Udemy

Well the short answer is that "creating the course is the easy part, selling the course is the hard part."   You might not like that answer (or agree), but that's the reality for any content creator in any industry.   Why do singers/bands only get 10% of their record sales? Why do book authors only get 5% of their book sales? Why does Amazon only pay 6 cents per hour for videos watched on Amazon Prime?   The reality is that Udemy is doing the hard part. I work for myself with no employees. Udemy has 800 employees working to sell my course. That's a scale that I can't achieve myself. ... View more

I guess community champions don't have a rank? I don't see one beside my name.   But I did get an email earlier that said I was a rookie. I have an acrylic trophy that Udemy gave me calling me a guru a few years ago, so rookie is quite the downgrade from guru. Knocked all the way down the mountain.     ... View more

Just received in Wise. Thanks Udemy. ... View more

I assume it will eventually be OK. But only one time in the past was Udemy 5 days late with a payment. So odd. ... View more

Looking forward to it. ... View more

@JimmyNaraine had some of the best looking and sounding course videos on Udemy at a time when every other instructor looked like their recorded their courses using a 2.0MP camera.   He was recording courses at a beach even. With impeccable quality.   Ask him what gave him the idea to go extremely hard on video quality so many years ago?   And how are his brothers doing?   ... View more

All courses must have a video component. The video must be moving and not a static image.   Perhaps you can partner with a video editor (a trusted friend) to add some moving video to your audio like slides or relevant stock video in exchange for a portion of the revenue. Perhaps someone on this forum would be willing to help if you posted on the main message board (outside this thread) explaining your situation and asking for help.  Don't just trust the first person who volunteers. Chat with them and get to know their motivations.  ... View more

Questions:   - How do you prepare your room for good sound before you start recording?   - How do you remove echo from a video that has already been recorded?   - How do you remove background noise such as dogs, cars and babies?   - How do you ensure all of your videos have about the same level of audio and it doesn't fluctuate from being too quiet in one video and too loud in the next?   - What tools do instructors use around audio?   - Do I need an expensive microphone?   - Should I "edit out" mistakes? If I say the wrong thing, or a demonstration doesn't work the way I planned? How important is that?   - What about ums, uhs, ahs, and long pauses in the audio? What to do about that, if anything? ... View more

Good audio is so important.   An underrated thing for instructors to learn and get good at, in my opinion. It's a skill. ... View more

Any comment on why you change privacy vendors frequently? This is the third one in the last four or five years, that I recall.  ... View more

Thanks for the shout out @Bella  ... View more

"Have a question for Vash? Ask him in the comments below!"   Probably should say "Jason". ... View more

Question: How has marketing for Udemy instructors changed in the past two years since the last Udemy Live?   Question: What can Udemy instructors do to promote their own courses, honestly? Be honest and say if the answer is "not much".   Question: What's your favorite city in the world outside of San Francisco? ... View more

 @ChenBlatman is one of the smartest marketers I've ever met in my life.    I'll be there for sure. Ears open and mouth shut. ... View more

Woo hoo.   Thanks to all who voted. And to the community team at Udemy.   Wish everyone an amazing holidays and a happy 2022!   Success for all! ... View more

@AtilSamancioglu It's happened before. It can happen again. ... View more

I set a goal orignally to teach 1 million students in my lifetime. I have already passed 600,000 and aim to hit my lifetime goal in the next two years. ... View more

Wish you much success!  ... View more

Ardit, glad to see you're still around, man. It's been a long time.   Wow, you've completely changed your Python Mega Course image. That's a big change.   Did you hire a professional designer for that? Or run a contest on 99designs?   I like the bold background colors. Makes it stand out. I love that your photo is there. (I assume that's you and not Twitter's Jack Dorsey or a professional model.) I might suggest that you make the photo of you bigger. Humans trust faces. 😉 50% more Ardit, please.   I like your course image better than Tim's or Jose's. Yours is SO much better. In fact, you definitely have the "top 1 or 2" course image on the entire page 1 of "python" search.  I also like Angela's course image. ... View more

Funny you should ask... https://teach.udemy.com/black-friday/ip-qa-bf-prep/   ... View more

I do, sometimes.   What I provide is a PDF. And the PDF contains many links back to my course on Udemy in case some random person finds the PDF and is curious where to get the videos from... ... View more

It's sort of like asking, how can you tell a photo is real and has not been Photoshopped? How can you tell if something is a Deep Fake?   I would say, humans (and now AI) can recognize certain patterns. When you compare the reviews of a course where you KNOW the reviews are real, next to a course where you suspect they are not real, you can see the difference.   1 hours ago - 5 STARS - Best instructer on Udemy. Amazing. Great. 2 hours ago - 5 STARS - Wonderfuil. Best. 2 hours ago - 5 STARS - Greate course. Realy GReat. Wonderfuil. 2 hours ago - 5 STARS - John Doe best teacher. Much best.  3 days ago - 1 STAR - This course is awful. Avoid it. I want my money back. This instructor really knows nothing about the topic, and shouldn't be teaching at all.  I mean, you can just see a pattern.  ... View more

Hi Paul,   On the whole, you've put together a nice short course. The course image is eye-catching, the title contains a clear value proposition, and the subtitle draws interest. I've watched the promo video, intro video, and one of the lessons. You're good at this.    There's no reason why someone who is looking for a career change would say no to watching even a bit of your course to get some tips from it.   If I can make two suggestions. One, you appear to have just chosen the first five lessons of the course as your free preview ones. Maybe there is another video or two within the course that you can expose for the free preview that gives potential students a feeling for your teaching style. I'd recommend choosing a different video (or two) for a free preview.   And two, am I correct to assume that the downloadable PDFs contain most of the lessons of the course? If so, you're leaving yourself open to students buying the course, downloading the PDF, and refunding the course. I'd ensure that there are enough videos in the course that teach things not covered by any downloadable PDF to make the videos a valuable companion to the workbook.   You clearly know a lot about creating a video course despite this being your first one.   In terms of marketing, what you need to do is get your course in front of people who can use it. I see you've probably given away 2500 free coupons, and that's OK I guess. But what you really need are people who are looking for a career change.   Where do you find people looking for a career change?   LinkedIn, likely. Twitter too. Perhaps Reddit. Job search boards. Maybe there are job search FB groups that allow these kinds of posts. I don't know the exact answer, but what you need is exposure to the right audience. Not just free coupons to random people who may not even need your advice, but actual interested students. Not free coupons, but place your product in front of the right people. The price is already right.   Is there someone who already has an audience, that might be willing to show this course to their audience?    You need reviews. Preferably good ones, but the course needs student activity. Watching videos, doing assignments, completing the course... Out of those 2500 free coupons, you need some of those people to watch the course and give feedback. Use educational announcements to encourage action.   Finally, if you can get some reviews, this might be the kind of thing Udemy Business is interested in. So once you meet the minimum qualifications for that, see if you can get their attention.    Good luck!   ... View more

It's not "luck" to be early or first in a category.   When Apple first introduced the programming language Swift, Nick Walter spent all weekend making the first Udemy course on it. https://www.forbes.com/sites/susanadams/2014/10/27/heres-how-one-new-college-grad-made-66000-in-one-month-without-a-full-time-job/   That's not luck. No way. That's striking at opportunity.   You want to be first in a category? Find one with no courses that you know is going to be popular and make a course. That's not luck. I didn't say it's easy to find one, but when you do, that's skill and effort that got you there.    And yes, Taleb is an angry person in real life. Check out his Twitter.   ... View more

Believe. ... View more

Larry, you're giving away the secrets!     ... View more

I've never heard of a "contract with Udemy" other than the one we all sign. And I talk to a lot of the top instructors regularly. I get paid like you get paid.   Also keep in mind that the number of enrollments is different than the number of students. If you have a lot of courses in the same topic area, you get students buying 10-15+ of your courses. I have students enrolled in 20+ of my courses. ... View more

The Auto captions are provided by Udemy. ... View more

I use a service called HappyScribe to create English captions. They are better than the Udemy captions because I can upload a list of words that are unique to my courses.   It costs me next to nothing. I think I paid $49 one time for the service on AppSumo. ... View more

One of your courses is in English and the other is in German.   It's likely that the German market is just a fraction of the English market on Udemy. Maybe only 5%. This is one factor that leads to low sales in German. The other factor is perhaps the topic of the course, which I interpret to be how to use video as a coach or therapist. It's an important topic, and I'm sure there are thousands of therapists that can use the training. But are those people searching on Udemy for courses? I don't know.   I think the image is great. It conveys what you are teaching. A+   I don't see anything wrong with this course given that I can't speak or read German.   What you need is more students. Is there a way to present your course in online groups and forums where therapists and coaches hang out? Is there a reddit forum or a German twitter hashtag for this? Find some enclave where these people hang out and say, "excuse me, but I have this thing that might be helpful to you. <link>" - - - - Your English course seems important as well. Discipline and bad habits.    There is a fairly obvious typo on the landing page that my eye was drawn to immediately.   "You need a lot of discipline in order to get what you really want in live". This sentence is totally wrong.   There is irony there because the sentence is wrong. 🙂 The word probably should be "life" not "live".   "Habits" is a tough category on Udemy. There are courses with 10,000s of students already in the marketplace. Some of the teachers are "famous" on the Internet. So what sets your course apart from those other courses?   So the problem you have here is differentiation.    You might have more success with "How to Break a Porn Addiction" or "How to Stop Snacking Throughout the Day" or "How to Reduce Your Online Shopping Habit" or "How to Go to the Gym Every Morning" than "how to abandon bad habits" in my view.   The riches are in the niches, they say. So how can the concepts of this course be targeted for a specific, popular bad habit? Find a topic that is underserved on Udemy.    OR find a way to make this course stand out. Since your partner is a respected therapist, this might not be easy. But TV infomercial Queen Susan Powter used to scream "STOP THE INSANITY!" which became her catch-phrase and made her stand out in the late-night infomercial wars.    I think it's a tough category. You need more students, more reviews, and a better message to say why your course is better than all the other habits courses. That's not going to happen if you do nothing.   Good luck! ... View more