@Anonymous, There are a number of possible answers to your question. The most obvious one in my mind is that by marketing your course and bringing students to Udemy you increase the standing/ranking of your course on Udemy, thereby increasing Udemy organic sales. Yesterday, while searching courses, I found a course that has been on Udemy for three years and has a total of seventeen students and a rating of 4.7. I watched the preview lectures and it seemed to be reasoably good. So, why, after three years does this course only have 17 students? There was a recent discussion here by someone who announced that they were leaving Udemy because Udemy had failed to market their courses. When I looked at their students and ratings, it was obvious that the instructor had done nothing to market his own courses. Udemy hadn't failed, he had failed! The more you market your own course and create a base of satisfied students, the more Udemy will market your course. I view my own marketing efforts, which honestly are not very extensive, as "priming the pump", getting the flow of students going so Udemy organic (and UFB) will then take over the marketing. I have my own website/blog, but I have not opened my own "store" to sell my courses. There are a couple reasons I haven't done this, while I recognize that this may be working for some people, in some categories. First, I think it is a lot of work to both develop your own site, then maintain it, process payments, and most import, do the marketing to draw people to your site. When your course is on Udemy you have "shelf space" in a huge supermarket where millions of people are already shopping. If you open your own store, you are out in a desert where no one is shopping and you have to make a huge amount of noise to attract any attention. I am too lazy for that. Anyway, those are my views.
... View more