no enrollments for a while :( Please offer some advice/help/insights

Hello instructors,

We just updated our course and changed it from FREE to PAID. When it was free, we had steady enrollments and good reviews; However, ever since we put a price on the course, we haven't had any enrollments at all. It's been like 2 weeks...

Am I being anxious or is it normal? We have tried lots of marketing methods such as posting clips on Twitter/Youtube/LinkedIn, and generating free coupons for people to enroll, but so far the impact is minimal.

We are a two-people team. Our content is rich with lots of animations and design. We were told it's really a great course but we are frustrated and stuck as to how to attract more students.

Can someone please have a look and offer some diagnosis/advice?

Sorry for tagging you guys but it would be great if I could get some help Thank you in advance.

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Comments

MuhammadDuj869

Dear @Sunshine_Naburika
,

Its always very disturbing when you would not get any new enrollments. As per my experience, I want to suggest something. At Udemy, students are really interested to get a lot of benefits from the course. I have observed that students normally get enrolled in courses which cover almost everything related to a particular field. Your course just provides information about Pandas. It will be great if you will expand it and also add some basic stuff for beginners as well. For instance, there are courses in the marketplace which cover everything related to data science including Pandas as well. We hope when you will expand the course then it will be much more interesting for students as well.

Sunshine_Naburika

Thank you @MuhammadDuj869
for your reply! Yes we have been working on adding more content for our course now.

RandyMinder

@Sunshine_Naburika
- I see two possible explanations. The first is that your course is only 1.5 hours long. I have never had much luck with really short courses. I think it often comes down to students feeling like they are not getting much for their money. The second is competition. When I did a search for Pandas, I got 1,350 results back. When your course was free, it probably stood out from the others because it was free. But, now that you are charging $30, you are competing with the other 1,350 courses. This is not going to be easy and could take a lot of time to get noticed.

MichaelPog

Actually @RandyMinder
pretty much nailed it.

@Sunshine_Naburika
your course is beautiful. I watched the promo video and the preview videos, and everything looks really good.

As an instructor I can appreciate the work you put into the music, animation and the visuals.

As a student in the marketplace I would probably look for better value for my money. And that value is there on the first and second page of looking for your course topic. With courses containing more content, with 20 hours of material and coming from very well-known instructors with tons of reviews and ratings.

I'm absolutely not surprised that you got so many enrollments and good reviews when your course was free. It is probably the best free course for that topic. But when it comes to paying students the landscape is very different.

Did you do market research before working on this course?

Also in my opinion it's a terrible idea to start a course as a free course. I don't know why people still do this.

When you launch a new paid course you need me gives your course a new tag and puts it usually on the first page of your topic to give you a boost. No other marketplace platform does that.

But when you launch your course as free you waste that opportunity. Now you have to compete with everyone in your category.

Sunshine_Naburika

Makes perfect sense @RandyMinder

We were really not experienced when we started. Will keep learning as we go! Thank you so much for your diagnosis

Sunshine_Naburika

Thank you so much @MichaelPog

We appreciate your time in watching the content and giving the comments. Makes sense! Now we know what to focus on in the next few months. We are motivated to keep adding more content soon

AHardin

@Sunshine_Naburika
I'm going to piggyback on what others have already said. First and foremost, your audio and video production on your free preview videos are excellent for your first course, so bravo!

With that said, you do have some things working against you.

The first is that the Python category is a highly saturated category on Udemy with significant competition, meaning you have a lot of stiff competition vying for the top page rankings on Udemy - in the business world, we call this a red ocean strategy because there's a lot of sharks in the water eating up the smaller competition.
The second is that your course is only 1.5 hour long. Looking at your competition, their courses range from the 9-30+ hours in length. Looking at that from a value-proposition perspective as a student - they'll be more apt to purchase higher ranking and well- established longer courses over a shorter one.

The reason you received a lot of free enrollments is that while your course is short, it is high-quality with low competition (not many free Python Pandas courses). Now that it's a paid course, you have a lot of stiff competition.

I would recommend re-evaluating the length of your course based on your competition, and looking to expand it's length because you'll want your course to compete with the best-sellers. Also, continue with your marketing and look to improve the delivery of your course offering on YouTube - right now, it's video-only (no audio) at the end of your video. I would recommend building your brand on Facebook and via a website. Also, when researching new course topics, I recommend using Udemy's Marketplace Insights tool.
Hope that helps!

Sunshine_Naburika

Thank you @AHardin
! Those are good suggestions.

However, may I ask what you meant by `right now, it's video-only (no audio) at the end of your video`? What kind of audio should I add at the end of my videos?

Look forward to your explanation. Thanks in advance

AHardin

You're welcome. I watched one of the videos on your YouTube Channel and at the end, it's just animated text without any audio, so it doesn't do a good job promoting your course.

Take a look at the intro and outro from one of my YouTube videos to see how I promote one of my courses in it:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gEn8j9vkaMU

Sunshine_Naburika

Your videos look good! Thank you

AHardin

You're welcome!

Ankit_Mistry

It's peace time before Tsunami of enrollment.

Sunshine_Naburika

waiting for the Tsunami Haha

Noble570

Keep adding new courses and add lot of Value you will be successful

ajaykrishnan

Offering some personalisation like Live sessions for those who complete the course and Q&A will help a lot to drive more traffic and attention to your course.