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Hello all,

I have created my first three courses on Udemy.com. The first of which is a free course. There are now over 1700 students enrolled in the introductory (free) course, which is not even a month old, and it grows more everyday. I'm wondering how it is there are so many students enrolled in this course, who are enrolled in other paid courses, and yet no one has enrolled in a paid course of mine yet? The few reviews I've gotten are positive 4/5, that being said, should a good product not sell itself? I've tried emailing my students, asking them to take a moment to review the free course if they enjoyed it, attempted to promote all three courses on various social media sites, done my best to stay engaged with any messages or questions that come through, and made coupons and promotional announcements for each of my courses. There is plenty of traffic to the intermediate and advanced course landing pages, and they are both priced at the lowest and second lowest tier up from "Free". Is there something I'm doing incorrectly, or not doing that would be preventing students from enrolling in the paid courses? (which I feel they would get the most out of and are not expensive when compared with other courses covering similar topics, even though the content is likely on par with some of the best-selling courses in this field) I'm not losing motivation by any means, but if anyone has any insight I would very much appreciate it

Comments

  • Niels
    Niels Posts: 58 storyteller rank

    It's well known that free courses don't really work on udemy and that students from free courses don't buy paid courses. There are several threads about it already.

    The only thing free courses do, is mess up your statistics. I tried it once, got 2000 students in one week and absolutely no benefit from it.

    Students enroll in free courses just because it is free, not because of the content. Look at your statistics and you will realize, that most people will not have started the course at all.

    Free courses are a waste of time. Make them paid, give it time and learn from honest feedback of paying students. If you have a great course, it will sell. If it doesnt...work on improving it, but dont assume your course is great, just because of free enrollments and some lucky reviews. Sorry to say that.

  • Hi @2DZ
    - I see questions of this type often. You really do not want to offer courses for free. First of all, there are bots that crawl the Udemy system looking for free courses and then acquire them. 99% of these people will never go through your course. Secondly, Udemy does not allow you to send promotions to these people.

    Another thing to keep in mind. You have created courses for a topic that has hundreds or thousands of other existing courses. I did a search for "2D Illustration" and got back 3,800 results. This means your course is competing against all these other courses. So it's going to be very difficult for your courses to stand out against all those others. Unfortunately this is something most new instructors are not aware of when they create their first courses.