May Feedback Post: Give and get feedback on your course!

[JocelynH]

Whether this is your first or fifth course, it’s always helpful to hear from other instructors how you can improve your course content to be even better. Each month, we create a feedback thread where you can ask for feedback and share your feedback too.

Before you share your course content, check out our self-promotion policy and read these quick guidelines:

1. Be specific. Share what you’re looking to improve or things you’re concerned about so your fellow instructors can provide targeted feedback.
2. Upload content directly. Whenever you can, directly upload a video or course outline to our platform so it’s easier for other instructors to check it out.
3. Don’t share course links or instructor coupons. This is a space to share and receive feedback, not sell to other instructors. If you want to reference a course, share the full name of your course without linking it. Instructors can find the course by clicking on your community profile and going to your instructor account on Udemy.
4. Pay it forward. If you’re asking for feedback, look over someone else’s course and give them some feedback too! Always try to give more than you ask for.

We hope this feedback thread can help you create even better courses!

[ScottDuffy · Accepted solution]

How can I help you?

I've been on Udemy just over 4 years now, and have just about 150,000 paying students. I teach technical topics (like cloud computing), but consider myself fairly knowledgeable about how Udemy works and Udemy SEO in particular.

Reply to this post with your course name and instructor name, and I'll give you an honest opinion about 2 or 3 things you can do to gain more success on Udemy.

Or AMA - Ask Me Anything - and you'll get my honest opinion on that.

[GregAnyon · Accepted solution]

Hello,

First post for me - have published two courses so far, but have struggled to attract students to them.

How to get a job in Sales

Sales Training: The Nuclear Core of Selling

I've put on emphasis on production quality to help differentiate it from other courses of a similar ilk. Does the course descriptions work in your opinion? Am I not positioning it right for potential students? Anything really! 

[csking1981]

Great!

Thanks,

[CommonSenseBA]

I am very new to Udemy, but I love teaching. I recently created a course and following what I learned from a course on creating Udemy courses I added an intro pre-roll and outro post-roll to each lecture. I received a 1-star rating stating that the music was too overpowering. 

CommonSensical Requirements Gathering 

Please review the Intro & Outro Lecture 6, 7, & 8 (all are set up for free preview)

Lecture 6: Has my original volume

Lecture 7: Has an adjusted volume

Lecture 8: Has the VO starting at the very beginning with the music softer in the background

Here are my questions:

1. Is the Intro in lecture 6 overpowering?

2. Is the Outro in lecture 6 overpowering?

3. If either was overpowering, did the adjustment I made to lecture 7 solve the problem or did the adjustment I made in lecture 8 solve the problem?

4. If not, do you believe they need to be adjusted in any other way? Length, Colors, VO, etc.

5. Do you believe that each lecture should have an intro and outro?

Any advice would be greatly appreciated! 

[JocelynH]

Hi @CommonSenseBA, I created a new thread for May so I'm going to move your question over there so folks see it 🙂

[FrankKane]

Your audio quality in lecture 7 is noticably better. It was actually hard to understand your voice in lecture 6 due to the echo in the room, and some sort of effect where it seemed like your voice kept cutting out when it got below a certain level.

As for the intros - I think most Udemy students are quite impatient, and want to get right into the content of the lecture as quickly as possible. An intro might be appropriate if each lecture were longer and meant to stand alone as their own videos, but personally I don't use them except in my promo video. Consider dialing it back to just the beginning of each section, and not each lecture.

If you want to open every lecture this way, then I'd make it much, much shorter. Get rid of the animation on the course title and get through it all within less than 5 seconds - lecture 8 was better in this respect. But as a student, I really don't think I'd want to listen to that same music clip at the beginning of every lecture. It would have to be something much shorter and subtle for that to work - a piece like the one you're using that involves string instruments is at a similar frequency to the human voice and is a little distracting.

In short, my advice would be to axe the music and intro entirely unless it's the beginning of a section. And whatever you did to improve the quality on your voice in lecture 7, do more of that!

It's a shame that you started off with a one-star written review over one small aspect of your course - that's every instructor's worst nightmare. But you're right to just try and fix it - after 3 months, that review will no longer count toward your total.

[CommonSenseBA]

Thank you very much for taking the time. I will let you know how it goes.

[ScottDuffy · Accepted solution]

How can I help you?

I've been on Udemy just over 4 years now, and have just about 150,000 paying students. I teach technical topics (like cloud computing), but consider myself fairly knowledgeable about how Udemy works and Udemy SEO in particular.

Reply to this post with your course name and instructor name, and I'll give you an honest opinion about 2 or 3 things you can do to gain more success on Udemy.

Or AMA - Ask Me Anything - and you'll get my honest opinion on that.

[PLenda]

Hi there! I just published my first course on Udemy and I'm looking to see if anyone can give me some feedback.

My course name is Proven Passive Income Methods and my name is Paul Lenda.

[ScottDuffy]

I see this is your first course. Allow me to be your first student. 🙂

Please take this feedback as constructive and something to help you for the next time you create a course. Or if you care to continue working on this one.

I like your voice, and your audio is good. Your video is mostly in 4:3 ratio, and I would encourage you to get to 16:9 for the next time. PowerPoint slides are a bit amateur and you can choose a better design for that next time too.

I think the best courses on Udemy have a specific topic that they are about. A specific promise that "at the end of this course you'll be able to do X". You are taking the student on a journey, moving them from A to B. At the start of the course, they cannot do X. And at the end of the course they can do X.

So talking in a general way about various passive income methods doesn't accomplish that for me. "This course is going to explore why it's a good idea to create passive income streams" you say in your intro video. I'd rather learn HOW to create passive income streams than why I should create them.

It would be much stronger, to me, to be teaching specific methods. A 8-hour course on "Affiliate Marketing Mastery" is a much stronger draw to people than a 1-hour course on "Proven Passive Income Methods", as a topic.

For instance, in the video on affiliate marketing, you say that the recipe is to "have a high traffic website" in part. But how do you do that? Basically, instead of talking about why it's a good idea. I'd rather learn how to do it in detail. 

Later you say, "It's pretty easy to get 5000 views per video for dozens of videos." Is it? Is it easy? Please, make a course on that! 

You should create another course, but make this one very tactical. Someone should be able to take your course, and at the end have a concrete accomplishment. Pick a topic that is underserved on Udemy, not one that has hundreds of existing courses. My 2 cents.

All the best, and good luck!

[PLenda]

Thanks Scott! I really appreciate it. That was all very helpful and I will take all that into account for my next course and get more focused and elaborate in greater depth. 

[CarrieFernandez]

Hi Paul. I'd love to take your course, and maybe you can take mine and we can leave each other feedback (using free coupons)?

---

@PLenda wrote:

Hi there! I just published my first course on Udemy and I'm looking to see if anyone can give me some feedback.

My course name is Proven Passive Income Methods and my name is Paul Lenda

---

[JocelynH]

Hey @CarrieFernandez & @PLenda, please use our new monthly feedback thread for July: https://community.udemy.com/t5/First-time-Course-Creation/July-Feedback-Thread-Give-and-get-feedback... Thanks!

[MikeM]

Hi Scott,

Name: Mike M

Courses:

1. Golang: Build RESTful APIs with Golang (Go programming lang)

2. Golang: Build REST API JWT authentication with Golang (Go)

The first one normally gets twice the traffic of the second one. But, the second course has twice the conversion rate. That is weird.

Thanks for the help,
Mike

[ScottDuffy]

Hi Mike,

First, I encourage you to review Udemy's course image policy:

https://support.udemy.com/hc/en-us/articles/229232347-Course-Image-Quality-Standards

Looks to me like most of your images violate it by being all text, and I would not want the policy team to be contacting you. The images need massive improvement compared to the Udemy standard. I don't think the images are helping you attract students.

The Udemy Marketplace Insights tool tells me that Go Programming Language is a very very popular search term - 98th percentile. 

https://www.udemy.com/instructor/marketplace-insights/?q=Go%20Programming%20Language&ref=suggested-t...

So great topic there.

The most popular keyword is "golang" and you use it as the first word in both titles, good job there.

The first course (Build Restful APIs) has a review score average of 4.0. This is one thing holding you back. So what can you do to improve that course and try to get the review score closer to a 4.5 average? The top courses on a search for golang have "4.5 - 4.6" average scores and you need to address this 4.0.

The other issue could be the course is currently 3.5 hours in length. All the top courses above you in search have lengths from 9 to 70 hours. So you need to look at improving the quality and making more in-depth videos as well.

The second course is 2.5 hours in length.

So my advice is :

- improve the images to attract more students

- improve the review score

- make the courses longer to at least match your competitors

Good luck!

[MikeM]

Thank you @ScottDuffy . I will take your suggestions and fix the issues.

Mike

[CarrieFernandez]

I've just submitted my first course. So as soon as it's live, I'll be giving you my info because I'd LOVE your opinion on how I can get the most people taking my course. Thanks so much!

[ScottDuffy]

Good luck!

[GregAnyon · Accepted solution]

Hello,

First post for me - have published two courses so far, but have struggled to attract students to them.

How to get a job in Sales

Sales Training: The Nuclear Core of Selling

I've put on emphasis on production quality to help differentiate it from other courses of a similar ilk. Does the course descriptions work in your opinion? Am I not positioning it right for potential students? Anything really! 

[ScottDuffy]

Hey there,

I love your course images. Are those custom? Really outstanding compared to what we typically see on Udemy. 

Looking at the "How to get a job in Sales" course, you could really improve the course landing page. You have one "what you'll learn", one "requirement", and your description is 82 words long.

I think you could go back to that and invest another 20-30 minutes really improving that. The #1 course for "sales" has 7 "what you'll learn", 2 "requirements", and a 301 words description.

Your promo video is cool. Good quality video filmed outside, and good quality audio. Looks professional.

Your main problem is getting attention to this course. 6 students and 1 review isn't going to cut it. You need hundreds of people to have a look at this, and then you'll get some sales, some reviews, and a higher ranking in the Udemy search engine.

So this is a classic "drive traffic" problem. Can you promote this course more in your social media channels, or link up with someone who can get this in front of more people?

[GregAnyon]

Hi Scott,

Thanks for the thoughtful feedback - have been very much in 'build mode' for next courses, so have just switched focus to what I've already created. I'll action all of those suggestions and pay extra attention to the traffic driving conundrum.

The images aren't custom, I saw them on a stock imagery site and was smitten with them, so picked up a set of them on the spot.

[PadmaRallap477]

I'm also taking images from Google and Prajna and Bhakthi Nivedana magazine and making videos