Udemy

You need to be careful about about instructors or courses that claim to have thousands of students. You really need to know how many of those students got the course for free. Any course that is offered for free attracts students like bees to flowers. And, it's been my experience that most of the students who "purchase" a free course never really intend to spend much, if any, time in the course. I have no idea why this is. I guess they just like the idea of a free course.   Any course that has thousands of students who paid for it has a few things going for it:   The instructor is teaching something of interest to many students The instructor is quite knowledgable The instructor is very clear, both in speaking and presenting, in his/her approach. I cannot overstate how important this is. If I purchase a course and I have a hard time understanding the instructor, I'll return the course or leave a less favorable rating. The course is reasonable priced ... View more

I don't know if it's the best but I've used Camtasia to create all my courses and it's worked great for me.  ... View more

There are three sure-fire ways of getting your courses appearing near the top when users do a search. Have a top-rated, or near top-rated course. Have a best selling course.  Have one of the only courses available in some particular area of interest I cannot tell you exactly how Udemy decides to put courses near the top of the results page when a search is done, but the three factors I've listed play very important factors. And, accomplishing the first two can take a great deal of time.  ... View more

I have 10 courses for sale on Udemy and never has a student seen my face, except in my bio. For most courses I've purchased, I find it rather annoying when the instructor actually includes him/herself while teaching. For me it's just distracting.  ... View more

You are not free to price your course anything you want. On the pricing page for your course you can select from a tier of prices such as $19.95, $24.95 up to $199.95 I think.   By default Udemy will market your course(s) for you but in exchange for that they will take 50% of every sale. If you make a sale as a result of an ad program Udemy is running, you will only keep 25%. If an affiliate of Udemy sells one of your courses, you will only keep 25%.   When Udemy is running a sale (which is probably every couple weeks) and Udemy is marketing your course(s) for you, they can choose to sell your course for anything they want, typically $9.95. But, this depends on the region the student making the purchase lives. In India, for example, the price is marked down even lower.    You can choose not to have Udemy market your courses for you but then you are responsible for your own marketing and most instructors are not well equipped to do that.   I would guess the average instructor who has Udemy market their courses for them earn about $4.00 per sale. This is what they actually keep. And it really doesn't matter what the list price on your course is because most of your sales will only come when Udemy is running some sort of sale. This means that a course that lists for $199.95 will be selling for $9.95.   This has been my experience and confirmed by others. Probably 90% of my sales come when Udemy is running a sale. And, when they do, my courses are marked down to $9.95, regardless of the list price I set. I have about 10 courses for sale and I've had almost 900 sales across those 10 courses. I average just about $4 per sale that I get to keep.   ... View more

Hi Abbie - According to the documentation you referenced, the only time I will see a Publish button is if I've already submitted my course for review. However, I cannot submit for review because I'm still building it out. It seems odd I cannot publish my changes, so I can see how everything is going to look, untill I submit for review. Am I missing something?   Randy ... View more

Abbie - On your Create an Engaging Course page (https://www.udemy.com/instructor/resources/?page=teaching), there is a link to download an outline template (Step 4 on the page). When I click it, I get taken to this page (https://docs.google.com/document/d/1_e2U5BIs_EGySIp_hhwr8V3-bpZMu6b57mrcZntg0eE/edit) with an error that says "We're sorry. You can't access this item because it is in violation of ourTerms of Service." How can I download this template? ... View more

Thanks Abby, I've seen that and will take advantage of it. Once I do that, then I create my entire course and then submit for review. Once reviewed, I assume it then gets published to Udemy and students can then see it? ... View more

Thanks Abbie. I understand I have to upload my videos etc. to Udemy for students to see them. What I didn't know is that I had to upload my entire course to officially become an instructor. I thought maybe becoming an instructor was an intermediate step. And, then, once I became an instructor, I would submit my course(s) when done. What happens if I spend say 30 days creating my course, upload it and then Udemy rejects it for some reason? Is there some process whereby I can create maybe the first few lessons, to make sure I'm on the right track, have it reviewed and then continue once Udemy says it looks good? ... View more