I've made 1000$ on my first course [Here's what I learned]

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I've made 1000$ on my first course [Here's what I learned]

After six month from publishing my first course on Udemy, I only made 1000$. 

HilalHakla522_0-1653137849990.png

While this is certainly a good milestone per se, and I know I won't be making millions from publishing courses like other senior Udemy instructors that already got the benefits of being first movers and already publishing course after course and built a personal brand.

I just wanted to share my humble experience on this platform and maybe shed some light to future aspiring course publishers:

 

  •  You need to publish A LOT of courses to gain traction, don't expect that to happen tho, proceed at your own time risk.
  • Udemy kills your income with discounts that are tuned geographically, for example buyers from India will purchase your course at 0.5$ to 2$ while buyers from european countries might buy it at 4-5$ 
  • Udemy courses are a maintenance headache, you need to keep promoting your courses, updating them, answering questions etc...  
  • Udemy's "buy once, own it for life" business model is flawed - imo. This is a huge down side for me, courses on udemy are not "subscription" based, current students don't pay for updates and don't support your ongoing maintenance plan. App developers charge subscriptions to update their apps why can't course be like that ? There's too much value provided to students at extremly low prices, apparently this profits Udemy but not much instructors-unless they bulk upload courses and content ?
  • Don't publish course to make money 🙂 Publish courses maybe to help students, build a brand or any other goal, just don't think about money and don't expect it either. You won't be motivated making content if you think much about revenue.
  • Competition: There's so much competition on high traffic courses (courses that users search for). Competition is fierce AF ! So If you search for some key words and you found that one or more courses are ranking top with tags like "best seller" "highest rated", I don't think It's a good idea to waste time making that course, unless you have your own audience for that and 100% sure about your plan.
  • Most important lesson in my opinion is : Udemy is a long term game. Udemy is one of those things similar to blogs, you spend years building blog pages, eveeeeeeeeennnnntttttuaaallyyyyyyyy those pages will rack up traffic and provide decent ad revenue.

Just my 0.2$

 

11 Replies

Good work 

Thank you

Thanks for the boldness and transparency. Wish you much continued success because I do believe going forward you will rock!

Going forward it is ! Thanks !

Bella
Community Manager
Community Manager

Hi @HilalHakla522

 

Congratulations on your $1,000 milestone! Well deserved! 👏

 

Thanks for sharing your experience with Udemy, we really appreciate you taking the time to give advice to other instructors in the community.

 

Wishing you all the best!

 

Bella Almeida

Udemy Community 

thanks bella

Thank you for the insights!

Wow amazing.

I am also create my first course. And I hope it will be the best course.

great insight. thank you

What price tier do you suggest for someone first time publishing a full course?

Great insight! And you're right, Udemy is not a place where you can get rich by making a course. It can be a good side hustle and a way to disseminate and polish your own skills. Congratulations on 1000!

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