Udemy

ScottDuffy · ‎01-04-2020

Udemy has a number of free courses on various things: https://www.udemy.com/user/udemymanager/ I would also suggest you look for free courses from your fellow instructors. https://www.udemy.com/courses/search/?kw=udemy&price=price-free&q=udemy&src=sac Yes, watch a few courses yourself before making a course. Accept that it's overwhelming. You can't achieve perfection in the first week or month. Or maybe even ever. But do you know how you eat an elephant? One bite at a time.

ScottDuffy · ‎01-04-2020

Be careful with who you pick. It's so easy to appear to be successful when you are in fact not successful because instructors can give out free coupons and enrol 10s of thousands of free students. Look for "number of reviews" being the indicator of success, not number of students.

ScottDuffy · ‎10-02-2019

Goals? Udemy Live! See you there!

ScottDuffy · ‎09-18-2019

Maybe what you want is PayPal or Payoneer to support bitcoin withdrawal. But they would never, ever do that for the same reasons as above. Plus PayPal makes its money on fees so they don't want to do it.

ScottDuffy · ‎09-18-2019

Of course, the real answer is the complex money laws around the world. Particularly laws around terrorism and anti-money laundering. https://www.investopedia.com/terms/a/aml.asp A company like Udemy cannot just send $100 million per month to 30,000+ people in 180 countries so easily. The US government in particular has strong laws about sending money to countries like Iran, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Cuba, etc. So that's why Paypal (and now Payoneer) is needed. And that's why Udemy will never, ever, ever send cash directly to your bank account. Or bitcoin. Udemy is not big enough to have enough lawyers and accountants to deal with all the complex money sending laws around the world and they will gladly pay 30 cents per instructor to Paypal to deal with that. Think about that. PayPal charges Udemy 30 cents per instructor and they take away thousands of dollars per month worth of financial reporting headaches. How can anything beat that? This is the answer. This is the only answer. Money laundering, terrorism, and the US government watching where money flows around the world.

ScottDuffy · ‎08-30-2019

Thanks! I think you have been doing great on Udemy. You did all the hard work, and are getting the rewards from that. Speaking of Tokyo, I want to go to the Japan 2020 Olympics! I don't know if I can, but I would like to.

ScottDuffy · ‎08-20-2019

I don't know if any of this is really "changed". So you're saying it's harder to be successful on Udemy than it was 5 years ago? Yes it is. Harder to be successful on Youtube than it was 5 years ago? Yes it is. Harder to be successful on Amazon FBA / Amazon Kindle / Facebook ads / Google Ads / Making money from Adsense / ..... yes. All that is true. Udemy is not "making" it harder. It's harder as more people enter these markets looking to make money. Yeah, a JavaScript course will have a hard time being successful. You can learn Javascript for free all over the Internet. Pick a better topic.

ScottDuffy · ‎08-15-2019

All new instructors must go through an identity review. I believe they sent you a message about recording a video of yourself reading a specific sentence, and sending it in. https://support.udemy.com/hc/en-us/articles/229234067-Instructor-Identity-Verification-Process

ScottDuffy · ‎08-14-2019

This is a video training website. If you think "written information is better unlike video can be reviewed quickly" then you're looking to write a book.

ScottDuffy · ‎08-03-2019

Some people are so negative. You have to let whatever biases you have against Udemy go. You're wasting your own time posting here if you have such a negative opinion of Udemy.

ScottDuffy · ‎08-01-2019

@MarkLassoff now I can print that out too! Best day ever.

ScottDuffy · ‎07-31-2019

Print this out and put it on your wall.

ScottDuffy · ‎07-27-2019

Been a good month and a good year here. Working a little every day and starting to get excited about the second half of the year.

ScottDuffy · ‎07-27-2019

Congratulations Udemy! Keep going up, up, up!

ScottDuffy · ‎07-27-2019

Double, not 10X.

ScottDuffy · ‎07-23-2019

It doesn't change magically. You have to change it. What are you doing to attract more people to your topic?

ScottDuffy · ‎07-11-2019

Yeah, sounds fine.

ScottDuffy · ‎07-09-2019

You didn't ask this, but I'm going to provide my opinion anyways. It's very hard to get any success in teaching "web development". There are 4000 courses on web development. You need to be something special and unique. Maybe you already know why your course will be unique among thousands of other courses. But odds are against you. Maybe it will be fun for you to create a course. Great. Don't want to dissuade you from that. But you will not find very much money. Is that OK?

ScottDuffy · ‎07-09-2019

Legally, sure. But I don't think this is a great student experience and you'll likely get lower ratings than if you just explained the concept yourself. You're the teacher. Not wikipedia.

ScottDuffy · ‎07-05-2019

Let me say what remains unspoken. Someone with an "not activate" version of Windows is using a pirated version of Windows. That's what people think when they see that. That's what people will think about you. I would expect your ratings to suffer. Don't crop it out. Buy a license for Windows.

ScottDuffy · ‎07-05-2019

Bit of a click-baity title. 🙂 I've been on Udemy now 5 years, and sold more than $1 million in courses in that time. This is my advice. Take it or leave it. Up to you. If this is your first year on Udemy, you might be interested to know how the rest of the year will go, so that you can plan your work. July, bit of a quiet month. People are on holidays in the Northern Hemisphere of the world. But surprisingly, this is not the slowest time of year. I'd rate this in the middle. An "average" month in expected sales. August, back to school season starts again. As we get to the end of August, people start getting their heads out of beaches and summer, and start thinking of school again. Course sales pick up near the end of August. Udemy runs a "back to school" sale then, and August is perhaps the "third best month" of the whole year. September, a bit slower. Students hopefully stacked up on courses in August and so September is a bit of a "pull back" in terms of sales. Back to July levels. No major promotions this month. October, picking up. As we get to the end of October, sales start to pick up a little. Above average month. Udemy sometimes runs a "course creation" contest or incentives around this time. Last year, they paid a cash bonus for launching a course during this period. November is the big month. Thanksgiving. Black Friday, Cyber Monday. This is the start of Udemy's sale season. November is often the #1 month in terms of sales or very close to #1. If you have a course you're planning to launch, launch it before November. December, again right after a big sale is the hangover. December is one of the slowest months of the year. Christmas season, and people have other things on their mind. January, new year's resolutions means New Year's Sale. This is the #2 month of the year, or for some people #1. If you missed Black Friday, launching your course well before Jan 1 is recommended. General Suggestions: - July is a great month to course creators (us) to be course creating. August is often the #3 sales period of the year. - If you've got a new course in the pipeline, launch it by the end of October. That's less than 4 months from today. Move heaven and Earth to get it done. Work weekends and tell the kids to talk to your spouse for a week or two. Missing Black Friday with a new course is like the ultimate Udemy instructor sin. - If you miss Black Friday, don't miss New Years sale.

ScottDuffy · ‎05-30-2019

Hey there, I love your course images. Are those custom? Really outstanding compared to what we typically see on Udemy. Looking at the "How to get a job in Sales" course, you could really improve the course landing page. You have one "what you'll learn", one "requirement", and your description is 82 words long. I think you could go back to that and invest another 20-30 minutes really improving that. The #1 course for "sales" has 7 "what you'll learn", 2 "requirements", and a 301 words description. Your promo video is cool. Good quality video filmed outside, and good quality audio. Looks professional. Your main problem is getting attention to this course. 6 students and 1 review isn't going to cut it. You need hundreds of people to have a look at this, and then you'll get some sales, some reviews, and a higher ranking in the Udemy search engine. So this is a classic "drive traffic" problem. Can you promote this course more in your social media channels, or link up with someone who can get this in front of more people?

ScottDuffy · ‎05-30-2019

I've made a lot of money on Udemy. I don't have to make any decision based on what it costs if it's for my business. I still record all my courses using Screencast-o-matic. $15 per year for the pro version. It's not fancy in terms of features - not a video editor or animation tool. But it records the screen and your microphone reliably well. Easy to use. Not complicated. I own Camtasia, the Adobe suite, and 4 or 5 other tools that can record the screen. I use Screencast-o-matic.

ScottDuffy · ‎05-30-2019

So if you've already owned 2 lav mics, WHY did they suck? My general advice is that ANY lav mic is good. The first lav mic I bought was less than $30. No name brand, just a cheap one from Amazon. It was fine for my purpose. So... why did your last lav mics suck? What about them specifically sucked? I would not recommend you buy a new one, even an expensive one, until you know that it's not something else in your recording environment that is the issue.

ScottDuffy · ‎05-13-2019

Good luck!

ScottDuffy · ‎05-13-2019

Hi Mike, First, I encourage you to review Udemy's course image policy: https://support.udemy.com/hc/en-us/articles/229232347-Course-Image-Quality-Standards Looks to me like most of your images violate it by being all text, and I would not want the policy team to be contacting you. The images need massive improvement compared to the Udemy standard. I don't think the images are helping you attract students. The Udemy Marketplace Insights tool tells me that Go Programming Language is a very very popular search term - 98th percentile. https://www.udemy.com/instructor/marketplace-insights/?q=Go%20Programming%20Language&ref=suggested-topic&lang=en So great topic there. The most popular keyword is "golang" and you use it as the first word in both titles, good job there. The first course (Build Restful APIs) has a review score average of 4.0. This is one thing holding you back. So what can you do to improve that course and try to get the review score closer to a 4.5 average? The top courses on a search for golang have "4.5 - 4.6" average scores and you need to address this 4.0. The other issue could be the course is currently 3.5 hours in length. All the top courses above you in search have lengths from 9 to 70 hours. So you need to look at improving the quality and making more in-depth videos as well. The second course is 2.5 hours in length. So my advice is : - improve the images to attract more students - improve the review score - make the courses longer to at least match your competitors Good luck!

ScottDuffy · ‎05-07-2019

I see this is your first course. Allow me to be your first student. 🙂 Please take this feedback as constructive and something to help you for the next time you create a course. Or if you care to continue working on this one. I like your voice, and your audio is good. Your video is mostly in 4:3 ratio, and I would encourage you to get to 16:9 for the next time. PowerPoint slides are a bit amateur and you can choose a better design for that next time too. I think the best courses on Udemy have a specific topic that they are about. A specific promise that "at the end of this course you'll be able to do X". You are taking the student on a journey, moving them from A to B. At the start of the course, they cannot do X. And at the end of the course they can do X. So talking in a general way about various passive income methods doesn't accomplish that for me. "This course is going to explore why it's a good idea to create passive income streams" you say in your intro video. I'd rather learn HOW to create passive income streams than why I should create them. It would be much stronger, to me, to be teaching specific methods. A 8-hour course on "Affiliate Marketing Mastery" is a much stronger draw to people than a 1-hour course on "Proven Passive Income Methods", as a topic. For instance, in the video on affiliate marketing, you say that the recipe is to "have a high traffic website" in part. But how do you do that? Basically, instead of talking about why it's a good idea. I'd rather learn how to do it in detail. Later you say, "It's pretty easy to get 5000 views per video for dozens of videos." Is it? Is it easy? Please, make a course on that! You should create another course, but make this one very tactical. Someone should be able to take your course, and at the end have a concrete accomplishment. Pick a topic that is underserved on Udemy, not one that has hundreds of existing courses. My 2 cents. All the best, and good luck!

ScottDuffy · ‎05-07-2019

How can I help you? I've been on Udemy just over 4 years now, and have just about 150,000 paying students. I teach technical topics (like cloud computing), but consider myself fairly knowledgeable about how Udemy works and Udemy SEO in particular. Reply to this post with your course name and instructor name, and I'll give you an honest opinion about 2 or 3 things you can do to gain more success on Udemy. Or AMA - Ask Me Anything - and you'll get my honest opinion on that.

ScottDuffy · ‎05-07-2019

When you’re first starting out, topic selection is perhaps the second most important thing that determines success. (The first is that you have to meet a basic level of overall quality.) There’s no point having an amazing course on a topic nobody is searching for, or even an average course on a very popular topic. So you need to find out what people are wanting to learn from you and would pay money for. Once you’ve done that, you start to make sales. You start to get students going through your content. You need to continue to provide quality training on topics those people want to learn. You create 2, 3, 4 or more courses. And if you’ve found a good niche, you just keep doing that. Keep digging for gold where you have already found gold. Don’t move to a new spot just yet! Eventually, you get to a point where students ask you for things. Students ask, “when are you going to have training on X?” And you thank them for the idea. And if students keep asking, you need to consider making a course on that. You need more than one person asking. The market tells you what they want. You always have to have an eye on the possible popularity or the size of a market. Don’t get trapped making courses on smaller and smaller topics. You need to still be able to produce courses on big topics to attract even more new students to you. It’s a tricky game.

ScottDuffy · ‎03-26-2019

Udemy does not have over 25K active instructors. How many instructors do you think have published or updated a course in the last 12 months? Let's start there. Because if someone published a single course 3 years ago, they didn't put any work in and they deserve to not be getting good results. $1000 per month is good money in many parts of the world. Exceeds what a lot of people make at their full time jobs. And Udemy is not a full time job and for many people, they do nothing (0 hours of effort) to earn that each month not even answering student questions.

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ScottDuffy • Community Champion

Bestselling Azure & TOGAF® Trainer, Microsoft Azure MVP

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