Udemy

What does that mean, "I want to make my career with udemy"? Does this mean you want to work for Udemy? If so, send them your resume. Does this mean you want to sell so many courses that you can be an instructor full-time? If so, the odds of this happening are almost 0 percent. Sure there are some instructors who are able to do this, but VERY few.    Let's say you lived in the United States and needed to earn $60K per year to live the sort of life you want to live. The average instructor earns between $1 and $5 for each course sold. Let's be optimistic and say you can earn $5 for each course sold. You will need to sell 12K courses each year. I have no statistics to back this up but I would guess that less than 1% of all instructors on Udemy are able to do this. ... View more

I would strongly recommend you do not make your course. The only sign-ups you will get will be from automated bots that constantly look for free courses and then signup. These are not real students and will not go through your course. I don't know why this happens, but it does. And, then, even if you do get a few real signups, Udemy will not permit you to send promotions to them. So, there isn't any real advantage to offering your course for free. ... View more

I had my best month ever, both revenue and new students, by quite a large margin.  ... View more

Hi @ElaJones    I listened to your promotional video and your accent is a little thick but I could understand you pretty well. I think the problem you are having is the number of courses that already exist that cover using OOP with PHP.    I did a Udemy search for PHP OOP with course ratings of 4.5 or higher. I got back 2,515 results. I think this is your problem. You are competing against a huge number of existing courses covering the same topic.    To be quite honest, if I had to decide between purchasing a PHP OOP course rated 4.5 or higher with hundreds of ratings, or a course from a new author, I normally would not select the course from the new author. This is a problem every new author runs into. You will need to draw students to your course yourself until you can gain some traction. Then Udemy might do some marketing on your behalf. ... View more

Hi @CLINT  I have been doing this for about 2 years now and have close to 30 courses. For my first couple courses I spent MUCH longer than I do now creating the actual video. There are a couple reasons for this. The first is simply because I've gotten much better at creating content. The second is I no longer "sweat the details".   Most instructors will earn between $1 and $5 for each course sold. You simply cannot spend 2-3 hours creating a simple 2:45 video when we make so little money on each sale. At least I refuse to do it. Of course, this is a bit of a balancing act. You cannot produce junk because then you are wasting your time.   I try to create my courses to be good enough and then move on to the next course. Most of my courses are 3-5 hours long and I will spend a couple weeks creating them. Virtually all of my courses are rated between 4.2 and 4.7.   There is no doubt I could spend a lot more time making my courses absolutely first rate. But, then, Udemy will sell my $29.95 course to someone in India for $5 and I will make $2. For me, I would rather spend my time creating many good enough courses.  ... View more

Hi @ElaJones    I took a look at your course I would say you have two hurdles to overcome. One is easy, one isn't. The first is the price of your course. Very few students will pay $90 for a course from an unknown author. Most won't pay $90 from a known author. They will just wait for the next sale and pick it up for $9.95. I would suggest lowering your price to $19.95 since you have no track record.    The second is there are currently 2,300 courses on PHP rated 4.5 or higher. Let me ask you an honest question. Why would a student purchase your course (from an unproven, unknown author) when they can purchase a highly rated course from well established authors? This is the problem you are facing. And you are not alone. MANY new and newer instructors face the same problem.    So, what can you do? You will need to do your own marketing and draw students to your course yourself until you can get some sort of track record on Udemy. Note that Udemy does market courses for us but in most cases they will not spend their ad dollars on marketing courses from new authors when there are others, highly rated, from established instructors that are a better investment for them. ... View more

Why haven't you put that belief, whatever it might mean, to practice and create some courses? ... View more

@Nola826    The first thing you must understand about Udemy is that offering a course for free is almost always a waste of time and almost always discouraging. There is a very little reason to do it.   You said you had 200 students enroll almost right away. These are not real students. They are bots that roam the Udemy landscape looking for free courses and sign up. I have no idea the point of this or why Udemy allows it but at least 195 or more of these signups are not real students that will actually take your course.   Secondly, Udemy does not permit you to do promotions to anyone who signs up for a free course. So even if you do have a real student sign up for a free course, you won't be able to promote your other courses (assuming you have more than one course) to them.   Because of this I would encourage you to reconsider your course being free. ... View more

Hi @CherieHaven561    Here are some thoughts I have on your course and comments you made.   #1: You said you are looking for peace of mind. If you are anxious about this I think you have the wrong expectations. Very few Udemy instructors, as a percentage of the whole, make any serious money (a couple thousand $ per month or more). I have no actual data on this, but if I had to guess I would say the average instructor on Udemy makes maybe $100-$200 per month or less. New instructors would make a lot less. I think my first month I made $10. I saw a statistic somewhere that said the average Udemy instructor makes $15-$30 per month, per course.    #2: It can be VERY hard for new instructors to gain traction on Udemy. Why? Because most topics are already thoroughly covered by at least a dozen courses and sometimes hundreds. I just did a Udemy search on "Learning English" (your topic) and got 10K results back. You have a lot of competition.   #3: In most cases, for new instructors, Udemy will not be able to do any real marketing of their course. Why? Because there are probably so many other, highly rated, courses where Udemy wants to spend their ad dollars. In general, why would Udemy advertise a brand new course by a brand new author?   #4: Your course is priced at $50 and is only 2 hours long. How much English can anyone learn in 2 hours? Most Udemy students, I am guessing, will never spend $50 for a course period. But especially one that is only 2 hours long. They will simply wait for the next Udemy sale and buy it for $12 (or much less in some countries).    #5: You will have to do your own marketing for quite some time. How you do this, I really don't know because I don't know the English teaching market. If it were me I would probably start trying to find people teaching English to foreign students and offering them your course at the lowest possible price you can offer it ($9.95).   #5: Just assume you are doing this for fun and never expect to make much money. That is probably much more realistic and will keep you more mentally healthy :).     ... View more

@ThomasHende399    Regarding advertising methods, I wouldn't pay anything to advertise your course. Realistically you are going to earn, on average, between $1 and $5 for each sale of your course.  Therefore, it makes little sense to pay to advertise.   I primarily advertise my courses on Reddit (in the appropriate subreddit) and on LinkedIn (in the appropriate group). I have done acceptably well on those sites. At least well enough to keep doing it. ... View more

@ThomasHende399    So you are telling me that over the course of a year, 5,000 courses were added about Asian History? I hardly think so.    You said your course is packed with content. You don't think the 1,800 4.5+ rated courses are packed with content? Of course they are. They wouldn't be rated 4.5 or higher if they weren't.   BTW, what is helpful is a dose of reality on how things work on Udemy. I told you how I think you can start selling your course on Udemy. You cannot rely on Udemy at this point. You have to do the marketing yourself. You can jazz up the ascetics all you want but the fact is that your course probably will not be found by students coming to Udemy unless you draw them yourself because students conduct searches and your course won't appear anywhere near the top because it is too new. In a year this might not be the case. But it's reality at the moment. ... View more

Hi @ThomasHende399    The first thing you need to do is to do a Udemy search on Asian History. When I did this search I got over 5,000 results back. Over 1,800 of those are rated 4.5 or higher.   Think about this objectively. Your course is competing against 5K other courses on a similar topic. Over 1,800 of these courses have a large following and are highly rated. How are students going to find your course and why would they purchase it even if they did find it?   This is the grim reality of trying to sell courses on Udemy. So many new instructors spend months creating a course and fail to realize there are already hundreds of highly rated courses existing on the same topic.    To be quite honest, for a new instructor like yourself, Udemy isn't going to be able to help you much, if at all. You are going to have to draw students to your course yourself. And, most of us instructors, me included, are not very good at doing that. ... View more

@AineP    There is almost no good reason to offer a course for free. First of all, 99% of the signups you get will be done by bots that constantly look for free courses and then sign up. I have no idea why they do this or why Udemy allows it. Secondly, Udemy does not permit you to promote to students who acquired a free course.  ... View more

@Slogger - Absolutely. You can change the price at any time. ... View more

@Slogger - Hello and welcome.   I took a look at your promotional video and it seems quite good. One word of caution though. I did a Udemy search on Cognitive Behavior Therapy and got over 5,000 results back. You are going to need to be patient. Somehow students are going to have to be able to find your course among the 5,000 that already exist. This won't be easy unless you are able to draw students to your course yourself. Yes, Udemy does a significant amount of marketing on our behalf but they simply won't promote a new course when there are many others that are highly rated. It's a simple matter of economics.   Also, your course is priced very high at $95. Most Udemy students simply won't pay that much for any course, especially a new and unrated course. They will just wait for the next sale when they can purchase it for $10-$12.  ... View more

@LibbyC84 - Unfortunately you are going to have to accept the fact that Udemy's rating and review system is just flat out broken and lends itself to abuse.   I have found that roughly 1 in 5 students leave a rating. About 1 in 4 of those leave a review. About 1 in 2 of those leave a review that is useful. So, if my math is right, maybe 1 in 40 students leave a useful review.   I have simply stopped looking at reviews. I honestly have not looked at a single review in months. I do look at ratings on occasion because of promotions that I do, and I like to highlight my courses that are highly rated (4.5 or higher).    I have seen so many instructors on this forum tell new instructors to focus on improving quality. Well, when only 1 in 40 students leave a useful review, that is pretty impossible to do. ... View more

@LibbyC84 -    "As an instructor, I rather they ask for their money back instead of leaving one star reviews and bring down my percentage"   I could be wrong but I think Udemy allows someone to leave a 1 star rating, get a refund and their rating says. It does not get removed if the students gets a refund. ... View more

@Linda127 - Hello and welcome. The single most important piece of advice I could give you is to research how many courses already exist in the topic area you are considering before you start creating your course.   I cannot tell you how many instructors create a course in a particular topic, get no sales in the first several weeks or months and failed to realize there are already 200 courses covering the topic.  ... View more

@Andre_LaMothe    My June revenue was the best I have ever had. Part of this is due to promotions. I usually turn out a new course each month and promotions to my existing students now amount to 20%-25% of total revenue, of which I keep roughly 95%. So this helps total revenue tracking.    My July so far has been about average. Not great but not bad. ... View more

@FamousOwhed669  - You asked the same kind of question the other day and I thought I gave you a very good reason for why you are not experiencing any sales. You don't need to keep asking the same question over and over. ... View more

Hi @Dawit_Bezuneh - I would STRONGLY recommend before spending months creating a course you do a little homework and find out how many courses already exist in the topic you intend to cover. Otherwise you might publish your course and wait months before you make a sale.   I would also strongly suggest you speak in clear, slow, English, if English is not your native language. A lot of people, including me, will not purchase a course if they have to struggle to understand the instructor. ... View more

Hi @FamousOwhed669    No sales after one day? Are you joking?   I took a look at your landing page and your course. Here are my comments:   1) You have two existing courses rated 2.8 and 3.7. I would normally never purchase a course from an instructor who had courses rated that low. These low ratings are going to hinder you from selling any new courses. Your courses really need to be rated ~4.2 or higher to hope to be successful on Udemy.   2) I listened to your promotional video, or at least a part of it. First of all, it is 16 minutes and should be no more than 2-3 minutes. Secondly, you are VERY difficult to understand. I really had to struggle to understand what you were saying. I would never spend money on a course where I had to struggle so hard to understand the instructor.   3) Your course is on Django. If you do a Udemy search on Django you will get over 2,600 results. You have to ask yourself why someone would purchase your new, unproven, course when 2,600 other courses, some very highly rated, already exist.   4) Your bio says this, " Famous (yes, that's his first name) is an awesome instructor". The fact that you have two existing courses rated 2.8 and 3.7, and an instructor rating of 3.2, would suggest otherwise. Something is wrong with your courses and I would spend some time trying to figure out what it is before you release new courses with the same problem. ... View more