Guide Overview
This guide will define for you the 5 most important areas and tactics in establishing your successful course business.
When you are intending to develop and sell courses on the Udemy platform, even before you jump to thinking about what will be in your course, how you will film it, what kind of Facebook ads you will create, there are some simple but valuable preparatory steps you can take to better prepare for the journey.
In this first part of our guide to selling courses on Udemy, we present five often overlooked or underestimated steps that will help set the tone for a successful path to creating and selling Udemy courses.
1. Get Started on Udemy
Before you jump to thinking about creating your course, get to know Udemy better and understand some key instructor to do's. Udemy's interface will guide you through the process of becoming a paid instructor, nevertheless, it's good to know what to expect and generally what the steps are ahead of time.
Here are the highlights you should know:- Open an instructor account – There is no fee to open a Udemy instructor account.
- Create a Paypal or Payoneer account – These are the two ways Udemy can pay you.
- Minimum course requirements – To sell a Udemy course it must be at least 30 minutes and 5 lectures long.
- Udemy's quality review process – Just something to keep in mind, there are some minimal checks. You can look here for further details and download a checklist that is full of great suggestions for making your course superior.
- ou retain the rights to the content of your online course – Helpful to know if you are daydreaming about other channels to sell your Udemy course.
- You can teach in any language.
- Your identity will be verified. This usually takes just a few days, but can take several weeks.
2. Set Your Goals
This is an easily overlooked step in the frenzy to making money online by selling Udemy courses. It's essential to have the big picture and really think about why you want to sell courses on Udemy. Your financial and personal goals will serve to motivate you in your course creation efforts, help you manage your expectations and time, and guide other big decisions such as course content and format.
The key goals you should consider are:1. Income. s your goal to achieve passive or active (full time) income? Do you envision a minimum income per month that is acceptable for your efforts? Or do you not really care? How do you define passive income and what does selling courses on Udemy have to do with your idea of acceptable passive income? Are you trying to save money for something – a car perhaps – and selling courses on Udemy is a way to do that? Are you looking to teach online as a full time career? If so, you have a whole set of decisions to make that are related to that aspiration.
Having an income goal attached to your Udemy instructor journey will serve to either motivate you to take the steps to achieve the goal or make you feel great and spur you on when you reach or surpass it. It will help you plan for the long term, in terms of deciding how much attention you are willing to dedicate to the process of selling courses on Udemy.
2. Time/effort. Following along the line of setting an income goal, it's easy to think that it doesn't matter how much time you put into creating your online course - after all, it's just for extra money, right? This can be especially true if the course that you are creating is on topic that is fun for you to work on.
What if we told you that it will likely take 40-100 hours idea to finish in order to create your first course and start selling on Udemy? (If you think it will take less time, you may want to revisit your decision to create a Udemy course). And, it probably will not be all that great? Ask yourself, how will this affect your motivation and desired payout?
As you would with any job opportunity, ask yourself, what hourly rate would you like to earn when comparing the time needed to create and promote your course vs. your Udemy earnings from that course? If you only want to put little effort into course creation, is $15 per hour OK? And how long are you willing to wait until your Udemy course sales reach your desired hourly rate or income goal? If you are creating a 9-hour Masterclass course should your goal be to achieve a higher hourly rate, giving it up to say 1 year?
Putting a value on your time and effort and deciding what selling courses on Udemy is worth to you will help keep you focused and on track. If you don't value your time, you may just keep putting off setting time aside to finish your course.
3. Udemy or Own Website/School. Further putting income and time goals into perspective, it can be helpful to think about the long term end game. Is your goal to quickly get a course up on Udemy, let the sales roll in organically for as long as people are interested and call it a day? Or, are you aiming to earn money online full time as a career, eventually creating your own website of courses or online school and educational brand?
How far you want to take your online teaching career will help lay the foundation for creating your first Udemy course, your engagement and promotion efforts, updating courses, creating new courses and so on. Even if you are undecided, it helps to think about if long term online teaching is even in the realm of possibility for what you are teaching. For example, if you are a full time yoga instructor selling yoga online courses, it may not make sense to stop practicing yoga as an in-person teacher. However, if you are programmer who is looking to work from home forever, you may very well want to work hard to get a reputation on Udemy that allows you to do so eventually.
4. Partner or Not. People assume that Udemy instructors create and sell Udemy courses on their own. Many instructors, such as Phil Ebiner, partner with other experts to create courses. As with any partnership, the dynamics to consider are the same. Who will do what? How will revenue be shared? Are you on the same page work ethics-wise? Etc. Bringing on a partner can have many benefits – new/different content and skills, accountability for getting the course created, someone to share the effort with so you can get going faster.
3. Do a Self Assessment for Time and Skills
Many Udemy instructors would suggest starting with something obvious and easy as your first course topic. But if your obvious skills are in a highly competitive area, such as Python, you might consider running through other skills or interests that could be valuable as a first, or if you are already an instructor, follow on course. Maybe you know Python, but you are also an amateur snowboarder or rockin banjo player. Can you make a course on either of those skills?
Or, maybe you want to become a Udemy instructor, but can't think of anything obvious to teach. The point is, do a robust skills assessment of yourself - even just identifying your hobbies and interests or things you want to learn more about. Ask yourself, "What do people ask me for advice or information about?" or "What do I readily talk to and advise people about?" The answer could be something like "I spend hours teaching my son how to build complex lego structures". You can then use this self-assessment for the next step – Choosing a course topic.
Along with brainstorming your personal skills, you must ask yourself how much time will you realistically have to work on creating your course? If you think you might need 50 hours to create your course – will you simply work a full week start to finish? Weekends? Over the Christmas holidays? How long are you willing to drag the course creation out? If you have a partner, how can you work together time-wise?
Once you have thought through thos, block out the time on your calendar. Make appointments with your partner(s) or anyone else that you may need help from. For example. decide which day you are going to go out and purchase your equipment (or sit at your laptop and do it) or learn how to use it.
4. Choose and Validate Your Udemy Course Topic
This is the most important step to setting yourself up for success selling courses on Udemy. In addition to the skills assessment that you will have done in the previous step, several other factors should influence your choice of topic. Ultimately it is up to you to take all of these into consideration, weigh the pros and cons and then just go for it.
1. Course level and length. Where to start? Short course for beginners? Long course covering all levels? Long course covering advanced topics? Maybe you have a skillset that allows you to teach beginners, but another skillset that allows you to teach an advanced level course topic. Which should you do?
There is no right or wrong answer, but in general on Udemy, longer courses sell more. The length of your course also affects your ranking (longer is better). That said, if you are teaching a beginner level course on a fairly light topic don't intentionally make your course long or you risk making it boring, and you will lose students and reviews.
Beginner courses, however, typically have a larger audience (more people are "curious" to try out a topic). Attracting a larger audience can help you begin to build an audience for follow on courses, or even your own website. Thus, it's important to weigh this decision with your goals and self-assessment criteria.
Not sure what to do? Pick something you love. I you are just starting out and really don't know what to do, our advice is to chalk your first course up to gaining experience and learning to sell courses on Udemy and just go for it. Just focus on the process.
2. Validating your Udemy Course Topic. Now that you have one or a few course ideas that meet your time, skills and income goals, the real work and value comes in researching and "validating" your topic choice (s). It's not enough to just decide to teach what you know. You must figure out if there are enough people who will pay for what you are willing to teach to make it worth your while.
How do you do this? Through an exercise called "validation". Validating your Udemy course topic means doing the research required to determine who is your audience, how big is it, are they willing to pay for a course in your topic area and how much, and who else is selling courses in your topic area.
Hare some the key considerations when validating your course topic idea:1. Demand/Size of Audience. As a good start to estimating the demand for your course, we suggest you follow the tips outlined in Teachinguide's comprehensive article, "Top Tools for Validating Your Online Course".
A note on number of students: While the number of students enrolled in other courses similar to yours can give you a sense for demand, keep in mind that there is always a chance that a lot of those students did not pay for the course. Instructors, especially newer ones, often give free coupons out to get enrollments and create an audience. Focus more on reviews and the number of reviews to assess demand.
1. Willingness and ability to pay. You may have a lot of people interested in your topic, but will they be willing to pay for that knowledge? Would YOU pay for it? Look for other channels of learning in your chosen topic area that people pay money to obtain – books, related products on Amazon, memberships or subscriptions, etc.
As a Udemy instructor, we recommend that you assume most students will be paying $10 per course. Can you attract enough students with your chosen topic to make it worth your while? If you want to earn $100 a month, you will need on average about 20 students a month (20X$10X50%). If your goals are much loftier, if you are putting together a longer or more time consuming course, and would like to get more out of it, you might be aiming to earn $1000 a month selling courses on Udemy. In that case you will need to attract 200 students a month. Can your topic draw that kind of crowd?
2. Competition and Substitutes. This is one of the most important factors to assess when validating your course topic. What other sources of knowledge, or substitutes, exist for what you want to teach? Books? Youtube videos? Webinars? Bootcamps? Look on Skillshare, particularly if your course is a creative one to see what competition exists that people are paying for.
Of course, you need to look at your direct competition on Udemy and assess who is selling courses on Udemy and how. You need to look at the competition's content, pricing, landing page, reviews and more.
What you are hoping for is that you will choose a topic that is high in demand, that people will pay at least $10 for, and which doesn't have too much competition on Udemy. How much competition is too much? The answer depends somewhat on the demand trends for your chosen topic. A hot, trending topic in the beginning phases of growth may still provide decent earnings opportunities, especially if you can improve upon courses already being taught.
Otherwise, very generally speaking, should be looking for just 2-3 pages of results maximum in terms of competing courses, and which have a few dozen reviews. This will give you an indication that your topic is in demand, and at the same time you have a good shot at selling courses in that topic area. 10 pages of competing courses, most of which have lots of reviews, probably tells you that there is too much competition and that you've missed the boat on your chosen topic.
Finally, you must also be asking yourself when assessing your competition – can I beat them? Can I improve in a meaningful way over what is already offered? There may be many ways to do this. Perhaps your competitors are using mostly voice over slides or their video presentation is lacking. Maybe their course is poorly outlined and has information gaps. Or, maybe the course has not been updated in over a year.
It's a good idea to take some of your competitor's courses, or at least thoroughly read reviews to get a sense for what improvements or edge you can gain with your particular course.
Teachinguide would be remiss to not point out here that assessing the competition is one area where the Teachinguide app can greatly assist. It can provide even more insights than Udemys' Marketplace Insights or many of these methods. It even offers a competition monitor to track your competitors over time. If you are a bit stuck trying to assess your competition and validate your course topic, consider doing a free trial.
Note: It is unlikely that most people's courses will fall into Udemy's restricted topic list, but if you are unsure, here is a link.
5. Name Your Udemy Course
Selling courses on Udemy has become such a phenomenon that you need to think about any way you can differentiate your course, attract an audience and gain an edge. Choosing a well-researched and well thought out name is one way to do so. You may not believe it, but your course title can make or break your course sales.
Put yourself in your potential audience's shoes. All other things equal, which course would you go for:
"Make Money Online - 5 Easy Steps" or "Ways to earn income online"
The first title has three advantages over the second title: it is action oriented, it contains a frequently searched keyword phrase "Make Money Online", and it tells you what is in the course – "5 Easy Steps".
The second title leaves much open to interpretation. Your potential students may wonder - How many ways are there and how long will it take me to get through them? Income - is that the same as money? Is it easy or hard? How much effort will it take? For the same $10 most people would go for the more certain outcome.
The Importance of Title Keywords to Sell Courses on Udemy
A while back Teachinguide wrote about the importance of researching keywords and including them in the title and subtitle of your course name, as well as on your landing page, in order to rank high on Udemy. For a refresher on this topic, refer to our article "Udemy Search Rankings – How to Get Your Course High on the List"
- Put keywords up front in your title and sub-title, not at the end.
- Good: Adobe Premiere Pro Video Editing Course
- Bad: The Spectacular Complete All-in-One Video Editing Course in Adobe Premiere Pro
- Include the benefits that a student will get from taking your course.
- Example: Adobe Premiere Pro: Start Editing Videos Like a Professional
- Example 2: Wordpress Websites: Build Your Own Theme in One Hour
Keywords help your course show up in the search ranking. Stating the benefit of the course entices a student to click on your course.
Phil Ebiner, an instructor who has made over $1 million selling courses on Udemy provided this additional tip for naming your course: It's a good idea to experiment with different names for the same course and see which titles/subtitles lead to better rankings and conversions. If you do this, make sure that when you create your course slides or record your course video that, instead of stating a specific course title when talking, refer to your course more generally. That way if you change the course title, you don't have to re-record video or re-do slides.
So that's it for the Preparation phase to start selling courses on Udemy. In Part 2 of this guide, we'll address planning your course and creating content.