Lex DeVille
Sweeping Shadows From Dreams
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Why? Is it because it would violate control? Or is oversaturated with courses? I am asking as this is where I want to start, I will be preparing a course for the accountancy qualification which I've completed a few years ago, with my first course being a beginner level course, in fact I am about to buy the camera, microphone and a Camtasia subscription, would you just go straight to your own website? I thought Udemy had a high number of users from the start so even if they get a massive revenue share it's still worth it for accessing high number of customers/students quickly.
As Andy said, it basically comes down to control. When you publish on Udemy you have very little control over your product.
If You Publish to Udemy WITHOUT Joining Their Promotional Program
If you don't join Udemy's promotional program, your course won't get seen or advertised and you won't make sales without bringing your own audience. Assuming you bring an audience, you might get sales, but you won't capture their emails, so they're not your audience. In this case, it doesn't make sense to give up control to Udemy since you're going to put in the footwork to bring an audience anyway. Might as well bring them through your email/website/platform so you can market to them however you want and whenever you want.
Publishing to Udemy as Part of Their Promotional Program
If you publish to Udemy and join their promotional program, you will almost certainly make *some* sales. Unfortunately, Udemy will discount your course into oblivion, selling it at $11-$12 per student no matter what price you set, and giving you $1 to $3 of the sale UNLESS...you bring your own audience.
Course Topic Matters
If you pick a course topic that doesn't have a lot of demand, or if there are already way too many courses on that topic, especially good courses, then you still won't make any money. I have like 20 freelance courses published. COMBINED, they generate about as much as a single course generates on my other Udemy account.
Multiple Courses Matters
Unless you bring a huge audience to Udemy, you'll barely make any money by publishing a single course. So you'll need to publish multiple courses just to build up to a full-time income.
Audience Mindset Matters
If your audience is a bunch of whiney losers from third-world countries (a huge portion of my freelance Udemy audience is), then you can expect that those whiney losers will consume your content, leave 1-star ratings, and contact Udemy for a full refund. If you publish multiple courses, those same whiney losers will buy ALL of your courses and follow the same process before refunding ALL of them and Udemy will do nothing about it.
Negative Reviews Are Extremely Damaging
My freelance courses have hundreds of pages of 5-star reviews and a low ratio of 3-star or below reviews. Nonetheless, it only takes a few negative reviews before Udemy stops promoting a given course. Suddenly, sales drop off a cliff, and your course dies.
Knowing What I Know Now...
If I launched a course business today, I would do it through a platform that affords more control (Wordpress, ThriveCart, or New Zenler). Then I would set up a simple sales page and run ads from Google and YouTube and skip all the bullshit in between.