Udemy

RandyMinder · ‎09-07-2020

Hi @mak_academy - Have you considered that maybe there isn't much demand or interest for using Jarvis with Python? It could also be that your accent makes it very difficult for you to be understood. I listened to your promotional video and I had a rather hard time understanding what you were saying. How many people are listening to your promotional video and not signing up?

RandyMinder · ‎07-28-2020

Hi @GabrielHerr127 You've got to take refund rates with a grain of salt. Many of the top instructors have their courses on UFB as well as for sale. The courses offered via UFB are rarely, if ever, refunded. Therefore, their refund rate is going to be quite low overall. My refund rate is almost a constant 4% each month. It almost never fails. And the majority of my refunds are from Indian students. I have no courses offered on UFB. In my opinion, Udemy's refund policy is broken but Udemy seems uninterested in doing anything about it. This is a bit of a mystery to me because when a course is refunded, nobody makes any money. I agree Udemy should offer a refund policy. But, the fact that a student can complete 100% of the course and get a refund is just brain dead.

RandyMinder · ‎07-18-2020

Hi @SabaMohsin338 Welcome to Udemy. I would suggest, before you create a course on learning English, that you take a look at how many courses already exist on this topic. I did a Udemy search on "Learning English" and got 10,000 results back. So, if you create another course like this, you should expect it to take many months before your course gets noticed.

RandyMinder · ‎07-16-2020

Hi @RoshniPurswani Welcome to Udemy. I assume you intend to create a course on learning French? If so, you might want to consider there are already over 600 courses on Udemy teaching the same thing. This shouldn't necessarily stop you from creating a course on learning French, if that is your intention. Just be aware that with so many courses already existing, it could take a long time for your course to get noticed.

RandyMinder · ‎07-12-2020

@GregReverdiau How does an instructor go about improving their course when Udemy allows students to leave a 1 or 2 star rating with no comments? And this seems to happen most of the time, not just to me, but to a lot of instructors, as I look at their ratings and reviews. Of all the ratings I've gotten that are 1 or 2 stars, maybe 10% leave any comments and maybe 1% leave a comment that is useful. It's been my experience that roughly 1 in 5 students leave a rating. About 1 in 5 of those that do give a rating leave any comments. And, only 1 in 5 of of those that leave a comment leave a useful comment. It's virtually impossible to know how to improve a course when Udemy allows this. I've read many of your posts on this subject and your typical response is, "improve your course". Well, that's good advice but Udemy seems to be working against instructors being able to do this effectively.

RandyMinder · ‎07-07-2020

Hi @ParnaDassarma I took a look at your course and I did a search on Udemy for "Process Engineering". I got back 10,000 results. This means you are competing against 10,000 other courses in this space. Therefore, it's going to be very difficult for your course to get any attention, and it could take a great deal of time. Udemy will attempt to market your course on your behalf. However, with so many courses in this space, it's unlikely your course will routinely get marketed by Udemy. You are going to have to market your course yourself, at least to get started. I might suggest you send links, containing discounts, to groups and forums specializing in this space.

RandyMinder · ‎07-07-2020

@pradeepchelani - No it will not.

RandyMinder · ‎07-07-2020

@SeanMurray29 Making a course free (as opposed to free coupons) has almost zero benefits. The vast majority of students who acquire a free course have no intention of ever taking the course. They just like getting free courses. And, you cannot send promotional emails to anyone who signed up when the course was free. Udemy does not allow it. Providing free coupons to a non-free course does have some benefits. You are able to send promotional emails to these students. And they might provide nice ratings / reviews (or they might not). However, in my opinion, the only real benefit to providing free coupons is so you can market your other courses to them. So, until you have additional courses, there probably is limited value to offering free coupons.

RandyMinder · ‎07-07-2020

Hi @SeanMurray29 I see several potential problems you are going to encounter with your course: You are asking a lot of money ($35) for such a short course (35 minutes). Very few Udemy students are going to pay you $35 for a 35 minute course. I would lower this to $19.95, the lowest price you can offer. It's been my experience that very short courses don't do well on Udemy. And the refund rate on them is fairly high (my guess based on experience). I did a search on YouTube and found a large number of videos on Jamaica Creole. I'm not sure why someone would pay to purchase a course when they can learn free on YouTube in the same amount of time. How many people do you think are really interested oin learning such a niche language and are wiling to pay to do so?

RandyMinder · ‎07-06-2020

Hi @RenuThakur122 A couple thoughts here. First, don't strive for perfection. More than likely, you simply are not going to earn enough money to justify spending hours upon hours trying to make your course as good as it can be. The average Udemy instructor will only earn about $4 for each course sold. So, you need to consider whether the time spent to perfect your course is worth it. In my opinion, it is not. Second, before you get too far into your course, do some research, if you haven't yet, to make sure your course isn't going to compete against 500+ other courses teaching the same thing. Almost every day an instructor will post a message here wondering why they are not making any sales. In most cases it's because there are 500 or more courses teaching the same thing. This makes it almost impossible for your course to get noticed.

RandyMinder · ‎07-06-2020

Hi @RicardoStephan I took a look at your course and saw three things that may help explain your lack of sales: Your course has a huge amount of competition. I did a Udemy search for Adobe Photoshop and got 7,800 responses. It's going to be almost impossible for your course to appear on the first couple search result pages with so many competing courses. You have your course priced very high, at $95. Most Udemy students will never pay that much for a course. They will simply wait until the next Udemy sale, if they are interested. So, at that price, you will probably never have many sales until there is a sale, and then somehow your course has to get noticed amoung the 7,800 other courses. Your course is only 1.5 hours long. It's been my experience that courses under two hours don't normally do that well, and if they do sell, students will often ask for a refund, simply because of the length, and not feeling like they got their money's worth. Personally, I will never release another course less than three hours. It just seems like the refund rate is too high with short courses.

RandyMinder · ‎07-02-2020

Hi @AmanKatna1985 - Congratulations on your first course. How do you make your first sale? My first suggestion would be to lower your price, a lot. Udemy students typically will never pay $94 for a course. Especially a new course by a new instructor. There is another consideration on price. You have targeted Hindi speaking people in India. Indian students are accustomed to paying just a few dollars for courses on Udemy. My guess is that very few of them would be willing to pay the equivalent of $94. And, those that do might likely do so with the intention of getting a refund when they finish the course (the majority of my refunds come from Indian students). My second suggestion would be to make an english version of your course. You are limiting your course to students who speak Hindi. Therefore, you have eliminated the entire world outside of those parts of India that understand Hindi. Also, I did a search on Udemy for "Microsoft Excel" and got back 10,000 results. This means of course you are competing against thousands of other courses. It's going to be very difficult for your course to get noticed, especially since you are targeting Indian students and it could take a long time to get a steady stream of sales. Therefore, you might want to consider offering free coupons to gain some visibility.

RandyMinder · ‎07-02-2020

Hi @PranshuBailwal Do your homework first. When I did a Udemy search on chemistry I got back almost 500 courses. This means that your course will be competing against many hundreds of other courses. Be prepared for your course to potentially take a long time to get noticed.

RandyMinder · ‎07-02-2020

@Kazuki You are very welcome. I think a good way to look at the accent issue is this. English is my native language. But, let's say I create a course in Japanese. Let's also assume my Japanese is ok but not great. You can understand what I am saying but you really need to concentrate. If my course is the only course on the topic, you will probably buy it because you have no alternatives. However, if there are a dozen other courses just like it (and rated about the same), and the instructors are native Japanese speakers, you probably will not purchase my course. And I wouldn't blame you. This is what most non-native english speaking instructors face on Udemy who create a course for world-wide consumption.

RandyMinder · ‎07-02-2020

@Kazuki "I would like to question, for the first month, does everybody gain few students and after a few months the students gradually increase? or the students increase immediately if the topic is right and the quality is high?" I don't think there a single, correct, answer to this question. It will depend entirely on whether you are a new author and it will depend upon the number of competing courses etc. The quality of the course probably doesn't come into play right away because students won't know about quality until they buy it and go through the course. Almost any new author is going to struggle at first. There are so many courses available on Udemy and virtually every topic that could generate a nice number of sales probably already has numerous courses already available. So, getting your course recognized could take quite a bit of time. Also, I listed to your promotional video. To be honest, this may turn some people away. First of all, the background music was very loud and it made it difficult to hear your voice. Secondly, your accent makes it a bit of a struggle to understand you. Students may just decide to find an instructor they can understand more easily. I'm not saying that a strong accent will turn everyone away. That isn't the case. But, with so many other courses to choose from, some potential students are likely to find a native english speaking instructor, if one is available. To be quite honest, I know I would if I had to devote too much energy to understanding the instructor.

RandyMinder · ‎06-29-2020

Hi @Kazuki You said you may have picked the wrong topic. I think you might be right. One of the things you need to consider before creating a course is the number of courses that already teach your particular topic. I did a Udemy search on 'Wordpress Development'. I got 10,000 results back. This means your course is competing against thousands of other courses. Because of the number of courses already teaching this topic, you are going to have to be very patient because it's going to be difficult for your course to get recognized.

RandyMinder · ‎06-29-2020

Hi @HemantDhole589 Welcome! I would strongly suggest, before you start creating your first (or next) course, that you spend a bit of time researching how many courses already teach what you are teaching. We get a lot of posts here about instructors who spent many, many hours creating a course and are wondering why they are not getting many, if any, sales. Often it's because they are competing with hundreds of other courses on the same topic.

RandyMinder · ‎06-28-2020

Hi @Soumyapk428 Before you start your course, you should research how many courses are already published on Udemy centered around chemistry. There are hundreds so you are going to have some very stiff competition. You should expect your course to take a long time to get noticed and gain any sort of traction.

RandyMinder · ‎06-28-2020

Hi @DevanandSB The obvious recommendation is to re-record your course in english. Any course published to Udemy that isn't in english is going to greatly limit your potential audience unless you have a specific, thoughtful, reason for doing so.

RandyMinder · ‎06-26-2020

I have about 13 courses on Udemy. My first couple took a long time to record and edit because I really didn't know what I was doing. Now I can knock out courses pretty quickly, after I've done the research I need to do. There are two reasons for this. The first is because I'm much better at doing this than I was early on. The second is that I've stopped trying to be perfect. When you think about it, you're going to earn somewhere between $.80 and $5.00 for each course sold (if you're an average Udemy instructor). It's simply not worth putting in the extra effort to try and be perfect. Your time is much better spend creating new courses than making existing ones as good as you can possibly make it.

RandyMinder · ‎06-26-2020

Hi @ArianaMorales The first thing you need to consider is how many other courses teach Geometry. I did a Udemy search on Geometry and found over 700 courses. So, you are competing against 700+ courses. You can imagine how difficult it's going to be to get your course noticed. It's going to take a lot of time. The only thing I can think of to suggest is to find online math / geometry clubs and offer free coupons to your course to gain some attention and reviews.

RandyMinder · ‎06-26-2020

@Palathara_1974 - @Sahiba_Sharma Before you create a course on public speaking, you should take a look at how many courses already exist in this area. I did a Udemy search on public speaking and got over 5,000 results back. This means you will have a very difficult time getting your courses noticed. You would have to sell a lot of courses with a very high average rating (4.5 or higher), to appear on Udemy searches. This will be extremely difficult.

RandyMinder · ‎06-23-2020

That will depend upon your target audience. If your target audience is Arabic speaking people, then your course should be in Arabic. If your target audience is world-wide, the course should be in english

RandyMinder · ‎06-22-2020

Hi @SudhansuTri907 The first thing you have to look at is your competition. I see you created a course on chemistry. I did a Udemy search on Chemistry and got almost 500 courses back. So you are going to have a lot of competition. Also, your course is priced at $95. Most Udemy students are not accustomed to spending that kind of money for a course. You might want to think about lowering that quite a bit until you get a number of students, and good ratings. Then you might be able to raise your price. The key is to be patient. You picked a very crowded area to publish a course so it could take a while to gain some traction with students. Don't expect too much too soon.

RandyMinder · ‎06-22-2020

Hi @erfanbaig Congrats on your first course! With regards to what you can expect, the first thing you have to look at is your competition. I did a Udemy search on "Business Plan" and got 10,000 results back. Even if only 25% of those directly compete with your course, you somehow have to get noticed among the 2,500 other courses out there that teach the same thing. This is not going to be an easy task. Also, let's assume your course is actually among the top 30% of similar courses. That is not going to be high enough to have your course appear anywhere near the top when users do searches for creating business plans. Why? because there would still be 750+ courses higher rated than yours. Also, I listened to your promotional video. I would suggest you re-record that and turn the background music down. It was so loud I could barely hear the woman speaking who was introducing you and the course. Also, she was a bit difficult to understand. You might want to have her speak a bit more slowly and clearly. Your course is priced right ($19.95). Other than that, the only way I can think of to attract students is to somehow market your course directly to them. However, I'm not an expert in this area so I do not know how you might go about this. Will your course attract some buyers. Probably, but it could take a long time to gain any real traction with students because of your competition.

RandyMinder · ‎06-20-2020

@Lynn That depends. Do you intend to publish additional courses that you will market to existing students? If so I would go with the 3 day unlimited coupon. The 30 day coupon for only 10 people just seems weird to me. I'm not sure what purpose it's supposed to be addressing.

RandyMinder · ‎06-20-2020

Absolutely you can create your course in Chinese. But, of course, you are limiting yourself to Chinese speaking students unless you create english captions for all your lectures. That's doable but would require a great deal of work. Just one word of caution. If you intend to create a course in software development, you are entering a VERY crowded market and you could have a very difficult time getting sales.

RandyMinder · ‎06-20-2020

There is almost no point in making a course free. What you end up getting are many hundreds of people who acquire your course and most will have no intention of ever actually going through it. They just like free courses. I've seen this over and over. Plus, you cannot send promotional emails to students in free courses. If you have a target group of people you can market your course to, that would be interested in your course topic, you can create a free coupon that allows students to acquire the course for free for three days (they can still go through the course at any time). There is no limit as to the number of students that could use this coupon. But, the coupon is only good for three days. This builds up a base of users that might leave you a good rating. And, just as importantly, or more so, you will be able to send promotional emails to these students when you release your next course.

RandyMinder · ‎06-19-2020

I don't see any courses you have published. Perhaps Udemy hasn't approved it quite yet. One thing I did take a look at was the number of courses you are competing against. I did a Udemy search for "C Programming" and got about 5,600 results back. You picked a very crowded topic for your first course. Because you are competing against at least 5,600 other courses, I wouldn't expect significant results within the first several months. It could take quite a bit of time to start getting some traction against some many other courses.

RandyMinder · ‎06-18-2020

Congrats on your first course. How many paid students you get will depend on at least two key factors. The first is the competition you have in the area your course covers. I did a search for courses related to Math and got 94 pages of courses. So, you're going to have some stiff competition and it could take quite a long time for your course to gain any sort of traction. The second will be the ratings you receive. In order for your course to be found by students doing searches, your course rating will probably have to be 4.5 or higher. This is certainly doable but it's going to be tough.

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