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Udemy S-1 IPO

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Re: Udemy S-1 IPO

#71

Post by 41209 »

nickjj wrote: post #18

One thing that's worth mentioning is Udemy is a completely different type of company based on you being a watcher of courses vs being an instructor on Udemy. I was an instructor there for 5+ years (with ~30k enrollments) and in my entire professional career I've never met a worse company in terms of how corrupt they are and how little they actually care about instructors unless you happen to be one of the few instruc…

As a student I had a very similar experience.

Very rarely do you find something better on Udemy than you would on YouTube. YouTube often is a bit better since you don't have the sunk cost of paying 30$ for a class to realize it's trash.

Unity Learn is a much better alternative to any Unity content you'll find on Udemy. And with Unity deciding to make it free( I doubt anyone was really paying for it when it was a premium service), it's a great way to get started.

For most tech, take Flutter or React as good examples, the official websites tend to have tons of quality educational content.

Re: Udemy S-1 IPO

#73

Post by joshwcomeau »

nickjj wrote: post #18

One thing that's worth mentioning is Udemy is a completely different type of company based on you being a watcher of courses vs being an instructor on Udemy. I was an instructor there for 5+ years (with ~30k enrollments) and in my entire professional career I've never met a worse company in terms of how corrupt they are and how little they actually care about instructors unless you happen to be one of the few instruc…

This is such a good point, and impossible to overstate.

I decided about a year ago I wanted to create my own course (https://css-for-js.dev/). After exploring the options and hearing about the Udemy horror stories, I decided to build my own platform.

It's gone better than I ever could have hoped, and it's set me up well for a lucrative career I'm passionate about.

You don't have to create your own platform from scratch, either; I haven't personally tried them, but there are SaaS companies like Kajabi and Teachable that look like white-label course platforms, so you can build your own course on your own domain. If I wasn't such a perfectionist, I would have started with a smaller course on one of these services.

Re: Udemy S-1 IPO

#74

Post by joshwcomeau »

ai_ia wrote: post #50
dbetteridge wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I would seriously suggest anyone thinking about creating courses to avoid using any type of course marketplaces (ACG is especially bad too). It's worth it to build your own audience - Youtube + mailing list - Build your own site - ??

- Blog on the niche and build reputation It's amazing to see how instructors like Wes Bos, Kent C Dodds and Josh Comameu's CSS Course pulled off. - Create youtube channel and drive traffic from their to your course

Thanks for the shout-out!

Re: Udemy S-1 IPO

#75

Post by joshwcomeau »

open-source-ux wrote: post #35
nickjj wrote: post #18

One thing that's worth mentioning is Udemy is a completely different type of company based on you being a watcher of courses vs being an instructor on Udemy. I was an instructor there for 5+ years (with ~30k enrollments) and in my entire professional career I've never met a worse company in terms of how corrupt they are and how little they actually care about instructors unless you happen to be one of the few instruc…

The self-publish course route works best when the instructor has a following on social media and can appeal to their followers (Twitter, YouTube or even on GitHub). Without followers in some form, course discovery can be hard via the self-publish route. That's why Udemy remains an attractive option (despite how badly Udemy treat authors as you say). It's a bit of a chicken-and-egg situation.

Yeah, building on what Nick said: I think it was possible at one time, 7-8 years ago, to launch a course on Udemy with no audience, and let them handle the marketing for you.

I heard a podcast recently and a successful Udemy instructor had said that these days, the SEO required to succeed on Udemy is even harder than the SEO to rank in Google. When you search for a topic on Udemy (eg. React, Go), there are dozens of highly-reviewed courses, and it's impossible to show up in those results unless you already have a huge audience or want to spend lots of money on paid traffic.

So yeah, I think it's true that you need an audience to succeed with a self-published course, but honestly I think that's true no matter which route you take.

Re: Udemy S-1 IPO

#76

Post by mywittyname »

alangibson wrote: post #58

Middling quality, many good competitors, substantial I'll will from creators, no customer lock-in. I'm feeling there's a good short opportunity here

Alternatively, they could go on a spending spree with all their new-found capital and effectively corner the market.

I'm in agreement with you, but I've also noticed that company with a bad product isn't necessarily poorly run.

Re: Udemy S-1 IPO

#77

Post by ironmagma »

ai_ia wrote: post #61
ironmagma wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

YouTube has a lot of the same issues as Udemy with regard to creator treatment. Building your own audience sounds like the ideal, but obviously there are network effects to being on a platform and those can’t be simply written off.

I agree 100%. What does, in your opinion, an ideal course platform look like though? Genuinely curious.

I’ve never been a course instructor, but I imagine the best would be something where the creators own a slice of the overall pie (share in the company).

Re: Udemy S-1 IPO

#78

Post by crackinmalackin »

Josh Comeaus css course is one of the most amazing courses I’ve ever purchased. I also wouldn’t be a web dev without Wes Bos and his courses. Brad Traversy, Max Depps sorry I know I’m spelling your name wrong, also Stephen Grider. Also can’t forget the amazing Scott Tolinkski and level tuts. These guys are amazing instructors and I’m happy to give them my money, more so if they’re on their own platforms

Re: Udemy S-1 IPO

#79

Post by nickjj »

arnvald wrote: post #20
nickjj wrote: post #18

One thing that's worth mentioning is Udemy is a completely different type of company based on you being a watcher of courses vs being an instructor on Udemy. I was an instructor there for 5+ years (with ~30k enrollments) and in my entire professional career I've never met a worse company in terms of how corrupt they are and how little they actually care about instructors unless you happen to be one of the few instruc…

Thanks for sharing! I'm planning to create a couple of courses next year and I considered using Udemy, because I use it quite a bit as a student, but I see I need to do some research before I lock myself in some platform. By the way: ACG = A Cloud Guru?

> By the way: ACG = A Cloud Guru?

Yep. I don't want to get into it here but their founders are some of the worst people I've ever encountered in my life as a human being. This is only my opinion of course based on having had a fairly long term business relationship with them in the past.

I don't like negatively talking about folks in public but yeah out of 20+ years of freelancing and dealing with dozens of companies ACG's founders are at the top of my list of folks I never want to think about or encounter again for the rest of my life.

Re: Udemy S-1 IPO

#80

Post by mlengineerio »

What do you guys think about educative? It's getting more popular in for people who focus on interviewing.

I've been told a good author can earn about 20k during 6 months. It's pretty good ROI given it's all passive. As an author myself, what I really want to a direct communication channel with readers to answer their questions.

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