for reviews or rating to be seen by you ? Or to show on your landing page?

  • AnupShukla
    AnupShukla Posts: 465 mentor rank

    Reviews posted by students goes through Udemy's review filter as they check for spams and fake reviews using their algorithm. Although there is no fixed time for reviews to show up in your instructor dashboard, but if they find reviews are genuine, you should see all such reviews within 24 hours.

  • I saw just one but not yet on landing page

    You said 24hours is it 24hours working days or becux today is Saturday have to wait till next week?

  • AnupShukla
    AnupShukla Posts: 465 mentor rank

    I agree with @Thor
    . students who enrol for free, do so just to grab a free course. Once you get students enrolled, it's your responsibility to mobilize them - to complete the course, to leave review and feedback.

    And more importantly, it's a traction...to start working on your course and improvise it.

  • Niels
    Niels Posts: 58 storyteller rank

    Same experience here.

    I never really had any free courses, but tried free coupons once. I got 3000 students in two days, but couldnt mobilize them to buy other courses or provide valuable feedback. It just messed up my statistics.

    Better make your course paid from the get go, and be patient and constantly work on improving your courses. There's a LOT to learn here.

    Udemy won't make you rich over night.

  • So I launched my first course about 4 weeks ago and up until 2 days ago I managed to get around 50 students by promoting it to my network on LinkedIn. But yesterday I posted another link to the course on Linkedin with a coupon (which made it free) and in the last 24 hours I've had almost 3000 students enroll. It's strange though because I used the same coupon back when I first launched the course and only managed to get around 30 students from that particular coupon code. The most recent LinkedIn post didn't really generate much more viewership/engagement than my usual posts, which I wouldn't say is all that high. I'm not quite sure what is driving the volume now (I assume a link to the course was posted somewhere), but I had used a few hashtags when I posted on LinkedIn, which included #udemycourse, #udemycoupon and #udemyfree. Perhaps the hashtags are what are driving the volume now.

    Screenshot 2020-08-20 at 9.11.25 PM.png

    I initially thought it would be great to get a surge in enrollments by making the course free to help build credibility for the course, but I'm not so sure this is a good thing now. Of the almost 3K that have enrolled in the last 24 hours almost none of them have viewed any of the content (so most are just mining courses). That and I'm worried now that having a surge of non-qualified enrollment might negatively affect my ratings (the course is a bit technical, so I'm worried that a generalist who didn't go looking for this content in this first place might be more likely to give lower ratings). So yea, can't say that getting a surge in students is necessarily a good thing. I can update this post in a week or so to let you know where I netted out, ratings wise. But my suggestion would be to take it easy with the free coupon codes, plug your course as much as you can across various channels (e.g. Facebook, LinkedIn) and just grow it over time.

  • 2000 students is a clear goal, but i would aim instead to get good reviews from the students you have and listen to their feedback. This will improve your SEO and getting students is all about good SEO. Don't even think of going the free route... there is nothing to be gained.

    A great promo video and landing offer are key to getting students. I rewrote my landing pages last year. Dave Espino has a great course on writing Udemy landing pages.

    My other tip: test and know your keywords. The marketing tool and Google trends are your friends.