Publish your First Udemy Course in 1 Day! Unofficial

We will begin our journey teaching online at https://teach.udemy.com/. Udemy is an incredible teaching platform that has grown exponentially over the years. By uploading a course to Udemy you will join 20,000 fellow instructors, gain exposure to 12 million students eager to learn in 190 countries, and have the opportunity to earn $8,000 per year (on average). Udemy is the best teaching platform to get started on because it is the #1 destination for online courses.

Let's begin by creating the sections for our course. This will serve as a rough outline for the content I plan on covering. 

Quick tutorial on how to create course lectures on Udemy. I highly recommend producing video in 1080p HD and trying to stay under 10 minutes in length. Statistics show that videos 5 minutes in length are best for viewer retention.

Before we get started filming lectures, let's take a quick look at competition. The best way to compete on Udemy is to identify the top courses in your subject area and figure out ways to improve upon them. Long, comprehensive courses sell best, but regardless you should be aware of what students value in a course. 

If this is the first course you are teaching on Udemy it is always a good idea to submit a test video to verify that your video/audio quality will be approved. There is nothing worse than taking the time to film all of your lectures and having Udemy tell you the quality isn't up to par.

Let's begin uploading videos to our lectures. You can either upload a single video at a time or use the new bulk uploader. The bulk uploader allows you to upload multiple videos from your computer or via cloud storage. Occasionally, you may have issues uploading video directly to the lectures, if so try the bulk uploader. 

I enable all of the videos in my courses to be downloadable for students. If you want your course to be as accessible as possible to students all over the world, I strongly recommend doing the same. Many students request to download lectures because they lack home internet access or do not have adequate bandwidth for streaming video. From my experience, if someone wants to pirate content from your course they will find a way to do it. Don't let the idea of this prevent you from making your course as easy to access as possible.

In this lecture, we will update our course title, subtitle, category, and subcategory. If your course can fit in multiple categories, first check to see how competitive each category is. We can always change everything in this section post-publication except for the category/subcategory. 

Next, let's write our course summary. This will be the focal point of our sales page, so be sure and make a good pitch that communicates the value a potential student can expect to receive from the course.

Let's fill out the course goals section. This is where we set student expectations and the requirements to be successful in the course. If students require a certain software package or previous experience, be sure and communicate that in this section.

If you are not the most creative or are not familiar with graphic design, Udemy's design team can create a course image for you. You can always request a new course image after you publish the course or update it with your own. I will also create a quick promo video for the course. A good course promo video is vital for making sales, however we will upload a quick one for now and upload a better one once the course is approved. 

Before you can receive payouts from Udemy you will need to apply to become a premium instructor. You can do this by going to your profile, clicking on Premium Instructor, and entering in your PayPal information. Remember that your course price communicates the perceived value the buyer will receive.

Let's submit our course for review. This course isn't a finished product, but we can still submit it for review. The minimum amount of content you need for Udemy to publish your course is at least 5 lectures and 30 minutes of video. I prefer to take more of a methodical approach to publishing on Udemy because it will allow us to get constructive criticism prior to finishing production. Students will tell exactly what they want in a course, so let's get our course published to the marketplace and begin enrollment.

Make sure you choose a short URL that represents the entirety of the course. You cannot change the course URL after publishing.

Udemy will typically take 2 business days to either publish or request you to make adjustments to your course. The course feedback consists of required fixes, recommended improvements, and completed items. The required fixes are the only mandatory adjustments we must make to the course, and lucky for us we only need to wait for our course image to be completed.

In this lecture, we will join the Udemy Studio Facebook group to share a free coupon to our course, and network with other instructors https://www.facebook.com/groups/UdemyStudio/. The Udemy Studio is a closed group, and all you need to do is fill out a short form to apply for membership. 

Reviews can be one of the most polarizing experiences for any new instructor on Udemy. I like to respond to reviews, both good and bad, to see what it is I can do to make the course the best it can be. If you receive a 1 star review on your course it is not the end of the world. Respond kindly and ask what you can do to make the course better for the next student. Remember, when looking for constructive criticism make sure you keep an eye out for trends. For example, if multiple students say the audio quality could be better you may want to take the time to re-record your lectures.

In this lecture, we will begin writing the lecture descriptions and learning objectives for our course. Lecture descriptions are extremely important for search engine optimization (SEO), so be sure and pack this section with keywords and keyword phrases. Learning objectives should communicate to the student what they should be able to accomplish after completing the section.

There is a good chance your instructor bio will rank #1 in a Google search for your name. Make sure you take the time to write a decent bio.

Let's create subtitle files for our course. Adding subtitles is a great way to make your course as accessible as possible to international students (English as a second language), and setting your course apart from others in the Udemy marketplace. Udemy requires you to upload WebVTT (.VTT or Web Video Text Tracks) formatted subtitle files, and YouTube makes this process easy.

You may want to save a copy of your course image to use when marketing your new course. You can use the course image in promo announcements, as a part of a blog post, etc. It is important to maintain consistency when sending traffic to your course sales page on Udemy. You want buyers to be as comfortable as possible, and using the same course image will help.

You can submit an application to join the Udemy affiliate program at https://www.udemy.com/affiliate/. You will be prompted to create a Linkshare (Rakuten Marketing) account, and becoming an affiliate isn't difficult. Make sure you create affiliate links when giving your course away for free (outside of the Udemy Studio). We will do more with the affiliate program later on in the course. 

One of the easiest and quickest ways to get new students enrolled in your courses.

Deleting lectures from a published course can compromise your search ranking in the Udemy marketplace. This is what I prefer to do with obsolete material within my courses.

Educational announcements are great for boosting engagement within your course, promoting blog posts or YouTube videos containing related content, or running contests to reward your most dedicated students.

Let's send out our first promo announcement for this course! A good promo e-mail includes a call-to-action, offer, and deadline to create a sense of urgency for the buyer.