Want an Opinion on Your Upcoming/New Course From a Top Seller?

[ScottDuffy]

Update 02/21: I continue to provide feedback to people leaving comments on this post. I will be traveling for the next week and won't be able to do much in that time. But please be patient, and I will return to this thread when I return.

Hi there, my name is Scott, and I've been on Udemy for nine years — 1.1 million paying students as of now.

If you have a new course (or one that just went live) and want some honest, constructive feedback to make it better, I'll spend 10 minutes looking at your landing page, promo videos, and anything else I can see and give you some solid ideas of things that you can improve. I promise I won't be too harsh but I'll be honest.

Post in the comments, and I'll go to your profile page and find your latest course. Or post a YouTube link to one of the videos if the course is not live yet. 

Any of the other community champions can jump on and give feedback to any of the instructors looking for feedback.

[Vedran Didara]

Check out my course on IP if u have time and let me know what can be better 😉

[ScottDuffy]

Hi Vedran,

Your course is an introduction to intellectual property and appears to be 1 hour.  Your title says "for start-ups and entrepreneurs," and I like that - speak directly to the audience this is for.  Good title.

There appears to be a typo in your landing page "requirements" section: "No speciic skills needed,".

There is also a typo in your section titles - "Copyrigth and related rights". Some lessons also have typos like "assingment". Please go over the sections, lessons and course landing page with a spellchecker.

Your subtitle is a list of keywords. I would change it to be a sentence that answers the question, "why should I buy this course? what will i get out of it?"

An idea from me: "Learn how to protect your trade secrets and industrial designs using patents and copyrights"

I don't know if that's great, but it speaks to the entrepreneur about what is in it AND includes keywords.

Consider changing your course image to something more professional, including using your own headshot against a professional background to emphasize authority. People want to learn from a real person, not a stock photo of a lightbulb.

How are you "an expert in Intellectual Property"? Are you a lawyer? Do you have a university degree in it? Have you taken courses in it or been granted some authority by a third party? This is your business, your career?  I'm just curious and a potential student might be too.

I think you should add a sentence or two to your instructor bio AND your course description saying, "I am CEO of Didara IP Services Inc and my company has helped 252 companies file patents over the past 10 years," or whatever the basis of your expertise is. Is that clear? If you have some other points of authority on this topic, like a degree or working experience, add them. This course just needs a bit more demonstrated authority, in my opinion.

I like your introduction video. The audio is clear. Your talking head video is nicely framed and looks professional. It's short and direct.

The "what you will learn in this course" is odd. The sound is lower than the intro video, and the video is stretched.  I think something happened during the editing of this video. There are black bars on the video that serve no purpose. You need to fix this video.

You have a good mix of assignments, quizzes and videos in the course.

Overall, I think you have a pretty good first course. Just need to fix a couple of typos and one video seems poorly edited. The rest seem fine. Like I said, I like how you are targeting this at a specific audience and not just "anyone". Good luck!

[Vedran Didara]

@ScottDuffy thank you so much for detailed suggestions, i have already polished some details you have identified, while other will adjust for sure according to your suggestions! once again, kudos to you for great tips!

[ahaselberger]

@ScottDuffy What a generous offer!  I have a relatively new course that isn't getting as much traction as I'd like (though I have other courses that are quite successful) and would love a second set of eyes: https://www.udemy.com/course/working-parent/ Thank you!

[ScottDuffy]

Hi Alexis,

* Great instructor bio. Reasonably shows authority on the subjects you teach.

* I like the title and subtitle of the course. If I was a working parent feeling overwhelmed with responsibilities, that would clearly speak to me. I'm not your target audience, though. 

* 4.9 stars?!? 4.9! What! That's awesome. You hardly every see a 4.9 rated course (legitimately) so you are doing great. I don't even know if I can make suggestions to improve the course itself since students have been loving it.

* The promo video is also excellent. Professionally done. Audio clear. Your and your co-instructor are clearly presentation pros. 

I'm just going to stop there. So you have an incredible course. There's probably nothing I can say to improve the quality of the course itself. What you need is reach. We just need to get this thing in front of more people.

Now there are a couple of approaches for this. First, I would check in the Udemy reporting tools for your conversion rate. If someone goes to your course landing page, what percentage of the time do they buy? I would bet that it's higher than average. If it's not, then we have to look closer at the landing page. But I bet the landing page isn't the problem.

So the next question would be around how many people see your course in search results. How many people are searching the topic of "parenting" and how high is this course in the search results for that search?

Your positioning on the topic pages is not great. Top of page 2 for "parenting". There are some worse-rated courses before you. I don't know why.

For the keyword "parenting", you are on page 3. That's not great either.

I don't think you use the word parenting (with the ing) enough on the course title, subtitle or in the description. 

I think this is partly a basic SEO problem. You need to figure out what word or words people use to search for a course such as yours, and use those words more.

The second thing I would suggest is that we spam all the employees at Udemy to have a look at your course. This is a great course, and it's hidden on page 3 of search. I bet many UB customers would love a course such as this.

[ahaselberger]

Thank you so much.  This is so helpful!  (And that's for the kind words.  Yes, people are really liking the course, so it's definitely more of a reach thing.)

I'll look into all of those things.

Really appreciate it!

Best, 

Alexis

[VentseslavH509]

Hey Scott! 

First off, major kudos on your incredible journey of nine years on Udemy and the monumental 1.1 million students reached — that's beyond impressive! 

I'm Ventsi, and I've recently launched a new course titled "ChatGPT for Creative Ideas: Generate Powerful Concepts." It's a passion project close to my heart, and I'd be honored to have your experienced eyes take a glance.

Course Link: https://www.udemy.com/course/chatgpt-for-advertising-creative-generate-campaign-concepts/ 

If you can spare around 10 minutes to share your insights on the landing page, promo videos, or anything you think could use a tweak or polish, it would mean the world to me.

Big thanks for offering your expertise to the Udemy community! 

Cheers, Ventsi

[ScottDuffy]

Hi Ventseslav,

I see you work at Graffiti BBDO. I worked for many years at Proximity BBDO in Canada. I recognize many of those brands on your instructor bio, as I worked with Gillette, Molson, Campbell Soup, and others on the digital marketing side.

* I like your instructor bio. Shows a lot of authority, and I immediately trust you to teach digital marketing and creative ideas. This bio is a great example of a teacher showing real world authority.

* I like your "what the student should know". They do indeed need to know something about marketing but that shouldn't stop them from the course. Well said.

* Similarly "who this course is for" is dead on too. Well said.

* Description uses bolding and lists well to break up the text and make it easy to skim. 

* Nice course image. 

* The promo video has an inconsistent creative style. The video editing is a bit harsh. Some places have music in the background and then suddenly (sharply) there is no music. Then there is music again. I also noticed one part of the video where your voice was cut off at both ends. The camera autofocus is struggling to find focus in some places.

I say this because you're a strategy officer at a famous worldwide marketing brand. I assume that you wouldn't show that first video to a client, even as an early demo. Maybe take the raw video and take a second shot at editing it so that the style is more consistent throughout.

I think the second preview video, "Brief to prompt," is MUCH better. It still has the camera autofocus going in and out of focus at times. So, I guess you'll need to turn off autofocus when doing talking heads in the future.

* I love that you have course downloads to help the students follow along.

* The third video, "Concept Dynamic Connection", also has much better editing than the intro videos. 

* Do you actually demonstrate using ChatGPT in this course? None of the preview videos show ChatGPT live at all. I would add videos to the course that DEMONSTRATE the concepts you are teaching about building a prompt. 

If those videos do exist, add one of them to the free preview so that students can see some active teaching through demos.

Basically, I think your landing page is great, and some of your course videos appear to be at a good standard for teaching. My main suggestion is to try to create a much better promo/intro video because I can see some people being turned away by that.

"You never get a second chance to make a first impression."

Also, you have a good mix of video and teaching styles (talking heads, b-roll, slides, quizzes) and I would suggest a few more demos of using ChatGPT. Maybe even some type of project that you take the students through.

All the best and good luck!

[VentseslavH509]

Hi Scott,

Thank you so much for taking the time to provide such detailed feedback! I truly appreciate your insights, especially coming from someone with your extensive background in digital marketing.

I'm glad you found the instructor bio and course details well-crafted. Your suggestions about the promo video's consistency and editing are incredibly valuable, and I'll definitely work on refining it to create a more seamless experience for viewers.

I appreciate your keen observations about the autofocus issues, and I'll make sure to address those in future videos by turning off autofocus during talking head segments.

You've highlighted a crucial point about demonstrating the use of ChatGPT live. I do cover it in the course, and I'll take your advice to showcase a demonstration in the free preview to give potential students a clearer understanding.

Your encouragement and constructive suggestions mean a lot. I'm committed to enhancing the course based on your feedback. 

Wishing you all the best, and thanks again for your thoughtful review!

Warm regards, Ventsi

[Dzuya]

hello Mr. Scott,

My name is Joseph Dzuya. I recently launched a course entitled, ' Machine learning from scratch: Numpy library  from scratch' .

Please go through the landing page and the first section of the course and give me the feedback on how you find the course.

I will be glad to hear from you soon.

Thank you very much.

[ScottDuffy]

Hi Joseph,

Nice to meet you. I hope you take these suggestions as constructive help, as they are intended.

Overall, you do have some challenges to get your python/numpy course up to the standard of the top courses on Udemy on the topic. So all of my suggestions are to help you raise your course to a higher standard but I can't promise or guarantee that doing these things will result in many sales for you because Python is a tough, tough category.

* I went to your instructor bio, and I would suggest you rewrite your biography using proper capitalization, including lower-case letters. Using all capital-letters detracts from the professional look you are going for.

* Similar to your course landing page. I would suggest proper capitalization for the course title.

* Your subtitle is a jumble of keywords without spacing. I would suggest you rewrite this to be more natural English sentence structure to get the students interest in what the course is about.

* I don't find your course image to be related to machine learning programming and would suggest choosing something that gives students a positive idea of what the course is about. 

* Zero ratings and zero students is going to make people pause before signing up for the course. I would suggest you find 30-50 people that are interested in numpy that would be willing to take the course and offer it to them for free. Ask them to give you feedback on the contents privately to help you improve the course.  Don't just post free coupons to the Internet, find people who are target students.

* I would suggest you organize the course into fewer section headings. It appears that many sections only have one lesson. You should have at least 2-3 lessons under every section. So reduce the number of sections and move lessons together into the same section.

* The lesson titles and section titles also have "ALL CAPS" in places. Keep it consistent, using "Title Case" for those titles.

* There are some minor grammar mistakes on the landing page. "learning and the general data science through many worked examples" is one of the "what you'll learn" items and that sentence isn't clear to me.

* Your promo & introduction videos appear to have been filmed on a hand-held mobile phone? I really commend the "talking head" style to get you into the course in some way. There are a few benefits of that. But the talking head part of the videos can be improved. There's a lot of camera shaking, and your face is close to the screen. I would suggest a tripod to keep the camera steady and a bit farther away from you.

* However, your audio is clear and there's no background noise. So that's good.

* Your screen-recorded videos are clear.

* Perhaps you can include a few more free preview videos so that students can see your teaching style beyond the introductory topics.

I wish you the best and much success in your career in online teaching. 

[Dzuya]

Hello Mr. Scott,

Thank you very much for your time  in my course preview.

I have made the corrections you have suggested to me. I will be grateful if you could go through the course again and see the corrections i have made.

How do i get the 30-50 people to preview my course as you suggested to me. I will be  glad if you can help me find these people.

What has shocked me is that, i have found my course priced at 54.99 US Dollars instead of the price of 19.99 US Dollars i had proposed. I don't  understand how they came up with that figure.

Thank you very much Mr. Scott.

[ScottDuffy]

My understanding is that Udemy tries to sell your course at many different prices (high and low), to try to find the best price that your course sells at. They run pricing tests on each course to discover what the market will pay.

[SoyMarketer]

Bump 👆

[VanessaCoul532]

That’s very kind Scott

just live today with my course 

may re record the intro (as I lifted it from other work and had to resize it)

love to hear your thoughts 

Vanessa 

[ScottDuffy]

Congratulations on launching your course on parenting.

* I like your title and subtitle. Direct and to the point. The subtitle has an emotional element, and a parent frustrated with their children fighting or being aggressive would certainly pay attention to your course.

* 5 students, great. But you'll need to get some reviews soon. See if you can find some local friends/relatives who are parents to take your course and leave a review for you. And ask for any negative feedback privately so that you can improve the course.

* 22 downloadable resources, sounds like you have a lot of resources for the student which is great

* I like your promo video. The audio is very clear. You talk about your own personal experience. (Great!)

* The video editing needs some work, however. I am not sure why the black bars in your video shift around so often. The video of you doesn't take up the entire screen and moves around every 30 seconds or so. Maybe you had trouble with the video editor software, or maybe you wanted to add some variety to the video.  

* The audio in your prologue video is very low. I can only hear it in my right ear, and the audio is barely audible. 

* Your story of raising four children in New Zealand is very touching. Thanks for being so vulnerable with your students.

* The audio in the Positive Parenting video also suffers the "very low" problem. This needs to be fixed.

Here's a video on how to "normalize" audio using a free tool called Audacity. This needs to be done on your videos I think. I use "-3 dB" as the peak amplitude which is a good talking volume.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xLYh4YrkllM

I think this low audio will hamper the students' ability to learn and will result in lower review scores. So, in my view, fixing the audio is your most important task. And then fixing the promo video black bars.

I'm going to stop there with my review. Best of luck,

Scott

[VanessaCoul532]

Many thanks Scott, appreciate your time 

[VanessaCoul532]

I have re recorded my intro on my landing page now 

[EshginGuluzade]

Hi @ScottDuffy ,

Thanks in advance for taking time and give feedbacks.

My course is not new though but it still will be great to get some feedbacks from you. I have spent so much time on this course but it still struggles to get students/reviews...

https://www.udemy.com/course/linux-mastery-from-beginner-to-confident-linux-user

[ScottDuffy]

Hi Eshgin,

I checked out your course landing page and your course free preview videos.

I don't really have any improvement suggestions except for one. It appears you have 44 quizzes in this course. If I was a student, that would be a bit annoying after a while. You can consider combining quizzes that come after every video into a quiz at the end of the section, and cut this number down.

Linux is a great topic, but very difficult to compete in. I think your issue will be what makes YOUR course the best and what makes it unique compared to the competition. On Udemy, there's no point in having the 10,000th Linux course that is inferior to at least 20 other courses on the same topic. So you need to have something that makes people choose you over the others.

This could be your animations or unique teaching style, how short your course is, or how long it is, or you're teaching a distro of Linux that no one else is teaching... 

But you need to identify that and make it clear to students that this course is different than Jason Dion's Linux course. Or Colt Steele.

Find a way to BE UNIQUE! And find a way to SHOW THAT on your sales page.

[DILLYARA]

Hi, @ScottDuffy! Thank you for offering your help to us, first timers, with your review suggestion!

Really appreciate it! Although, am an experienced professional but really feel somewhat both excited and anxious to launch my EVER first online course..:). You must have probably already forgotten that feeling....:).

I have not yet published it. So, let me share two links to video files:

1) Link to the course promo video - https://youtu.be/XLimIH5tm7Y?si=f0FEW5INbW-cSIZO 

2) Link to a final course lecture - https://youtu.be/_EOtX-Boy1o?si=NWz_xhEA1Kt7KUXG 

Looking forward to hearing your feedback.  

Kind regards,

Dillyara Dosmakova.