[Zanardi]

Update, June 18th, 2017:

These past days I didn't have the time nor the energy to take care of my business, because I had lots of classes and exams. However, the system that I built self-sustained. Rock bottom, but self-sustained. The traffic is abysmal (<5 views a day), the Youtube channel reached 5 subscribers, but it's now back to 4. On the bright side, I uploaded another video, which didn't have so many views.

The next week I'll be able to take care of my business more.

Today, I looked over my earnings. They are a measly fifteen bucks from 4 students. The pattern that I saw is that they all bought this course from coupon codes, the highest price they paid being 15$. It may be too early to tell, but if my potential customers are willing to pay 10-15$, then there is no way they'll pay the 50 euros that I asked for. For this reason, I reduced the course's price from 50 to the lowest possible: 20 euros.

Because I "spammed" Quora, they don't allow me anymore to post links to my Udemy course (they automatically delete them), but they allow me to post link to my Youtube channel. This situation doesn't help me much, so I'll delete my Quora account and start all over again. No "spamming" this time. The waiting period between the account deletion request and the actual deletion is 14 days, so I'll be back in a fortnight time. I hope they don't ban me

[Zanardi]

Update, November 25th, 2017:

I haven't forgotten about my course, I was a bit discouraged, but, looking back, I admit that I had no real reason whatsoever to be like this.

The reason is that now, that I finished the course, I need to promote it somehow. In June I began marketing it on Quora, but I found this process highly inefficient.

Seeing this, I had to admit it for what it is: I suck at promoting. And frankly, I don't want to learn how to do it, because I much prefer focusing on perfecting the skills on my expertise and because, long term, I don't want to be a one man show around my course. I want to focus on other things.

So, the externalizing idea came to my mind again. I could do that once, I can do it again, however for promotion. As I write this post, I am again browsing Fiverr for that matter to search for freelancer that will do this kind of thing. Prices start at $10.

So far, my course had generated $35 as of today (excluding one refund). All the money came from Udemy's promotion system.

A bit offtopic: I just bought from Amazon the book Bachelor Pad Economics. Although it is written with the US male in mind, I am curious to see how much of its knowledge applies to Romania.

[Sonoma]

I'd consider doing targeted FB ads to people who seem interested in that field or who already shop on Udemy

[Zanardi]

Update, December 3rd, 2017:

Listening to Sonoma's advice, I created an offer on Fiverr with what I want. I already have 11 offers. Now, I have to choose one.

Any hints and tips on how to screen? I am a complete newbie so I may as well choose randomly.

[Atomic]

(12-03-2017 11:37 AM)Zanardi Wrote:  

Update, December 3rd, 2017:

Listening to Sonoma's advice, I created an offer on Fiverr with what I want. I already have 11 offers. Now, I have to choose one.

Any hints and tips on how to screen? I am a complete newbie so I may as well choose randomly.

You should start with taking a Facebook ads course on udemy. I just checked, there's a bunch that are only a few hours long and cost $10.

You can probably learn the basics of what you need in a day or two. Then you can experiment yourself and gain even more experience. Or you can decide that you wou is rather hire out for the services, but at least you will understand the major concepts and be versed in the "shop talk.

Side note: TMBA (tropical mba) just out a podcast recently discussing Facebook ads. Check it out. Believe it's title "Creating a Brand" and follows the success of some purse/watch startup.

[Zanardi]

Update, December 9th, 2017:

After a few days' conversations, I came to terms with a Fiverr freelancer to do the Facebook promotion for my course. The allocated budget is 75$.

Right now, I have no actual clue what to expect as a return from this campaign, because I never did this before in my life. I hope to break even or show a small profit.

Let's see what happens.

A little side note: yesterday I received about twelve bucks from Udemy, the revenue for October. And for the first time I didn't think to spend them on some Steam games which were on sale, but I chose to keep them on my Skrill account, for further profit reinvesting. I feel I did the right thing.

[Zanardi]

Update, December 12th, 2017:

Made the payment, let's see what happens.

[Zanardi]

Update, December 18th, 2017:

The lady freelancer delivered her gig and right now I have an ad running for 10 days. Let's see what happens.

*insert optimistic icon here*

[MrRemi]

I had a look at the intro of your course and your YT channel. I feel like the presentation quality and design isn't sufficient. Personally, I like to see who's teaching. Examples Martin Shkreli or this guy. I also had a subscription to datacamp.com, where also you get to see the tutors beside the slides.

There are a lot of courses that are for free (Youtube) or paywalled at a very high quality (e.g. datacamp.com, masterclass.com). "Programming for Beginners" is very broad. There are a ton of courses on this (e.g. coursera.com or also on Udemy). Also the 3* rating isn't the best selling point.

I don't want to discourage you. I know it's a big effort what you did. It's just to give my reasoning why personally I would not purchase it.

[Zanardi]

Hey!

Thank you for your feedback!

I heard many disputes between showing or not showing my face. I have no problem in showing my face, but for technical reasons I couldn't.

Let me explain: because I don't want to have legal problems with using counterfeit software, I had to choose software which have free licenses. For the slides I used the FreeOffice pack (which, to my surprise, can be a serious replacement for MS Office) and for screen recording, I had to choose between pirating Camtasia or using a free CamStudio. Camtasia allowed me to show my face, CamStudio didn't (yes, it's much lower quality than Camtasia, but it has its basic functions). Because I bought a new house and I am in the process of moving, a Camtasia license is not my priority right now, but if showing my face will help boost my sales then I'll gladly do it in the near future.

Regarding the course title, I had some discussions with the Udemy chaps. Before beginning to build the course, I did a search for possible competition on Udemy. I only found this course. As my course is aimed toward beginner programmers, this is the best I could come up with. Any suggestions to further improve the course's name are welcomed.

About the 3*, it's a bit odd, IMO. Udemy allows the users to rate the course with stars (as you saw), but to also give their feedback on more specific things, like the usefulness of the course and how knowledgeable the teacher is. I got top grades for every specific thing, but only 3* overall. I left a message to the poster, kindly asking him what I can do to improve it, but I didn't get any response.

You're not discouraging me. I know I have many blindspots and things that I don't see. Thank you for your feedback and I am open to communication.

[Heart Break Kid]

How do sales work when Udemy puts all their courses at 10 USD? Udemy seems to do this all the time, do they pay the content creators the sum difference of the original price vs the discount?

Ie, your course is 200 USD
I buy that course for 10 USD because Udemy has one of their billion sales

How much would the owner of the course get paid?

[Zanardi]

No, Udemy doesn't pay the creators the sum difference you mentioned. To answer your previous question, I didn't get any sale on my course while Udemy chose do make discounts to it. I even tried for a month to lower the price for my course to 10 USD and I didn't get any sale. Ironically, all the sales were when the course was at 50 USD, because other affiliates sold my course through coupons.

[Zanardi]

Update, December 19th, 2017:

I just remembered that, even if a part of the promotion is given to somebody else, this doesn't mean that I have to get lazy and not produce any content. This means that I'll have to keep producing videos for my Youtube channel.

[Zanardi]

Update, December 21st, 2017:

I processed and uploaded the first 30 seconds of every lecture on my Youtube channel. I also programmed when they will go online: every Monday, 7:00 AM, Romanian time (EEST). I have content assured until April 30th, 2018.

I also added on my list to acquire a Camtasia licence and to re-shoot all the videos with my face on them.

[Zanardi]

Update, December 22nd, 2017:

I searched the web for resources on promotion and I discovered that the strategy to take is to make my course known to a very, very, very large number of people (*) and hoping some of them will purchase and to build social proof by handing free coupons in exchange for a feedback and stars (hopefully, 5). The social proof seems to be a key component in ranking my course higher in the Udemy search engine.

Personally, I kinda dislike giving away my course for free, for the simple reason that it doesn't present such low-value content, but it seems like I have to do this.

I also found articles and blog posts with negative stuff about Udemy. To name a few:

1. The communication to your students is managed by them. Practically, the students are Udemy's, not mine;
2. Multiple promotions in which hordes of courses are given with 10$;
3. The commissioning system, which is highly unfavorable to instructors;
   

I agree with the things mentioned above. Many times I saw my 50$ course being sold at 10$ and because many people want to buy it cheap, all my 8 students bought my course using coupons, which, along with their commissioning system, seriously pilfered my earnings.

It seems that, actually, Udemy is a launch platform which is good for me getting experience and seeing how stuff works. The next step would be to sell independently.

I am not the one noticing that the rate of course completion is very low here. I am not sure if should I be glad or sad. I should be glad because it's free money (albeit a small amount) or I should be sad because I don't get any reviews or serious feedback? The chap that gave me three stars had a completion rate of 8%. He was the most serious student I have.

---

(*) - is it called awareness?

[Zanardi]

Update, December 26th, 2017:

For a while, a dilemma is into my mind:

I have ideas for 5 or 6 more courses. All those courses are about more general or more specialized topics of programming. So far, I thought to begin producing the next course after I have the promotion of my course down.

But what if I begin creating the second course anyway and deal with what happens later? The upside is that I'll have more income streams (as low as they may be), but the downside is that I have a low fan base to begin with, so I can use my existing course to promote the next one with a low success.

[roid]

I looked at your youtube channel and I watched only 5 seconds of it before I had to stop it. Your slides are bad. They look like they're from the 80s. The videos look like they were done to generate traffic to your udemy courses instead of adding value. I don't like what I see. Also programming for beginners? Who exactly are you targetting here? You're attacking too far broad of a market segment, that's why you don't get much sales.

[Zanardi]

Thanks. Now I know what to work on!

[Zanardi]

Update, December 27th, 2017:

Because I am going to re-shoot the videos anyway, I began tweaking the scenarios for them. The first step is re-reading them and see if anything needs removing or correcting. The second step is to do some extra research to see if there is anything that should be added to the scenarios.

[testos111]

I have just finished creating an online video tutorial and I'm really excited to start the selling process. Just had a small doubt regarding Udemy.

I plan to sell this course in India through my own website and to customers in other countries via Udemy.

I just came to know that Udemy does not have a "exclusive to Udemy" rule so I can do this.

But the question I have is that I've seen Udemy often has discounts running. I don't want to be in a scenario where the price for my Indian audience is higher than the Udemy price due to these discounts.

So is there any way to not let Udemy apply discounts to your course?