First Course Paid or Free?

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

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!!!

@csking1981
I 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.

DeniseFletcher

@istuff360
I agree with @
put a price on it. Udemy used to value free courses years ago so you will see lots of free courses available on the platform however these days it is better to have paid courses. When you launch your 2nd course then you can decide whether to make your course free then so it acts as a lure into buying your next course BUT Udemy doesn't really work that way. Outside of Udemy yes this marketing tactic works because the free is a lead magnet but you can as Brian mentioned offer free coupons

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!

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.

Hi,

Deni

Thank you so much for your feedback and resolution towards Brian feedback which really means a lot to me as I would highly appreciate any help I get on my journey as I want to be successful instructor on this great platform.

I'm considering to offer it as a paid course with free coupons as per guidance, thanks! :-P

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

Hi,

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!

:smileyhappy:

csking1981

Hi;

Excellent!

Congrats for your choice.

You did the best!

Regards;

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

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 ... ?

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

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

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

ActuaryOnFIRE

@
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

Universal_Pray

Hello Good people,

My name is Universal and I am just getting the ball rolling myself. That was a great question. Keep up the excellence.

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

@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

Dhabaleshwar

Hello @istuff360
,

First of all I congratulate you for makin your first wonderful course.

I am not an active member in the Udemy Community but as you are a new instructor and don't know much about udemy so thought of helping you a bit.

I have been an instructor on udemy for the past 7 months so let me share a few tips which you need to keep in your mind if you want to make some crazy amount of money and at the same time add value to the udemy community.

So as you are saying you are a new comer. I assume that you don't have any audience to promote your course , nor any email list, blogs etc. But still you want to dominate your XXX field. So let me assume that you are creating a course about SEO. Well then the basic requirements for you to succeed in here is-

1- Time (It is always necessary)

2- An extraordinary course (If your course fails to impress your students then you might be stuck with a bunch of bad reviews that will ultimately ruin your course. )

Here are the points you need to keep in mind to be the best one-

1- Analyze the market first .....Like if you want to create a course on SEO first see are there any courses about it?? How much audience do these instructors have?? How many reviews?? What are the ratings?? How are new courses performing in this field?? Look at marketplace insights??

I understand, you are bored by now but bear with me you are gonna get great value.

2- Now as noone knows you so if you release a paid course chances are you will get a few bucks into your paypal but if you want to play a big game then stop dreaming about making quick bucks ( as I told you earlier that you need time ).

3- Lets say you made an SEO course that is 7 hours long ( gave every possible information that you had in that field , made a masterpiece course) and thinking of giving it away for FREE or Paid. Let me tell you FREE would be a bad idea because (my fellow instructors already explained the reasons in some answers). But wait listen here......I have a trick for you now........Don't upload that course now .

4- You need to create a short version of SEO course (1-2 hrs approx.) . That course would be a basic SEO course that won't provide all the value that you offered in your 7 hours course but would be an introductory course (Keep promoting your paid course in that short course and tell people that the paid course would be available soon.) NOW release that short course for FREE on Udemy. Promote your course accross the internet, using coupon websites, fb groups, friends and family, Reddit etc.

5- Now here the time factor comes into play........if your course would be nice then eventually your course will start earning praise and a lot of positive reviews (well there would be always some negative reviews don't worry about that they would be nearly 2-3% if your course is excellent.)

6- Now the people who completed your FREE course will know how good you are at explaining something so they would be happy purchasing your new SEO course.

7- Now after a few good reviews and 2-3 months later upload your 7 hour SEO paid course. You will have collected a lot of emails by now through udemy. Send promotional emails and just watch BIG BUCKS flowing into your account and a lot of praise coming from your students.

ALL THE BEST Buddy!!!

And yes I hope this article helps a lot of instructors who are new in this platform.

Dhabaleshwar

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