Ask Me Anything - Phil Ebiner, long-time instructor

[PhilEbiner]

Hi, 

I'm Phil Ebiner. I'm a long-time Udemy instructor - been here since 2012. And I'm excited to be a part of this community. Please feel free to ask me any questions!

Since 2012, I've made over $1.5 million from Udemy. And I don't say that to brag, but to show you what a normal guy like me can do... someone who started like many of you without an audience, experience teaching, experience selling, email list, website... nothing.

It has taken a lot of hard work and time to do this, but I believe you can achieve your goals if you have the right mindset and put in the right amount of effort!

I love Udemy, and hope to help you out on this amazing platform!

Cheers,

Phil

[DennisTraub · Accepted solution]

Twins! Congratulations!

[Vijay_Saini · Accepted solution]

Woow. That is impressive 🙂

[PhilEbiner · Accepted solution]

Thanks!

[PhilEbiner · Accepted solution]

I teach creative skills like photography, photo editing, video editing, motion graphics. 

Great question about how long a course should be. I always say that they should be 'as long as it takes to teach the topic.' I wouldn't focus on just simply trying to reach a certain length of course... just focus on teaching a topic in an efficient and easy-to-digest manner. You don't want to drag on and on about a topic.  On the flip side, I've seen longer courses do better on Udemy. So adding additional topics/content, and making the course comprehensive enough to be 5+ hours is generally my rule of thumb.

In terms of finishing the course - do it! Just get the course done and launched!

[RubbieNKing492 · Accepted solution]

Wow. That's impressive. I have been procrastinating with my courses. They are written but I've not taken the first stepl to launch. What advice do you have as to making it grow once i launch the first course.

[JoseSalvatierra · Accepted solution]

Hey Phil, thanks for doing this. Big fan of your Online Course Masters podcast.

How many Q&A's do you get per day? How long do you spend managing that? How big is your TA team?

How many people work with you in course production (if it's more than just you)?

Jose

[JaskoKoyn · Accepted solution]

Hey Phil! Congrats on your success on Udemy. Along with being an instructor, I'm also a student of some of your courses. I wanted to ask about your marketing. I noticed that a decent portion of your earnings come from self promotion (basing this on the screenshot you've posted).

What do you do to market your content? Which platforms do you use? Do you do Facebook advertising? I would love to know your strategies. Thank you for doing this AMA!

[UmairSimjee · Accepted solution]

That's all becasue of hard working and your consistency 

[PhilEbiner · Accepted solution]

I definitely think free courses are a great way to build your brand and student base. Not only should you put that free course on Udemy, but also on YouTube and potentially on your own website so you can use it to build your email list that you will send the paid course to when it's done. 

You'll have to pay attention to the rules on Udemy though, because you can't send free coupons to students in a free course via an announcement. This would have to be done with your own email list or on a website/YouTube channel to your own audience.

[PhilEbiner · Accepted solution]

At the end of the day, what ends up making more money is making more great courses. So while I truly believe building your brand (website, YouTube, social media) is super important for the long run, I also think if just starting out, you might want to just focus on creating as many good high quality courses as you can.

[PhilEbiner · Accepted solution]

Great question! What I've learned is that those ups and downs are just the normal trends across Udemy for all instructors. November, January, June, August... those are usually peaks. Other peaks will be when I launch a new course. 

As for when it's a new month, and it's going slow... I just want to ask what you are doing to improve it? Are you working on a new course? Are you building out a website? Are you growing an email list? Are you growing a YouTube channel? Are you testing out new ways to promote? 

What are you doing to grow?

[gztibs · Accepted solution]

Thank you for being selfless and sharing with us. What do you have to say about the many sites that promote udemy free or discounted coupons？ Is it worth a try？ If it is, which sites are recommended？

[AliRazeghi · Accepted solution]

Hi,

Do you think using Google Ad is uesful for marketing my courses?

[AdimoraChimex · Accepted solution]

Hi Phil,

You have done so well for yourself and for that I say congratulations to you.

Please am new on this platform and really don't know how to start up.

Is there a way you can help me?

[PramodAgrawal · Accepted solution]

Hello Phil!

I am Pramod from India, a brand new instructor raring to go. Your story is amazing & inspiring.

I need your suggestions on - how to reach where you reached or better it. I give a few details about me and my class.

My class name: Stock sutra

What does it teach? Stock trading, currency trading, commodity trading.

Total class length - 3.45 Hrs

Total videos - 101

Design - Powerpoint slides and me talking in the background. The class is engaging with pictures and examples. The class is in such simple words that even a 15-year-old child in any part of the world can master stock trading and benefit from it.

Current status - Class is completed. Instructor verification on.

About me: I am from India. I have been trading stocks for the last 15 years. Also, I have many years of work experience in other fields too. I am now 60. This is my 1st class ever anywhere online. I am a passionate teacher and love teaching. I have worked for over a year on this class and invested all my money and loans from friends and family. I would like to return the loans as early as possible with handsome returns. I want to make my 2nd class on - Simple Yoga & Meditation.

Could you please give 5 tips to success that I should be looking to act upon.

Best wishes.

Pramod

[Naeem-Malik · Accepted solution]

I see you haven't published a course yet. 

[LaorKaelHel200 · Accepted solution]

Hello Phil, how can we talk in person about your offer? 

[Ibrahim13 · Accepted solution]

Amazing job Phil... I'm really impressed! I hope I can make my first $1.5 🙂

[KellieChass647]

Amazing trend Phil - congrats!

[JaskoKoyn · Accepted solution]

Hey Phil! Congrats on your success on Udemy. Along with being an instructor, I'm also a student of some of your courses. I wanted to ask about your marketing. I noticed that a decent portion of your earnings come from self promotion (basing this on the screenshot you've posted).

What do you do to market your content? Which platforms do you use? Do you do Facebook advertising? I would love to know your strategies. Thank you for doing this AMA!

[PhilEbiner]

Most of my own promotions come from direct sales from YouTube or my website, and some email marketing - no Facebook ads or any type of ad.

cheers

[Dries_Ketels]

Hey Phil,

Thanks for your time and all the answers you're providing. I'm not sure how to interpret you answer to the facebook ad thing. Did you seriously tried social media adds and concluded that they are not the best way to promote courses etc.? Or did you simply never really put time and effort in figuring out how to do social media ads?

Atm I see a lot of top level executives like Gary Vaynerchuck talk about how underpiced social media is and how we should put money in ads etc. Therefore I'm a bit confused. 

Friendly,
Dries 

[JohnCrowder6]

Phil,

Thank you for being open to help others in the course creation process. We all really appreaciate your contributions to this community. I wish you many more success-filled years ahead!

Have a geat day!

John

[PhilEbiner]

Thank you!!!

[zeuscoder]

Hey Phil, thank you for sharing this graph with us too.  It took you quite a few years to find your stride, and i think that is a valuable lesson for a lot of us right?

Any thoughts on how to persist, how to keep improving, and what are the things you wish you knew back between 2012 - 2016?

Thanks!

[JasonDion]

@PhilEbiner , my only question is, when is Season 3 of the Online Course Masters podcast going to drop? I love listening to the show on my commute to my day job. It really inspired me during my first year, and can't wait to hear from more instructors on your podcast (and maybe even some "where are they now" updates)!

Episode 2 with Scott Duffy was a really great one that helped keep the perspective on why I should continue to focus on Udemy (at a time when my focus was shifting), and there have been countless others that I learned a lot from (Diego Davilla, Dave Espino, and too many others to name). Without an official Udemy podcast out there, I find OCM to be a great "unofficial" one since so many of your guests were Udemy instructors.

Jason Dion

[SallyLittleton]

Hi Jason, 

Thank you for mentioning Phil's OCM podcasts. Very helpful!

Sally

[PhilEbiner]

We're doing some major work for OCM, and plan on launching the new podcast in Q2 of the year! So hopefully in April!

[ScottDuffy]

I was really on my game that day.

Not sure what happened since. 😉

[Stephanie3173]

What marketing tools do you use to get students ?

[PhilEbiner]

The ones that have been most successful for me are having a YouTube channel and building my website and consistently writing high-quality articles.

[Naeem-Malik]

Hey Phil! 

I'm here because I watched your course about creating a course. You rock man, love for the kids. Stay blessed & keep pumpin stuff!!!

Naeem Malik.

[PhilEbiner]

Thanks!

[RajaBiswas]

You are helping and inspiring the community over the years, thanks a lot for that.

Wish you a lot more success.

I want to ask , Do you still generate revenue from your old courses that are 3,4 years old? 

for most of us, few of the courses generate most of the revenue, is it true for you as well?

Thanks 🙂

[PhilEbiner]

Yes! That's one of the most amazing things about Udemy... I still earn money from my very first course from 2012! Some topics are more evergreen than others, which helps. But, yes!

I would say 10 of my courses generate 50% of my revenue... the other 50+ make up the other half.

[GrahamNicholls]

Phil, huge congratulations on your success! I’ve got a couple of your courses and you deserve the success you have achieved.

ive only been on Udemy as an instructor since September 2017 and I certainly have the passion for it that you do.... I love it!

I hope your results are a true inspiration to others.... I know they are to me 

[azamsharp]

Hi Phil, 

I teach programming courses and my question is related to screen resolution while recording. 

My Macbook Pro default resolution is 1440 X 900. I use a third party software to get the resolution adjusted to 1280 X 800. I record all my courses on 1280 X 800. Is that going to be problem in the future? What do you suggest? 

[PhilEbiner]

I would suggest recording at the higher resolution. 1920x1080 is standard HD quality. One of my biggest gripes with Udemy has been their slow adoption of higher resolutions. YouTube is already on 4k and beyond! While I don't think 4K is necessary, I think for some courses 1920x1080 is... due to the type of monitor that a student may be using to watch, and the size of things on the screen.

The issue with only recording at 1280 x 800, is that it's already a lower quality of HD... and when in the future, 1920x1080 is the norm on Udemy, you'll wish you had recorded your courses at a higher resolution. 

So try to future-proof yourself and start recording at 1440x900. What Macbook Pro is it? Are you sure you can't record at an even higher resolution?

[Karthikeya]

Thanks for the all the great info.

You had mentioned "1920x1080 is the norm on Udemy, you'll wish you had recorded your courses at a higher resolution" and you also suggested to record in 1440x900. Confused 

Also, what resolution monitor should I be getting. Does 1440x900 or 1920x1080 monitor do?

Thanks!