Udemy

For the $50 per month I was making from it, it was not worth the effort to maintain. I kept it updated for 5 years, and that seemed like enough.   I would occasionally be criticized for it. So it's much better all-around that I don't appear as someone who has "something to sell" to instructors.    I think it's very hard right now to "beat" the Udemy search index. The index is smarter and the competition is tougher. In the old days, I could get courses from page 10 to page 1 with the right application of keywords. I think those days are gone. ... View more

I set a goal orignally to teach 1 million students in my lifetime. I have already passed 600,000 and aim to hit my lifetime goal in the next two years. ... View more

Wish you much success!  ... View more

Ardit, glad to see you're still around, man. It's been a long time.   Wow, you've completely changed your Python Mega Course image. That's a big change.   Did you hire a professional designer for that? Or run a contest on 99designs?   I like the bold background colors. Makes it stand out. I love that your photo is there. (I assume that's you and not Twitter's Jack Dorsey or a professional model.) I might suggest that you make the photo of you bigger. Humans trust faces. 😉 50% more Ardit, please.   I like your course image better than Tim's or Jose's. Yours is SO much better. In fact, you definitely have the "top 1 or 2" course image on the entire page 1 of "python" search.  I also like Angela's course image. ... View more

Funny you should ask... https://teach.udemy.com/black-friday/ip-qa-bf-prep/   ... View more

I do, sometimes.   What I provide is a PDF. And the PDF contains many links back to my course on Udemy in case some random person finds the PDF and is curious where to get the videos from... ... View more

It's sort of like asking, how can you tell a photo is real and has not been Photoshopped? How can you tell if something is a Deep Fake?   I would say, humans (and now AI) can recognize certain patterns. When you compare the reviews of a course where you KNOW the reviews are real, next to a course where you suspect they are not real, you can see the difference.   1 hours ago - 5 STARS - Best instructer on Udemy. Amazing. Great. 2 hours ago - 5 STARS - Wonderfuil. Best. 2 hours ago - 5 STARS - Greate course. Realy GReat. Wonderfuil. 2 hours ago - 5 STARS - John Doe best teacher. Much best.  3 days ago - 1 STAR - This course is awful. Avoid it. I want my money back. This instructor really knows nothing about the topic, and shouldn't be teaching at all.  I mean, you can just see a pattern.  ... View more

Hi Paul,   On the whole, you've put together a nice short course. The course image is eye-catching, the title contains a clear value proposition, and the subtitle draws interest. I've watched the promo video, intro video, and one of the lessons. You're good at this.    There's no reason why someone who is looking for a career change would say no to watching even a bit of your course to get some tips from it.   If I can make two suggestions. One, you appear to have just chosen the first five lessons of the course as your free preview ones. Maybe there is another video or two within the course that you can expose for the free preview that gives potential students a feeling for your teaching style. I'd recommend choosing a different video (or two) for a free preview.   And two, am I correct to assume that the downloadable PDFs contain most of the lessons of the course? If so, you're leaving yourself open to students buying the course, downloading the PDF, and refunding the course. I'd ensure that there are enough videos in the course that teach things not covered by any downloadable PDF to make the videos a valuable companion to the workbook.   You clearly know a lot about creating a video course despite this being your first one.   In terms of marketing, what you need to do is get your course in front of people who can use it. I see you've probably given away 2500 free coupons, and that's OK I guess. But what you really need are people who are looking for a career change.   Where do you find people looking for a career change?   LinkedIn, likely. Twitter too. Perhaps Reddit. Job search boards. Maybe there are job search FB groups that allow these kinds of posts. I don't know the exact answer, but what you need is exposure to the right audience. Not just free coupons to random people who may not even need your advice, but actual interested students. Not free coupons, but place your product in front of the right people. The price is already right.   Is there someone who already has an audience, that might be willing to show this course to their audience?    You need reviews. Preferably good ones, but the course needs student activity. Watching videos, doing assignments, completing the course... Out of those 2500 free coupons, you need some of those people to watch the course and give feedback. Use educational announcements to encourage action.   Finally, if you can get some reviews, this might be the kind of thing Udemy Business is interested in. So once you meet the minimum qualifications for that, see if you can get their attention.    Good luck!   ... View more

It's not "luck" to be early or first in a category.   When Apple first introduced the programming language Swift, Nick Walter spent all weekend making the first Udemy course on it. https://www.forbes.com/sites/susanadams/2014/10/27/heres-how-one-new-college-grad-made-66000-in-one-month-without-a-full-time-job/   That's not luck. No way. That's striking at opportunity.   You want to be first in a category? Find one with no courses that you know is going to be popular and make a course. That's not luck. I didn't say it's easy to find one, but when you do, that's skill and effort that got you there.    And yes, Taleb is an angry person in real life. Check out his Twitter.   ... View more

Believe. ... View more

Larry, you're giving away the secrets!     ... View more

I've never heard of a "contract with Udemy" other than the one we all sign. And I talk to a lot of the top instructors regularly. I get paid like you get paid.   Also keep in mind that the number of enrollments is different than the number of students. If you have a lot of courses in the same topic area, you get students buying 10-15+ of your courses. I have students enrolled in 20+ of my courses. ... View more

The Auto captions are provided by Udemy. ... View more

I use a service called HappyScribe to create English captions. They are better than the Udemy captions because I can upload a list of words that are unique to my courses.   It costs me next to nothing. I think I paid $49 one time for the service on AppSumo. ... View more

One of your courses is in English and the other is in German.   It's likely that the German market is just a fraction of the English market on Udemy. Maybe only 5%. This is one factor that leads to low sales in German. The other factor is perhaps the topic of the course, which I interpret to be how to use video as a coach or therapist. It's an important topic, and I'm sure there are thousands of therapists that can use the training. But are those people searching on Udemy for courses? I don't know.   I think the image is great. It conveys what you are teaching. A+   I don't see anything wrong with this course given that I can't speak or read German.   What you need is more students. Is there a way to present your course in online groups and forums where therapists and coaches hang out? Is there a reddit forum or a German twitter hashtag for this? Find some enclave where these people hang out and say, "excuse me, but I have this thing that might be helpful to you. <link>" - - - - Your English course seems important as well. Discipline and bad habits.    There is a fairly obvious typo on the landing page that my eye was drawn to immediately.   "You need a lot of discipline in order to get what you really want in live". This sentence is totally wrong.   There is irony there because the sentence is wrong. 🙂 The word probably should be "life" not "live".   "Habits" is a tough category on Udemy. There are courses with 10,000s of students already in the marketplace. Some of the teachers are "famous" on the Internet. So what sets your course apart from those other courses?   So the problem you have here is differentiation.    You might have more success with "How to Break a Porn Addiction" or "How to Stop Snacking Throughout the Day" or "How to Reduce Your Online Shopping Habit" or "How to Go to the Gym Every Morning" than "how to abandon bad habits" in my view.   The riches are in the niches, they say. So how can the concepts of this course be targeted for a specific, popular bad habit? Find a topic that is underserved on Udemy.    OR find a way to make this course stand out. Since your partner is a respected therapist, this might not be easy. But TV infomercial Queen Susan Powter used to scream "STOP THE INSANITY!" which became her catch-phrase and made her stand out in the late-night infomercial wars.    I think it's a tough category. You need more students, more reviews, and a better message to say why your course is better than all the other habits courses. That's not going to happen if you do nothing.   Good luck! ... View more

The poor innocent stock model is being blamed for poor sales. 🙂    I don't see a correlation between the image on the home page and my personal revenue. Maybe someone can track it. ... View more

Ah, I see the problem. ... View more

I don't have as many years here as Larry, but I do see people who "give up" on Udemy before they even get started. And that's sad.   How to fix sideways images: https://support.mindbodyonline.com/s/article/Why-are-images-uploading-sideways?language=en_US    Angela Duckworth has a great book called Grit which is worth checking out. It's about what successful people have in common. Developing grit is something everyone should work on if they find stuff like this throwing them off course. ... View more

It used to be I created courses under my name that I did NOT want under my company brand. You'll see there is a different number of courses under my name as my company.   For instance, I have a course with Phil Ebiner that is on the Scott Duffy account but not under the SoftwareArchitect account.    It's also a branding thing. I want people to know that I have a company and what the name of that company is. ... View more

I wouldn't grab it from Google if I were you. Someone might own that image. The chances of someone caring are low, but there are people out there who make a career of suing people who take their images without permission.    I would find "creative commons 0" images. That means the person who took the picture is providing it for free to anyone to use.   Here is a search tool for "free to use" images: https://search.creativecommons.org/   Over 500 million images they claim. Not all are great, but you can be sure they are safe to use.   ... View more

Udemy has a document that describes how they award badges. https://support.udemy.com/hc/en-us/articles/229605188-Udemy-Badges-Guide   * Course with highest recent sales within a particular combination of category and primary topic (e.g., Python - Development, Python - Business, Yoga - Personal Development, Yoga - Health & Fitness). * Course has minimum of 4.2 average rating."   Does your course have a topic? I see the category is interior design, but what's the topic?   That seems odd. Maybe if you changed the topic to "Sketchup" you'd have the bestseller tag tomorrow.   I think you are not getting the bestseller tag because there is something unusual about your "topic" setting.       Please take a screenshot of the topic setting of your landing page and we can figure out why your course doesn't have a topic displayed on it's landing page. ... View more

1. Roughly after 13-14 minutes of video is the first prompt for a review.   I suggest you watch your own course "preview as student" and you'll see EXACTLY where the review pops up.   2. Sales happen all the time. Not every sale is for every student, so a student in Norway may see your course on sale but a student in Finland does not. You can't predict most of them. Some you can't predict, but some you can. Like I knew there would be a sale in August, and I know there will be another sale in November and another in January. Most sales are not predictable.   That said, if you become an affiliate, Udemy will send you an email every month telling you about the sales. But it's not really worth your time trying to time the sales.   3. I ask students to leave a review inside the course. "Hey, in a few moments, Udemy will ask for your opinion on this course. I really would appreciate it if you would consider leaving a review so that other students might find this course in search. Also, you don't have to leave a review. Here's how to click the "ask me later" button... etc." ... View more

I actually like the way you brand your courses "happens automatically". That's a cool and clever concept.   When I search "Amazon Automatic Translation", yours is the #1, #2 and #3 course. When I search "Amazon Translation", you're #1.    In fact, I can't find any other courses just on Amazon Translation or Amazon Polly. You have the only course on the topics it seems.   So your problem is not "students can't find you". Your problem is that the topic is not popular.   I don't have an easy solution for a topic not being popular. If students are not searching for it, they aren't.   Udemy doesn't recognize these as topics even.   So my suggestion, sadly, is to make a course on a more popular topic that has some existing demand and not enough supply.   Like, what do you know about AWS Rekognition?   Sorry, not the answer you were hoping for. But that's what I have right now. ... View more

I don't share this belief.   There are so many factors for course sales. Udemy is drawing students into their platform from different countries, at different times. Students have a need during one time, and don't have a need during others.   For instance, if you're teaching "chemistry", is there a season for that? Do you see a lot of sales around "exam time" and few sales in the summer? Do you see more sales at the beginning of the school year and fewer sales near the end?   I don't know if chemistry courses are seasonal, but they can be. Just one factor of many factors.   ... View more

Hi Salil, I can remember seeing your courses before.    You seem to be doing all the basic things right. Your promo video is very good. 5-star reviews. Your title and subtitle are extremely focused on who the right student is.    If I was struggling to sell my product to consumers, you'd have my attention. I'd be interested in hearing what you have to say.   Requirements: "no requirements". I am not a fan of there being no requirements for any course. I'm not sure it is a big deal. But every course I have has some requirements, even if it's for beginners. You probably want your ideal student to be "excited to learn how to sell products to consumers" at least. Or for them to already have a product in mind that they are trying to sell. There is SOME requirement, even for beginners in sales.   Your description is OK. 251 words. You are mentioning products, sales, and grow as the most frequent words, which is probably correct.    Sorry, I don't have many criticisms for the course or the landing page.    What is your landing page conversion rate? Are people viewing the page and not buying? Or nobody is seeing this course?   You probably just need more traffic. Traffic can be bought. Or at least, there are ways to get traffic out there on the internet.    ... View more

Personally I don't wait for specific days to launch a course. If it's ready, I launch it. If it's not, I have to wait.   Except for Black Friday and New Years sales. Those are the only two days I try to make. I make sure my courses are done before November 10 and December 20.  ... View more

Yes, I agree that students in the marketplace and UFB have different objectives.   And a course might do poorly in the marketplace and do well in UFB.   Udemy uses the marketplace to find the best courses for UFB. So I can see why they do it. They don't want potentially bad courses to be in UFB.   I don't know what the best answer is. ... View more

I think modifying a single video makes Udemy mark it as updated. Not sure though because I don't play those games.   Feel free to take advantage of the 30-day refund policy (or your right to review) if you find outdated content that doesn't satisfy you.   Although I wouldn't suggest leaving a bad review for a fellow instructor. Let's support each other just a little bit. Just get the refund if you're not happy.   Also, why buy a course on Windows 7? 🙂    ... View more

There are no dumb questions, first of all.   "Is it possible for me to earn $1500/month from Udemy?" Don't let me or anyone else tell you what you can achieve. General life advice, OK? I know it's possible to make much more than that on Udemy. Maybe not easy for everyone. But it's possible. I know hundreds of people that do.   "Whether you think you can, or think you can't, you're right." - Henry Ford.   For future courses, you'll have to improve the sound quality. There is quite a lot of echo. It sounds like you are recording in an empty room. I can understand you OK, but as a future improvement, you need to figure out how to record without so much echo.    In fact, if you get bad reviews saying the student can't understand you, some of that will be because of the echo. I think this is probably the most important thing you need to work on.   The course I previewed is called "Full stack project with spring boot java and react - TDD".   It's a minor thing, but you should learn about "Title Case" because book titles, course titles, blog post titles, etc should have every word start with a capital.    In my search, you are #4 for "spring boot react" on Udemy. But I see that you expect students to have beginner-level skills in Spring and React already. So you're not "teaching" spring, you're just using it?   So what are you teaching? Test-Driven Development? You should use the word "Test Driven Development (TDD)" in your course title. TDD alone is not enough.   "Master Test-Driven Development (TDD) with Spring Boot & React"   I don't know if that title fits, but I would try that as a title and see if it improves things.   Those are my suggestions for now. It's a competitive category. Good luck!   ... View more

@LiamDavin1  sound engineering! Now there's a topic that has my interest.   I've been recording videos from home for almost 7 years now, and fighting with sound (particularly echo but other issues too) has been a long battle.    This will be some honest feedback, ok? I'm not trying to be harsh, but you're looking to improve so I'm going to tell you what I think as I go along.   My first impressions: - I am not sure about your course images. Particularly the level 2 courses seem cluttered. You might do well to have a quasi-professional make some new ones for you. (Does Udemy still make course images? @Bella , do you know?)   You can test new images, and if they don't improve your sales after a month, easily put it back to the old images. 🙂 No risk to try to do something better here.   - Nice promo video 👍; I have to appreciate how good the sound quality is. I like the style of the promo videos, the cuts, the script.    - You have a good teaching style. - Honestly, the level 1 course looks like something I would be interested in. Many instructors probably would be good candidates for this course or something similar.    - I watched the free previews, Lessons 1 and 3. I felt a bit lost in Lesson 3. I felt like I would have liked to learn a bit more about "sound". How does sound work? What is sound engineering?    - This makes me think, maybe you should start with a quick demo BEFORE introducing the software. Show me before you tell me. Take a raw bit of sound (maybe a music track straight from the mic), bring it into Reaper, and then YOU go through the process of cleaning up the track. Spend 5 minutes getting a track from raw to finished. Let us HEAR the before and after. Show us what a sound engineer does.  Wow us! Then, teach us how to do it.   Maybe I say this because I don't know what a sound engineer does. I would not search Udemy for "sound engineering". So the title of your course limits the audience to people who associate "sound engineering" with "improving your audio quality" for music, podcasts or courses.    So to summarize my suggestions: - instead of emphasizing "sound engineering", use words that people might search for. What problems will the student be able to solve once they take the course? Make sure those words are prominent enough in the title and/or subtitle and/or description.    - record a video demonstrating what a sound engineer does, as video 2. Show before you tell.    - Is there any way you can create a version of this course specifically for spoken audio, podcasters and/or Udemy instructors? You have a market of 100,000+ people HERE at Udemy who want to learn how to improve their audio. It's tough for beginners.    - Heck, contact @ChrystieV and volunteer to make a video/ama for the community talking about audio. You can grow your prominence by helping others.   ... View more