Hey everyone!
Jason here, digital marketing consultant.
And in this Udemy review, for course creators, not students.
We're going to be going through whether or not it makes sense to post a course to Udemy
to try and generate some online income, grow your business, your email list, whatever your
goal may be with your online course.
And the short answer is absolutely not.
No, it is a complete waste of time.
You shouldn't even bother with Udemy at all.
Here are three concrete reasons why, and then at the end, we'll talk about the only two
times that ever would make sense in this universe to even consider working with Udemy for anything,
but really it's just not a great place for creators.
And the reason number three, I'm going to go backwards here.
Reason number three, it's not a great place is, they simply don't actually really care
about their course creators or instructors.
This screenshot from the old Facebook group for Udemy creators, perfectly illustrates
how they just don't actually care, what creators think.
They do surveys like this.
And as you can see, they actually did away with the Facebook group, they went to a forum,
even though nobody asked for a forum, nobody wanted a forum, but they wanted to have a
place where they could easily control the narrative.
And so they abandoned the open Facebook group where people could actually have real discussions
for a forum where they could a hundred percent control it.
Now, the other problem too is, I've actually had the opportunity to talk to some Udemy
instructors, who have made multiple six figures on the platform.
And it's been appalling how poorly they've been treated by Udemy because Udemy really
just doesn't care.
They care about their customers, which are the students, not the course creators, because
as a course creator, they know there are tons of course creators.
And so there's nothing in their business model that says we need to help all the course creators
be successful, because they have so much content.
Now, the second reason leading into, okay, how do you actually do be successful as a
course creator?
Well, the problem is Udemy pricing model is based upon sales, which means they attract
a bunch of people who are just looking for a deal.
So forget about trying to grow a Udemy course and then upsell them on some sort of higher
ticket course, because it's almost virtually impossible.
The entire Udemy platform is based upon taking a 3 or 400 dollars course, that's 10 to 20
hours long and then chopping it down to $10.
That's an absolute steal for students.
I mean, that is awesome, if you want to go to Udemy as a student, like the prices are
insane, they're great, but they're not going to be all that great, if you're a course creator,
because you're only going to make 5 to 20 dollars, per course, even if you've gone through
the process of making a 30 or 40 hour course, it doesn't matter how great your courses is,
it has to be under $50 to be competitive on the platform.
Because the entire business model is price slashing.
Now, reason number one, counting down from three here that Udemy is a terrible place
to try and put together an online course, sell online course grow any type of sustainable
business is because, they actively make sure that you can't grow your email list.
The core to any online business is your customer list, AKA your email list.
So any platform that blocks you from growing your own email list, so that you can be independent
from the platform is just an absolute no-go, if you're a course creator or entrepreneur,
now here's a screenshot from the last course that I posted to Udemy, I did have three courses
live at one time and they actually went through and told me that my course would not be approved
until I took out external links, even external links that were a hundred percent relevant
to the stock market trading course and or external links to just blog posts or additional
videos, that I thought would be helpful to students.
So even though I wasn't linking to my own content, they wanted to make sure that there
was no part in any of my course that drove traffic click off of Udemy.
Now, this wasn't always the case.
When I posted my first course, way back in like 2013, they weren't as strict, linked
to my YouTube channel.
I could link to a one landing page, but they've done away with that because they know they're
going to make more money, if they stop creators from driving traffic off of the platform.
And that's part of their business model, we can't fault tehm for that, but we can choose
not to give them, our course and content, to help grow their business.
Because that's ultimately what you're doing as a course creator, you're growing, you Udemy’s
platform, you're not growing your platform.
It doesn't matter that you can have social and external links in your bio and profile.
Hardly anyone ever clicks on that.
So those are the three concrete reasons why Udemy is an absolute waste of time.
They don't really care about course creators.
You're not going to make that much money anyway, because you're going to have to make a massive
course.
And they're just going to lob it down to 10 to 30 bucks per sale.
And then they're going to block you from actually growing what you need in order to be successful
long-term as a course creator and entrepreneur, which is your email list.
Now I can already feel all the hate comments.
So go ahead and hit that dislike button, if you think this is complete BS and comment
below with your thoughts, but here are the only two reasons why I think you should you'd
ever consider Udemy.
The first situation is you've already made your course, you've already put in all that
work and effort and you're getting hung up on the technical side of it and you already
have a list.
So it's just a matter of, I need a platform where I can put my current content and sell
to my current list.
If that is a situation that describes you for some reason, then Udemy might make sense
for a temporary solution.
Although there are so many great pieces of software that allow you to put together a
course that charge less than $50 a month, it really just doesn't make sense.
You should just do your own course.
And then number two is if you're trying to get exposure and build yourself up as an authority,
there is a certain level of authority that you can build on your Udemy.
Something that I've done, did in the past, when I started my financial advisory practice,
is I actually made a free course so that I could get a lot of people in there.
So I could get comments, engagement.
I could get feedback on my teaching style.
And of course I was able to say that I had a few thousand students, even though those
students were free.
At least it gave me some authority as opposed to a completely new financial advisor who
never made anything and just said, “Hey, I should manage your money”.
And there's no proof that anyone has found anything that I had to say valuable, but really
those are the only two situations.
And frankly, if you want to make money, YouTube is a much better place.
You're going to make so much more money taking all of that content that you were going to
have in a Udemy course and placing it on YouTube, optimizing it for YouTube, joining the YouTube
partner program and just having ads run to it.
And what's awesome about YouTube is you can actually make the content.
You can enjoy the ad revenue and you can drive people to your own email list, which is the
ultimate goal of building a sustainable online business.
So thank you so much for watching.
I sincerely hope you got some value out of this video and I've at least convinced you
to pump the brakes a little bit on posting to Udemy.
I really think that the opportunities that Udemy had just five or six years ago have
evaporated and disappeared.
YouTube is a much better place and learning how to drive your own traffic and build your
own email list, so you can actually control your business is so much more important than
trying to make a quick couple of dollars on Udemy.
So go ahead and hit that like button and subscribe for more reviews, just like this one.
And until the next keep building the business you love.