Creating in-depth video courses is a great way to grow your brand and earn passive income. But what sort of courses should you create?
For me, the courses I created were a logical progression of my work on this blog and on my YouTube channel. I’ve been asking around and here are some ideas to get you thinking about your next Udemy video course.
Expertise
You are an expert. We all are. We’ve all spent our lives engaged in activities that we know more about than other people. This is powerful.
Think about what you’ve done at work. What did you do very well? Was there anything you did better than anyone else?
What have you just learned?
This is a very important question. Somebody who has just learned the 2 times table will be much better at teaching it than an applied math professor.
Teaching is one of the best forms of learning, by the way. Teaching fills in the gaps of your knowledge as you have to brush up and research certain area to make a solid course.
Blogging / audience / questions people ask you
I’ve been able to access the most marvellous market research information since I started blogging. And, it’s free.
If you regularly put out content through a blog, you’ll soon find out that (surprise, surprise!) some of your articles are better than others. Google Analytics will tell you which articles are read and which pages visitors spend the most time on.
Even better, you get feedback via the comments and emails for random members of your audience. If you get asked the same question from your audience over and over, yes, make a course on that!
Do you get asked the same question over and over?
What have you made money doing?
I know money isn’t the most important thing in the world but showing people that they can make it with a career skill works on Udemy at the moment.
Have a look at Alun Hill on Udemy. He’s been making $4000/week profit from Udemy for most of 2014. The first course Alun broke big with was How I Make $2000 A Month On YouTube – And No Filming.
So, show people that they could make x amount of money doing something.
Deliver benefit and value to the student
Always make sure in your titles, descriptions, bullets and content that you are thinking of providing benefit and value to the student. Make sure your course relieves pain or is useful to your audience.
Provide measurable proof of benefit
Staying with the example of Alun Hill, he promises a measurable benefit by saying “Make $2000 a month”.
I am working on a big new course provisionally titled: “How I make $5000/month passive income selling digital info-products”.
And don’t forget to enjoy yourself
As I said in my rules of product creation article, people go on and on about target markets, keywords and low hanging fruit. They spend hours looking at spreadsheets trying to work out mathematically what the best selling products would be.
I would say, “go with your heart”. Make sure you enjoy creating the video courses! If you don’t enjoy making it, how is anyone going to enjoy taking it?
You can do it
You can create a video course that sells and makes money for you well into the future. If you have any questions, ask them here in the comments.
all excellent ideas. I have been using the blog traffic theory for quite a while and google analytics also to see what people want and what to develop next. One of my YouTube videos also does very well and gets a lot of comments and questions and that could be turned into a Udemy course.
thank you rob
You got it, Bruce! Really interesting to hear about that YouTube post. If you keep cranking out the content, sooner or later, you’ll get instances like that where it’s a no-brainer not to pursue! Thanks for the comment.
I love the idea that we learn more when we teach. That is so true. Great post. I look forward to thinking up courses that I can teach. Something to consider for 2015 🙂
Yes, I wish you all the success in the world for 2015, Victoria. You should definitely do this!
Thanks for another good post about Udemy. I’ve been following your progress, and have started writing my first Kindle. I hope to launch it within a few weeks, then start re-purposing the material into a Udemy course, unless the market tells me to choose another topic. 🙂
Hey Patrick, I’m delighted to hear you’re taking action – it’s the most important first step and I applaud you for taking it. Please let us know how you get on and please don’t hesitate to ask me any questions. Thank you for the comment.
Hi There,
Awesome tips to get successful video course in Udemy. Currently, I’m not planning to do anything with Udemy but, I think your tips will help me another way.
Thanks for these great tips.
Yes, Fakharuddin, I think advice on Udemy and Kindle can be reinterpreted as general info-product/digital product and content creation and marketing advice.
Hey Rob,
Been following your blog for quite a while. Lots of great info here about Udemy course promotion.
Thanks.
Thank you, Bashar, I hope you continue to follow me because there’s going to be loads more on Udemy and video course creation to come.
Hey Rob,
I’m currently preparing a course on analysing Financial Statements for people outside Finance. This does NOT guarantee making more money. However, it will certainly help people make better decisions with investments. My focus is to HELP people read and understand Financial Statements, which otherwise seem overly complicated.
What’s your take on courses which help teach people a specific skill not inclined towards a tangible increase in revenue versus those that do?
Also, I would like to know, whether you have a personal checklist of sorts for prepare your Udemy courses? Something similar to what Steve Scott uses for publishing on Amazon, viz. his 46 steps to Kindle Publishing.
It would be great to hear your thoughts on this!
Cheers,
Divesh
Divesh, I think that courses that teach a skill that results in a significant financial gain do better on the whole. But don’t let me put you off and you can sell your course as a pain reliever or a time saver – understand your Financial Statements so you don’t have to spend money on an expensive accountant or miss out on refunds, for example.
So, personally I always like to point out a tangible benefit. Even sometimes it’s “you can charge $100/hour for Photoshop freelance work”.
I don’t really have a check list but I do have quite a detailed plan and outline for a course (and I run that past friends and followers) before I start on it.
Selling a skill to help increase someone financially will continue to win the day for sure! The secret is out and people are running to the web in droves to get in on the action. What you know about the highly acclaimed “making money online” phenomenon is coveted by novice and expert alike, because even people who are successful somewhere else on the web aim to venture off to learn about other streams of income. Opportunity to scale your business by teaching is immense. I’m definitely shifting my focus to Udemy more this year!
Absolutely, Dion, I couldn’t put it better myself. I hope you see great success with Udemy and other online platforms this year. Best of luck and let me know if you have any questions about the process.
These are very good ideas.
I have been a big fan of using Google Analytics for a long time. But I should also say that I love finding out what people want and giving it to them… buy just asking them in the first place. One of my Ezine Articles has also done quite well and I’ve been thinking a lot about how I can turn it into a Udemy course so that more people can benefit from the content.
Thanks!
Awesome idea, Elvis. It doesn’t matter if you get the feedback from Google Analytics, from emails you receive or from a platform like Ezine Articles. If it works, it works. Best of luck!
Hi Rob, just want to say thanks for all these helpful posts on Udemy. I’ve taken a lot from them. Your brand and trust has build in my eyes so can see how valuable this is!
I’ve just found it and there is a major gap in there for my sugar-free niche and I have SO much expertise to share and give. I do have a few questions (that might help you create more good courses – a udemy specific one would be good!)…I’m now splitting up my bigger course into smaller ones. I think this is valuable for the user too as they can pick the ones most relevant e.g. leave out emotional eating sugar if this isn’t a problem for them
Is it best to put your free courses up first and just let your audience build up whilst you create the others (or launch say 2 free courses & 2 paid at the same time). Does it not make sense to keep your premium product or big course hosted on your own site as the ultimate upsell? I have value add elements of this course that I can’t just do on Udemy anyway (daily texts, Facebook group.). I don’t want to devalue this course though.
Can you respond to feedback if it’s negative?
Finally do you do any 1-2-1 personal mentoring?!
Thanks
Laura
Hello Laura, thank you for your comment. I’m glad you’ve found my Udemy advice useful. In actual fact I do have a course on Udemy, well, the title is Earn $5000+ a Month Passive Income Selling E-books and Video Courses – so it’s about a lot more than just Udemy. Maybe I’ll do a Udemy-specific one one day.
I’m delighted to hear your passion for creating courses. Good idea to split them up.
To answer your questions:
Yes, I would do the free course first. If you have a course ready there’s no sense in waiting to put it up, however.
If you have a huge following I would put a premium premium course on your own site. If you don’t have a huge following then I would put everything on Udemy and your site. In the case of my most recent course, the version on my own site has more videos and I will be more hands-on with students there. I see that as a good model going forward.
Negative feedback? If it’s constructive I would respond to it but usually it’s best to let sleeping dogs lie.
Yes, I’ve just started doing 1-2-1 mentoring, please feel free to get in touch via the contact form 🙂
Thanks, Rob
Hey Rob,
I just bought an Alun Hill’s book on Amazon based on your recommendations (on Facebook I think)
Would you recommend that I make my first training completely free or put a price to it and give away free coupons instead?
Thanks in advance!
Sergio
It depends how long your first course is, Sergio. If it’s really long and a good and comprehensive then it should probably be paid. The important thing is that you keep going creating courses and, eventually, some of them will be free but most of them will be paid. Careful with the free coupons as well. Don’t give too many of them away to people who won’t be interested in taking the course because that’ll make your course look bad in terms of student engagement. Give coupons to people who’ll hopefully take your course and give it a review.
Thanks, I was thinking of actually turning the first training into a completely free one but it took me so long to put together and so much hard work it just doesn’t feel right.
I created coupons for Udemy instructors but they got snatched in blackhat forums, then I created a few more, same thing happened.
I’m going to work on the things that need to be added like a few quizzes, promo, intro and conclusion letters and I’m not going to give away any free access to it anymore.
Thanks for the advice, I think I should have asked first before actually taking matters into my own hands!
Don’t worry so much about the free coupons, Sergio. If people from Black Hat Forums take them it’s not the end of the world. You certainly aren’t losing any money. And we don’t know whether Udemy looks on the lack of engagement badly.
I would still consider having free courses on Udemy. For me, it’s the biggest driver of my success there.
Hey thanks Rob, I re-considered my options and decided I’ll be leaving the training as a free course. 😉
Sounds like a wise move, mi hermano. Udemy is a long game, you want to be making money in 6 months or a year’s time and your free course could have 10,000+ students on it by then – that’s powerful whatever you decide to do with it. 🙂
I love the idea that we learn more when we teach. That is so true. Great post. I look forward to thinking up courses that I can teach.
Definitely, Preeti, teaching courses teaches me stuff. Writing blog posts teaches me stuff. 🙂