I have been an Udemy Instructor since 2014 and since then, I have never looked back or regretted my decision to do so.
I am grateful to Udemy because it has given me a steady stream of income after I transit from teaching in classrooms to online courses. Thus, I want to share with more people how you can also sell your online courses on Udemy too =)
Just a piece of gentle advice, this is a long blog post with many screenshots and steps, so things can get pretty overwhelming. This blog post is not meant to be consumed in a single sitting. Do bookmark it and work through the steps at your own pace.
I wish you all the best in your course creation in Udemy!
Answers To Frequently Asked Questions!
I understand that you may have some burning questions before you want to even start considering selling online courses on Udemy. From my experience, there are 3 most common questions that people asked, I have provided the answers below.
- Is it really free to sell my online courses on Udemy?
The answer to the above question is YES. It is free to sell your online courses on Udemy. The thing to take note of is that you won’t be earning 100% of the course fee because Udemy will take a percentage of it. The following are 2 different scenarios to note:
(A) If a student buys your online course through your own referral link, then you will earn 97% of the course fee.
(B) If a student buys your online course through Udemy’s promotion channels (email, social media, recommendation, etc), you will earn 37% of the course fee.
Revenue model and how to optimize it is a big topic and it deserves another blog post. I will be posting another post to share with you more about this topic.
2. There are so many platforms like Udemy. Why should I choose Udemy to sell my online courses?
Actually, there are not many providers like Udemy in the market. Platforms like Teachable and Thinkific don’t have their own learners. If you sell your online courses on Teachable, they are not going to help you promote it, you will be the one doing all the promotion and marketing on your own database.
But if you sell your online courses on Udemy, you are opening up your courses to Udemy’s 40 Million students database. Udemy does a lot of marketing to their students so the chances are higher that your courses will get sold faster as compared to other platforms.
There are other platforms like Skillshare which act like Udemy but their marketing is not as strong so your online courses won’t be getting enough exposure from their marketplace.
From time to time, I received invitations from other new platforms that work like Udemy and want me to move my online courses to their platform too but oftentimes, the hassle of moving the course content is not worth the results and effort maintaining support (to the students)from all these other platforms.
To sum up, Udemy is the only platform that allows anyone to be an Instructor to sell online courses to their 40 Million students. As of now, no other platforms come close...
3. How much can I earn from selling online courses in Udemy?
I know of Instructors who are making 5-figures per month from Udemy and also others who make less than $100 per month so the range is very wide.
Personally, I make a basic income from Udemy and based on my experience, it is possible to make $1,000 to $5,000 per month if you have a number of courses (with a minimum of one best-selling course).
I will share my insights in another post on best-selling courses on Udemy but just bear in mind that there is no fixed formula to create a best-selling course. Although there are several factors that come into play you will never know the outcome until you create the online course and start selling it!
Setting Up Instructor Account On Udemy
Before you can start selling courses on Udemy, you must first set up your Instructor’s account in Udemy.
Go to Instructor sign up page at — https://www.udemy.com/teaching/
Click on the ‘Get Started’ button and fill up your particulars in the popup box as shown below:
You will be asked a few questions regarding your teaching experience before directing to the dashboard.
Once at the dashboard page, click on the circular icon in the upper right corner of the screen to enter your instructor profile and also upload a picture of yourself.
We are done with the setup, now let me touch on a bit about Premium Instructor.
Premium Instructor VS Normal Instructor
Anyone can be a Udemy Instructor and upload free courses but if you want to charge for your courses, you would need to become a Premium Instructor, no worries, it is free to apply! Click here to see the steps to apply for Premium Instructor.
You can apply for Premium Instructor later when you are setting the price of your online course.
Create New Course!
Once you are at the Instructor’s page, click on the ‘New Course’ button.
Then select the ‘Course’ blurb, next, click on the ‘Continue’ button at the bottom right of the screen.
Next, enter your course title, don’t worry if you will be changing the title later, this is just a temporary title. Then, click on the ‘Continue’ button.
Next, select the category that your course belongs to. You can also select the ‘I don’t know yet’ option if you are unsure at the moment. Then click on the ‘Continue’ button.
Next, choose an option below that best describes the time you have to dedicate to your online course creation. I never figured out what this question is for, it seems to have no effect on any parts of the course creation that follows...
Once you have selected an option, click the ‘Create course’ button.
Once you have clicked on the ‘Create course’ button, it will bring you to the next screen where you will follow the Plan, Create and Publish process for your course. It is going to take a while, but we will get there, hold tight and stay close to me.
Plan — Intended Learners
The first section is the Intended Learners where you need to enter at least 4 learning objectives (although the screenshot below only shows 3 as the last one is out of the screen capture)that your learners will achieve after completing your course.
Tips: Depending on your course topic, think in terms of the point of view from your learners. For example, if you are teaching how to prepare healthy breakfast recipes, then the learning objectives would be ‘Able to prepare breakfast recipes in less than 15min’, ‘Understand human basic nutrition needs’, etc. You can also take a look at other courses listed on Udemy for reference =)
After writing the learning objectives, you need to include what are the requirements or pre-requites to take your course.
If your course is an advanced course in Microsoft Excel, then one of the pre-requites for the learners is to ‘Must have a basic understanding of the Excel program’
Tips: It is better to have some requirements before taking your course regardless of what topics you are teaching. This section is for you to manage the expectations of your leaners. Some Instructors include things like ‘Must have an open mind and give it a try before you reject any ideas in the course!’ Again, take some time to check out some of the courses on Udemy and see what other Instructors have for their course requriements and pre-requites!
The last part for the Intended Learners section is to indicate who is your course for. If you are teaching website design, you can state ‘People who are interested to design their own websites’ or ‘Students who are learning HTML and CSS and want to deepen their knowledge further’.
Tips: If you have a clear idea of who your target market is for your course, then this section will be the place for you to put them in place. Do your best to think of different groups of people who will need your course.
Remember to save all your data on this page before you move on to the following section. The ‘Save’ button is on the top right of the page (shown below).
Plan — Course Structure
Let’s move on to the next section, Course Structure. This section does not require you to input anything but more on resources to help you plan your course outline.
The following are the minimum course requirements checklist for your reference and while planning your course outline.
- The entire course must be at least 30 minutes of video content. If you intend to create a free course, the video content must not exceed 2 hours.
- The course must contain at least 5 separate lectures.
- The video quality must be HD (720 or 1080 pixels).
- Audio that comes out of both channels and is synced to video.
- Audio quality that is not distracting to learners.
- A course image that is in line with Udemy image standards.
- Course title and subtitle must include relevant keywords.
- A course description with more than 200 words.
- A complete instructor bio and profile picture.
Tips: Udemy is very strict on the audio quality. You need to make sure that your recording sounds clear and free of echo. I use Blue Yeti microphone for my recording, you can check that out too.
Plan — Setup & Test Video
The last section on planning your course is to get ready your recording equipment. Although Udemy is very strict on audio quality, it is a good thing that they provide free service to help you check on your video and audio quality.
You can record a test video and submit it (shown on the screen below) for the Udemy team to check and give you feedback before you record the entire course.
Tips: Don’t assume that your recording is perfect, always let the Udemy team check on it before you record the entire course for submission. My first course was rejected because of echo and I recorded 40+ lessons! Also, click here for Udemy’s recording equipment tips and recommendations.
