One of the reasons why the Internet became an indispensable aspect for the modern civilization is convenience. Gone are the days wherein people will have to gather all the patience they have in order to accomplish things manually; the Internet makes everything available almost in an instant. Everything became one click away as if time is already a luxury that everyone can barely afford.
Nobody can deny the fact that it is going to be really hard for most people to live without the Internet. Everything is already coursed online and almost everyone is already forced to embrace the cyber world. As matter of fact, it is easy to say that the world cannot function well without the help of the Internet. From entertainment, food, clothing, travel, health, government, business and finance, shelter, and everything else that you can think of is online, including education!
Non-conventional education such as online courses, also known as Massive Open Online Course (MOOC), are now very popular especially to those people who do not have extra time to go for traditional classroom type of learning.
In this article you will learn how to use Udemy and how to get started onto Udemy. You will also learn how to make money using the Udemy.
What is Udemy
Imagine how anyone can get a degree without leaving the comfort of their own private space. Anyone can now have easy access to different levels of education by means of short and practical online courses and tutorials through audios, articles, computer based test and exercises, electronic books, PowerPoint presentations, videos, and a lot more. This is what Udemy is known for.
Founded in the year 2007 by Eren Bali, Udemy is one of the largest Massive Open Online Course venues today. It has a huge collection and library of different online courses, tutorials, and all other academic or educational materials created and contributed by experts and instructors who wish to teach people online.
Everyone is welcome to create and submit online courses to Udemy, and online instructors make money through these paid online courses. Just recently, Udemy made their services available through the downloadable app (smartphones and other devices) to give easier access for people who are always on the go.
Udemy follows a payment system for the online instructors through the following categories:
- Based on the instructor’s popularity, or the level of subscribers’ demand for the instructor (Providers Source).
- The volume of subscribers to any online course from Udemy’s marketing and promotion efforts (Inhouse Marketing Source).
- The volume of subscribers to any online course from Udemy affiliates’ marketing and promotion efforts (Third Party Source).
Aside from these levels, Udemy makes online course providers or instructors earn by giving them the opportunity to offer other online materials to the subscribers. It is a given that you are capable of creating and supplying an online course if you are looking into the possibility of making Udemy as your venue for teaching and providing materials.
How Does It Work?
It’s very simple to use Udemy as all of the courses on their on on demand. Basically what this means is that there isn’t no official start date and students can start and complete the course when ever they want.
The students can take however long they want to complete the course. If they want to take 5 years to complete it or 5 months, its totally up to the student.
How Much Can You Make?
This is what you want to know right. You probably got questions like, ‘Can I turn this into a full time career’ or ‘Will I earn enough to quit my job from this’. I can tell you to answer to both these questions is yes, you can!
There are many people earning six to seven figure incomes from just teaching on Udemy. Bess Ho earned over $200,000 for with her top earning course being Learn to Develop an iPhone or iPad app in 4 Weeks. Mark Lassoff has over $300,000 from teaching on Udemy with his most popular course being HTML and CSS For Beginners.
There are tons of people earning money on Udemy and some people are even earning more money than Mark and Bess.
So by now you’re probably pretty interested in starting your own online course and making some money but you still have some questions. Like, how much of a cut do Udemy take?
That’s a good question and the answer to that can vary. If you promote the course yourself and the student/user enrolls onto your course through you then you get 100% of the revenue. If Udemy get the student enrolled on the course then Udemy get a 50% share of the revenue.
Check out the table below for more clarification:
How to get started on Udemy
If you don’t know how to get started on Udemy don’t worry. It is very simple to get started on Udemy and does not take time at all. You will get your first course listed on the site in no time at all.
Step 1: Create a account on Udemy
This is easy, just log onto www.udemy.com and you will be able to register to become an instructor. Click on Become an Instructer or ‘Sign up’.
Step 2: Find out What Your Course Should Be About
Once you have done that you will be directed to the page where you set your account up. Just fill in the details and then go to the next page. Remember to also enter what it is you want to sell as a course. In my example I have put Photoshop. You can put whatever it is you wish to specialize in. Some of the popular courses on Udemy that you can start are:
- Coding for Beginners
- How to Make Money Online
- How to Make Money using YouTube
- Microsoft Excel Advanced Tricks
- Learn How to Develop An iPhone or Android App
- How to Build a Startup that Makes Money
Step 3: Fill In The Category
Next you will have to just fill in a few details of how Udemy can tailor your experience. You will to fill in things like the category of your course, what you plan to achieve and why you you are on Udemy.
Step 4: Fill Out The Information About Your Course
After you have filled all this out you can get started on filling out the information of your actual course and putting the actual content together. Start writing the information about your course such as the title, subtitle and what the course includes.
You should also include the outcome and what the student can expect to learn.
Step 5: Upload Your Content
Once you have done all this you can start uploading your content for the course. Udemy allow you to upload videos, eBooks, PDFs, presentations, audio and a mashup of them all. The site says that you should have at least 30 minutes of video and at least 60% of the material should be video.
Popular course usually have around 1-3 hours of video in total however they make each video shorter to about 3-7 minutes.
The key to having a good and popular listing on Udemy is to make it descriptive, include an awesome promo video and have some previews open of some of your videos or material so potential students can see your content.
If you have a good following on social media channels like Facebook, Twitter and Google Plus then it is good to promote on their as you will see some sales through that. You can also promote through YouTube and Quora as they are both popular sites.
You can answer related questions to do with your course on Quora and you can upload videos to do with your course on YouTube and make helpful videos and tips and then direct people to your course. This should boost sales to your online course.
If you have an email list then this can also be a great way to let people know about your course. Give your email subscribers a special offer and I bet most would jump at that offer.
Have a blog? Make a blog post and promote your course on your blog.
You can market your course in a lot of different ways, you just have to get slightly creative. But the good thing about Udemy is that since it’s a marketplace it has tons of people looking for courses on the platform so you do not have to do that much marketing.
It is true that it can be easy for anyone to generate income by using the power of the Internet, but there are still few things you will need to consider to make Udemy an income generating avenue.
Some Helpful Tips
You need to know how you will welcome yourself in the competition.
If you are just starting in the online learning industry, it is best for you to do some research about those who have already tried creating and teaching courses through Massive Open Online Course (MOOC).
Know what worked and did not work for them. You may want to check the topics that gather most subscribers online and perhaps have yourself cross-trained with the in-demand online courses, too.
If you are a beginner, it is important for you to know how other online course providers entered the industry so you can have an idea how you will improve what they did and do it yourself.
The demand for the course that are you planning to teach and sell.
Though it is true that everyone is an expert of their own league, the fact remains that not everyone will be interested in one idea or topic. The online course provider needs to determine whether the topic is marketable or in demand offline, too. Anyone can simply post anything that they would like to talk about. The next question to ask is: Will anyone pay attention to whatever the material is trying to deliver or teach?
Your reputation as an instructor or the online course provider.
There are millions of people around the world who access the Internet everyday, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. Though, it is quite impossible to really tap the total online population, it is still important that you know that you got a sure number of subscribers to the materials after they get posted.
It is important that your online courses are at par to current trends, appealing, updated, reliable, and engaging. There are many other ways to build a reputable name online and this includes being active and available on the Internet all the time.
With that being said, reviews are very important as well because they provide social proof and credibility. Aim to establish reviews as soon as possible.
Your market level as an online course provider.
Before you pour out your thoughts and ideas in Udemy, you may want to market yourself first through different online channels like email, social networking websites, blog and video websites, and all other possible media.
Make it a point that you have created a considerable number of people who are most likely to respond and enroll to your online courses before you even start offering them, this will save you time and a greater chance to gain profit.
As what they usually say – Make some noise and people will look at you and others out of reach will find their way to the source of the noise. This makes perfect sense especially if you are just starting to the industry as on online course provider.
Nevertheless, Udemy created a holistic system that can help you as an online course provider or instructor. The marketing team of Udemy will also help you and your online courses get subscribers for a fee, especially if you are a starter in the virtual education setting.
Udemy made a strong number of affiliates, too, that can help in promoting the website, the collection of online courses, and the online instructors through referrals on the affiliate websites, direct invitations, and online advertisements.
You need to know some technical aspects, too.
It is not enough that you are an expert in a subject area. As an online course provider, it is important that you know how the Internet works, even for the basic things like making uploading the online materials to Udemy properly to avoid crashes and for some online support, too.
Video type of learning needs some neat know-how when creating one as it is not going to be like simply taking a short video through your mobile device; knowing things about graphics is very important. Knowing the do’s and don’ts when creating an online course will protect you and your work from being compromised.
You need to plan how you will gain profit and your desired profit.
Teaching is a very noble profession, that is a fact that will never change, but it is important for anyone to consider income, too. This part is linked to how you need to make yourself big online through marketing. As an online course provider, you need to be creative in introducing yourself to the online world so people will know that you exist.
Everyone is going online already and that makes the competition stiffer as days go by. You need to do whatever it takes for you to get an acceptable number of followers, if not everyone, to survive in the industry and stay in the race. Get yourself updated all the time and learn new skills that you can offer to teach to the online learners.
Consider getting some partnership with other course providers to make your network and market wider, rather than focusing on one spot of the market.
Take corporate updates and trainings as an example, those who are providing materials for different corporate training materials gather a fleet of corporate subscriptions that can brings about hundreds and thousands of course subscribers for Human Resources, Safety, Health, Legal, and all other vital corporate trainings.
Keep in mind that one corporate client alone potentially brings about a thousand or more of profit already; just imagine what you can earn if you have a list of clients.
Learn everything you can along the process.
Being an online instructor does not mean that you are already excluded from this task. As a person who needs to earn money and a business who is competing with all others in the market, it is important that you gather and record facts as you go along the race.
Conclusion
Take note of everything that you will experience, failures and successes, because these can definitely help you in processing and developing new ideas and plans for your future dealings that will involve Udemy. Perhaps, you can already develop or create a new online course about how to make money with Udemy and allow others to become successful, too.
And once you’ve uploaded your course onto Udemy, why stop there? Use other platforms and upload your course onto there as well. Look at Skillshare, Teachable and others.
The possibilities are endless only if you know how to take advantage of the experiences that you can get while you are making others learn. It can be hard to start in anything but if you carry on with it and have persistence and consistency then you are bound to be successful.
If you liked or enjoyed this article I would appreciate it if you could share it with someone else as it could help them as well.