Want an Opinion on Your Upcoming/New Course From a Top Seller?

[ScottDuffy]

Update 02/21: I continue to provide feedback to people leaving comments on this post. I will be traveling for the next week and won't be able to do much in that time. But please be patient, and I will return to this thread when I return.

Hi there, my name is Scott, and I've been on Udemy for nine years — 1.1 million paying students as of now.

If you have a new course (or one that just went live) and want some honest, constructive feedback to make it better, I'll spend 10 minutes looking at your landing page, promo videos, and anything else I can see and give you some solid ideas of things that you can improve. I promise I won't be too harsh but I'll be honest.

Post in the comments, and I'll go to your profile page and find your latest course. Or post a YouTube link to one of the videos if the course is not live yet. 

Any of the other community champions can jump on and give feedback to any of the instructors looking for feedback.

[ElenaOsokina]

Hello, Scott, thanks for this opportunity 🙏 I'm a new instructor and there is only one course in my profile - The Endless Source of Motivation. Thank you, Elena 

[ScottDuffy]

A course on motivation? I need that. I have very low motivation in 2024 so far... 

So, I looked at your promo video. I think it can be better. Please accept these comments in the spirit of helping you improve. I want to inspire you to reach a new level in your videomaking, as every person on Udemy has had to do over the years.

* I find the music in the promo video a bit distracting. Perhaps this can be solved by turning the volume on the music track down a bit while you're talking. Your voice should be much louder than the music, so maybe a 50% reduction in the music volume.

* There's clearly some echo in the room you're in. If you were to record another video like this, you might have to record in another room or put some more blankets/carpets/furniture down to absorb the sound. For instance, I have these heavy moving blankets in my office at home that reduces echo.
* Around the 1:00 mark of the promo video, it sounds like someone drops some cutlery in the background.

* Also, the camera shakes a little bit and I wonder if someone is holding it? A tripod or something stable to hold the camera might be a solution to that. Or if it's autofocus or some type of anti-shake feature of the camera, turn it off.

The "roadmap" video is much better! No echo, no music. 

All in all, I think you'd be much better off if your promo video was as good as your main course videos. So perhaps you can re-record that, and it will make your course appeal to more people.

All the best,

Scott

[JuRodrigues]

Ola Scott eu acabei de me cadastrar e estou com muitas Duvidas. 

Eu uso outras plataformas de vendas como Hotmart e Edduz para  lançamento dos meus cursos e de meus clientes também e gostaria de saber mais como funciona a Udemy. Não achei um contato direto com alguem da plataforma e como vi que está disposto a ajudar os novatos, gostaria de saber se pode me ajudar. 

Desde já Grata !

[ScottDuffy]

Ola e bem vindo.

Desculpa, meu portugues e mau. Eu moro em Portugal so dois anos. Estou aprender portugues ainda.  Eu acho que ha um comunidade portugues onde voce vai perdir suas perguntas.

[ChristopherNett]

Hey Scott,

thank you for this amazing offer to new instructors like myself. I happily take the offer with my now third course at Udemy: MITRE ATT&CK Framework - From Zero to Hero | Udemy

Looking forward to your feedback. Feel free to be as critical as possible as I am still a new Instructor (started in Nov23) looking for feedback on how to improve.

Thanks again for making this time-intensive investment!

[ScottDuffy]

Hi, welcome to Udemy.

Cybersecurity is obviously a massive area and there are lots of opportunities for courses on the topic. 

I don't know much about MITRE ATT&CK.

I see you are currently ranked as the fourth or fifth course when you search Udemy for "MITRE ATTACK". And second when you search "MITRE". So I think you don't have SEO issues at the current time despite the ampersand in the middle of the word...

I am not sure I like your course image. Solid black background is a bit harsh. Can you get a textured black background for a little contrast? I would suggest you work a bit more on the image to grab people's attention and appear professional. Security is a serious topic after all.

I guess you used AI to create some of the course images in the slides, but ... is that guy in a suit sitting on the lap of the guy in the hoodie? But he only has two legs. So the guy has two torsos and one set of legs? The course image is a bit distracting if I'm being honest.

I think you can use the course slides a bit more effectively. 

I think your course landing page is fine and I can't really comment on the contents because I don't know the topic. 

With 101 students and 15 reviews, you should be able to reach out to some of the students (or interact with them in the Q&A) and ask them for their feedback on how you can improve the course.

All the best and good luck!

[ChristopherNett]

Thanks for taking the time to give me feedback Scott! I highly appreciate your input and plan to work on the topics you mentioned.

Enjoy the upcoming holidays! 🙂

[AnikaT]

Dear Scott,

thank you for your kind offer. I just published a course for beginners to learn Tantra a few days ago. I would very much appreciate your feedback! 

Looking forward to hearing from you. Have an amazing day! 

Warm greetings,

Anika

[ScottDuffy]

Congrats on launching your course. I looked at your course landing page and don't have any specific suggestions. Your promo video is awesome. It really inspires people interested in the topic to join the course.  A++ promo video.

I see some of your videos are filmed in inspiring locations like a jungle. I don't mind the little rooster crowing in the background of one of your videos. Feels authentic. Your audio quality is really good. A+ section intro videos in module 1 and 2.

I must admit that I don't know much about Tantra besides a few things I've seen in the media. For instance, probably 20 years ago, I remember hearing that the singer Sting practiced Tantra. Maybe what I think I know about it is completely wrong.

For that reason, I wonder if you have to address what Tantra actually is and dispel some myths even on the landing page or in one of the free preview videos. A little history on it and what I would achieve if I practiced it. Is it tied to a religion, or can you practice it while maintaining your current beliefs? Can you adopt some parts of it and not adopt all of it? I mean, I really don't know much. 🙂

Maybe your ideal student doesn't have those preconceived notions. But one thing that would stop me from joining the course would be that I don't know what Tantra is. Perhaps comparison with other techniques like meditation, yoga, Reiki, and others. See? 

Good job and good luck! 

[Charlotte KB]

Hi Scott D

I got you profile-page link from Bessy Community Moderator. I have looked at your landing page with all your courses, wow! I just published my first Udemy course, for the first time live, some days ago.

I'm looking for some honest, constructive feedback. I have an idea already, what can improve, but always great to hear feedback from other "neutral instructors"... I'm in the beginning of making a new photo course.

Are you interested in giving feedback? Beside my profile page, that you can go to, then do you need more detailed information from me? My thoughts, background story? etc?

Sincerly Charlotte from Copenhagen (photographer + art historian).

[Jodi-AnnRow851]

Hi Scott,

I like the use of animations for the course. I would pay attention to what the 1st customer mentioned, especially about the Chatgpt plug in not working. Visit to confirm is this is correct and make an edit to the course so that students will feel appropriately compensated for the course. 

I know you will do exceptionally well with this course.! Good vibes.

[ScottDuffy]

Hi Kim, and welcome to the wonderful world of teaching on Udemy. 

I am a bit torn about how I feel about your course title, "Photo Creative."  It's short. It's intriguing. It invites the reader to enquire within for more. Like the corner of an old photograph poking out from the middle of a stack, asking the passerby to lift the pile and see the whole photo. 

That said, the title is probably the most important thing about a course in the search results, and I wonder if students will pass over it if they fail to grasp the concept immediately. Sometimes, people need to be hit over the head with "What is this!" to get it.

I would suggest keeping the intriguing title, but consider expanding it if you're not getting the desired results.

"Photo Creative: Finding Your Creativity Through the Lens of a Camera" - that loses the intrigue but might yield better results.

I guess, in the intersection between creativity and commerce, sometimes creativity needs to lose some of itself for the sake of commerce. 🙂

I enjoyed your use of colors in the sections and videos. I was going to comment on the intro to the course being you on a white background. But later in the course, I realized you were color-coding each section, and it made more sense. I expect that a course on creativity would use colors and visuals in an interesting way.

I like that you have lots of free preview videos. I like that you have a final section of the course called "You Made It" to celebrate the student's completion of the course.

The course description is well-written and easy to read with plenty of paragraph spacing and bolding. 

I don't have many improvements to suggest.

* Obviously, the title and subtitle, both being quite short, is a creative choice that I would suggest you keep in mind to change if you don't think the course is getting the attention it deserves.

* I am not going to suggest redoing all your existing videos, but perhaps in the future, you can expand your video editing to better use the visual element of a video course. This could include text on screen to highlight important points, slides, or even just b-roll video to break up the monotony for the viewer.

Like if you watch a popular TV show, film, or even YouTube video, what you see on screen changes every few seconds. Now, I am not saying you need to change the visuals every few seconds, but I personally have a rule that I want "something new to happen on screen" once per minute. That could even be changing the framing of the talking head so that you go from being a close zoom to a bit farther and even off-center. 

Hopefully, I am describing that correctly. Just make the videos more interesting for the viewer. You can do some research on typical ways to do that.

That's my main piece of advice, although it might not be easy to fix on the current course.

Good luck and wish you the best,

Scott

[Charlotte KB]

Dear Scott D

"Photo Creative" course feedback:

Thank you so much for your help and the time you have taken. It's VERY kind of you. I appreciate your honest reply. In this way you learn and improve more quickly.

I will take notice of your opinion and advice. I think my new course "30-day Photo Experiment" will "automatically" have more of what you mention as idea, advice and suggestions. As the new work title suggests, there are more "build in movement and dynamics" (haha).

There is ALWAYS a reason why you do like you do (in my case), but I will not begin to defend my thoughts and WHY-reasons... (haha).

Scott, can I ask you for feedback again, when the new photo course has been born...?

Take care Charlotte from Copenhagen  

[IngTomasMoravek]

Dear Scott,

many thanks. This is fantastic.

Please, kindly.

I have really really tried my best with this new course:

https://www.udemy.com/course/social-media-chatgpt-bard-gemini-ai/

I have received one middle range review and two 5 stars reviews.

I was really trying to create nice screen recordings as well as animations with my animator.

My editor has created very nice checklists.

Still, not so mega success I was dreaming about.

So, if you have any idea how to be more beneficial and better for students, I will be really really grateful.

Many thanks,

Tom

[ScottDuffy]

Hi Tom,

The title "Social Media Joyride" has me intrigued. A joyride sounds fun!

Good use of keywords in the title and subtitle. AI and SMM is a hot topic.

The "3.9" average review score has me a bit concerned. Why do students not love the course? There are only 4 reviews so far, so we need more. Send an educational email asking more of your 2000 students to watch the course. In fact, consider holding some type of contest for the month of February for any student who finishes the course to be entered into some type of draw. You need something to motivate people to watch the course.

I haven't seen other courses creating these course checklists and guides the way your course has. That's a unique course guide that you provide. Good job on that.

You have a good energy. You are clearly excited about the topic and it shows in some of your videos.

Best of luck,

Scott

[AlchemizeMinds]

Hey Scott,

My name is Sameer, I would really appreciate if you could review my first FREE course I have launched. The course name is AI Prompt Mastery - Part I. 

I will appreciate if you could spend reviewing my course and provide me honest feedback on the course and the recording as well. 

Sameer

Alchemize Minds

[ScottDuffy]

Hi Sameer,

Please accept this feedback in the spirit of constructive help.

I watched the promo video. The confusing thing for me is that most of the promo video has nothing to do with "AI Prompts." You mention the title twice, but less than 30 seconds of a 3 minute video is about the course I'm about to watch. There are a lot of information about each of you as teachers, your background, your company, and your goals in transforming student lives. I would expect a promo video to talk a lot about the benefits of taking the course.

Since Free courses don't have any "free preview" lectures, I can't see anything more than that! So I have no idea how good your teaching is based on this one video talking about yourself.

Forcing me to be a student just to get a look at some sample videos is a barrier for people to sign up.

In your course description, you use the term Artificial Intelligence (AI) a lot. But you don't say anything about what kind of AI you're teaching about. I guess it's "generative AI" because it's about prompts, but you don't use that term.

Do you teach any specific tool or technology inside the course? Is it ChatGPT? Google Gemini? Something else.

It's been my experience that students come to Udemy searching for something specific they want to learn. They will search "chatgpt" when they want to learn about that tool, or "Midjourney" or whatever.

I don't know if they'll get anything useful searching "AI". It's too generic a word. It means 100 things to 100 people. 

My main suggestion is to redo your promo video to talk about the course (or the series of courses you are planning to make), and redo the landing page to use a word other than AI to attract people. 

Good luck,

Scott

[MelanieStevens183]

This is a wonderful offer, thank you! I’m currently writing my fourth Udemy course but I would love some feedback on my latest one. Would you be happy to have a look?

https://www.udemy.com/course/master-intuitive-card-readings-using-tarot-and-oracle-cards/

[ScottDuffy]

Congratulations on your course, with a 4.7 rating. It's clearly enjoyed by the students that have taken it.

That's a good title and subtitle. Nice course image.

Your promo video is professionally done. My one comment is that your voice in the promo video seems a bit quiet compared to the music which is louder. Is it easy to re-edit this video to turn the music down a bit? Your intro video is much easier to understand.

Great intro video. Well done. A bit of echo but that's ok. I like that you mention who the course is for, and that the student doesn't need any experience. Also they can use any deck. It's very clear who this course is for.

I'm actually interested in becoming more intuitive, in general. Does this course teach people to become more intuitive generally? You mention that anyone can become more intuitive, and that's something I'd be interested in learning more about. I might take a course like this, with no interest in reading cards, just to learn how to improve my own intuition and gut instincts.

The audio in Video 2 is a lot lower than the intro video. I think you should check every video to make sure the audio is at a consistent volume. You can do this for free in a tool called Audacity.  The other videos I watched don't have the problem of Video 2.

I think your course is well done overall, and wish you good luck with it. It's a competitive topic, but you have a course that should compete well.

Scott

[MelanieStevens183]

This is awesome, thanks so much for taking the time to reply! 

I had some issues with consistency of the audio so I re-did some of them, I’ll take another look at the ones you’ve mentioned. I now have a dedicated ‘recording laptop’ which I don’t need to use for anything else, so I’ve got my studio set up and it won’t be touched at all! So that will hopefully mean more consistency in terms of audio and visuals going forward 🙂

Yes the course teaches about intuition in general and noticing the signs that are all around you, not just when reading the cards. Tarot reading opened up my intuition massively and I now don’t really need them as I can intuitively read anything! - the colours people wear in their clothing, their symbols that pop into my head, and the signs themy spirit guides send me. I’ve included an introduction to working with spirit guides too so it’s an all encompassing course. 

I hadn’t thought about creating more of an intuitive development course in general, but that’s given me an idea!

if you’d like any more info on the course please let me know, and thanks again for taking the time to review it! ⭐️

[ScottDuffy]

I have a gut feeling that a course on "developing your intuition" would be popular.