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42 Comments

Just hit 100 sales and $900 on Udemy!!! [RoR course]

I'm overwhelmed!
A few months ago I asked IH whether it would make sense to make a Ruby on Rails course and...
you motivated me for work!
I spend 2 whole months of quarantine recording 18 hours of video and...
Released my course "Ruby on Rails 6: Learn 25+ gems and build a Startup MVP 2020" in the end of May and...
Now is the first of July and:

  • I just hit 100 sales
  • $897,47
  • My course is placed 5th on the first page of Udemy organic "Ruby on Rails" search
  • My course is 1 of 3 courses in the category featured as "Bestseller"
  • Through only 11 people rated the course, 10 people rated it 5* and only 1 person rated it 4,5* => Currently top rated Ruby on Rails course, hehe!

Some takeaways:

  • If you post on Udemy, be ready to sell for $10-13 and get $1,5-$7 of a sale.
  • I had a few people who paid $50 for the course, but most of them made a refund :( ["why buy a $50 course if I can get 5x$10 courses"]
  • Make a good quality course that you would be ready to pay for yourself.

The course itself:
https://www.udemy.com/course/ruby-on-rails-6-learn-20-gems-build-an-e-learning-platform/?couponCode=INDIEBROTHERS

Have a beautiful beautiful day!🥳

P.S. If you're interested in my udemy experience, course, or anything - will answer in comments :)

  1. 2

    Well done @Yareki., Great to see this success!

  2. 2

    Very well done, congrats 🎉

  3. 2

    I wish Udemy would disappear. Creators needs to be properly compensated.

    1. 1

      The big downside of Udemy is that you cannot build a real audience.
      The audience belongs to Udemy...
      I've choosed to self host my courses with Podia, never going back !

    2. 1

      Udemy does an INSANE amount of marketing and advertising for you...

      Not only that, they are hosting your entire course, providing a LMS, create quizzes, assignments, forums.

      They do a lot for you, and even though you get perhaps maybe, $2-$6 per course, they have the volume to make it worth while.

    3. 1

      Each platform has it's own ups and downs. Udemy is the "$10 - any course" place. To make more $, one would have to explore other ways to sell content online.

  4. 2

    Awesome! Good work! I have a few question, if you don't mine.

    How did you choose what technology to make the course on?

    Is Udemy the only platform you've launched on? If so, why?

    Roughly how many hours did you put into making it?

    1. 1

      Which technology? - Well, I love Ruby on Rails. That's my topic!
      Udemy - I bought courses there in the past and know what to expect.
      I'm also thinking of launching on Skillshare, Bitdegree, own platform.
      How many hours - I didn't count, but a lot. I started in mid-March and finished at the end of May, spending roughly the whole workday on this project.
      But in the end it's such a great exprience!

  5. 2

    Nice one mate!! Well done!

  6. 2

    Hi, congratulations! I would like to ask you something about what you have done to launch your course. Any advertising or social media "anything"? Some research for a better launch? Thank you.

    1. 1

      Actually I wanted to learn how organic sales would look without any marketing, so I didn't do any (bad decision, you should!), but as you see the sales are quite steady and the students are happy.
      Also 2 weeks ago I finally made a post on a telegram channel and it brought in a few extra learners :)

  7. 1

    I don't know who you are but I am very happy for you. My hearty congrats. :)

  8. 1

    Happy for you! I still think you deserve more though. Some people are happy with Udemy because of it's discoverability, but I personally think should look into other course creation platforms, maybe? Possibly exploring audio courses as well (since I think it could be big in the near future!)

    But congratulations and wishing you all the best. Your course looks awesome!

    1. 1

      Indeed, audio does sound promising. I think it would work great for humanities (law, literature, philosophy, psychology, religion).
      As far as I remember, there was an indiehacker creating an audio course platform.
      Not for programming through :)

      1. 1

        That's interesting, since a friend of mine actually managed to learn how to code via audio lessons. Got a junior engineering job 3 months later. I guess maybe it's cause it hasn't been done yet? We'll see what the future brings!

  9. 1

    Congratulations! You might also want to sell it in Gumroad :)

  10. 1

    Well done! 🥳 Why did you choose Udemy compared to selling it yourself via your own website eventually?

    1. 2

      I have 0 following on the internet so I figured Udemy would help to find the first customers.
      As I said in one of the other comments, I will eventually host the course on my own platform.
      Why own platform:

      • Flexible pricing (not 10-13$ like on Udemy)
      • No censorship / any content, any time
      • 100% revenue goes to the creator, no platform fee
      • "Competing" products are not being offered on your landing page
      • Access to student emails & contact info (create community, upsell, cross sell)
      1. 2

        Fellow Udemy (and also self-hosted) teacher here. Your reasoning is sound, I think Udemy is a great place to get started if you have no following and/or don't know marketing.

        Congrats on the first month success! I've been going for a little over 18 months now (10k students) - feel free to drop me an email if you have any questions / would like any advice.

      2. 1

        Hadn't read all comments but sounds great. Start there first and move on if it works 👌🏼

  11. 1

    Congrats !

    Have you considered making a dedicated site for the course or planning to stick to Udemy ?

    1. 2

      I am not planning to launch on Teachable or Thinkific.
      In the course I teach people to "build the best udemy clone", so naturally I've built it myself :)
      Here's the link to the demo: https://corsego.herokuapp.com/
      Not yet did I post the course on the platform that I built, but I intend to do so in mid July, and see how the platform works in real life, as well as see how the course will sell on it's own platform.

  12. 1

    Congratulations ! I hope your numbers grow exponentially in the months to come. If you dont mind , would you share your set-up to do the course? What equipment and software you used. Any tips of what you learned by working 2 months on this?

    1. 1

      It may sound funny and unprofessional, but I used ZOOM to record my screen and "call-center" headphones with a microphone for $50. Some Photoshop for images :)
      First I tried using LOOM for screen recording, but ZOOM felt better for recording 300 videos

      1. 1

        On the contrary, it is encouraging. Best of luck

  13. 1

    Congratulations! :D
    BTW, I wonder that is your course also include how to create the earn royalties system of Skillshare? (Teachers make money based on the number of minutes watched in classes every month.)

    1. 1

      My course will hopefully be available on Skillshare over the week, and than we'll put their monetization system to the test. As for today, I have arounf 10,000 minutes watched on Udemy.

  14. 1

    Great work Yaroslav! And thanks for giving a discount to fellow IH'ers. Will you launch on Teachable? How do the other learning platforms compare in terms of ease of use and payout to teachers?

    1. 2

      Ease of use: adding content to Bitdegree is a bit easier than Udemy.
      Freedom:
      Bitdegree feels more free in terms of content policies and student email collection.
      Udemy is against any way you would collect student emails.
      Tools:
      Udemy has their own version of google analytics to track course views & conversion.
      For today, Bitdegree does not.
      Sales:
      I haven't made a single organic sale on Bitdegree yet: https://www.bitdegree.org/course/building-advanced-web-applications-with-ruby-on-rails
      Udemy is at around 5-7 sales a day today.

      Payout:
      MY promo code: I get 97% of the sale
      Organic search on the platform: I get 50% of the sale
      Udemy adds or affiliates: I get 12 to 25% of the sale
      => "Create an audience and sell to it" would be the right strategy.

      Slideshare: ONLY VIDEO content (no text lectures allowed). I'm in the process of posting the course there now. Payout: people say it's around $0,05/minute watched. I will put that to the test!

      1. 2

        Thank you for the detailed answer @Yareki!

  15. 1

    That's awesome!

    I just ordered my mic to make my first udemy course on a study guide for Terraform. Did you do the video editing yourself? If so, did you have experience beforehand?

    Amazing results btw! Congrats

    1. 1

      I used "Sony Vegas Pro" for some editing. Really simple and intuitive. It takes just a few hours to learn. Here's another "heavily-edited" video I made using the tool https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Eq9Q4SzPJAo

  16. 1

    Interesting insight. Thanks. I am thinking of publishing a course myself too. Is Udemy defacto leading online course community? How about other places such as SkillShare?

    Now, to the monetization part. Do you think it is a good idea to integrate affiliate programs into your courses? Meaning, if you would teach people how to make certain product and refer them to us as to the place where certain product is being made. I think it is a great way to find some influencers and referrals through online courses. And you can certainly make more in commissions that from Udemy...

    Any thoughts?

    1. 1

      Publish on Udemy only if you want many sales at a low price.
      Today udemy & skillshare are the leaders.
      coursera & linkeding learning = HIGH entry barrier.

      Affiliate:
      You are not supposed to add any advertising inside of an Udemy course - you can be banned.
      However Udemy does offer an affiliate API and you can become one. Not sure how it works in practice.

  17. 1

    Proud of you! Would love to have your course on my platform (Jemsplash) once I launch it. More platforms the merrier :)

  18. 1

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