How should I gain more students for the first video I've created

Hello. I've published my first video and one month has passed but I've got only one student.

I'm wondering if I've made the wrong topic that not many people will buy the course in the first place.

I've actually looked through the "Market place insights" where "WordPress Plugin" topic was high on Student demand and also the number of courses. Median Monthly revenue is $18 and the Top monthly revenue is $367. Did I mischoice the topic? Or do I need to advertise with my own to increase my students?

Or if the quality of the video is the problem, can anyone give me any advice to make the video better? I've worked on the intro video but maybe the taste wasn't attractive.

Here's the course that I've created

https://www.udemy.com/course/wordpress-plugin-development-and-proversion-for-selling

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Abbie

Hey @Kazuki
, before anyone else jumps in, let me share with you this community post that includes Best Instructor Posts of All Time — Marketing. You can find info about optimizing your course to get more students, how to use promotional tools, how to improve your course marketing, and much more.

Hope it helps!

RandyMinder

Hi @Kazuki

You said you may have picked the wrong topic. I think you might be right. One of the things you need to consider before creating a course is the number of courses that already teach your particular topic. I did a Udemy search on 'Wordpress Development'. I got 10,000 results back. This means your course is competing against thousands of other courses.

Because of the number of courses already teaching this topic, you are going to have to be very patient because it's going to be difficult for your course to get recognized.

Kazuki

Hello. Thank you very much for the community post link.

It writes many suggestions about how to advertise the course and it is very helpful.

Thanks again and I'll study the lists that are given.

Kazuki

Thank you for your reply and advice.

Yes, that's right by searching with the keyword "WordPress Development".

But I was thinking about the keyword "WordPress Plugin Development" because coding plugin is different from developing WordPress such as websites, so actually I thought I am competing with the Plugin developer of WordPress.

When I search by "WordPress Plugin Development" there are many Plugin developer's courses on the list, but my course also appears on the first page.
That means that even if I'm competing against many courses, it didn't go on the very end on the search. So probably the recognition isn't bad?

I would like to question, for the first month, does everybody gain few students and after a few months the students gradually increase? or the students increase immediately if the topic is right and the quality is high?

knihT

I think your subject may be too niche?

@Kazuki
wrote:
Thank you for your reply and advice.
Yes, that's right by searching with the keyword "WordPress Development".
But I was thinking about the keyword "WordPress Plugin Development" because coding plugin is different from developing WordPress such as websites, so actually I thought I am competing with the Plugin developer of WordPress.

When I search by "WordPress Plugin Development" there are many Plugin developer's courses on the list, but my course also appears on the first page.
That means that even if I'm competing against many courses, it didn't go on the very end on the search. So probably the recognition isn't bad?

I would like to question, for the first month, does everybody gain few students and after a few months the students gradually increase? or the students increase immediately if the topic is right and the quality is high?

RandyMinder

@Kazuki

"I would like to question, for the first month, does everybody gain few students and after a few months the students gradually increase? or the students increase immediately if the topic is right and the quality is high?"

I don't think there a single, correct, answer to this question. It will depend entirely on whether you are a new author and it will depend upon the number of competing courses etc. The quality of the course probably doesn't come into play right away because students won't know about quality until they buy it and go through the course.

Almost any new author is going to struggle at first. There are so many courses available on Udemy and virtually every topic that could generate a nice number of sales probably already has numerous courses already available. So, getting your course recognized could take quite a bit of time.

Also, I listed to your promotional video. To be honest, this may turn some people away. First of all, the background music was very loud and it made it difficult to hear your voice. Secondly, your accent makes it a bit of a struggle to understand you. Students may just decide to find an instructor they can understand more easily.

I'm not saying that a strong accent will turn everyone away. That isn't the case. But, with so many other courses to choose from, some potential students are likely to find a native english speaking instructor, if one is available. To be quite honest, I know I would if I had to devote too much energy to understanding the instructor.

Ifeomabless377

Hopefully

Kazuki

Thank you for your advice. Yes, I guess non-native speakers' English is hard to understand. There were many others that seem to have a strong accent but they had over ten thousand students so I thought that doesn't affect much before I decided to make the course.

But maybe three or four years ago, there were fewer courses on this category that many authors were able to earn students more than now.

Thank you for your polite and long answer and it really helped me analyzing how to handle courses in Udemy.

Have a nice day!

Kazuki

Thank you!

Kazuki

Yes, kind of... But it seems there are many course developers who are receiving many students with this category...

RandyMinder

@Kazuki

You are very welcome. I think a good way to look at the accent issue is this. English is my native language. But, let's say I create a course in Japanese. Let's also assume my Japanese is ok but not great. You can understand what I am saying but you really need to concentrate.

If my course is the only course on the topic, you will probably buy it because you have no alternatives. However, if there are a dozen other courses just like it (and rated about the same), and the instructors are native Japanese speakers, you probably will not purchase my course. And I wouldn't blame you.

This is what most non-native english speaking instructors face on Udemy who create a course for world-wide consumption.

DanielEvans

Nothing is 'too niche' if you have a targetted, existing audience.

Whilst it's usually the first stage to establish where your target market is, it's probably a good idea to consider your marketing tactics now in reflection of that before being tempted to consider another niche.

Alex2020

Hi,

My experience is that, every course will have lean time in the beggining at least for 1 month. Reason why it bahaves so, I do not know. But after its presence for a month at least, it starts picking up subject to reasonably good review (>3) and topic in demand.

While choosing the topic you must see key word search % which indicates demand which certainly you have done. Also, you need to go through the list of courses already exisitng for the same topic. Number may not matter much But you must see popularity of the already exisitng courses for the same topic. If there are very popular courses are already exisitng and it is kind of monopoly position with respect to review and enrollments, you must not shoose that topic. When you topic after discount cost same as already existing one, student naturally may not prefer your course. This is simple pshychology of students.

So, you must see porfile of exisitng courses for the same topic, mandatorily.

Hope this helps...

But no worries - your course will pick up....

Prof_K

Increasing student enrollment is one of the toughest parts of being an instructor on Udemy. I published my first course in 2015 and I'm now just hitting 115,000 students. You really need to study and learn everything you can about SEO and keyword placement. Both of these have to do with how your course will place in the student's search results.

You need at least 5 reviews to get rated and that's something else you have to understand.

A lot of instructors will tell you to stay away from handing out free coupons because of the grief it brings with dealing with trolls and bad reviews and there is some truth to it but if your course is not rated, don't expect any enrollment when the next course in the search results shows an overall rating of 4.6. This is where you need to start. Get the reviews and get your course rated.

Join Facebook groups that focus on Udemy instructors and courses. Once you join, post your coupons. If you're in it for the money, that will follow once you do all the leg work but it takes a well-thought-out plan. You have to learn everything you can about how to get your course listed in the top ten search results and how to increase your student enrollment.

If it were me and I was posting my first course on Udemy I would do exactly what I did in 2015, send out free coupons to all parts of the universe and not worry about making any money until the dust settled and I had my first 2500, 5000 and then 10,000 enrollments. Those are milestones that I set for my first course and within the first couple of days, I had over 2500 students. That got me my 4.7 course rating and I was shooting to the top of the search results with a bullet. In my first month, I made $53.00, and the next month I made $276.00 and so on but...I had to do the research and figure out how to play the Udemy game.

This strategy worked for me but I wasn't focused on the money, I was focused on getting students enrolled, getting a good course rating, and getting listed on the first page of search results. As I said, the money followed.

I now have 12 good money makers on Udemy and I still hand out free coupons for any new course. When you have over 115,000 students and 20% of those tell their friends and family and post the coupon on some coupon site, my enrollment numbers shoot up 20-30k every time and I have no regrets. New students have lots of questions, 6 or more a day but you need to be proactive and answer the questions to the best of your ability. I get one bad review out of a hundred or more 4 and 5-star reviews. Three days later it's buried so deep no one cares. That's what the high enrollment numbers do for you, they quickly negate any 1 star or bad reviews.

My next enrollment milestone is 200,000 but remember, I started with a single enrollment like everyone at Udemy. The difference is I had a plan going in so build a plan, set your milestones and the money will follow.

Hope this helps!

Kazuki

Yes, thank you for the additional comments.
I understand that if the course is in Japanese, most of the buyers will buy the native speaking Japanese course. That is true.

It seems that there are many non-native English speakers making courses in Udemy so maybe it's good to choose the category that lists many non-native English speakers. Then there can be a chance if native English speaker's courses are few.

Thank you very much for your comment! I'll keep on figuring out more about the courses in Udemy.

Kazuki

Thank you for your comment. I understand that before moving to a different niche, you need to try on that niche first and do whatever marketing tactics to see if you can earn students or not.

I have a question. Making free courses have merits?

Is it like a volunteer-type of course, or there is a plan of approaching to the student free at first and then announce the next pay type courses to

earn students?

Kazuki

Hello. Thank you for giving me good information about the first month that not much action will happen.

I thought that it is quite difficult that recently most of the category already has a mega-hit course and most of the category is in a monopoly situation. Students will choose the mega-hit courses.

The course developers are specializing in that course, and they cannot move on to a different category because the course developers cannot teach a not specialized topic.

So, maybe we have to face on mega-hit courses if we are specialized in that category and can teach only on that material.

This can be a dilemma of finding a topic that can earn students.

But thank you very much for your advice!! It helped me a lot!

Kazuki

Hello, thank you for your advice.

I also thought that giving out free coupons will gain low stars, but the idea is the opposite. Do you think that pasting free coupons on YouTube will increase the students? There are some people who think positively and others not. But not only YouTube but I should paste the coupon more in different places also.

Some people say that the very first video will not be good on the quality itself, so go on to the next video for making and experience more on the creation part rather than gaining students on the first course. Do you change the places on the first video like a retake section or create additional sections to make it longer to make the first video better?

I thought of this because you never know your quality of how high it is before getting stars and ratings. Even if you give efforts to gain students in the first video, if the students don't come because of the quality in the first place, the effort will be worthless. In that way, some people have another suggestion to make more and more courses even if you didn't receive students in the first video, but try to improve becoming a good teacher and making good videos.

But when I see your advice, I thought that there are ways to earn students on the first course. So like adding sections a couple of hours more or retake the places that you don't like can make the quality better and better. Parallel to that, giving out coupons will increase the students and the good rating.

So simply saying

1. Add more sections and retake to make the first video better and better.

2. Give out free coupons more and more to earn students and the ratings.

will be the direction to earn more students for the first video, as you are saying.

And also about the SEO and changing title will be the marketing part that can be improved.

Thank you very much for your advice!! I am learning more about Udemy of how to handle the course!! This will help me improve my course marketing skill!!

Kazuki

Hello, after I've given out free coupons on Facebook, I've got more than 10000 free students + 7 rating average of 4.5. That is good! I think that using a free coupon worth it.

Thank you very much for your advice!! Now, I must try on the paid type of students for marketing.

Davidnyong438

So if the results are lower would that increase the number of students

pktk

Hi @Abbie
, seems like your link to the video is awesome going by the response I see to it down below here and on other pages. But for some reason, I am not able to access it since I am getting the following message:

"Access Denied

You do not have sufficient privileges for this resource or its parent to perform this action.

Can you help me understand what could be the possible reason here. I am new here, preparing my course and looking to learn in the community while I do so..

Thanks!

Aash

sat

@Kazuki
Great tips! thank you. If you still have free coupon then please share with me.

btw, have you tried paid marketing, is it working?

AmandeepKaur Sodhi

Hi Abby! Even m trying to see the post https://community.udemy.com/t5/Marketing/Best-Instructor-Posts-of-All-Time-Marketing/m-p/31077

But it says I don’t hv enough privileges to access this. Plz help

ElianaC

Hi @AmandeepKaur Sodhi
can you please try to access this link first

https://community.udemy.com/t5/Published-Instructor-Club/ct-p/Instructor_Club and then try to access the desired post? Let me know how it goes.

Eliana Cerna

Udemy Community

AmandeepKaur Sodhi

Was able to access this link. Thanx a lot