Udemy

Vlad_B · ‎12-16-2021

Hi @HilalHakla522 , First of all - sincere congratulations to you on publishing your first course! The first course is the hardest one. Many people start with a 3-4 hour course. So it's amazing that you took the time to start with a 9.5-hour course. 7 months is a huge effort, for sure. As already answered by others, the 1-star without comment are really frustrating. We should ignore them basically, but of course it is very hard to ignore them at the beginning. Now, I just wanted you to be aware about yet another thing that can frustrate the instructors. It is that the online courses marketplace is a really, _really_ competitive landscape. So it really takes time for the course to get traction. Why? Because there are many similar courses with way higher ratings to begin with. When I type say "Azure exam prep" in the search bar, it is highly likely that the top 10+ courses will be the ones from the top instructors. It makes the new instructors with way less chances to get organic sales. So what should we do about it? First of all, don't expect high sales in the beginning. If you expect too much too early, and get too little, it's a recipe for early disappointment. As the saying goes: "Happiness Equals Reality Minus Expectations". Second, do your own effort to market your course. There is a fantastic article about it from Lawrence Miller (big thanks to him!) : https://community.udemy.com/t5/First-time-Course-Creation/Plan-Your-Course-Marketing-Before-You-Publish-Here-are-Proven/m-p/8558 And third, proceed to create more courses. Yes, it is quite hard to keep creating courses when the sales are low. But it should work out in the long run. Hope this helps. Keep rocking! With kind regards, Vlad.

Vlad_B · ‎11-16-2021

"We would all like to be in that millionaire club" - not everyone. 🙂 I would prefer a few thousands a month, especially if it were be a steady income stream (even though yes, I know it sounds like a salary, not an income from an online business). Why would I choose that (if I were given a choice)? Because after a certain point, it's not about the money, really. And what is more important - "enough money" give you freedom; "too much money" start to get the freedom away from you. With kind regards, Vlad.

Vlad_B · ‎11-02-2021

Hi Everyone! I do two things on Udemy: - create my own courses - and also translate popular courses from English to Russian (in a proper co-instructor mode). One of my best student interactions was the following: one student told me that my translation was actually even better than the original English version. 🙂 Cheers, Vlad.

Vlad_B · ‎10-12-2021

Dear @LawrenceMMiller , First of all, thank you for this article - as well as for many other articles you've written for the community. A lot of things to take action on. In terms of books, I believe that "The Black Swan" by Nassim Taleb has a fantastic relevance to building a business on Udemy. In short, he says that for scalable businesses, the difference between super-stars and regular people is very, very underestimated. That is, top 1-3 (maybe 10) performers in a given category get 99%+ revenue, and other thousands of people get less than 1%, distributed among them. And on top of that, he says that "luck" is one of the ingredients, like the luck to be the first mover in a certain topic, etc. 🙂 For some people it might be quite discouraging. And Nassim generally feels like an angry person - I hope he is not like that in real life, but his books are way too sarcastic. But personally, I found his ideas to be very useful and actionable - to really build proper expectations (or, to be more precise, to avoid building wrong expectations), and play the long game. Thanks, With kind regards, Vlad.

Vlad_B · ‎09-09-2021

Hi Ela, Thank you so much for the feedback, and for suggesting the accent reduction courses. Should you have any particular courses you can recommend, then please kindly share. Thank you very much. I've checked your courses - you seem to have a very pleasant-speaking and clear voice. If you are looking for ways to improve things, I would suggest two areas: - try to tune the microphone settings and/or recording software settings to remove the background noise. It is quite noticeable. - maybe add more materials to the courses, especially to the 1-hour course. Usually 1-hour courses do not sell well on Udemy, even if they are super-great. I believe that adding more content and removing background noise will improve your courses much more than improving the accent. Again, thanks for the feedback - appreciate your help! With kind regards, Vlad.

Vlad_B · ‎08-25-2021

Hi Emmanuel, The thread above was not about downloading existing courses from other instructors, and then translating them to another language. It was about the same instructor creating a course in one language, and then doing the voice-other in another language. If you want to do a voice-over for a course created by another instructor, you must (not should, must) have an agreement with that instructor about the voice-over. The Udemy itself does not provide a way to do such thing. But a direct contact with the instructor might be possible. Please note that doing a voice-over for a course created by another instructor might be very, very time-consuming. The case above - when a voice-over is created by the same instructor who created the English version - is something different, because that instructor already knows the material. And on top of the issue above, if the video contains a lot of English text, the course is not a good fit for a voice-over. Simply because there is a lot of English text - the people who know only French, but do not know English, will miss that text entirely. Again - if the original course was created by the same instructor who plans to translate it later, then he/she can avoid including text in video, making it more "translatable". But usually that's not the case with most courses. Finally, you should check whether the French courses already exist on the topic you plan to teach. The competition on Udemy is very, very strong. Many popular topics already have great courses in most languages, and it is very hard to compete with them. To sum up, I would not recommend to start a Udemy journey with a voice-over course. Certainly it is only my opinion, but I would advise to create your own course first, with a proper quality, and then see how it all goes. Good luck! With kind regards, Vlad.

Vlad_B · ‎08-09-2021

Dear @Prof_K , Thank you so much for sharing your story! It is great to hear that you succeed with free coupons. Many instructors choose to avoid that path, because: - free coupons tend to attract the kind of people who will not enrol later into paid courses - those people tend to give lower ratings - since they didn't pay for the course, they could easily enrol into something that they don't value, and therefore are more likely to rate it badly. As a side note - you may already know it - there is an easy way to spot whether a large number of students come from free or paid enrolments. Look at the number of reviews - for the paid students it should be somewhere around 30% of enrolments, more or less. For example: 15K enrolments and 5K reviews - probably all those enrolments are paid enrolments. Else, if the number of reviews is an order of magnitude less than enrolments - it probably means the instructor has given away free courses. 🙂 With kind regards, Vlad.

Vlad_B · ‎08-09-2021

Dear @BetuleSairafi , Since technically there is no easy way to mark the course as bilingual, you could create two separate courses - one in English and one in Arabic. And since it is essentially the same course, you could re-use most of the materials. For example, you could start by recording videos in English. Then, after they are ready, you could use the same videos, but do a voice-over in Arabic. That way, creating the second course will take much less time than the first course. Best of luck! With kind regards, Vlad.

Vlad_B · ‎06-23-2021

Hi @Bella , The beautiful aspect of Udemy is that you can create a course WITHOUT any risks. I didn't take any risks at all, and really enjoyed the process. 🙂 Of course, I can imagine two major categories of risks - either quitting a full-time job (like Mohit did), or hiring a team too early, without being quite sure that the whole thing is profitable. But other than that - when you do it as a weekend pet project, without hiring anyone to help you, then you have everything to gain and nothing to loose. Even if you spend your time and don't get the expected result - actually creating a course gives you an additional set of skills - video-editing, audio-recording, etc. - that you can use later in other projects. So it's a win anyway! With kind regards, Vlad.

Vlad_B · ‎05-29-2021

Dear @FrumiRachel802 , My sincere congratulations on publishing the new courses! The first course is usually the hardest to create. Please note that many instructors believe that 1-1.5-hour courses do not sell well on Udemy. If I were you, I would really combine those 6 courses in one long course. Of course it's hard to tell which way is better, but you may want to consider that option... Cheers and good luck, With kind regards, Vlad.

Vlad_B · ‎03-31-2021

1-hour courses do not sell well on Udemy. I would suggest to make the course longer.

Vlad_B · ‎11-12-2020

Hi Ravi, It is great to hear that you are already thinking about the second course. There is no reason to wait until the first course gets bigger. Of course, a small pause makes sense - to congratulate yourself and take something like a vacation between courses. But after a short pause, there is no reason to wait. One advise though - while you are working on the second course, pay close attention to the reviews / questions on the first course. If something is very wrong in the course (for example, I remember having a video wrongly mixed, with audio issues), correcting the issues is a first priority. For the marketing, you may read this wonderful thread: https://community.udemy.com/t5/Marketing/How-can-I-market-my-course/m-p/435 Cheers! With kind regards, Vlad.

Vlad_B · ‎11-10-2020

Hi Ravi, Wow - congratulations! These results are simply outstanding for the first month. Many instructors have a considerably slower starting curve. Keep rocking! With kind regards, Vlad.

Vlad_B · ‎11-10-2020

Hi Miki, Did you try to ask the author of the course? Direct message, Q&A. Also - does the lecture have any Resources links? Maybe, if there is only one link there, it becomes clickable - but that's only a guess. With kind regards, Vlad.

Vlad_B · ‎10-07-2020

Hi, There are many courses that do not have the instructor on camera. Being on camera does help you to build connection to students. But there is not such requirement. If, for whatever reason, you would prefer to be behind the camera, you can do that. Good luck, With kind regards, Vlad.

Vlad_B · ‎09-28-2020

Hi Laura, Congratulations on publishing your first course! It is hard work, and the first course is the hardest. Discounts are run very often. The students are used to them. They rarely enroll into courses without discounts. Most of them wait a few days, until the next discount appears. From that perspective, a discount is a good thing! With all those discounts, it is unlikely that full-price sales will take place too often. The marketplace is too competitive for that. These days, it is not a place to get rich overnight. Now, if you don't want a discount to happen, you can opt out of the promotion package (or how it is called these days). But in that scenario, it's you who will take care of all the promotions. Cheers, WIth kind regards, Vlad.

Vlad_B · ‎09-06-2020

Hi @StrayCodeMonkey , If your primary goal is to add more of a human component, then there are much more powerful things for that than profanity. Humour. Elegant real-life examples. Jokes. Some beautiful language here and there, with words and phrases rarely used in technical documentation. That would make an otherwise technical and clean (yes, a bit boring) text to be way, way more human. It takes time to make the lectures more interesting, but it's well worth the effort. If done right, there will be no reason to use profanity. Cheers, With kind regards, Vlad.

Vlad_B · ‎08-26-2020

Hi Girija, Imagine you are a student. Would you enjoy enrolling into a course with watermarked videos? Would you even enroll into that course (after watching a watermarked promo video), or maybe look around for a more mature course? Your answer to these questions will help you answer your original question. Look around for free software alternatives. Google around. For recording, one example is OBS. And there are others. For editing, one example is iMovie (if you are on Mac). Not sure about Windows, but look around. Cheers, WIth kind regards, Vlad.

Vlad_B · ‎08-18-2020

Dear Jarrett, Congratulations on publishing your first course!:) While I don't have a specific marketing advice, let me share with you something that might help. I've met quite a few people who divide their projects into two categories: 1) "I want this to happen". And it is profitable. 2) "I want this to happen". It is not profitable. But I want to create this thing. If the projects in "1)" are so profitable, that they cover their own costs plus the costs of "2)" - then the whole economy is working. So projects from "1)" sponsor (fund) the projects from "2)". Why discuss this? Because it is quite possible that some very niche courses might not sell well (sell very slowly), simply because the audience is very small. But I hope that you will create the next courses anyway!! Even if the first few courses are not profitable straight away. Also, they might become profitable later - after a long period of time, when enough people enroll to cover all the costs to create the course. And by the way - the programming courses are not as easy to market as it seems. The competition is fierce - any popular topic is already covered in depth by best-selling instructors. So creating a niche course is really a good thing: small niche -> small competition -> larger market share. Another aspect is COVID-19 - unfortunately, some people study new language when they prepare to travel to the specific country. When travel is postponed to next year, some people might postpone the language learning (i.e., why learn today - I'll travel next year, so I'll forget anything... I better learn next year, right before I travel). Good news - even if this factor is affecting (maybe it's not), it will go away next year.:) All the best! With kind regards, Vlad.

Vlad_B · ‎08-07-2020

Hello SungsikMin, You can check the structure of popular courses. Most of them have sections, and then individual lectures within each section. Example: 1 course, 5 sections, 30 lectures. Each lecture is usually short - no more than 10-15 minutes (rarely 20-30 minutes). That way, the course is easier to navigate. If by "one take" you mean that you plan to record one multi-hour video in one go (non-stop), then you can split it later into smaller parts using any video editor of your choice. But it is probably easier to record each lecture individually. Cheers, With kind regards, Vlad.

Vlad_B · ‎08-01-2020

Dear Kasia, Thank you very much!! With kind regards, Vlad.

Vlad_B · ‎07-30-2020

Dear Rob, Thank you so much for driving people's attention to this! Totally agreed. Apart from a good microphone with a pop-filter, sometimes it is necessary to cover surrounding surfaces to avoid echo. I'm one of those who use special anti-echo materials for this purpose. The whole recording room looks a bit funny though - I get warm jokes from family and friends about it. 🙂 Cheers, With kind regards, Vlad.

Vlad_B · ‎07-26-2020

Dear LongNT, yes, I speak Russian as a mothertongue. Thank you so much for the kind words! With kind regards, Vlad.

Vlad_B · ‎07-24-2020

Dear Thanh-Long, First of all, congratulations on making you first course!! It's a very hard work. AI is a very, very hot topic. Therefore, it is very, very competitive. So it takes a lot of time for the new course to get traction. One idea for you. Since you have lived in France for a while, you probably speak French very well. And since your name is not French (pardon-pardon me if that's wrong!), maybe you speak yet another language. So what about creating the same course in the other language(s) you speak? From the first glance, the English audience is way larger. But! The competition is also way larger. So it makes perfect sense to create courses in another languages - you get way less competition. You have a niche. And another point is - once you already have a course in English, then creating the same course in another language will take you way less effort (than you spent creating English version). You've done most of the work to create the course(s) in other language(s). Hope this helps, Good luck, With kind regards, Vlad.

Vlad_B · ‎07-23-2020

Dear Juan, Even though I do not speak Spanish, I hope that I could understand something you say because I speak little Italian. 🙂 In your video, you spend 30 seconds (from 0:30 to 0:59) going though the menus. That's 30% of the video (1 minutes 28 seconds). Each menu item is just pronounced by its name, without any additional information about each menu item. I would remove this part, because it does not bring any new information to the students. Or, alternatively, maybe add a phrase to each menu item - something very short about standard items that are similar to other applications (like File, View), and something interesting/engaging about specific items (Midi/Audio, etc), so that students get interested to know more in the next lectures. Hope this helps, With kind regards, Vlad.

Vlad_B · ‎07-18-2020

Dear Manu, Great animations on the chess board! A few things I would suggest to improve: - In the video, your face appears _very_ briefly. And even during that split second, the camera is moving around. I would mount the camera, and make that piece longer, so that people have enough time to see you. - The "stages, not stooges" slide also appears too briefly. Not enough time to understand - I briefly saw three people, and somehow thought that three stages will correspond to those three people. Not enough time to read. - Same for other slides on the right side - I would suggest to ensure that each slide should appear long enough for people to read it. Hope this helps, With kind regards, Vlad.

Vlad_B · ‎07-18-2020

Dear fellow instructors, Please - can you kindly give a rating on my English pronounciation? On a scale from 0 to 10 ("0=very bad", "10=very good"). Please click on my profile, the course is called "SQL Essentials: The Beginner's Guide to SQL Language". Please just watch a 2-minute promo video. I'm not a native English speaker, and would really appreciate your honest feedback. Thank you so much, With kind regards, Vlad.

Vlad_B · ‎07-18-2020

Hi Krish, Can you share a bit more details - why exactly are you in doubt using Prezi? From the first glance, it's very similar to Powerpoint and Keynote. And it has great animations. 🙂 With kind regards, Vlad.

Vlad_B · ‎07-18-2020

Hi Gavin, these chat groups are very helpful in a few areas: - whenever you have a question about creating courses (video, audio, marketing, etc), you can search the existing community topics - there are a lot of questions already asked and answered/discussed. - and, of course, you can ask your questions and start new discussions. - also, being part of the community can help you stay motivated when creating new courses. It is always hard work, and the community helps you realize that other instructors are also doing hard work. Cheers, With kind regards, Vlad.

Vlad_B · ‎06-22-2020

Hi @Jorim , Thank you for detailed reply. Really appreciated! With kind regards, Vlad.

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Vlad Burmistrov

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Vlad Burmistrov

Vlad_B • Observer

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