Udemy

  First when I opened the link my heart went down. My course is on RuTracker - one of The Largest torrents in internet. Downloaded more than 2000 times, 80 seeds, 15 more people downloading right when I look at it.   I did math quickly and the number of dollars that I saw in front of me as "lost" was looking like a fresh Mac Book. Or a bike, or a trip to Thailand for a week or two. But it didn't matter: neither of those guys were going to pay me a penny.   I was going to close the tab in frustration, but then out of curiocity I went to a comment section. What I saw there completely changed the way I looked at this whole situation.   "Best course in category, I would recommend to buy it" - said the original seeder. Hm, wasn't that bad after all...   "Author is answering questions on Udemy, you should buy this course" - said another one.   While reading that I was thinking: "That's great that you liked it, but I would prefer you buying the course instead".    And few comments later, the comment that were published around 2 months after the original pirated release:   "The course in Udemy now has 17 hours, and your torrent only has 14". "Please update the torrent, I HAD TO BUY this course for the missing content"   NOW we're talking business. After reading this comment I gave it a deep though. Piracy is a fact. You can whine about it, you can swear and share your grief with other instructors... or you can use it to your advantage. So I sat there and thought: I can't fight piracy, but can I turn piracy into a sells funnel?   Here's the strategy that I came up with: 1. Step 1: Acceptance. Accept that your course *will* be on torrents. Let's skip past denial, anger, barganing and jump right into the acceptance. This is an important step. Breath in. Repeat: "Piracy is a fact. Udemy can't change it. Sony and Universal can't change it. I am an instructor and not a Royal Galeone, my mission is not to fight pirates, but to create great courses".    2. Make it clear that the content is updated all the time. Make a video and tell viewers to check this course regluarly, since more "great content" is coming. Just out of curiocity, people will check out Udemy to see if there's anything that their "pirated" version is missing. AND once they found that something is missing, there's a very good chance that they will want it.   3. Advertise Q&A and community in videos. In my course there's already several hundred questions and I make sure to answer them. Students are helping out too, some of the questions are answered by active students. Show it as a strong side of your course IN VIDEOS (that's what pirates get) and an essential part of an educational process.   Your goal is to find what the pirated content is missing (updates, Q&A, community), and make it very clear in your VIDEOS (since that is what pirates get), that these aspects are crucial for an effective education.   A student that downloaded such course from torrent should feel like they are missing a big part of fun. Like a kid that is standing behind the fence and watching other kids play. That's the feeling that you want to cultivate in you pirate students.    The best thing is that it will have ZERO negative impact on your paying student base, as they ARE the kids who playing.   We're welcoming all the kids who want to have fun with us. All they have to do is to walk through a front gate instead of watching from behind a fence.   ... View more

(not all of them, just technology and programming ones)   Hello fellow instructors,   A published instructor as well as published book author here. In 2012-13 I dedicated a very large part of my free time to writing a programming book. I loved that book like my baby: putting my name on something printed felt like leaving a footstep in history. A tiny step, but still.   Now I'm mostly working with video content, and I found that this format works much better for what I teach. Videos are easier to follow, they are easier to update (most of the time), they allow students to see the expected result and compare to their own. Moreover, books take tremendously more time to create.    There are two aspects where books are winning: 1. Reading pace and re-reading paragraphs. Books make it much easier to return to a place that you did not quite understand, and then read it *really slowly*, or *several times* untill you really understood the idea. With video it is not impossible but hard.   2. "indexing" and "searching through". It is much easier to find a page with explanation than to scroll through the video. But even that could be fixed by providing script or fine-grained "TOC" in a video itself.    Oh, and you can use a printed book when the airplane is taking off...   Are video platforms like Udemy really killing traditional IT publishing houses? I would be curious to have some numbers (like revenue of OReilly, Apress, Pact and such). What do you guys think? Is there still place for technology books on bookshelves, or they are "so 20-century".  ... View more

Hello fellow instructors,  I think that recording studio setup is one of the most difficult subjects to get your head around. Microphones, audio interfaces, lights and sound all seem to be important. However the amount of technical details and hard decision on priorities are making studio setup quite overwhelming.    I've gone through a long journey of building home studio from $500 to $10k setup, made many mistakes along the way, bought few pieces of equipment that I almost never used, and some other pieces that I can't imagine my work without.  I decided to record a short video and describe the priorities and options for your home studio. Check it out! How to set up home recording studio If you're curious, here's the list of my equipment that I use for recording. Notice that videography is my hobby, so I also shoot some short films, interviews and occasionally corporate promotional videos, so this equipment set is a bit of an overkill for Udemy Microphones: Neumann TLM-102 (voice-overs) Sennheiser ME-2 (lavalier mic for talking to a camera) Radio transmitter/receiver set for mics Sennheiser G3 Audio Interface Focusrite Clarett 2Pre (thunderbolt version) Field recorders Zoom H6 Zoom H1 Cameras Canon C100 MK-II Canon Legria HF G-25 (cam B) Lenses Canon EF 24-105mm f/4l IS II USM Canon EF 16-35mm f/2.8l IS USM Lights LEDGO 2x 1200 Bi-colour Lighting Kit Monitors (headphones) Audio Technica AT-M70x ... View more

Hi guys! I'm Juriy Bura, a Solution Architect based in Zürich, Switzerland. I teach programming. I'll be happy to get in touch! ... View more