I honestly regret making my first course

I genuinely regret making a course on udemy, If I had known It's going to be this way I would no where near approach this platform to sell courses. I wouldn't even think about making a good course.

I spent countless hours recording, editing and transcribing hours and hours of content. I am heavily promoting my course with little to no convergence.

Competition is fierce, If one course is labelled best seller good luck competing against that.

Students buy your course with dirt cheap prices and leave bad ratings, you contact them they don't provide written feedback.

I feel lost like how the f do I know what areas should improve in the course if you just leave bad ratings without giving proper feedback.

At this point, I'm trying to undo things, trying to get the money I put on software and audio equipment.

This is so frustrating.

Comments

  • I noticed that as well, you need to create a lot of courses and this takes a loooooot of time, we're talking years.

    Competition is also painful cause It leaves no room for new course publishers to thrive. When a course is labelled best seller It's over, probably 90% of the sales goes to best selllers. It's like rich get richer type of thing.

    But anyways thanks Lawrence

  • Welcome to reality 🤯

  • @HilalHakla522
    I think you are right about the "years" thing. I have been at this for seven years and other instructors who sell well have also worked at it for years. So, that is a decision that people make. The rewards are great, but are you willing to keep working at it for years? There's no right answer.

    On the best seller thing. I track my competition on a spread sheet and I can see the percent of enrollments going to my course, which is a best seller, and newer courses with a very similar title. I wish it was true that I got 90% of enrollments because my course is a best seller. Not the case. A good share, yes. But much less than 90%.

  • On one hand I totally feel you and understand your pain and frustration. I know how much work it takes to produce a course and it sucks when it goes nowhere.

    On the other hand I'm really confused about what you expected exactly.

    I checked the Market place Insights tool, and for the topic you chose the top monthly revenue is $800. You are the 3rd top earner with a good looking course and promo. Your rating is also very good. What exactly did you expect that didn't happen?

  • Gove
    Gove Posts: 15 traveler rank

    Hi @HilalHakla522
    ,

    I was tried to write message to lawrence and frank kane for alot of times in past, with this kind of negativity, i wrote 4 of them and delete 4 of em... Because i aware in google search engine, it show's my community profile,as well as my shame to wrote those... so i delete them.

    Actually I understand your feeling, because i work this udemy for one year but total earning are still in 3 figure... I'm not quiting, yet doubting,hesitation,confusing, and a lot of negativity is come to attack me... i am still continue, because, it is my dream, the one whose can continue the longest, always whose have the faith in them. But due to reality wether or not, it's come to how you look into it.

    My course are all bunch theoritically explain science, but not the motivation, someone wrote here say your course become top 3, that prove there is no shortcut,all i could say is,

    The glory is come from every step you take.

  • RajGupta
    RajGupta Posts: 322 specialist rank

    @HilalHakla522
    Reading your post in between the lines, I get the sense you are frustrated that you are not getting TRACTION.

    Traction will come if you have 8-10 quality courses if you are in a very competitive field. Some of you will ask how I got the number 8. Angela Yu has 8 courses and excellent traction and a Best Selling instructor.

    If you are not in a competitive field you may get traction with just one course.

    I have 5 and I have better traction than when I had 1 course but to get full traction you will 8-10 courses.

    If you are familiar with the Mathematical concept of Permutations and Combinations, you know the difference between 20 C 3 versus 20 C 1.

  • Dear Hilal,

    sorry to hear that. WOW - you started by providing a 9 hour during course for a technical topic that provides knowledge to a specific - but sure upcoming niche. It is a great effort to do so and requires - of course - a lot of knowledge, so please take my honest respect for that. Haye you ever thought about lecturing smaller courses on related topics? So if you teach 9 hours, why not providing 9 1 hour during courses (5-8 Videos) on specific topics from the greater course? So you could easily get in touch with your community on udemy, and are able to produce your content pretty faster (which scales income sooner). ^^

    Edit: One of my key learnings on udemy was, that it seems to be a great strategy to think not only in courses and your own offer in the plattform, but in building topic related funnels. It is almost the same structure one would build up in traditional online marketing: freebie course -> cheap specific course -> main offer (8h+ course) - and the idea is to lead people through this funnel by using the "bonus lecture" you can provide at the end of every course. You can also interact with your peer by using on plattform messages, just to inform them if there is something new in one of your courses or something.

    Wish you the best,
    Markus

  • @MarkusZed457
    Has this strategy worked for you?

  • Well yes, but my target was not so much to found a main business out of my udemy courses, but rather to get (more) people book my courses. I won around 2.000 Participants in 2 years, which might be not as much to run a real business from it, but more than I once expected. Actually I try to set up not only a few courses, but a greater course offer on the base of the same principle (first time) on larger scale. Let's give it a try, I'd love keep you informed how things are going and am looking forward to achieve greater benefit from the application of the described strategy

  • interesting i never looked at this market place tool. I excpected to get minimum 3-4 course sales with promotions every day. That was my expectations since Scott Duffy's course gets about 50- 200 course sales daily.

  • thank you so much the eye opener Raj ! I get it now

  • Thank you Ramesh, I really needed that motivation. Cause the last couple of weeks I've slacking from Udemy cause I was so demotivated. I kept telling myself that I'm not going anywhere with this. I'll try changing my approach with this and just do it for my personal knowledge on the subject of cloud.

  • I never thought of funnels like that, but considering that for each funnel step a small percentage will actually reach your end goal. It seems It's kinda inefficient. I'd rather push sales to my main courses than having them bounce betweeen funnels.

  • If your competition consists of 10-hour courses, the strategy of breaking it up into several smaller courses isn't gonna work. Why, as a student, would I pay for ten 1-hour courses when I can pay for one 10-hour course that covers everything I need to know?

  • yeah exactly

  • RajGupta
    RajGupta Posts: 322 specialist rank

    Getting to a minimum number of sales every day is certainly the goal. Even with 5 courses my sales do freeze often.

    I would encourage you to keep at it.

  • This is an eye opener. I am yet to publish a course. Thanks for this tip

  • TrevoirWill
    TrevoirWill Posts: 140 specialist rank

    I understand your frustrations. I didn't start making $100 a month until I published my 5th course on the platform and I was where you are in terms of wanting to cash out.

    I took a look at your course and the value proposition is great, this is a good topic. One thing that might be affecting your ranking though...is that you have it listed under the category IT Certifications > Azure Functions as opposed to IT Certifications > Microsoft Certification.

    I have experienced where getting this classification wrong can affect the enrollments and how easily persons might see your course. You might also think about doing AZ-204 as the main topic, so that more general searches along those lines will find your course in the results.

    Another "ironic' part about increasing sales, is giving away free stuff....Yes...I know...but if you make a smaller course, maybe focused on a specific module (2 hours long) and then promote it on social platforms as free and increase those enrolments, that is a great way to build your student base and have students who know your quality, opt to buy this and other new courses from you. It improves your credibility and the course that is "free" will also rank higher and still sell.

  • Hi Michael, I am curious... I am familiar with the market place insight tool, but I don't know how you were able to tell that this course was the 3rd top earner... Can you please help me understand how you were able to do this? Thank you.

  • MichaelPog
    MichaelPog Posts: 989 rolemodel rank

    Simple. I see that he placed his course under "Azure Functions " category, so I typed that in the Market place tool, and his course is 3rd in the list.