Hi, I am fairly new

[drewprof]

I joined Udemy about six months ago and posted a single course at that time.  It was priced in the lowest tier but sat there with no subscriptions until I changed it to free.

Within days the subscription numbers skyrocketed.  That encouraged me to publish another free course and a paid one.  Again the latter in the lowest pricing tier.

Subscriptions for the free courses kept increasing to 1600 while nothing for the paid one.  Take it back, yesterday someone signed up for it then somehow withdrew.

I am probably coming to the conclusion that my material must be horrible and that I should give up.  I have been teaching for decades but I think I must not fit this medium and should forget about it.  Or, is it possible that this platform attracts people looking for free stuff and I might as well stick to youtube if that's the case?

[Monja Wessel]

Definitely! You can send promotional emails twice a month to all your students or just from specific courses so you did marketing wise a fantastic job although I don’t remember if you can still send messages to students from a free course, it worked but a lot changed so I don’t remember

[drewprof]

My conversion rate on my free courses has been between 90% to 68%.  I am confused!  If they seem to like the free stuff, why not try the paid stuff?  

[LawrenceMMiller]

Because it is not free. 

Conversion rates on free courses mean absolutely nothing. If you stand on the street handing out your brilliant new book, 90% of the people passing by might take it. What does that tell you about how it will sell in a store? Absolutely nothing.

[KarolyNyisztor]

>> My conversion rate on my free courses has been between 90% to 68%.
>> If they seem to like the free stuff
Wrong conclusion. Those numbers do not mean anything. What really counts is the completion rate.
What percentage of your free course have those students watched? If it's not close to 100%, they don't actually like it. They enrolled just because it was free.

We keep telling you that, but you're not listening.
Why do you expect a different result if you keep doing what you've been doing? Anyway, I'm done here.

[drewprof]

@KarolyNyisztor I am not arguing against your points.  I am merely expressing what I see from how I understand this platform, at this stage.  Actually, I must thank you for clarifying the facts and I appreciate them.  Stay tuned, I might pull something off and not look so useless or clueless, I just need time.  Again, forgive me for appearing abstruse...

[SK_Lanre]

You do not have to feel that way, of course you can always improve your material. When I started a few months ago, I had similar experiences, for my first paid course, there was over 30% refunds. I felt my contents were terrible to. But that was the last time I had such experience. I improved on my next course to. 

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@drewprof wrote:

I joined Udemy about six months ago and posted a single course at that time.  It was priced in the lowest tier but sat there with no subscriptions until I changed it to free.

Within days the subscription numbers skyrocketed.  That encouraged me to publish another free course and a paid one.  Again the latter in the lowest pricing tier.

Subscriptions for the free courses kept increasing to 1600 while nothing for the paid one.  Take it back, yesterday someone signed up for it then somehow withdrew.

I am probably coming to the conclusion that my material must be horrible and that I should give up.  I have been teaching for decades but I think I must not fit this medium and should forget about it.  Or, is it possible that this platform attracts people looking for free stuff and I might as well stick to youtube if that's the case?

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[tallojuuday]

Its quite common for most of the instructor in Udemy facing challenges with free users versus paid users but just promote your course link using social media platform definitely your sales will start

[WilliamChav681]

Don't give up! It must be a non-stop mission.

[drewprof]

I have reduced the number of free courses and now I only have two to three enrollments a day.  So far, I made a fortune for November: $9.00 (zero on Black Friday LOL).

So may hours of work for that; I must really suck at this dazzle me with fluff and short snippets of feel good ADD compatible stuff.  I don't think Udemy is for me.   I should move on and start my own platform with my own marketing.