First course published, Hot and New!

[german640]

I'm really excited because this is my first course published, and it already achieved the Hot & New badge. This is what worked for me:

• I made sure to select a topic from insights tool that was classified as a "great oportunity" due to high search and low number of courses, and focused on providing something different and valuable from the already existing courses there.
• Launched on thanksgiving, followed by black friday and cyber monday udemy promotions.
• On launch date I created a free unlimited coupon, and shared it in a few "free udemy courses/coupons" facebook groups. After 2 days I already had more than 3,000 enrollments and I shutdown the coupon.
• Also shared a few free coupons to friends and family hoping for some reviews, however I got zero, that didn't work as expected.
• For the current 3 reviews, 2 are from free stranger students and 1 from a paid student.

Now I'm fixing the autogenerated subtitles and I'm thinking in a possible second course. I still don't know what strategy to follow for it, if I do again the public free coupon it would seem fair to also give that to my existing students in a promotional announcement, but also there's the option to not do public free coupons and offer existing students discounted coupons. I still don't know if free coupons are that good, but so far it has been a good start.

[MariaG · Accepted solution]

Hi @german640 , congratulations on your first course! You strategized well there and we're glad to know it's going well for you!

[DrPhil_]

Congratulations on your first course. Out of curiosity, did you see a surge of paid sales from organic traffic? I'm toying with the idea of doing this for my next course, and want to know if it pays dividends.

[german640]

All my sales have been from organic, discovery or affiliate traffic. I still receive more traffic from "external sources", but I don't think any of it is converting because I don't see any revenue from "instructor promos", which raises the question, how is the channel classified if a student buys the course after clicking on the expired coupon link?

Also just 70 out of the more than 3,000 students I have actually started the course. I still don't see a strong reason for using free coupons other than bump up the number of enrollments to make the course "look interesting", and as many other instructors point out in these forums there are potential drawbacks, so for my next course launch I'm inclining more to not use free coupons and just use promotional announcements with discount coupon codes to students of my first course. 

[VipinJoshi]

@german640 The number of students enrolling in courses is magnificent i.e. above 3000. 

Congratulations on getting Badge ' Hot and New'.

Kindly tell your promotion strategies if you have any for promoting the courses. 

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@german640 wrote:

All my sales have been from organic, discovery or affiliate traffic. I still receive more traffic from "external sources", but I don't think any of it is converting because I don't see any revenue from "instructor promos", which raises the question, how is the channel classified if a student buys the course after clicking on the expired coupon link?

Also just 70 out of the more than 3,000 students I have actually started the course. I still don't see a strong reason for using free coupons other than bump up the number of enrollments to make the course "look interesting", and as many other instructors point out in these forums there are potential drawbacks, so for my next course launch I'm inclining more to not use free coupons and just use promotional announcements with discount coupon codes to students of my first course. 

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[DrAjayShukla]

So what's your suggestions on paid promotion gives better results

Or something else

[german640]

Paid promotion as in buying adds in Facebook and Google AdSense? Elsewhere in these forums some people have commented that those don't give good results. I think the number one way to increase sales is still producing good quality courses that people find valuable, work on adjusting the course landing page to optimize for conversion, and build a follower base outside of Udemy to bring into Udemy.

[MikeXCohen]

Nice, that's a great start to a successful career on Udemy 😉

My personal recommendation (and to be clear: I am by far not even close to the most successful instructors here; this is just my intuition and positive experience) is to focus on making more courses that are related but not overlapping with your RxJava course. Then your students will want to take multiple of your courses.

Also, don't over-interpret the mass of free students. Some of them are really into the topic and will go through the course, but many of them are "collectors" who enroll in every free course and will probably never even watch a single video.

But the most important question is How did you reward yourself for earning the Hot&New banner?!?!

[german640]

Thanks for the advice and good question about rewarding myself haha

[OrenAbbou880]

Congragulations man! And thanks for the tips!!

[DanielEvans]

It's definately an attractive badge which lends towards having achieved something, though at the risk of being a stick in the mud, I've also had the badge with only a few students and ratings and I'm perplexed as to what 'Hot' actually refers to! 

I know there's a green 'New' badge, but what constitutes 'Hot'?  

[CindyFayLybbert]

That is awesome, congrats and thank you for sharing.

gives me hope 🙂

cindy

[KaziHarun682]

Hi! @german640 

I hope that you are very well. Welcome to you and Udemy Community!!! 🌹🌹🌹🌹

Congratulations for your first course!!! Go ahead!!! Move ahead!!! Thanks!!! 🌹🌹🌹🌹

[CMGEnglishL658]

Hi there! Congrats on your course and on considering a second one too. I've had a mixed experience with offering too many free coupons. I ended up with reviews that weren't helpful or insightful and wondered if this was because people didn't pay for the course/invest in it. It's hard to say. That's been my experience. Best of luck with whatever you decide to do!