First Course Paid or Free?

[istuff360]

Hi,

Community

I am Waqar new here on this great udemy platform just about to finish my very first course. I am wondering either me should publish my very first course for Free or Paid [set a price] and is there a udemy policy or way to turn a Free course into a Paid course later on?

Would be so grateful to have your help and support, thanks in advance!

[csking1981 · Accepted solution]

Hi;

The worse think for new commers is free course!

Don't think about free courses !

Why?

1- Students for free course most of times give low rate and useless comments.

2- Students don't take serious free courses so it has not any results for you.

3- If you wanna be respectfull  first respect to your self then expect respect and free course means i'm new commer and my course is useless.

So:

Don't even think about free courses!!!

[csking1981 · Accepted solution]

Hi;

The worse think for new commers is free course!

Don't think about free courses !

Why?

1- Students for free course most of times give low rate and useless comments.

2- Students don't take serious free courses so it has not any results for you.

3- If you wanna be respectfull  first respect to your self then expect respect and free course means i'm new commer and my course is useless.

So:

Don't even think about free courses!!!

[CarlosDeLeon]

---

@csking1981 wrote:

Hi;

The worse think for new commers is free course!

Don't think about free courses !

Why?

1- Students for free course most of times give low rate and useless comments.

2- Students don't take serious free courses so it has not any results for you.

3- If you wanna be respectfull  first respect to your self then expect respect and free course means i'm new commer and my course is useless.

So:

Don't even think about free courses!!!

---

@csking1981I know your intentions are good, but the fact that you probably had a bad experience putting one of your courses for free (I'm speculating here), does not mean that all free courses are seen as bad or useless as you are making them appear.

I have a free course that has been free forever, and it receives better ratings than many paid and longer courses, and gets me hundreds of inspiring messages from people thanking me for making it free and for teaching them content that is very applicable at their jobs.

It is a very short course (1.5 hours at most) and my delivery sucks, as it was my first course, but people find it very useful, and it generates sales for my paid course regularly.

However, my plan for that course, from the very beginning, was to make it free forever and I wouldn't release a course as free to make it paid later.

[istuff360]

Hi,

Thanks for your feedback.

I had the same thought like offering a free course means like your content is not that valuable and I would appreciate your lead about offering paid courses as even a free course consumes a lot of time and work and even if i do offer a free course it would be short but attractive like 30Min long and covering a specific topic in my field to attract some specific audience towards my other courses thourgh that free course.

[Anonymous]

@istuff360

Congratulations on your first course.

I would recommend making your course paid and using free coupons if you want to give it away.

Udemy does support the ability to move courses between paid and free, but after one move you lose the ability to send promotional announcements to the course -- a killer.  It's really easy to lose track of how many times you moved a course back and forth between paid and free, so don't even go there.

Instead, if you want to make a course free, use a free coupon code for a paid course.  Don't even bother messing with making your course free.

That said, free coupons can get you your first thousand students overnight if you advertise the free coupon on the platform BestBlackHatForum.

Hope this helps and good luck with the course,

---Brian

[istuff360]

Hi,

Brian

I am so much glad to have your feedback on my post which is really great.

In your following statement you said (I would recommend making your course paid and using free coupons if you want to give it away.) What do you mean by making free coupons, Is it like offering paid course on a percentage like 50% off or 70% off or 100% free coupon?

Would be so grateful if you could please elaborate it a bit so i would have a better idea to start with, thanks in advance!

[Anonymous]

@istuff360

My point was that rather than making the course free, which gets into complications of losing your promotional announcement rights if you move back and forth between free and paid, always make your course paid and offer free coupons for the course instead of making the course free.

Free is one of the price options when generating a course coupon.

My other comment was about giving away thousands of free coupons on the site BestBlackHatForum so that your course will have thousands of students (looks a lot better than a hand-full) and you might get some favorable reviews (if you course is good).

So, don't make your course free.  Instead, distribute free coupons (you can also distribute them on FaceBook, but I've found that free coupons don't do as well on Facebook as BBHF).

Hope this helps.  Let me know if you're still confused.

---Brian

[istuff360]

Hi,

@Anonymous 

I am so thrilled by your great response and I do appreciate you have great potential and experience on Udemy Network. I know (BHF) which i used to use a while ago and would definitely offer my free coupons there and would also appreciate if you could lead me to other trusted coupon websites or placed to offer it as I would help me get some leads on my not only first course but also the courses I have in mind to do in the future, thanks!

[Anonymous]

@istuff360

It's important to get the next course out there as quickly as possible.  Realizing this, I created my first 10 Udemy courses in 10 weeks.  You can create courses, 2-3 hours long, fairly quickly once you get the process down.

The reason to get the second course out there quickly is so that you can cross promote your courses using Udemy promotional announcements.

Another thing you might want to consider is creating a short course that you give away frequently to use as a lead magent.  If your courses are all related (more-or-less a series), you can use your free course to lead people into your series, then send promotional announcements to your lead magnet advertising the remainder of your courses for $9.99.

Personally, I have 44 Udemy courses which allows me to play with all kinds of promotional announcement strategies.  I've found that the one-to-one announcement:

o Send to course #1 to all students who don't own course #2 about course #2 being $9.99

Is most effective.

This is the point at which I wish I could post free coupons to my Udemy course marketing course, but The Man won't allow it :-(.  So, instead I type on...

Please tell me this is all of use and I'm not typing for no reason ;-).

---Brian

[istuff360]

@Anonymous 

Sure, I will definitely make the second course asap, thanks!

For what period I should offer my coupon to last and which is the right time to offer it right after publishing the course or ... ?

[Anonymous]

@istuff360

That's a tough question once you have a few courses...

When I release a new course I like to advertise it around to my other courses for $9.99 for a while.  Of course, you don't have other courses, so that changes the math ;-).

I'd recommend you forget about free coupons and marketing for a while until you get the following right:

1) Include keywords in your title and subtitle to show up in Udemy search results.

2) Make your course description and promo video as good as possible.

3) Determine how many courses (to be the most) and of what length (to be the longest) you need to dominate your niche.

4) Get a couple thousand students over night on BBHF.

5) Monitor your student course completion logs and message students who have completed 100% of your course asking for a review (not a 5 star review, just an honest review).

...

You can see why it would be easier to offer my course for free ;-).

---Brian

[Anonymous]

P.S. You need more courses fast! ---Brian

[istuff360]

@Anonymous 

Thanks Brian I'll bear it clearly in mind and would mainly focus on creating best quality courses asap with good content!

[ChristineRo198]

Hi Brian,

Thanks for sharing such valuable information! Really appreciate it! I just launched my first course that I've co-instructed with another Udemy teacher and we've done exactly what you are suggesting about offering it as a paid course but with the free coupon. The issue we are having is getting more reviews we have about 2347 or something and only about 10 reviews. I've just taken you up on your suggestion and messaged a couple people who've finished the course and asked them for honest reviews.

Is the BBHF a paid site to list the course? And, how does that work? Are there other places to post the link as well? Just curious. 

We launched the course six weeks ago and I need to get on making some new course. I was going to focus on marketing this one but it seems like it would be better to get a couple more courses out there first. Is that what you'd suggest before really getting into the marketing piece?

Any thoughts on this would be welcomed. Thanks so much!

Warmly,

Christine

[Anonymous]

@ChristineRo198,

Congratulations on your first Udemy course.  It's one small step for woman, but a giant leap for human kind (poorly paraphrasing Neil Armstrong's first words from the moon ;-).

You only have one course.  That means you have an advantage.  Two Udemy promotional announcements with nothing to promote... or so it would seem.

You can ask for reviews via promotional announcements and since you don't have anything else to do with them for the moment I would recommend spending the last two of the month asking students for reviews.

Note that this is more of a shotgun approach to getting reviews than asking those who finished your course, so it will get you more reviews of a lower quality.

Also, dig deeper into your student completion records.  When I get desperate for reviews I like to send encouraging Udemy messages to students who are halfway through a course in an attempt to establish a relationship.

Multiple courses would definitely help.  Also, when you enter Udemy search keywords to find your course what rank are you?

BestBlackHatForum is free.  It's simply a discussion forum that happens to contain the most popular thread on the Internet for giving away free courses.  Sure, you can give them away on FB at a dozen a day or give away 1,000 a day on BBHF.  I'd recommend getting and account a browsing for the thre "Udemy 100% for a Limited Time".  The forum includes instructions on how to format your post.

Hope this helps,

---Brian

[ChristineRo198]

You are a Godsend Brian!

Thank you so much for your direction. I'm going to go and do all of those things. I'll let you know how it turns out! 

Really appreciate your support!

Christine

[ActuaryOnFIRE]

@Anonymous thanks so much for the helpful reply. When I looked at the Udemy help on generating coupons it seems to suggest that you cannot make a free coupon and the minimum value must be $10.

However you seem to know what you are talking about... so I'm a bit confused. Here is the wording from the help page:

You can create coupons where the discounted price is no lower than $10 USD or $9.99 USD depending on your course currency (please see the paragraph below regarding charm pricing) . Please note, however, that the lowest possible price tier for some countries may be lower than $10 USD or $9.99 USD, to better reflect local market conditions.

[ActuaryOnFIRE]

Ignore this - I generated a coupon and there is the option to make it free. 

(I still think the wording on the help page is confusing...)

[CarlosDeLeon]

You can definitely create coupons with 100% discount (i.e. price=0).

What that piece of the docs tries to convey, is that if you do set a price higher than 0 for the coupon, it cannot be lower than 9.99

[bala2020]

@Anonymous

Hi Brian

I am a new instructor trying to figure out how to deal with the first course commercially - frr, paid and so on. You have given some very useful suggestions. Curious to know if there is any decent tutorial on how one goes about using BestblackhatForum? Thanks and regards.

Bala

[bala2020]

Sorry for the typo. I meant ".... commercially - free, paid ....."