Finding Udemy Courses – You want your students to find yours!
Finding Udemy courses is all about making sure your students find yours but you have to remember that your potential students have a choice. The first decision that they make is whether to buy a course but the most important decision is whether they should buy your course. That being the case, you should at the very least understand what your competitors are doing around you. In other words, you must put yourself in the shoes of your students. Approach the issue as a buyer not a seller.
These are exactly the issues I studied before setting out to create my first course, The Entrepreneurs’ Guide to Startup Funding which has over 1,100 subscribers and it was this knowledge that I then used to create my second Udemy Course (this time created for Udemy instructors); Udmey: Understanding Strategic Course Design.
Udemy Secrets Revealed – Tips and Tactics to create best selling Online Courses
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1. Content
The first and, perhaps most important factor, is content. Is the content of your course the same as one of your competitors? On Udemy, it is possible to look at a competitor’s and see their list of lectures and their titles. This gives you a very good idea of how the course has been put together and how it covers the topic. You will know a great deal more about the topic than the potential student and you need to evaluate your course against this competitor and any other instructors covering a similar topic.
Ask yourself how can you cover the content in a unique manner? How can you make your course more appealing to your potential students? Are there some aspects of the topic which you can stress to make your course come across as more relevant, or more in depth, and therefore better value for your students?
2. Structure
The structure of your course is very important. The student needs to know that their learning experience is going to have a logical flow and cover the topic in an easy to understand sequence. From the instructor’s perspective, there are probably several ways you can choose to approach your topic. How are your competitors doing it? What can you learn from them? I am not advocating copying them, rather seeing how they have organised the material, and encouraging you to be creative and imaginative in the way you organise your material to improve the experience for your students.
3. Media Mix
Udemy is a very flexible platform. The main media type is of course video and 60% of your course content must be in this format. However, you can include slide decks, PDFs, text documents, MP3 Audio files and spreadsheets. In my Strategic Design Course, I even include a downloadable file for you to use with a data visualisation tool, the Omniscope from Visokio, and that has an “.iok” ending!
Take a look at the media mix that your competitors have chosen to use. If you mix up the media and give your students opportunities to learn from you in different formats, you will increase their speed of learning and the enjoyment they will take away from your course. Ask your self how you can re-purpose your materials to make this possible?
4. Style
We all have our own style and you will find yours as you create your course. Take a look at the approach taken by your fellow instructors. Some are comfortable being directly videoed on camera, others create screencasts, using software such as Camtasia or Screenflow, where you cannot see their faces, but they create voice-overs for their presentations.
I want to to also think about the teachers you had in school and college. Which of them had the most engaging style and why? You need to maintain a good pace, vary your tone and intonation. Avoid sounding drab, instead try to be energetic, excited and engaged with your audience. Imagine your student is sitting in front of you and you are taking directly to them and trying to explain your topic to someone who is keen to learn from you. If it helps, borrow a teddy from one of your children and put it on the other side of the Camera/Microphone and talk to it! 🙂
One tip to be more energetic; record your lectures standing up, it definitely makes a difference.
5. Length
There are two aspects of lecture length you need to consider. Firstly the overall length of your course. Bear in mind that longer is not necessarily better. On the other hand, you need to make sure your material covers your topic thoroughly. In setting out the objective of your course, your course materials must cover the subject to ensure that the objective is achieved. As ever, take a look at your competitors. How long are their courses?
The other aspect of length is how long are your lectures? I try to keep to between five and eight minutes each to try to make my course easily digestible. Of course, it is entirely up to you. One suggestion; if you have a lengthy topic split it into two lectures, Part One and Part Two.
6. Categories and Sub Categories
Udemy splits courses into 16 Categories but these are very broad. This does not make it very difficult to decide which category to put your course into. However, as there are several hundred courses in some categories, particularly Technology and Business, it is difficult to understand who your competitors are and which courses they are offering.
In my course, Udemy: Understanding Strategic Strategic Course Design, I have created over 250 sub-categories to make it easier to understand the Udemy landscape. I provide all this data in excel format which is fully downloadable so that new course instructors can do their own analysis to understand the competition their courses will be facing. This makes it much easier and much faster to analyse your competition.
7. Price
Pricing on Udemy ranges from zero (free) to hundreds of dollars. Free courses can be a great funnel for your paid courses and get a separate listing on Udemy. I am preparing one on Startups as a free funnel for my course, The Entrepreneurs’ Guide to Startup Funding. One draw back to this is you cannot see where your sign ups come from.
If you charge for your course, you can vary the price at any time, although this should not be done very often as it will confuse and upset students who may have paid one price and then find the price reduced the following week. You can create free coupons and control these by the number of coupons and the date of expiry. When these are taken up, if you have crafted an individual code for an individual channel, you can see where these sign ups come from.
You should also consider the impact of Udemy’s promotions on your actual revenues, if you decide to sign up to participate in these. If you have a low price and Udmey offers 75% off, your actual income from this sale might only be a few dollars.
A good way to get some guidance on the right pricing strategy is to see what the other instructors are doing on Udemy. Take a look at not just your close competitors, but look at all the courses in your category, or on the whole of Udemy. In my Udemy: Understanding Strategic Design Course, I show you how to do this using a data visualisation tool, the Visokio Omniscope. By providing you with the data in the Visokio format, you are able to download a copy of this expensive software for free from visokio.com and use all of its functionality for free.
8. Subscriptions
The number of students taking a course is a good proxy measuring the quality of the course and the market demand. You should check to see how competing courses are doing. If your competitors have large numbers of sign ups this shows that you are entering a market with a proven market but you are going to have a well presented, well differentiated course to compete.
Don’t forget that a large number of subscribers does not necessarily mean a high earning course, as you cannot see how many of these students gained access through free coupons.
Next Steps…
“Time spent in reconnaissance is seldom wasted”.
This old military adage is certainly true when allied to Udmey. When preparing my first course, I spent a considerable time analysing the courses on Udemy to understand how best to position my course, its structure, content and pricing.
I have made all this analysis available to new instructors in my Udemy: Understanding Strategic Course Design so that you can do this for yourself.
Are You Ready to Learn More About Udemy and How to Create Great Udemy Courses?
Over 1,000 Students (I don’t ever give this Course away with Free Coupons) and over 50 Five Star Reviews!
Now 107 Lectures and 18 and a half hours of content! – the only course on making Udemy Courses you will ever need!
This $497 is only $97 for a very limited time – Enrol Today!
What Students are saying about the Course
“Amazing!
This is not an average course, it’s a comprehensive that covers each and every aspect of course creation. The instructors goes in detail on topics like content creation framework, creating lectures in 30 minutes, 6 step business model, course optimization, course structure, course promotion and a lot more awesome content. The instructors also shares His own strategies and tips to create, publish and promote courses. So, from me it’s 5 stars :)” Nizam K. Five Stars
“Everything you will ever need to know about teaching online
This course is a Monster! It is packed with incredibly valuable information about not only how to make money on Udemy, but how to make great courses that people will benefit from. There is no stone unturned with this course. John covers literally everything. From Black Friday strategy to putting your course on Skillfeed John gives you everything you will need to know to be a successful teacher online. I cannot thank you enough!” Joe P. Five Stars
“A Goldmine of Quality Information
“This course is a literal goldmine of information about how to be a better Udemy instructor by providing what the students want to learn and more importantly, how to make data-driven decisions. (as opposed to the emotional decisions that most of us tend to make) John covers so many areas – creating your course, analyzing your competition, etc. and includes deep dive looks at all sorts of things like number of reviews, number of students, pricing of your course. It’s just amazing. When I enrolled in this course, I was looking for the exact answers that John gives, (I needed to “get my bearings” in this new business model called Udemy) and boy does he give great answers! (answers based on data, not emotion)
If you’ve ever wanted to get a more intense view of the Udemy “universe”, along with precision hawk dives to the real meaty parts that instructors have questions about, this is the course to get.” Dave E. Five Stars
Are You Ready to Learn More About Udemy and How to Create Great Udemy Courses?
Over 1,000 Students (I don’t ever give this Course away with Free Coupons) and over 50 Five Star Reviews!
Now 107 Lectures and 18 and a half hours of content! – the only course on making Udemy Courses you will ever need!
This $497 is only $97 for a very limited time – Enrol Today!
Don’t Forget – I offer a “No Quibble” 100% 30 Day Money Back Guarantee – If you don’t like it – Refund it!