My sales

Hi

It would be great if someone can give me an explanation for the question.

I had better sales in 2020 compared to 2021, even though I believe that I did more work in 2021 so I find it difficult to understand the reason.

Therefore my concern is how to get better than these two years.

I hope that you understand my issue.

Regards

Vathani Ariyam

«1

Comments

  • Hi @ariyam66

    I took a look at your course offerings and I see many of your course ratings are: 3.5, 4.0, 2.4, 3.0, 3.7, 4.0, 3.0, 3.5, 2.0 etc...

    These ratings are really pretty bad and will absolutely impact your sales. To be successful on Udemy, your course ratings must be roughly 4.2 or higher.

    I have no idea what your courses were rated in 2020, but certainly in 2021 your course ratings are hindering your sales. You need to work to get your ratings above 4.0.

  • Randy is right. You have been producing a lot of courses, rather than focusing on improving the quality of your courses. You cannot succeed on Udemy with bad ratings.

  • ariyam66
    ariyam66 Posts: 132 storyteller rank
    Hi
    Thanks for your reply.
    I have been trying to improve a few of my courses for the last few months and continue to do that till I achieve something. But on the other hand, I think that my students might not expect that from me. So I am wondering is it worth for me to work hard and wait for a better result. What do you think about it? I like to hear from you.
    Regards
    Vathani
  • ariyam66
    ariyam66 Posts: 132 storyteller rank

    Hi

    Thanks for your help.

    Is it possible for you to tell me how I can improve the ratings so That I will go back try to improve my courses?

    Regards

    Vathani

  • Frankly, If I were you, I would unpublishing every course that is below 4.0 and recreate it so that you are confident students will rate it 4.0 or higher. I have done that on occasion. I've created around 30 courses. A few have been duds. I simply unpublish them. I don't want prospective students seeing I have a course rated well below 4.0.

    There must be a reason why so many of your courses are rated so low. Look at your reviews and recreate the lowly rated courses.

  • Very much true.. I joined udemy in mid April this year.. with one course on board. I started working on 4 other courses.. in fact I have few videos ready.. just started and stopped them all.. as my objective changed from having N no. Of courses to having One course which gets revised, updated every month and until I feel it's truly standing out. Revenue has been considerably Great with month on month improvements, my course is within top 5 earning courses in respective category which has 1000+ courses

  • ariyam66
    ariyam66 Posts: 132 storyteller rank

    Hi

    Thanks very much for your reply.

    I will not take that as an insult as I know I have to improve these courses to get more students. But fortunately, I have got more than 4000 students reading my free courses and that is a bit of inspiration for me, so I will try more.

    Happy new year!

    Regards

    Vathani

  • Hi @ariyam66
    - Have you checked to see how many of those 4000 students who signed up for your free course(s) have actually started the course? I think you will find that very few have.

    The problem is that when someone offers a free course, there are bots that automatically detect these free courses and sign up for them. These are not real people. I have no idea why this happens or why Udemy allows it to happen.

    This has happened to me. Early on I offered a free course and got almost 1000 "students". They were not real students. They were bot signups and none of those "students" ever actually started the course. This is one reason, among several, offering free courses is not a great idea.

  • ariyam66
    ariyam66 Posts: 132 storyteller rank

    Hi

    Thanks for letting me know about it.

    Anyway, I work on my paid courses and will make the improvements to see the impact after that.

    I have never done any advertisements si far but planning to do that now.

    Regards

    Vathani Ariyam

  • ariyam66
    ariyam66 Posts: 132 storyteller rank

    Hi

    Thanks for that.

    I will try my level best to improve the lower-rated course first and then move on from there.

    Regards

    Vathani

  • Vathani,

    As everyone suggested before you run paid ads work on improving existing courses or creating a better course, promo video, landing page etc as in case you do not do that, your advertising money will also end up being wasted.

    You already got great advice from Lawrence so I will refrain from giving more, just keep working hard, improve quality, and you will grow!

  • ariyam66
    ariyam66 Posts: 132 storyteller rank

    Hi

    Thanks for your telling me about the paid adverts, I fully agree with you also I have never done any paid adverting for the courses and will not do that in the near future as well.

    Regards

    Vathani

  • RajGupta
    RajGupta Posts: 322 specialist rank

    @ariyam66
    Let me offer you some friendly competition.

    Three of my courses are above 4 but one is 2.5 and on Statistics and Business Writing. In the next few months, I will be making major enhancements to the course to improve the rating.

    We are starting at similar points. Course rated at 2.5.

    The first thing I will do is provide a word summary for each lecture video. Then I will make an educational announcement to students.

    Choose one of your courses rated at 2.5 or similar. What is the first thing you will do?

  • ariyam66
    ariyam66 Posts: 132 storyteller rank

    Hi

    Thanks for your contribution to my issues.

    I got some advice from someone asking me to unpublish the courses which are below the rating of 4 so I have unpublished 2 of them. But I am preparing new lectures to add to one of the courses I unpublished with the hope to publish again. Do you think it is the right way to do it?

    How have you planned to increase the rating for one of your courses?

    Regards

    Vathani

  • RajGupta
    RajGupta Posts: 322 specialist rank

    @ariyam66
    My course currently with the 2.5 rating is 8.5 hours. The negative reviews were probably grumpy students so @PrashantMunshi
    does have a point and even if not most students have not rated the course..

    I plan to add Lecture Plans for each Lecture.

    I will also include a new section on more statistical analysis.

    Later I will add some guest speakers.

    Detailed posts of rating improvement and progress are insightful.

    My advice to you would be to plan on a 10+ hour course on a topic you are an expert on. @LawrenceMMiller
    is right about this.

  • I don't think it needs to be 10 hours, but at least a substantial course of 4-5+ hours. But, most important, of high quality.

  • ariyam66
    ariyam66 Posts: 132 storyteller rank

    Hi RajGupta,

    Thanks for your reply, I will try what you said in your message.

    Regards

    Vathani

  • ariyam66
    ariyam66 Posts: 132 storyteller rank

    Hi

    That is really great. Good job you're doing.

    Vathani

  • Hi RandyMinder, I'm new here, just published a free course with the intention of getting some reviews then making it a paid course later. I had over 500 students overnight, (Wow I thought, but probably bots?) but after a couple of days only one has finished it (5 star review) and 2 others are working their way through. I have about 14 lectures in my course and just found out if I make it a paid course then I can also make a few lectures "free preview" and /or offer a discount (to free) if a review is supplied after. Is that correct? if so that seems a better way to go, what do you think? Thanks for your input.

  • Yes, most of those sales were bots. There is almost no reason whatsoever to offer a course for free. 99% of the signups are bots. You cannot promote to actual students that do signup for a free course. And the course is limited to 2 hours.

    New instructors often offer courses for free in hopes of getting reviews (good reviews of course). But, from what I've heard, this often backfires.

    I would suggest you never offer a course for free.

    I don't know what you mean by "...and/or offer a discount (to free) if a review is supplied after."

  • Hi Randy

    Thanks for your input. Sorry didn't explain the last part very well. but am doing more research into coupons. Thanks for your assistance

  • Thank you so much sir. You have cleared my misconceptions. Would you like to look through my courses.

  • ariyam66
    ariyam66 Posts: 132 storyteller rank

    Hi Randy

    I got some advice from you before which I liked, so now again I want to ask you could you please have a look at my courses and let me know what do you think about them.

    Thanks

    Vathani

  • Sir first of all take a short rest and enjoy some movement then think about your problem and i am sure that you will get your answer

  • ariyam66
    ariyam66 Posts: 132 storyteller rank

    I have not had any sales this month. I think it is not worth expecting anything from Udemy. It will be better to change the platform to sell our courses.

  • LawrenceMMiller
    LawrenceMMiller Posts: 2,296 rolemodel rank

    @ariyam66
    The sales this month are almost identical to the two previous months. I have more than six thousand enrollments this month and I am not one of the best selling instructors.

    Udemy is not the problem. If you are having no sales you have to face the reality of your own courses, your own performance, not Udemy's.

  • RajGupta
    RajGupta Posts: 322 specialist rank

    @LawrenceMMiller
    I have indeed demonstrated to you that it is possible for decent courses to be rated 3.5 for a brief period.

    @ariyam66
    may have a marketing problem so dismissing her performance outright is not useful. I am happy your courses are doing well.

  • LawrenceMMiller
    LawrenceMMiller Posts: 2,296 rolemodel rank

    @RajGupta
    You are welcome to your own opinion. The idea that a decent course can be rated 3.5 for a period of time is not relevant to this situation.

    My point is that the OP said " I think it is not worth expecting anything from Udemy" because her courses are not selling. She said she has had no sales this month. My data says that Udemy is not the problem. Sales are relatively normal this month. So blaming Udemy is not useful. It is useful to look at your own courses and think about why they are not selling in a marketplace that is functioning normally.


  • Going through the thread messages have been helpful to me as a new instructor on this platform. Can some one share some marketing/promotion tips on how to boost the visibility of my course?