What is your top goal this April?

[JocelynH]

Hey instructors! What are you focusing on this month? Is April your month to complete your course outline, film a new course, or amp up marketing?

Let us know what your top goal is for April and we'll check in throughout the month to motivate one another!

[Anonymous]

@Clare_Lynch

Busy month.  Your podcast sounds like fun.  How famous does a writer need to be to be a guest?  My wife wrote and I published over 100 books on Amazon making $500k from 2010 to 2014.  She's Melanie Jackson, author of the Chloe Boston and Butterscotch Jones cozy mystery series.  It was a wild ride.

---Brian

[Clare_Lynch]

@Anonymous Well, I'm working up to Michael Lewis, my fantasy guest, but in the meantime, interviewees have mostly been friends and acquaintances.

I'm on holiday at the moment and covered for the next couple of months, but give it a listen to see if it's the sort of thing Melanie would like to appear on (it's on itunes and Stitcher) and if so feel free to message me.

[BYMMB]

I hope that this month Udemy work harder than last month for marketing 🙂

Buy 1 Get 1 would be great like Black Friday...

[Mufaddal]

I am working on launching 2 courses this month . and also update one course . 

Been behind my original schedule but I am confident that I will launch them before end of april :D.

[JocelynH]

Good luck @Mufaddal! You can do it!

[Anonymous]

Give meaning to my current 21 published courses that with the current marketing policies of Udemy lead me to a gain lower than I had only 3 published. Yet they ran with an average of votes Above 4, 2. I'm getting more discouraged

[Anonymous]

Trying to figure out how to get my courses to show up in search based on the relevant topic. 

I have 8 courses outlined for production.  Not sure why I would want to add another course on the Udemy platform if my existing courses are not being found.  Any new course will be buried in the current search algorithm since your listing courses based on the number of ratings.

I've spent a lot of time following the advice of Udemy only to find that once again Udemy is hurting instructors with this ongoing and unnecessary testing of search results. 

I've improved my courses by spending thousands on upgrading video, audio and lighting equipment and re-recorded existing courses.  I've engaged with my students by answering questions within 24-48 hours (some instructors don't answer questions at all), I've taken feedback from students and made the courses better, and much more.

All of this helped my best selling courses reach the 1st page.  Which spurred more growth.  I was rewarded for my hard work.

Now, all that work doesn't matter because there are courses on Udemy, from 4, 5, 6 years ago, that have amassed thousands of ratings, aren't updated and neglected by the instructors.  Yet, Udemy has decided to reward these instructors with the new search algo.  Thanks.

[JocelynH]

Hey @Anonymous, I hear your frustration with the current search experiment. I would like to reiterate that this is a test and it is not the search algorithm. Our search algorithm looks at a number of different factors and does not display results based on the number of ratings. As I have explained in other threads what you are seeing is a test where we are surfacing the topic search results to a portion of users; there are still a lot of people who are seeing the usual search results where your courses are on the first page. This is not the new search algorithm, nor is it permanent.

Our number one goal is to match students with the right course, so we are always testing to see how we can get more information and do that better. We will be using the data we gather from this test to help us understand where there are opportunities for future investment in matching students to the right course.

[はむさん]

Hi, community! How are you?
My goal is to launch a new course about Rails 6(web framework) which is going to be officially released around the end of this month. So, I'm scripting with the beta version of the framework right now. The work is really thrilling.

[JocelynH]

That's awesome! Good luck on your course launch 🙂

[LindsayMarsh]

Just finished several new courses over the last few months so taking this time to update my best sellers with bonus content and doing a few student project challenges where I give live feedback to students via a live facebook stream. 

So really an updating month for me. Next month focuses on a huge new masterclass that should take the whole month to film. Kinda not looking forward to this one! 

[LiekeBeelen]

I just got my first course launched so I will be focusing on marketing and seeing how student will go through the content/ what kind of feedback/question and engagement I will get. Very curious.

[Anonymous]

@LiekeBeelen,

Congratulations.  I can vaguely remember my first course (it's been 5 years and I'm old).  You must be very excited.

Now for the bad news: it's a lot easier to promote two Udemy courses than one.  Sorry to drop this on you now but a high priority for you is to come out with a second course so you can cross promote your Udemy courses.  In the meantime, you have two promotional announcements to send this month with nothing to promote (your students already own all your courses).

Still, if I were you, I'd take the time needed to savor the moment.  Pat yourself on the back and get yourself a present because you just took the first step toward a goal you must really want (creating a course isn't easy).

Again, congratulations and thanks for sharing,

---Brian

[LiekeBeelen]

Thanks @Anonymous , I have some ideas for it, but also for me Udemy is just a means to connect to my own platform. I created some exercises to co-create with the students and then sell this co-creation on my platform. I'm already happy to do that with the only 3 students that already signed up - it is just a matter that they engage in the course. Nevertheless I will take your advise as a thing to keep in mind, but I have other parts of my business to run as well.

[JocelynH]

Hey everyone! April is almost over. How's everyone doing with their April goal?

[Yazdani Chowdhury]

I did not complete my goal.. so it’s proved that I am a lazy person. 

[Anonymous]

@Yazdani Chowdhury,

If you don't fail now and then your goals aren't challenging enough.

New month.  New goals.  New opportunities to shine :-).

---Brian

[GregReverdiau]

Month is almost over but I plan on finishing building my studio and setting it up

 then I have about 20 courses to create. I hope to be operational mid May and spend May/June/July working on this full time. I’m also planning on creating a new instructor account to teach a new line of topics. 

[Sijal_Ahmed]

Do you work as full time udemy instructor? 

[GregReverdiau]

Sijal, it depends on the time of year. I teach as a professor part time during the semester and the rest is Udemy and my drone business. In the summer when I don’t teach, I go 100% Udemy and try to get as much done.