The Biggest Threat and an Opportunity for Udemy Course Creators !!

A popular online marketplace always becomes a dominant force that dictates its own terms and monopolizes the whole ecosystem.

Let’s take the example of Amazon.

We all have used Amazon at least once in our lifetime. The growth of Amazon is tremendous from the customer point of view but now for the next few minutes,

let’s look at it from the authors’ and product owners (selling on amazon) point of view.

Amazon, if you see has monopolized the products ecosystem and it only sells the books of authors who come on to their terms or sells physical products if the manufacturer comes to the terms of amazon. A few of the monopolistic terms are

1. Exuberant charges for stocking your products in their warehouse. If you don’t stock with them, they don’t promote you.
2. No questions asked returns.
3. The seller must accept returns (even though it's no mistake of the product)
4. A seller never gets to know your customers
5. additional commissions and sponsorship to list the products higher

and many more.

Now the governments of all the countries like Noth America, Europe, and India are working towards passing the bill to end the monopoly of the big giants like the Amazon of the world.

So now the manufacturers and sellers have started their eCommerce stores by using the platforms like Shopify, Woo-commerce, big commerce, and many more.

Now, you have all the freedom to build the store the way you wish. Get connected to your customers, take the feedback improvise the products and put your own pricing, offers, and many more.

Now the products are available on Amazon as well as on their personal eCommerce stores.

Now let’s come to the marketplaces of Courses. It's an area of interest for you and me :)

Is Udemy not the Amazon of Courses?

Udemy is now the biggest marketplace for course creators

For Udemy, the highest priority is the end customer and NOT YOU because the end customer pays the money, not you !!

Do you know? Udemy’s top 20% of courses account for 90% of all enrollments.

Hence Udemy will not always popularize your course but will popularize a course that is already popular.

You cannot control many things on Udemy like

1. Udemy takes 70% of the margins on your course
2. Steep discounts are offered on the courses of your competitors. It puts immense pressure on your course pricing
3. No connection with your students.
4. No way to Upsell to your students.
5. There are hundreds of courses competing with yours on that screen.
6. And many more issues of frequent changes of commissions and etc.

Like Shopify, woo-commerce, etc, there are some great platforms like FreshLearn, Teachable, and Kajabi that let you build your own online learning portal where you create and sell your courses with complete control.

There are many advantages of having your courses on your own brand by using platforms like FreshLearn and others

1. Complete Control of the brand. You present the courses and the colors and the landing pages the way you wish to.
2. Complete control of the pricing of the courses.
3. 100% of Sales income is yours. Your hard work, Your Money
4. Complete control of the student interactions. You are the owner of the student data
5. Upsell your services, and other courses to the students

When Udemy is not dependent on you alone, why should you be dependent only on Udemy !!

Udemy is awesome when you are starting out and for your first couple of courses but then if you want to grow, you have to host your courses on your brand i.e. your learning portal as well.

Some other important statistics that will drive the point home :

Udemy’s 157K courses have gathered ~425 million enrollments and an average of 2,700 enrollments per course. What’s most surprising is that the median enrollment is only 188, which means that half of Udemy’s courses don’t reach 200 learners.

40% of the courses are charged priced at less than $40.

Let’s do small math here:

If you are a course creator and put a course worth $40 and after all the hard work, promotions, and excellent content, you get 200 customers by the end of the year.

Total Revenue: $40 * 200 = $8000

Udemy Cut (65%) = $5200

Your share (35%) = $2800

Now to earn this also you have influenced all your friends and family.

If you had used a platform like FreshLearn and put your course there and sold it to your friends and family and got further referrals from them, I am sure you would have sold 100 a year.

So typically it would be $40 * 100 = $4000.

And these customers would have become your brand ambassadors and brought you more customers because you would have provided them referral commission as well. One more thing, the moment you launch your next course, the existing customers will surely be buyers for the new course.

Start creating and selling courses on your online learning platform and put them on Udemy as well.

FreshLearn is a complete No Code platform that lets you create and sell courses online under your own brand. You have complete control over your customers, pricing, and every aspect of the branding.

FreshLearn to course creators is what Shopify is for physical products.

Start building your online learning platform with FreshLearn today for FREE

A creator is the one who makes his own future destiny !!

You might also like

1. Top 4 Udemy alternatives for instructors
2. What is the right option: Sell the course on your own website Vs sell on Udemy?
3. Is Udemy good for instructors to make money?