I honestly regret making my first course

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I honestly regret making my first course

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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. 

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LawrenceMMiller
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@HilalHakla522 I am sorry you are so frustrated. It is tough when you have put in so much effort and it isn't appreciated. Your course has a 4.5 rating which is good, so I wouldn't worry about a few negative reviews, we all get them. The question is "how can you improve?"

 

It is just a fact that Udemy marketplace is now very competitive. Your topic, Azure, has a lot of very good competition. The trick is always to ask yourself, "So, why would someone buy my course rather than the competition?" 

 

The best selling instructors all have multiple courses. I see Scott Duffy, probably the best selling instructor in this space, has 45 courses so he has built up his own brand and a "fan base." That is a huge advantage. I think what this says is that to succeed you have to be strategic and plan to build a portfolio of excellent courses. Yes, that is a big challenge, but the payoff is also big. 

 

Good luck. 

 

Lawrence M. Miller
Author/Instructor

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Hi @HilalHakla522 ,

 

I totally understand your frustration.  I had a look around your course and you seem to have done everything right and the course seems high quality. I genuinely think you are on to a winner if you can hang in there and do your best for the next couple of months. It will be a shame to have done all the hard work and walk away from it at the last minute.

 

I don’t have the many years of experience some of others here have, but let me explain why I think you have a good chance of making it and what you could be doing to achieve that. I am also an instructor making courses on Azure, but I focus on the data engineering space. I have been on the platform for just over a year and I have 27k students at the moment with 2 courses. My journey started pretty similar to yours!

 

I did the same as you and created a quality course to my ability. Course duration is also similar to yours at 9.5 hours. When I launched, enrolments didn’t come immediately. I quite heavily promoted the course on my social circles (LinkedIn, Facebook and some messaging apps). First month and half was hard and at least half of the sales were from my promotions. I worked my hardest to keep the course rating high (around 4.6/ 4.7). I answered every question in Q&A and also engaged with students who approached me to solve all their problems. It not only helped keeping the rating high, but also helped improving the course. Needless to say, I was also learning!

PS – I also had the odd 1 star ratings!

 

There were 2 key moments that followed. Firstly, because the course was selling (even though I was promoting), the Udemy algorithm picked up the momentum and started promoting. So, I started seeing sales from Udemy advertisements and affiliate marketing.

Second key moment was when the course got added to the UFB bundle which was around 6 weeks from launch, I think. Once that happened, enrolments increased significantly. To be honest I didn’t know that UFB would make such a significant impact. I think around 60 – 70% of my enrolments come from UFB. Little did I know that higher rating, number of reviews and demand from business customers are the key criteria for addition to UFB, but somehow all my hard work in the previous weeks got me there. I think the criteria for UFB is that courses need at least 25 reviews, 4.4 rating and demand from business customers. I can’t remember where I saw this, but it was from one of the google searches. So, it might not be 100% right!

 

Let me address some of the points raised here

 

Competition - There are a high number of courses on Udemy for Azure, but that shouldn’t matter for you. Your course is specialised on AZ-204 certification.  There are only 2 other video courses for AZ-204 and one of them is the best seller and the other one has lower rating than yours. Rest are all practice tests and they are not your competition. So, you basically have only one competition and that’s the best seller.

 

Best Seller - They probably take lots of enrolments, but as Lawrence says I don’t think it’s as much as 90%.  Also, I think UFB will be very different and they will be more likely to try new courses.  Most importantly, your course is the most recent and people are always on the lookout for new courses as the technology in this space is evolving rapidly.  

 

Number of courses – I am sure having many courses can help cross selling and increase enrolments exponentially, but I think there is opportunity to see small success like some people are seeing!

 

So, I would encourage you to do the following

  • Promote the course as much as you can to increase enrolments
  • Answer every question and update the course as required to keep the rating high

These are the only things in your hand and doing them will ensure that Udemy promotes your course (as it’s selling) and also the reviews and rating will help get into UFB.

 

As I said you have done a brilliant job, but here are 2 things you may want to consider

  • Your course is the most recent course on the platform for AZ-204. As Azure is evolving too quickly, people are always looking for the latest course. So, just say that in the title. New course 2022 or something similar
  • You have listed 1-2 years of C# experience as required, but none of your competitors have. I am not suggesting we should oversell, but do students need work experience or C# knowledge sufficient? You may want to consider rewording.

 

Sorry, it’s a long message, but hope this helps and good luck😊

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yeah exactly 

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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. 

 

 

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