Tons of random enrollments in free course.

[Tanphill]

I just posted my first course on Udemy for free (at least for a little while) in order to drive traffice. Overnight I aquaired ~300 students, and I have no idea where they came from. None of them are actually completing the course.

I guess this isn't a big deal, but I'm just curious if this is a common phenomana. Are their bots on udemy signing up for free courses? What are they trying to accomplish?

[PavolAlmasi · Accepted solution]

They are not bots. They are "course collectors". It's free, so they took it. No need to look at it any deeper than that. 

Some of them will complete the course and leave a review, but that will most likely be a miniscule number of students. 

To me, this is not a traffic I care about. And if you are going for social proof because it looks better for prospective students when there is 1000 sign ups, then that is true. It does look better. However, that social proof diminishes when there are 1000's sign ups and only 1-2 reviews.

[Tanphill]

Great, thank you! Only 4 students have completed any % of the course, so that makes sense. So would you say just don't worry about it?

[CarstenMuessig]

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@Tanphill wrote:

So would you say just don't worry about it?

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What else do you have in mind except free students boosting enrollments and the odd one leaving a review?

[Tanphill]

Nothing really. Just concerened that in some way Udemy might dink your placement in the search results for having a low student-to-review ratio or something. I'm really just curious.

[CarstenMuessig]

I never heard about a student-to-review ratio before. @Abbie or @ElianaC should be able to clarify (also the below aspects).

I'm pretty sure though that you need at least 30 reviews of at least a certain rating compared to similar courses to be considered for "Udemy for Business". There was recently a discussion on this. I can look for the link if you are interested.

Also, I vaguely remember, but not very sure that the paid vs. free student ratio may somehow matter.