Someone asked me the other day why I spend so much time in the Udemy community, reading posts, sharing information, and interacting with fellow instructors.   Well, it is simple...I find value in it.    Easy as that. Now, what kind of value? How about people who understand what you are going through? When you start doing online teaching and it starts going well, and you decide to spend A LOT of time doing it, people in your normal circle of friends might think you are a little weird. After all, while they are out on a Saturday night at the bar, I am home recording courses!   But, my fellow Udemy instructors get it. They understand the hard work, the time it takes, and the weird life that it creates for us (in a good way).    Other people in my life don't understand this online business or teaching thing, but the friends I have made through the Udemy community do, and we chat about it all the time. I have met a really great group of folks that I talk to numerous times a day, and it was all thanks to the Udemy community group.   In addition to that, I find inspiration in the big winners (Frank Kane and Phil Ebnir posting their $1 million miletsones) and other stories like theirs. It makes me think, if they can, so can I!   Well, I am not to their level yet, but I am catching up. (To be fair, they had a headstart on me.) But, stories of inspiration and community are two of the biggest reasons I personally come back here time and time again.   Jason Dion (@JasonDion)   I agree. I love coming back because I love the value I get from listening to the more experience guys or even seeing questions from newcomers that I never thought of before. So much value and it has helped me take my courses to the next level and be almost full time doing this in less than a year.    Yes - I am totally inspired by how I can discover how to evolve through the hlep of others. Daily we are all challanged to produce the highest quality courses that we can. I learn so much not only being apart of these groups but also by taking other peoples courses; this often gifts me a different perspective on how to create and propel my own courses forward. I am in the five zero's club; however have some distance to close before I reach Frank Kane and Phil Ebiners level. Lots of dedicated devoted work planned and lined up in front of me.     @JasonDion wrote: When you start doing online teaching and it starts going well, and you decide to spend A LOT of time doing it, people in your normal circle of friends might think you are a little weird. After all, while they are out on a Saturday night at the bar, I am home recording courses! Totally agree with you about this Jason! I also juggle my full-time work and Udemy hustle so I relate with what you said. I work early in the morning; I work while on the train to and from work; I work when I have free time in the office and I still work before hitting the sack. It's truly hard work but whenever I see the positive feedback from my students (and the $$$ on my revenue report) -- it's all worth the effort!   There were even some weekends when we host a "karaoke party" in our flat and I'm working on my course while waiting for my turn to sing.  That's a little weird in the eyes of my friends but to my fellow Udemy instructors, they understand the hard work that this business entails.   I still have a long way to go towards my goal but I know I'll achieve it along with the like-minded folks here in the Udemy community. And perhaps, once everything is done, I can sing all day long without having to worry about anything at all!    Same here: I also enjoy hanging around here instead of going to a bar. 🙂 I enjoy programming - but I hate being told what to do, where to sit, when to have lunch, etc. Love learning new stuff - but definitely don't miss the corporate bullshit, meaningless meetings, and soul-sucking, never-ending projects. Thus, online teaching and publishing was the biggest blessing for me; it allowed me to quit the rat race and work on projects I love. I've tried many things, but this one finally clicked! I'm so glad to be able to put my content in front of people from all over the world!  

I recently reached/passed 1 million students on Udemy. A huge THANK YOU to Udemy and all those at Udemy that have supported me, provided feedback, given direction and opened doors that allowed me to reach this milestone.   To give you a little context, I've been on Udemy since Nov. 2015. Before deciding if I wanted to put in the time to create a course, I did a quick search to see if the topic I wanted was relevant and how many courses has already been published. Nearly 6 years ago there was roughly 900 courses on the topic I planned on. At the time, I thought why even bother. How could I compete against 900+ courses, let a lone the 10's of thousands of other courses on the platform. In the end, I decided to create a couple of small courses to test the waters, both my own ability to create an online course and using Udemy as the platform. A few months went by as I maintained the little bit of content I had on the platform. The initial courses weren't paying the bills, but I became addicted to posting content, answering questions in the QA section of the courses and communicating with my students.    Student Location Map   I never dreamed or expected to reach a milestone like this. I was looking for a "side gig". This "side gig" has turned into my full-time gig and allowed me to hire a team to assist with maintaining the courses and keeping up with the QA.   It definitely didn't happen over night. But, with patience and giving more then the student expects, I've made more then just a "side gig". Thank you Udemy!   Lifetime Student Monthly Enrollment   I'm not one to typically toot a horn, but I feel this is something that I not only accomplished but something that Udemy has accomplished as well each instructor on the platform. In reality, a platform is only as good as the content on the platform and that content comes from all the instructors.    Author: @KylePew 

    Super excited to have finally reached this one. 100,000 in sales on Udemy and here is some of what I learned on the way. ( Thos took 3 years by the way! )   1. Consistent output is key. Either updating existing courses or making new courses. ( I have 12 courses now. ) 2. Appreciate bad reviews. What!? Yep, I said it. Those are the ones that will lead you to better course creation if you listen! ( of course I mean the constructive ones. ) 3. Learn to promote your content. Don’t wait for Udemy to do all the work. You can notice that over time I got better at selling my own courses. I started to get less organic sales so I began to share more videos on YouTube, engage with my audience on social media, and create more blog posts. I now bring in 30% of my own sales. 4. Build your audience off Udemy! The real power is in your following and they love interacting with their favorite instructor so give them ways to do that. For me it is pretty easy since I teach art. I comment on their art and give any insights I can. Create helpful free content for your target student as well as a clear line of sight to your course content. 5. Help as many people succeed as you can. Do this and you will find success along the way! 6. Don’t wait for perfection!  It isn’t even a real thing in my world.  I am an imperfect being and I share that in my content.  Besides, I would never get anything done if I thought otherwise.   I hope this helps and I am here if you have any questions! 🙂   -Robert (@Robert_Marzullo) 

MILESTONE! 🏆 I know it is not much to some of you big instructors out there, but I achieved a 5-figure number this month! Last Nov I came within a few dollars or reaching 5-figures but it feels good to reach it on an "off summer month" and not on a high sale month. This on top of the nice chunk of change I get from other sources/platforms monthly, teaching online is surpassing any prior expectations I had for income. A few tips of how I got here: ✔️The first 12 months was spent getting my income to $1,000 a month with only 12 months after that spent getting it to $10,000. You will notice how it speeds up quite a bit once you get past that $1,000 monthly marker. Same goes for building your net worth. That first $100,000 is a beast, with future subsequent $100,000 milestones being easier and quicker to reach.   ✔️You will notice that this month comprised of 20 percent instructor promotions. It can be higher, but it rarely has gotten that high and I think that helps a great deal in boosting you further past your prior numbers. I sent two promo e-mails this month along with a new course launch.  ✔️Speaking of course launches I *try* to do one each month. That means most of the month I am focused on course production and editing with one hour a day for student engagement. ✔️This was built on zero prior audience. It took that first 12 months to build a small audience to then build a bigger one in the next 12 months afterwards to achieve this type of income. 2 and a half years in total to get here, not really an overnight success but one where it was worth the years of effort. ✔️I do not have a huge youtube following, instagram following or anything else for that matter. This has largely been built using the Udemy platform and a student facebook groups and a page. I have spent too much time with little return on social networks like youtube/instagram. If it ain't working after several months of posting GREAT content then focus your efforts on building new courses instead. ✔️I have focused more on producing new courses and less on boosting and editing older ones. BUT Every 4 courses I take a month off and focus on upgrading prior courses with new content/lessons. ✔️I have had a larger focus lately on creating additional "bonus content" or "downloadable resources" for my classes to add a more rich experience. Students love being able to study things "offline" and some have a hard time streaming in their countries and really prefer this mode of learning, coupled with videos. My first few classes did not include many downloadable extra learning items. It is a student preference I had to learn over time. ✔️I have been focusing a lot on student support. One hour of each day is spend helping students with feedback. I have slowly (and it has taken over a year) to build a 5,000-member facebook group that contains just paying students. Paying students convert very well when you send them new course coupons. It is also a place where you can earn your 5 star reviews without asking by being helpful. ✔️Reviews are a HUGE deal in ranking. Any negative review (3 stars or under) with a comment is addressed immediately, not matter how crazy that review sounds. I never write a review off as "ridiculous" or "unfair" unless they use bad language. There is some truth in all reviews, no matter how unfair it sounds. I address all items, it if is a problem with sound, it gets addressed THAT DAY. ✔️I have a Black Friday plan in place. I am producing a course I think would have the greatest student demand (based on a poll on my student facebook group). I plan to launch in early October to get ranked high enough for Nov sales. ✔️Speaking of black friday I am boosting my biggest money making class. I have one super large course that is selling over $3,000-$4,000 per month. You bet I pay very close attention to that course. I recently upgraded the audio on 5 lessons and totally replaced 4 of them. I am adding new downloadable worksheets to lessons and I hope to remove lessons I think are unnecessary. All this will keep my rating boosted (in theory!). There is a point when upgrading a successful class is more profitable than creating a new one. Make sure you know when that point is. Usually, when a current course is still outselling your new additional courses. Anyways, just felt like sharing this milestone but also sharing a few tips as well! I hope you found some of this useful in your own teaching journeys!    Author: @LindsayMarsh    @LawrenceMMiller: Congratulations! You have done a great job of building a business on Udemy and it is obvious that you have worked very hard at it. You also did a great job explaining how you got there, which I am sure will be helpful to many.    

So, it finally happened. It is really strange seeing that 7th digit pop up on my Udemy revenue report. It just feels so surreal. I cannot believe this happened with just one company and without any paid ads that I had to run on my own and almost zero expenses, minus my own human capital. I am grateful to be in the right place at the right time in my industry and I think there is still great opportunities out there for those just starting out.   It took me 4 years and 20 full length courses to get to this point. 2 years had been creating courses full time and the first two it was just a side hustle thing. I would have a system each week where Monday’s I wrote content, tue was filming, Wednesdays were editing, Thursday’s was launching and Friday’s was social media. I would do this every week for 4 years. When I had client work, I did it in the evenings, which was hard and I do not think I could have gotten to this point if I did not take the risk of letting my clients go halfway through this journey.     This will be my last revenue sharing post as I reached the last goal I was wishing to share.   Not going to go on and on with this one, just thankful to be given the chance to accomplish this, thank you for letting me share with you.  

New milestone unlocked. I did a $20,000 monthly milstone post a few months ago and decided to do one for each notch from here.  My first $30,000+ month on Udemy. The January sale seemed more effective than the Black Friday/Cyber Monday sales. Other than this, there is not one thing I did that magically make my numbers steadily increase each month. I am still on track to release one new 10+ hour course every 6-8 weeks. Continuing to grow my Facebook student groups (only paid students can join, this keeps the content and post quality up) and have 10,000+ in three groups. Youtube and Instagram are growing, but very slowly and do NOT contribute a ton to my revenue share. I have totally overhauled my flagship money making course to be updated to the newest software. This and many other updates have helped this course have higher ratings and sales. The Udemy Promotional algorithm that chooses which course gets paid ads by udemy, selects "best sellers" tagged courses. I have noticed a big increase in ad revenue sales in that course. It took 2 years for my flagship course to get the best seller tag. Not something that came overnight. Building Facebook communities have been a huge help in having bigger course launches I have stopped doing shorter courses on Udemy and now try to have at least 8 hours or more of content for each new course I have not offered any free courses for over a year I have created several intermediate courses to compliment my flagship best selling course to naturally make more cross sells. I do one big promo each month and offer my students all my courses for $9.99 I do a live stream and review students work in a live video (sometimes over 50 student projects in total), I ask for reviews right after this video so they are at peak satisfaction with the course and bonus content I provide. I can also quickly review 50 students work instead of having to get back to them one at a time.  I have improved my course intros dramatically. I have made them longer (4-5 min instead of 2-3 min) to make sure the right students enrolls in the course.  I have added new downloadable resources to ensure they have something other than just videos to engage with. This has been HUGE!  I would rather come out with one 12 hour masterclass than try to do 3, 4 hour mini classes. Longer more broad topic classes just tend to make more.    My total breakdown of earnings this month JAN 2020 (last 4 days of the month are projected average daily earnings and added to the total) ✔️Udemy: $33,500   I do everything myself, so no need to pay any contractors or employees I get to keep it all. I do not do any paid advertising myself. Just giving people a breakdown because I know when I first started I LOVED to see some of the top earners break down and give lots of details of their earnings. It is like getting to peer behind the curtain.   Not doing this to FLEX, doing it to give you a raw breakdown of some things I do to slowly increase my earnings AND showing you do not HAVE to have your own platform, do tons of paid ads, have a great social media following.   You can to still do well as an online instructor. Just make tons of high-quality content and be consistent with putting out that content and engaging with your students in positive ways. Content is king, if you work on anything this year, continue to up the bar on your video/audio/editing/content quality.  

Hey guys! Filip Kordanovski here. I'm very much enjoying this new community and what a better way to start than with some valuable tips I've learned through my relatively short, but amazing, Udemy career. 1. Be consistent with communicating with your students. Send out promotional announcements whenever you have something new to sell or upcoming course release. Send out educational announcements with related course content, at least once per month and provide even more value to your existing students. 2. Gather your exsisting students within a community group. I prefer Facebook Groups, Discord chatrooms or anything other, really. Let this be a hub for your existing students and connect with them. Students like when they are receiving attention from their instructor and 1-on-1 communication with them may be crucial for that student to enroll in your new course! 3. Respond to private messages, reviews, Q&A questions and assignments. Student engagement is by far the most important thing you can achieve as an instructor. Engaged students are likely going to enjoy your upcoming courses based on how you treated them in your previous ones! 4. Research what your existing students are interested in, besides your course topic. This is important because you get to know what your audience would like to learn next and what a better way to surprise them than with creating a course they are simply dying to watch! Udemy provides in-depth statistics of this matter. 5. Quality over quantity Always focus on delivering high quality content, catchy visuals, crystal clear audio and always improve on your delivery. Don't rush to create course that is not perfectly made or even not finished completely. If you want any specific tips about the things I mentioned in this tip, feel free to ask away! 6. Quality courses equals high selling price Don't set your courses at 20$! A carefuly crafted course is worth way more than that. Always aim for the 100$+ price mark, so when Udemy has a sale, the student will be excited to see that the course they want to purcahse is 90% off! 7. Learn from the big guys Always research your competition before creating a course on a particular topic. I'd say, research about 10 competitor courses in your niche, and start listing out things that their courses are missing and make sure to include them into your courses! This is the best tip I can give you to win on Udemy. 8. Free coupons is a risky move! Most students who enroll in your premium course for free are not interested in your topic as a person who would pay for your course. Be cautious with this, since this may lead to low review ratings, overflooding your course with inactive students and thus resulting in incorrect statistics like engagement, analytics and more. I'd say just give 10-15 free coupons to close friends and let them criticize your course!   9. Bite sized lectures are the way to go! Don't make your lectures long videos that the student may feel overwhelmed by watching! Let them grasp a concept in a short video and make them feel like they've learned at least something throughout that short lecture! They are also more likely to watch a shorter lecture, thus, increasing your engagement! 10. Never stop learning I've been an instructor for 2.5 years but I'm still learning new things daily. Always research delivery techniques, learn from more successful instructors than you, visit this community hub at least 1 hour per day and learn and contribute! It will return ten times higher in your journey to become the best instructor you can be. Don't forget that you're changing lives of students daily throughout your courses. You help them land their dream job, get an internship or simply learn a new skill! Feel free to talk and share your ideas on how to improve on any field! Let's make this thread the ultimate go-to for any newcomer and seasoned instructor! You're awesome, keep rocking! Filip Kordanovski  

Today was the day when I paid off our mortgage. We're now completely debt-free! I left the 9-to-5 back in 2016 to dedicate myself completely to what used to be my side-gigs: writing books, developing software, and creating courses. It turned out that it was one of my best decisions ever that has changed my life in so many ways! Thank you all who've inspired and motivated me over the years. May the force be with you! 😉   

Question We all know Udemy can change lives financially and there is a lot of focus on a number of students and income.  What isn't discussed often is how Udemy provides is a platform to get a "name" in the world and become better known in your field.  Adding "best selling instructor" or "taught 50,000 students worldwide" can open up some doors outside of Udemy.   I have been on a handful of podcasts, have done speaking engagements, and even have a book deal from a publisher who found me on Udemy, her first e-mail called me an "expert" in my field. I have been asked to create specific courses for a large mental health organization, write for websites with five million+ monthly visitors, and many more that keep me motivated to keep creating courses and engaging with students.    What opportunities has Udemy given you?   Answers I received an inquiry if I offer live training to one of the biggest auditor firm in Japan. (I do Udemy as side hustle and in Japan, side hustling is becoming popular, but this is not something you openly want to brag) I don't do live, so I turned it down. Even so, I felt good to receive such an offer.   Other than providing me an opportunity for a second career, and helping me discover that I immensely enjoy creating online Courses ... none at all 😁 Frankly, not many people here have heard of Udemy ... and my Corporate Career earned me a lot more fame and fortune ! But those are not big priorities for me in my second career.  I earn OK, definitely not as much as what I made during my Corporate Career, but I enjoy the flexibility, and the opportunity to learn and do totally new things at 50 !   A university student came to my LinkedIn profile asking me if I could provide promotional coupons of my courses for students of Chemical Engineering    The opportunity to be with my children during the summer holidays. I can’t think of a better opportunity.  

My husband and I built a local music school that has been running for over 10 years now, and we've been spending every hour and dollar into growing it. As I'm sure you can imagine, we've been hit really hard with multiple lockdowns and have had to close. Though this gave me the time to really work on my dream of publishing a course, and a book. Prototypes and creating my layout Creating resources and doing voice-overs Shooting the Course I spent lockdown creating my Udemy course, and now with the time to set up and shoot videos, I was able to get it done the way I wanted. My Music Course has just launched a few days ago, and I'm really happy with how it looks on Udemy.   Although it has been hard to see the school doors close in a physical sense, we are moving everything online, and Udemy will be a big part in that.   It's been a while, but I feel optimistic about the future, and growing my student base, not just in my local area, but across the globe. Maybe lockdown has been an opportunity for other Udemy members too?

Hi Everyone This is the story of my journey on Udemy to earning my first $1000. This post is almost long overdue. I wanted to write this post at the start of Aug, but I got very busy with my next course. I am going to start at the beginning.   I graduated from university majoring in Mechanical Engineering in 2015. I had no idea where my life would take me five years later. Having found no job in Afghanistan and desperate to work, I found myself teaching 4th, all the way to 10th graders at school. I started teaching basic computer skills and the English language. In a matter of five months, I wrote six books on office and some necessary software. There were no books in the school curriculum of Afghanistan for computer so I had to come up with some to teach.   Right after the school year ended, I found myself diving more and more into computer science and software engineering. I learned HTML, CSS and JavaScript in just a month and started teaching them by the end of 2015. I think I binge studied them. These technologies were like nothing I had encountered before. I mean I had learned 2D and 3D modelling in AutoCAD, SolidWorks and Pro-E along with 2D and 3D analysis of Structures in AnSYS when I was in university. But, HTML/CSS/JavaScript had very different tones to them. After a year of studying and teaching at schools and universities, I became a full stack web developer. It was such an honor and an incredibly challenging task in Afghanistan at the same time.   It was the start of 2017, where I thought of getting a scholarship and take my skills to the next level. So, I decided to take the TOEFL test and I did. It was almost the same time when I started having chronic lower back pain. I was studying more and more everyday and the sitting was killing my lower back. I was sort of an athlete when I was in university. I ran a lot and did bodybuilding as well. But sitting made me familiar with the physical pain. It has been 3.5 years and I still get the pain but it is not chronic anymore. It comes and goes. Last year I went to Kabul and visited a doctor among other doctors over the years. He was the first one to tell me that I have a spinal abnormality. I have an extra lumbar vertebra, a sixth one like there were not enough already. And that guy is causing the pain. He told me if I am not careful, I might end up with a spinal surgery. It is very difficult to be careful about your health and program at the same time and live in Afghanistan with no resources at all.   Anyway, I did not let the pain stop me and self-studied TOEFL, which was nothing new at that time (the self-studying part) and scored 98. I could not get any scholarship and one year passed. It was start of 2018 when I found a scholarship to study in Japan. I studied IELTS and scored 7.5 and I still did not get the scholarship. I realized, if there is anyone or anything that is going to change my life, it has to be me, no scholarship, no nothing. So, I started studying Data Science and Machine Learning which was really interesting for me and still is. But what I got from the Japan scholarship was the light of my life, I met my wife who is the best scholarship I can get and got married after 5 months. In the march on 2019, I hurt my knee badly. Multiple injuries. Torn meniscus, torn ligament, displaced kneecap and a few minor ones. I could not afford knee surgery so I let it heal itself. It did heal to some extent, but in the process, I hurt the left knee. Subsequently, I suffer from pain in both of the knees and the back every day.   It was towards the end of 2019 when I stumbled upon Udemy and the idea of teaching on Udemy. It took a month to create a compartment to record. It was in the preparation for teaching on Udemy that I understood the true meaning of difficult. I searched for days on in my city and other cities and I could not find any good microphones to record. Finally, I found used (second hand) headphones just to realize my laptop does not record well. I must have changed the OS tens of times along with the drivers but nothing changed. I had saved almost $1.5k and I had already spent $600 on the compartment and bought the laptop for almost $950 (borrowed 50 bucks). The laptop is quite fast. Intel core i7+ (12 CPUs), 16BG Intel Optane Memory (IRST), 8GB physical RAM and 1TB HDD and 2GB dedicated GTX graphics. The laptop can handle mountains but not recording apparently. So, I decided to record the audio on my smartphone and synchronize it with the video. This is when I brought my brother into the equation. He is very good with the Adobe Realm and is also working on his Udemy courses. So, that’s how it all started.   Here is me sitting in my 1.5m by 2m studio built with the technology of 21st century in Afghanistan.   Nonetheless, the most challenging problem was yet to come. It was the month of Feb of 2020 when I was hit the hardest in my entire new life (development). The Udemy website was blocked in Afghanistan. The reason that this was the strongest punch thrown at me, was the very fact that I could not do anything about. I checked all the ISPs in Afghanistan and nothing could open Udemy. I could log in through some kind of VPN service, but I was not about to do that because I thought doing that is unethical and I might get banned from the platform. So, naturally, I got depressed. I did not eat for days and stopped working and studying altogether. I drowned into the horrors of not being able to change myself, my life and the life of people around me for the better. I tasted the bitterness of this world. I sank into the notion that I am good for nothing and no matter what I do, life in Afghanistan will always prevail over me. It was the worst weeks of my life. My wife helped a lot and never gave up on me, encouraged me as always, but I was drowning deeper that even I had realized.   After almost a month, one day my wife told me that Udemy is working again and I could log into my account once more. I remember the moment clearly. It was like someone blew life into my lungs again and I was able to breathe again. I was hit the hardest because when I saw Udemy and the potential of having a wonderful life, I was mesmerized. I knew at that moment that teaching on Udemy is what I want to do for the rest of my life. I had a clear picture of my life’s purpose and why I was born.   The first course was published on Apr 6th and after two days I earned $20 with no prior online presence including YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram etc. I removed my Facebook account in 2018. It was basically a waste of my time. My course grew more and more. I got more and more students. On the 31st of July, I released my second course and earned almost $95 in half a day. The courses are growing rapidly and so is my excitement. I teach 57 countries and 312 students in just 4 months.   Here is a screenshot of my earnings so far. I hope I can inspire at least one person in the world. If I can do it in Afghanistan, so can you.   At the end I want to thank dear Abbie and dear ElianaC for being there for me and answering my questions. I also would like to thank the Udemy policy and instructor support teams and all of Udemy deeply for inspiring people around the world and providing opportunities to learn and grow. I also would like to extend my gratitude to all of my fellow instructors and thank you for your posts and guidance. You have helped me a ton, literally.   Love from Afghanistan

Hi    I am happy to share I have completed, my first month as Udemy Instructor and have reached 5000 paid student milestone as well with enrolments from 59 countries.   Really thankful to Udemy for creating this wonderful platform & changing lives of millions of students, and thousands of instructors.  The insights and analytics dashboards are great, and shows how students are progressing in a course. Here are few things that helped me to reach milestone without spending on paid advts. - Build a active community of people on LinkedIn - Keep sharing valuable learning content - Host free LIVE Sessions/ Workshops on youtube - and Yes, bring your A Game in making a course  Once again Thank you Udemy & Instructor Community!

    When I created and published my first course 2 years ago on Udemy, I expected my market to be fairly limited and sales to be lukewarm. If someone told me that in a couple of years I would be sitting at $100k earnings (much higher number in terms of sales) I would have referred that person to a psychiatrist. Thanks Udemy for providing this excellent platform and helping instructors like me build their brands and a viable income stream.   My sales started slow (first few months) but they scaled really nicely post the Black Friday and Year End sales in 2019. The UFB was a welcome addition but the pandemic really hit the ball out of the park. The sales have slowed since then but they are still at acceptable level and I trust the think tank at Udemy to take the right decisions. I have a demanding full time job (which I plan on keeping) and therefore I rely completely on Udemy for marketing and promotions and so far they have done a darn good job at it.    Note to new instructors. 1) Creating and supporting courses is a lot of hard work and it should not be thought of as a passive income stream. 2) Take the reviews and feedbacks positively. It will help you become a better instructor. Always remember that your average student has likely purchased the course from the Rockstar instructors as well and you can't blame them for comparing your courses with theirs. 3) Actively supporting the course (answering questions, incorporating suggestions) wins you a lot of goodwill and helps with your brand. Very important for new instructors. 4) Keep upgrading your older courses. I cringe at some of my earlier videos as my inexperience comes across quite clearly. Also the obsolescence rate keeps increasing and I need to update lectures which may have used tools/packages which are not supported anymore.  

Thought I would share a milestone that is exciting for me. I just passed 300,000 lifetime students on Udemy! It's truly incredible. When I published my first course from my small desk next to my bed in my apartment, I never imagined even approaching such a number.   I took a several year hiatus from producing new content, but this milestone coincides with work I'm doing currently to finish my first new course in 6 years! I'm so excited to release something new.   Here's a few lessons I've learned:   Don't worry so much about how many others are teaching the topic you want to teach. That just shows that a topic is popular. What matters is the quality of your content. Make the course that you wish you would have had on that topic. There's likely others out there like you. Don't fret so much about pricing on Udemy. Focus on building an audience, as that's where the real success lies. Don't be afraid to share a portion of your content for free on YouTube or elsewhere. Be confident in your content, and use it to convince potential students to buy the full course. While you should file takedown requests, don't lose your mind worrying about pirating. Most people who download pirated content wouldn't have paid for it anyway. And some people just might appreciate your content enough that they decide to pay for it afterwards and now you've gained audience (that's happened to me many times). Don't worry about how much each individual student is paying for a course. Think of each new student as audience growth for your next course. Teach what you know and love: it will come out in the course, and you'll have greater enjoyment in the long-term support of the course, such as answering student questions.   Happy course production! My new sound tent for recording my new courses. A far cry from where I started!    

Today we bought our dream house, and it might be one of the greatest moments in my life. Some people will think: "What? Did you buy a house with money from online courses? You must be joking!"   But that's exactly what we did. And it's all thanks to our students and, of course, Udemy.   Udemy has been an excellent platform for me to share my knowledge with others and make an income at the same time. It's allowed me to reach people from all over the world and help them learn new skills and improve their lives.   I want to say a big thank you to Udemy. Your platform has allowed me to achieve my goals and dreams, and I'm really grateful for that.   So thanks, Udemy, for creating such a great opportunity for my family and me. We're looking forward to using our new home as a base to continue making an impact in the world.  Best, Karoly  

In 2014 - my first Black Friday - I had never heard of it before - caught me by a pleasant surprise. For some bizarre reason, my courses just started selling. Then I didn't know NOW I do.   It isn't just Black Friday - it is much bigger than that.   This is big so take advantage of these sales, you’ll be creating and distributing promotional material for more than Thanksgiving.  Your campaign work spans approximately three months. My thoughts: Pre-Holiday Campaign: Starting in September get your new course tuned up and ready to release. I like to release in October BEFORE the Black Friday madness of nearly every instructor waiting for their courses to be approved to go in November. October, you’ll start running campaigns to push your new course hard - lots of written reviews. Posting to all your usual social media outlets to get the course moving.  Leading up to Black Friday. Start playing around with promotional styles. Refine the look and messages you want to push. Pre- Black Friday – During this period in November, you might like to send out your own promo - well clear of BF.  Think about your course images/ landing pages and how you can maximise sales to everyone who will drop by and spend a few seconds looking at what you have to offer.   Black Friday – Udemy basically to all the promotional work revealing your courses to the world. What can you do to maximise this?  Maybe add some extra downloads. Students love free material. Think about using scarcity, use your Course Landing Page to suggest the free material is ONLY available during the BF  & CM Sale.  From my website and social media I direct people to my Udemy profile page and or individual courses - I use a mix to distribute all over social media. There is no point competing with Udemy during these big sales - work with them! Cyber Monday – On Cyber Monday, use different images to push your courses. Focus  - even though it was originally a tech kinda day I have always done well on CM.  Post-Black Friday Campaign – Now that Black Friday and Cyber Monday are over, you’ll want to make sure you are on top of your educational announcements - make the most of the new influx of students to let them know who you are and how best to begin their courses with you - any tips, info that is relevant. I am no marketing expert. I follow the threads of all the great marketers here on Udemy. Thus I need to prepare in advance so I am not caught dithering!  ps, I am dithering now avoiding creating my new course... bye for now... hope this helps all the new instructors...   Author: @SharonRamel 

Black Friday and Cyber Monday are just around the corner. Next month, hundreds of thousands of students will be shopping for courses. To set you up for success, we have some tips to make your content even more compelling.   Refresh your course Students can see the last time a course was updated or even filter search results by newest to oldest. Adding fresh, relevant information can put your content at an advantage. It also helps reassure students that what they’ll be learning is as up-to-date as possible.   Add helpful extras Everyone loves a good deal  — especially for Black Friday and Cyber Monday. Adding practice activities is a great way to increase the value of your course. If you haven’t already, try including one or more of the following:    Quizzes Practice tests Assignments Coding exercises Downloadable resources

Hi folks! In response to a recent discussion that was posted by @Bella about Udemy instructors who host a support group for the students (on Facebook or some other platform) here’s a few tips on how to build a reasonably sustainable online community.   In case you’re interested, my qualifications are a 65,000+ member FB group, a 1500+ member subscription community, and a Discord channel with 12,000+ members … oh, and 550,000 students just on Udemy alone.   Please let me declare here that I'm definitely no expert, but here are a few of the most important lessons I've learned along the way so far:   Tip 1. Posting Consistency.   Keep on investing and contributing value even if no one responds (especially in the early days).   Tip 2. Experimentation.   Try new things, don't fret about making errors and never stagnate. Different people will engage with different types of content.   Tip 3. Humility.   Healthy communities are built on a foundation of shared purpose and unity. False expertise, fake positivity, enthusiasm and ‘guru’ culture will never sustain.   Tip 4. Transparency.   Just be honest, be who you are, and don't try to be a guru. Remain entirely genuine and take ownership of the times you screw up and make mistakes. (I once messed up BIGSTYLE on a FB live and lost 5000+ members overnight!)   Tip 5. Health.   Within your group, remain focused on what's good, accurate, healthy, and what will empower other people the most. NEVER allows your group members to determine the purpose or tone of the group - you’ll see quality and standards take a nosedive VERY quickly, which will undermine your reputation and credibility.   As with all people group, learning communities need influential leaders who are motivated more by purpose than by profits.   And lastly, if the leadership isn’t strong, the community won't be either. I hope this post lands someplace useful for you!   Cheers, Kain

Question We are starting the week with a community poll about student groups & communities. Do you run a group or community for your students outside of Udemy? If so, we’d love to know more about your group in the comments below!  Answers My company (Dion Training) runs two student support groups. Our primary one is on Facebook and our secondary is on Discord.   Our students love the support groups, especially if you make them useful. We have ours filled with daily posts from us (practice questions, quotes, tips and tricks), and also have built a 25k plus member group, so there is always someone posting about something!   Plus, since it is on Facebook, it is a great way to engage with students outside of the Udemy platform and course, and it drives students back to Udemy for new courses all the time, too!   Thanks! Jason Dion Dion Training Solutions   Yes- I run 2 groups associated with 2 different courses- a Tarot one and a angels and guides one- I love being able to have that connection with my students outside of the Q and a Board and its a great way for them to practice what they learn in the course with each other in a safe and supportive environment.  I also love doing monthly facebook lives for them where I answer 5 questions that were asked on the Q and A board that month- its a great way to bring them together and give them the opportunity to ask me anything they like about the course live.    I too run a Facebook group student community for several of my Udemy courses and my own online school, as well as anybody on Facebook who is interested in joining, currently with 3k members.   Like Jason said, Facebook is a great way engage with prospective students outside of Udemy, as well as to build your brand.   Discord is certainly very interesting.   I have about 4K members in the Facebook group... The most interesting conversations are when students present their actual work related issues and discuss or ask how these should be resolved using Lean Six Sigma and Project Management tools (my niche). I proactively share my inputs. The engagement is awesome. The most engaging conversations are on the following topics: Actual work-related issues that they want to resolve using process improvement tools Seeking answers to tough questions asked by their interviewers Asking course related Qs and seeking answers from old group members/me Asking statistical software related Qs (which is taught in the course work) I make a point to introduce new members to the group each Monday. I regularly: Add polls that refresh their knowledge on various topics (I have seen polls have the highest engagement). Add FREE content that I share on my YouTube Channel Share articles that I find on Quora/Medium or other sites for my niche High level of engagement builds trust with group members and a sense of association. Students also get back with their needs and requirements of courses on new topics. It is definitely worth the 10 minutes I spend daily in the group.   I am also highly active on LinkedIn, but don't have another group on that platform. Some students prefer to use LinkedIn as against Facebook. So, I use the platform to let students connect with me and ask questions.   Our Discord is new and still small, not even to 2k yet. But people see pretty engaged so far!   Yes, I run a Facebook group for my students. I have 8 moderators who have taken the majority of my courses to help run the group. It is not exclusive to my students - answer the questions and you can enter - this is a great tool to sell to 'outsiders' who may have an interest in Shamanism but who do not know about Udemy. I run Facebook live sessions on an irregular basis - they are all well attended. Students feel very grateful to have an 'extra bit of me'   I run an academy at academy.numericalinsights.com with courses, a community and downloadable templates.   Hi @Bella, I have two groups a free udemy Facebook group which is for Udemy students only and that community is now over 6,000 and I have my own personal community. Facebook really helps to launch courses. I do two lives a week in my own community and again that helps drive Udemy sales, whilst providing an environment conducive to my teachings and learning.    I don't have any group, but I am considering to create one. My questions: - Is it really beneficial to put in that time? - Would one group be enough for all of my courses, or would you need a group for each course?     Facebook & Discord as many instructors doing here. I generally use them as complimentary support groups. I actually do Q&A inside of Udemy in order to keep things strict. However sometimes they want to help each other and get instantaneous answers to their questions by visiting Discord and Facebook, that is helpful.   Also what i observed that it is not easy to let students know about job opportunities or internship opportunities. Since i have a huge student base many people ask me for that and i try to relay this message to the students. I do not receive any kind of money or compensation for this but it helps companies and it helps students. It also helps me because students feel more committed since i provide some additional value to them rather than only the content of the course. So i generally try to let them know about job opportunities etc via my Discord or Facebook groups. View the full discussion here

YouTube is best way to get the word out. It free and everyone use it! 1. Start a channel featuring your own brand (if you haven't done it already) 2. Create and post new videos once or twice a week. (make sure you are sharing values - not promotions) 3. Place link(s) on the video description to direct interested viewers to your Udemy course. Make sure to add one of your discount coupon to the link. 4. Organize your channels in categories 5. Invite your Udemy students (and YouTube viewers) so subscribe to your channel. 6. Share your videos on Reddit, Facebook, Twitter... 7. Have fun with it!     Agree with all of this and use most of this myself.  I also use videos that are good quality but for some reason, I choose not to put in my course (I re-shoot videos 6 times.)  Maybe it's a bit longer and re-do it for Udemy.  Those videos, as well as some polished ones, go on my YouTube.  I also make sure the videos are something people will search for.  I teach mental health topics, so I will make a video and be sure to title it as a specific skill and also check to see what videos are out there on a specific topic first.  If I see 3 videos that are 5 years old and have 20k views each I will make a video on that topic!  If I see 1000 videos on a topic, all new and with 10 views each, I will not.   I have not done this in a while, but I use to sell webinars on topics (or do free ones, some of which were easy weekly Q&A) and record them to post later on.  Those were very successful in the initial sale, also selling the recording and gaining students.   Thanks for this, Luca. I'm new to Udemy and scrolling through the suggested articles regarding marketing and your post gave me an idea that I could immediately implement on my YouTube channel. So thank you for that! 😃