When to make my course paid?

Hey folks. I am a new instructor on the udemy platform and have started uploading my course from the previous month. Most of the courses which I have uploaded are free to enroll and a few are charging the Tier 1 cost to enroll.

Two of my courses have crossed more than 3000 students each and have an average rating of 4.02. I was thinking of making them a paid course so that I can make some money out of them and support my family financially.

I want to ask the community would it be a good decision to do so?

Also, I'd appreciate it if you can provide me some tips on how can I grow my audience in my paid courses.

Thanks in Advance.

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Comments

RandyMinder

Hi @harshkumarkhatri
- I think most instructors, me included, would strongly suggest you never make a course free. It has almost no benefit. You said you crossed 3000 students. If those are from your free course(s) I can guarantee you that 99% of those signups will never go through your course. They were signed up by bots roaming the Udemy landscape looking for free courses. I don't know why this happens but it does. Therefore, student counts on free courses mean almost nothing.

Also, Udemy will not permit you to do your own promotions on students who sign up on free courses.

Rebecca Livermore

Randy, regarding your last sentence, I didn't know that! I was thinking of making a course free, and now I won't. Thanks for the heads up.

harshkumarkhatri

Hey @RandyMinder
. I was totally unaware of this. I have posted around 4-5 courses free of cost for anyone to enroll and when totaled they are having 4500 students enrolled till now. not only this, I was planning to launch 4 more courses for free of cost.

Your comment opened my eyes and now I would be uploading the course on a paid basis.

Also, I would love your feedback on one more thing which is "What should be an ideal price for the course?"

RandyMinder

@harshkumarkhatri
- Pricing your courses... That is a real hot-button issue here. I would argue that for the average instructor, it really doesn't matter. Why do I say that? Because if you are like the average instructor, 90%+ of your sales will only come when Udemy is running a sale of some sort. So, even if you price your course at $99, Udemy will mark it down to somewhere between $10 and $12 and sell it at that price or maybe even lower depending on what part of the world the sale occurs in.

Now, some may say this. If I price my course at $99 I might get a few sales in between Udemy sales and I'll make a lot of money. Yes, they might. But, you also run the risk of students paying the full $99 and then getting a refund because the course was so (relatively) expensive.

What you have to keep in mind is that Udemy is basically treating our courses like they are a commodity. Each time they run a $10 sale they are treating our intellectual property as if someone is buying a gallon of milk.

Would you pay $99 for a course when you know if you wait a few days, you can purchase it for $10? Of course not (not usually at least). Because of this, I generally price my courses between $19.95 and $34.95. Based on my personal experience, 95% of my sales come from some Udemy sale. So, my $34.95 course is sold for $12, maybe, and I keep $3-$5, maybe.

harshkumarkhatri

Cool. thanks for this info and for helping me out.