The Explosion in Sales: Blip or Trend?

Many, if not most of us, are seeing a very significant explosion/increase in enrollments this month. If the data for the first 13 days represents half of this month's sales, the total for this month will be far higher than any previous month and close to 3X April last year. Now, we all recognize that the Covid-19 shut down is working in our favor. We are among the very fortunate few who are actually benefiting from this crisis.

The question is, does this represent a statistical blip on the graph, or does this represent a lasting trend. In other words, six months from now will we be seeing a continuation of this performance, or a regression to the mean?

Scenario 1: Business is changed forever. This is a permanent change in how people learn. In my area of management training corporations are not going to want to bring their people together in groups at some corporate training event for a very long time and will continue to assign them to online courses, now having recognized the efficiency of these courses. Less corporate travel, more comfort with online learning and conferencing. Things have changed forever!

Scenario 2: In six months (for example) when everyone goes back to work, this will be remembered as a bad dream that you can tell your kids about. Companies will want to get their people together in groups to share experiences, listen to their corporate trainers in all their brilliance, and our online sales will return to the long term trend line that is being violated by the current data. Things haven't really changed.

Which is it?

Find more posts tagged with

Comments

SuperHero

May I ask if your Google ad budget is for your Udemy courses or a different endeavor?

GregReverdiau

Interesting numbers. I have not seen much difference in my Udemy course sales this month but I have seen a 70% increases so far in April compared to March for my personal site. The day people received their $1200 deposit closely rivaled with Black Friday/Cyber Monday level sales, the following day a little bit less but still very strong (and still strong a few days later).
Another interesting fact is that since late March is that review numbers have dropped 38% while lecture completion has gone up over 100% in the same period. Can't wrap my head around that one.

Ed_Foychuk

People have more time to sit and do the course?

AxelRittershaus

@SuperHero
I played around with Google Ads for my Udemy courses, but that just doesn't make any economical sense.
Worst of that idea: I compete with Udemy itself, advertising my own courses
I only use Google Ads to advertise other, high ticket, online-courses.

I also sometimes push readership of my blogposts by running a campaign, if the costs are less than 2 cents/reader, to attract new readers of my leadership blog. Since I massively invest time into publishing new posts (48 as of now in 2020, aiming for another 60 posts by end of June) I play the long game.

Does this answer your question?

SuperHero

Yes, I really appreciate it. I was assuming it was for other products, but then thought I shouldn't assume.

For your high-ticket courses, have you compared FB costs to Google Ads? I'm just curious since FB is so expensive (until Corona, that is). Are Google Ads giving you better ROI than what you've experienced or heard about with FB?

Thank you for the details, especially your cost limits for blog posts. Awesome info. Thanks again.

AxelRittershaus

Fb works for me only when I run surveys, otherwise I haven't found my groove on fb.
sales via google ads is far from where I'd like to have it, I'm experimenting a lot recently.

SuperHero

That sounds like a fun experiment. I'm doing a "no marketing" comparison of ebooks, YT videos, blogs, etc. for 30-60 days, then basic marketing for 30 days. I want to see which avenue is fastest starting from zero. (I do have an email list which I'm using for a non-Udemy course, but that's not part of this experiment.) I'd love to hear what happens as you work on the ads.

Hanifa

I do believe that things have changed forever - but we may have a mix of people and businesses doing more online training even after this pandemic has run its course. I believe people are truly thinking "outside of the box" of past learning opportunities and noticing that it is possible and perhaps even more cost effective and efficient.

I look forward to positive movement forward!

Hanifa

GregReverdiau

For sure. My courses are pretty long as while it's a prep for a certification, most people don't have the time to dedicate to it for an extended period of time, so this is actually the perfect time to tackle it and get it done.

VipinJoshi

Not a drastic change, but still change is change. I have also seen a change of 75% increase over last month's sales. This change is due to the pandemic that arose in countries. There is no way to have a face to face teaching, students are looking for online content and since Udemy has a strong platform base on web and hence it all ended up here. I hope it goes to the max by the end of the month.

#Stay Safe #Stay Home #Prepare online modules

@Hanifa
wrote:
I do believe that things have changed forever - but we may have a mix of people and businesses doing more online training even after this pandemic has run its course. I believe people are truly thinking "outside of the box" of past learning opportunities and noticing that it is possible and perhaps even more cost effective and efficient.
I look forward to positive movement forward!
Hanifa

NafiulAlamNayem

wow! Great explanation, I appreciate it so much.

DanielEvans

Can you show the data from which you've used to reach this conclusion?

Whilst many people are experiencing a surge in paid-for enrollments, here are threads in which people from both business sectors are proclaiming that they are witnessing a drop in sales in contrast to a typical month...

CarlosDeLeon

@DanielEvans

That's just speculation and personal opinion/belief, expressed as if they were facts.

JM30

Thnx a lot for sharing n discussing great ideas with us. I m so greatful to learn a lot from experts like everyone here since I m a new instructor.

GregoryCaremans

I've seen an overall 2x sales in comparison with April 2019, which will make this my best month ever. Don't forget the period February till July is usually slow. This is crazy.

One thing though: I haven't seen this growth in all my courses. Some of them are just 'normal'. And the growth has mainly come from 'organic', meaning my top selling courses have been doing even better, the slow ones remained stable.

I wish this could last... but somehow I don't want to put my hopes too high here. A lot will depend on Udemy's policies. They've clearly decided to embrace this whole Corona situation for the better. However, what will be their position once everyone is back at work...

I'm crossing fingers, but have my doubts ...

SivakamiS2017

Yes, we should not expect this spike to last post pandemic. But we can hope for some of it to remain 😉

MinervaSingh66

Hi. I have an update of sorts. my courses are in the data science category. My March-May was better than last year. However, I have had a sharp decline in June. Frankly, my June performance is lower than what it was 2 years ago. Has someone else also seen a decline in their sales 1 week into June in the data science or any categories? It seems that while my courses are discounted during the promotional sales, Udemy is not actively promoting them. Is anyone else in a similar situation?

DYay2810

Yes, start to June has not been that promising for me either.

unknown

June is off to a slow start for me as well. More specifically, the first 2 days were huge, then it really slowed down.

LawrenceMMiller

May was down 10% from April, which was fine with me since April was such a killer month. I will be happy if June can just be down another ten percent from May. It will still be very good.

But, like everyone else, the first week has been slow. Maybe a sale will kick in this month.