Hi Filip. Thank you for taking the time to write down your thoughts. However, I think it's also important for people to realize that there are many paths to success, and what worked for you is not necessarily "the only" or even "the best" strategy. For example, I would like to politely disagree with 4 of your 10 points: 2) Gather students in an off-Udemy group. I'm not on facebook and I don't direct my students off Udemy. This has not hampered my success. And I think it's ethically questionable whether Udemy does (or should) allow you to make your students feel compelled to register or sign up elsewhere. Your students have paid to be part of the community here; why do they need to make additional investments off the platform? That leaves a bad taste in my mouth. 6) Coming from the world of technical textbooks, I think >$50 for an online course is ludicrous. I have a 600-page textbook that costs $50. Very very people actually pay $200 for an online course (I wouldn't). In my opinion, this whole business model of 90% off feels like a marketing scam, and you don't have to search hard to find opinions on the internet about how $200 for a 2-hour course is something to avoid. I don't like it, and I price my courses on the lower end, even my courses that are 30-40 hours of lecture (and each lecture has an exercise, so my courses are actually closer to 80 hours if the student does everything). Again, hasn't hurt my success. As far as I can tell, students ignore the "original" price of a course. See other recent posts about experimenting with lower course prices having no effect on sales. 😎 Free coupons are great. Free courses are another matter. I give away lots of free coupons, to my "real-world" students, to my Udemy students who leave nice reviews or who just message me. When a student posts a Q&A about something I address in a different course, I will give them a free coupon to that other course. Those are my most loyal students, and always leave glowing reviews. I would say that free coupons has been a big contributer to my success, particular when I first got started and had few students and few courses. Sometimes I even give someone two free coupons and ask them to share one with a friend. 9) There is no optimal length for lectures. I've had complaints about 5-minute lectures because the students felt I didn't go into enough depth (several times I've had to make additional videos because the students were right), and I've had many students mention in their public reviews that they appreciate the longer (20+ minutes) videos because I take the time to explain everything in detail, which is sometimes missing in other courses. A lecture should be as long as it needs to be. If the lecture topic is simple, then maybe a 3-minute lecture is perfect. But if you cram a 15-minute concept into 7 minutes, you are taking value away from the course and decreasing the quality for the student. Again, I don't mean to be antagonistic here; I believe that your suggestions worked for you. But I think it gives a misleading impression to make the case that your points are a formula for success, because in my cases my success has come from doing the opposite of what you write. Mike
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