First Course Paid or Free?

[istuff360]

Hi,

Community

I am Waqar new here on this great udemy platform just about to finish my very first course. I am wondering either me should publish my very first course for Free or Paid [set a price] and is there a udemy policy or way to turn a Free course into a Paid course later on?

Would be so grateful to have your help and support, thanks in advance!

[csking1981 · Accepted solution]

Hi;

The worse think for new commers is free course!

Don't think about free courses !

Why?

1- Students for free course most of times give low rate and useless comments.

2- Students don't take serious free courses so it has not any results for you.

3- If you wanna be respectfull  first respect to your self then expect respect and free course means i'm new commer and my course is useless.

So:

Don't even think about free courses!!!

[DeniseFletcher]

@istuff360I agree with @Anonymous put a price on it. Udemy used to value free courses years ago so you will see lots of free courses available on the platform however these days it is better to have paid courses. When you launch your 2nd course then you can decide whether to make your course free then so it acts as a lure into buying your next course BUT Udemy doesn't really work that way. Outside of Udemy yes this marketing tactic works because the free is a lead magnet but you can as Brian mentioned offer free coupons 🙂 

[istuff360]

Hi,

Deni

Thank you so much for your feedback and resolution towards Brian feedback which really means a lot to me as I would highly appreciate any help I get on my journey as I want to be successful instructor on this great platform.

I'm considering to offer it as a paid course with free coupons as per guidance, thanks! 😛

[csking1981]

Hi;

Excellent!

Congrats for your choice.

You did the best!

Regards;

[Universal_Pray]

Hello Good people, 

My name is Universal and I am just getting the ball rolling myself. That was a great question. Keep up the excellence. 

[Dhabaleshwar · Accepted solution]

Hello @istuff360 ,

First of all I congratulate you for makin your first wonderful course.

I am not an active member in the Udemy Community but as you are a new instructor and don't know much about udemy so thought of helping you a bit.

I have been an instructor on udemy for the past 7 months so let me share a few tips which you need to keep in your mind if you want to make some crazy amount of money and at the same time add value to the udemy community.

So as you are saying you are a new comer. I assume that you don't have any audience to promote your course , nor any email list, blogs etc. But still you want to dominate your XXX field. So let me assume that you are creating a course about SEO. Well then the basic requirements for you to succeed in here is-

1- Time (It is always necessary)

2- An extraordinary course (If your course fails to impress your students then you might be stuck with a bunch of bad reviews that will ultimately ruin your course. )

Here are the points you need to keep in mind to be the best one-

1- Analyze the market first .....Like if you want to create a course on SEO first see are there any courses about it?? How much audience do these instructors have?? How many reviews?? What are the ratings?? How are new courses performing in this field?? Look at marketplace insights??

I understand,  you are bored by now but bear with me you are gonna get great value.

2- Now as noone knows you so if you release a paid course chances are you will get a few bucks into your paypal but if you want to play a big game then stop dreaming about making quick bucks ( as I told you earlier that you need time ). 

3- Lets say you made an SEO course that is 7 hours long ( gave every possible information that you had in that field , made a masterpiece course) and thinking of giving it away for FREE or Paid. Let me tell you FREE would be a bad idea because (my fellow instructors already explained the reasons in some answers). But wait listen here......I have a trick for you now........Don't upload that course now . 

4- You need to create a short version of SEO course (1-2 hrs approx.)  . That course would be a basic SEO course that won't provide all the value that you offered in your 7 hours course but would be an  introductory course (Keep promoting your paid course in that short course and tell people that the paid course would be available soon.) NOW release that short course for FREE on Udemy. Promote your course accross the internet, using coupon websites, fb groups, friends and family, Reddit etc. 

5- Now here the time factor comes into play........if your course would be nice then eventually your course will start earning praise and a lot of positive reviews (well there would be always some negative reviews don't worry about that they would be nearly 2-3% if your course is excellent.)

6- Now the people who completed your FREE course will know how good you are at explaining something so they would be happy purchasing your new SEO course.

7- Now after a few good reviews and 2-3 months later upload your 7 hour SEO paid course. You will have collected a lot of emails by now through udemy. Send promotional emails and just watch BIG BUCKS flowing into your account and a lot of praise coming from your students.

ALL THE BEST Buddy!!!

And yes I hope this article helps a lot of instructors who are new in this platform.

Dhabaleshwar

[istuff360]

Hi,

@Dhabaleshwar 

I'm very impressed with your strategy and would certainly follow it. I'm a self-taught IT professional as well as a Web Developer and have worked on eBay.co.uk as well in the CS department as a TL and have vast experience about many many things not just talk I've been working on all of those things and know tons of tool but kind of stuck from where do I start and how do I break up a course into pieces, lol

Just figuring out though, thanks anyways!

[ChristineRo198]

Hi @Dhabaleshwar, 

I resonate with what your approach is and even though I'm not making SEO or technical courses I think that approach could work for me. I just launched my first online Udemy course and getting ideas of how to get it out there and get more reviews. While thinking about my next online courese I want to create. I have a co-instructor who has a huge audience and even though it's not quite for them we've gotten a lot of students. Our topic is on Cryptocurrency and it's to educate newbies about what that even is and if they may want to get invested in it. It's only a 2.5 hour course that at the moment we have been giving away for free. 

I'll be following it up with other online courses like how to safeguard your cryptocurrency in case of unexpected circumstances and developing skills that make you better at succeeding in by cryptocurrency and life. I'm a marriage family therapist by profession and a certified life coach. 

If you have any suggestions for how you think I can approach my plan I'd love to here it. 

Thanks so much!

Christine

[Vishesh]

Hi Dhabaleshwar!

Very well written and useful note. I was just wondering if teh initial bunch of students you get end up giving you review that pulls you down below 4 then it may not work.

Indeed if you get good initial reviews, your method would be perfect

Regards

[Timmyc]

Gold post.

[RB_Studios]

I agree with this offering a 1 hour course FREE as an introduction.  Make it a great short course, advertising for your paid courses.

I have found students give high marks for FREE courses that are well designed.  They will pay for your longer courses as they are more certain of your skill delivering content.

Keep in mind, you cannot advertise to FREE customers.  Their emails are not made available to you.   So the only way to advertise within Udemy is to include a video Ad inside your FREE Course.   You can create a coupon as well to encourage registration.   However, the coupon would require a monthly update to the Advertisement as the coupon code will have change each month.

It is worth experimenting with and results depend upon target demographic.