Does anyone actually pay full price for Udemy courses?
I'm considering making some software development courses, but its difficult to estimate revenue because they always have sales where everything goes from $200 to $20. There are $200 courses with only 2 hours of content and a ton of ratings, so I have to wonder are any of those ratings from full price purchasers. I would personally NEVER pay that much given the sea of other options.
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I had someone pay $199 for my course a couple of weeks ago and I thought about writing to them and telling them to get a refund.
I've probably had about 3 people pay full price and I have over 10,000 students.
I wish they'd just make all the courses $10 and not have any pricing options because until they do I don't want to be the only person been honest with the pricing. I think Udemys review system is even worse than their pricing system tho.
I can't complain too much I get good money from them each month.
I'm curious so I've sent you an email :)
Hi @arc4randall, Right now I am helping a guy make a new Udemy course. This guy is one of the handful "top" teachers on Udemy. And when you are a "top 10 instructor" you are guaranteed a lot of income - from 1/4th to over $1m a year, YES. I have my own old not-so-successful Udemy course too (it was a practice and warm up). So let me give you a different perspective to almost every comment, review and feedback I read about Udemy.
The biggest and most apparent criticism about Udemy is about money. Everyone will tell you Udemy is cheap, their promotions are unfair, never put anything on Udemy, etc.
My opinion: If you are so well known and doing so well and so confident of being able to pull in as many students online as Udemy can bring you, then and only then, kiss Udemy goodbye and never go there. Let me rephrase this for you. If you are "as big of a brand" in your specific field as Udemy is in the field of online education then by all means feel free to never publish on Udemy.
But if you don't own such a strong brand, and I can tell you 99.9999% of money-related criticism of Udemy is from those who do not own such brands, then I think even $1/month in your pocket is infinitely better and more generous than what you earn by publishing your content on YouTube or other platforms where they pay you US $0.00 exactly.
The fact that Udemy is bringing in people in the millions, showing your course to them, and manages to earn you a few $$ each time they buy your course, is an amazing gift and an opportunity for you to earn something while building your name and your brand.
Let me also put it in a different way. Making a 5 hour technical course takes less than a week's time if you know your stuff well - 1 hour a day - I have done it so I know. I spent a week 6 years ago and it is still making me US $20/m. What else can you do, or what else could I do in a few days to deserve that [little] income still after so many years!? Unless if you are a stock market guru, I doubt you have an answer to that - if you do please share, I would love to hear.
I think you are asking the wrong question here. Money follows passion and smart and hard work not the other way around. If you love doing what you do then you will love teaching others about what you know well no matter how much you get paid for it. I bet you there are a lot of high quality and free videos on YouTube on the subject you are going to teach. In fact that's the first thing any experienced Udemy instructor would tell you: Everything and anything that you find on Udemy, can also be found elsewhere for free. So I think to get paid anything for what "should" otherwise be free is more than fair.
Focus on your core skills, build a personal brand and don't think too much about the money upfront.
I considered putting a course on udemy; a version of a full-blown course on my website. I would use as a lead magnet. But no way would I put anything close to my full version because of their cheap sales.
Their approach to pricing is unethical. I am now hesitant to use Udemy because of this.
Don't forget the corporate revenue stream. Udemy makes deals with companies where their employees have unlimited access to courses.
Does this mean people accessing my course from a company account I wouldn't get paid? Or that its just free to them but I still get paid by the company?
I believe the way it works is that UDemy would bill the company for all courses accessed by the employees and then the trainers would get their share.
But I'm not 100% sure of the mechanics. I've been on the receiving end (as an employee).
I never do.
To add to previous comments, if you are looking at revenue estimation .. model it at 94% discount ...
I am not sure if its the same case globally ... but from India ... you can pretty much get most courses (any) at 94% after some going back and forth on the payment page or coming back later ... almost 99% courses sell for $10 or lower from India logins
never pay full price for udemy courses, they have sales so often you can always wait a week or two for the next sale. I think it's generally known to overprice your course by 10x because of the constant sales bringing it down to $9.99 - $12.99
Ya this is what I figured. No way you can sell a course for that high. You can actually get some amazing courses for free if you know Hindi (I do not unfortunately) but the quality of free courses in English isn't that good for the topics I've looked up
....then they'll pull the rug on us
I don’t think you pay $200 , almost all the courses go for $9.99 and the trick to it is to go visit a course in Udemy and then come out and you will get an email showing up that course on sale for discounted price , be it $199 or what so ever
I don't think so, Udemy always have a promotion and i believe anyone who has visit Udemy in the past know this.
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I totally agree. Why not price classes at ~$50 then discount down to $20 from there.
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