August 22, 2016 - Udemy Makes Another New Pricing Change!

Hello everyone and welcome to yet another online teaching case study! In this week’s case study, we are going to be discussing Udemy and their new pricing change 2.0! 

As a lot of you know about 5 months ago Udemy changes its pricing structure limiting instructor to $50 Maximum course prices and $20 minimum course prices! They are now going back to their old model with a few slight changes. Here is the article straight from their blog! 

This is a huge change yet again and I am very excited to see how the market reacts to these new pricing changes! I have created my view own youtube video to help answer questions and how I will be pricing my courses with the new pricing update coming August 22! 

Click here for the FREE Video and don't forget to subscribe to our channel! 

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC8g_o_0wHJUsp67lJA69yhg

We now have over 20+ hours of free preview video content for all of my best selling online courses! 

Resouce: Udemy Blog 

https://teach.udemy.com/updates-pricing-and-promotions

In April, we updated the Pricing and Promotions Policy on Udemy. This was one of the biggest changes in the history of Udemy, and we know this change had a big impact on you: our partners in this business. Over the past 4 months, we’ve been listening intently to you and your students. We’ve heard from you that you need more flexibility in setting your prices, and we’ve heard from students that they are motivated by more varied promotions that prompt them to explore a new product like an online course.

We heard you and are taking action. Effective August 22, we’re updating our pricing model:

• A wider range. We’ll be expanding the range for list prices on Udemy to $20 – $200.
• Larger discounts. We’ll be increasing the discount cap for Udemy promotions to 75% off and removing the 50% off limit on instructor coupons.
• Re-introduction of fixed price deals. By popular demand, we’ll bring back the Fixed Price Promotional program. This will allow us to run promotions on your courses at prices like $10 or $15.
• Maintain the floor. We will continue to limit sale prices to a minimum of $10, for both instructor promotions and Udemy deals.
• Maintain tiers. We will continue to tier course list prices on the 5s and 0s.

Please note that all of these changes will go live on August 22. The Udemy Deals Program now includes both a Percentage Promotions program and a Fixed Price program.

We have opted instructors into these programs based on your past promotional preferences. You’ll be receiving email updates from our team with more information on your specific opt-in preferences.

An evolving marketplace

To be clear with you, we will continue to evolve our pricing model as the marketplace matures.The most recent pricing model provided key insights into pricing on Udemy. We will continue to dig deeper into these learnings and student feedback to evolve our pricing in the future. We believe this will help you grow your revenues on Udemy and, as we continue to grow and learn, we will continue to refine our pricing.

Our goal in making this change is to increase stability and confidence in your Udemy revenue as we continue to deepen our partnership.

Next steps for you

Please log into your account and visit the Bulk Price Edit screen. There you can change your course prices and confirm your opt-in for the Fixed Price program. Your courses will be included in our upcoming promotions unless you opt out of the program by August 22. Courses that you select new prices for will update on midnight Pacific time, August 22. For guidance on how to think through pricing your courses, please see our blog post.

Our team is on hand to answer any questions you have in the Udemy Studio this week, and we’ll also be hosting a conference call to go over this change in more detail. You can register for the conference call here. Thank you for your flexibility and support as we work together to build a stronger, more sustainable marketplace.

(In April, we updated the Pricing and Promotions Policy on Udemy. This was one of the biggest changes in the history of Udemy, and we know this change had a big impact on you: our partners in this business. Over the past 4 months, we’ve been listening intently to you and your students. We’ve heard from you that you need more flexibility in setting your prices, and we’ve heard from students that they are motivated by more varied promotions that prompt them to explore a new product like an online course.

We heard you and are taking action. Effective August 22, we’re updating our pricing model:

• A wider range. We’ll be expanding the range for list prices on Udemy to $20 – $200.
• Larger discounts. We’ll be increasing the discount cap for Udemy promotions to 75% off and removing the 50% off limit on instructor coupons.
• Re-introduction of fixed price deals. By popular demand, we’ll bring back the Fixed Price Promotional program. This will allow us to run promotions on your courses at prices like $10 or $15.
• Maintain the floor. We will continue to limit sale prices to a minimum of $10, for both instructor promotions and Udemy deals.
• Maintain tiers. We will continue to tier course list prices on the 5s and 0s.

Please note that all of these changes will go live on August 22. The Udemy Deals Program now includes both a Percentage Promotions program and a Fixed Price program.

We have opted instructors into these programs based on your past promotional preferences. You’ll be receiving email updates from our team with more information on your specific opt-in preferences.

An evolving marketplace

To be clear with you, we will continue to evolve our pricing model as the marketplace matures.The most recent pricing model provided key insights into pricing on Udemy. We will continue to dig deeper into these learnings and student feedback to evolve our pricing in the future. We believe this will help you grow your revenues on Udemy and, as we continue to grow and learn, we will continue to refine our pricing.

Our goal in making this change is to increase stability and confidence in your Udemy revenue as we continue to deepen our partnership.

Next steps for you

Please log into your account and visit the Bulk Price Edit screen. There you can change your course prices and confirm your opt-in for the Fixed Price program. Your courses will be included in our upcoming promotions unless you opt out of the program by August 22. Courses that you select new prices for will update on midnight Pacific time, August 22. For guidance on how to think through pricing your courses, please see our blog post.

Our team is on hand to answer any questions you have in the Udemy Studio this week, and we’ll also be hosting a conference call to go over this change in more detail. You can register for the conference call here. Thank you for your flexibility and support as we work together to build a stronger, more sustainable marketplace.

Case Study 7/22/2016 Marketing Tips and Strategies on Skillshare

Case Study 7/22/2016 Marketing Tips and Strategies on Skillshare 

Hello everyone and welcome to yet another online teaching case study! In this week’s case study, we are going to be discussing Marketing strategies on Skillshare!

Recently I have been uploading a lot of my courses onto other platforms, especially Skillshare. In my very first month teaching on Skillshare I was able to enroll more than 2,500+ students and earn more than $2,200 in royalties!

In this blog post I wanted to share with you a one marketing strategy that will help you when creating your Skillshare courses!

Marketing Strategy #1: Should I Create A Smaller Course Or A Bigger Course On Skillshare?

Skillshare recommends Smaller bite-sized courses but they key to any course is the QUALITY of Teaching and the QUALITY of video. If you have a lot of smaller courses but the QUALTY is lacking, your courses will not do very well. Same goes for a bigger course. If you have a really big course, but the QULITY is not very good, students will give you poor ratings and the course ultimately will fail.

So, whether creating a large course or a smaller course, QUALITY will always trump either.

But.. I didn’t exactly answer the question. Longer courses or Shorter courses? While both have its advantages and disadvantages, I would learn towards creating smaller courses on Skillshare. Here is why:

1)    The more courses you have on Skillshare the more premium enrollments you can get from the same student.

It doesn’t cost your premium student any more money to enroll in additional premium classes of yours, but you do earn more for each premium enrollment in your courses! Simple math says that if you get 1 premium student to enroll in 10 of your courses, that 10 premium enrollments for you. Compared to that same student just enrolling in 1 “master class” if you decided to create a very big course.

2)    When taking online courses people do not want to watch hours and hours of video in one sitting

Most people wanting to learn online want to learn right away and quickly! With so much information at our fingertips these days students do not like watching hours or tutorials. Rather 20-30 minutes, learn something new, and then move onto the next thing to learn! Keep this in mind when creating your Skillshare courses!

3)    Students feel a sense of accomplishment when they complete a course!

It always feels good when we finish something! With a shorter course you can give your students that feeling more often! And this also keeps your students coming back and wanting more!

So to re-cap, I think creating smaller, bite sized, courses on Skillshare is the way to go (for now J)

I hope you have enjoyed this week’s case study! There are many ways to begin teaching online, but this should give you some great ideas that have worked for myself and many other online instructors! Stay tuned next week where I discuss more online teaching strategies. 

Thank you for reading our blog post today! If you have any questions please feel free to post your comments below!

Also, you can check out all of my blog posts for FREE by going to:

http://joeparysacademy.blogspot.com/

Sincerely,

Joe Parys

Case Study 6/8/2016 Working On Other Online Teaching Platforms Part 1

Hello everyone and welcome to yet another online teaching case study! In this week’s case study, we are going to be discussing Skillshare and creating courses other than Udemy!

Recently I have been uploading a lot of my courses onto other platforms, especially Skillshare. Skillshare is a subscription based online learning platform that allows premium users to access our courses. You can also create “free courses” that allow students to enroll anyone to enroll in your course for free!  Here is what my profile looks like after 3 days of starting on Skillshare!

So what are the advantages of working with Skillshare? Once you course has been approved it seems to be completely 100% passive income. There is not a whole lot of “student interaction” or “sending emails/answering questions”. However, Skillshare does have a “project” requirement for every course. Here is what that looks like!

Skillshare also pays its instructors with paypal and with a 50% 50% revenue share split. Its different because it’s a subscription based company, so here is some of the details below!

Overall I think trying and seeing how Skillshare works for you is a great opportunity to grow your online teaching business and earn some passive income as well!

I hope you have enjoyed this week’s case study! There are many ways to begin teaching online, but this should give you some great ideas that have worked for myself and many other online instructors! Stay tuned next week where I discuss more online teaching strategies.

Thank you for reading our blog post today! If you have any questions please feel free to post your comments below!

Also, you can check out all of my online courses by going to: www.joeparys.com 

Sincerely,
Joe Parys

Case Study 5/25/2016 Promoting on Youtube and Beyond!

Hello everyone and welcome to yet another online teaching case study! In this week’s case study, we are going to be discussing how to use Youtube and Your own Website To Boost Online Course Sales!

Since sales have slowed down and our own promotion on Udemy are not half of what they use to be, a lot of online instructors have begun their own marketing campaigns to dive in additional sales. I myself have build my very own Youtube channel and wanted to discuss how things have been going.

My channel (Joe Parys Academy) is a Youtube channel dedicated to helping teach as many people online as possible. My goal is to give away free preview videos to all of my bestselling online courses. This creates a win/win situation. First off, the view gets an awesome free video tutorial. Second, I get a chance to market my videos on an amazing platform and potential upsell my videos. Here is a screen shot of the beginning stages of my Youtube Channel.

As you can see I have just started the channel, but already I can see the enormous value! In one of my videos I had over 6 hours minutes viewed the very first day, and I made a full price sale directly from the link in my Youtube description! Now, I only have 9 subscribers and I am still in the process of building my channel, but I can say it’s a great place to get started making some extra sales and marketing your online courses.

Another place I am now selling my courses and giving away free courses is on my own Website! 

www.joeparys.com 

This has proven to be a bit more of a challenge and I am still building my website as well, but the potential seems to just as great! If students find my website they will be able to enroll in my courses directly on Udemy using my own coupon codes! This again creates a massive win/win situation where I earn 97% and the students save 50% off my courses! Feel free Enroll in my free courses by going to my website! Enjoy!

I hope you have enjoyed this week’s case study! There are many ways to begin teaching online, but this should give you some great ideas that have worked for myself and many other online instructors! Stay tuned next week where I discuss more online teaching strategies. 

Thank you for reading our blog post today! If you have any questions please feel free to post your comments below!

Also, you can check out all of my blog posts for FREE by going to:

http://joeparysacademy.blogspot.com/

Sincerely,

Joe Parys

Case Study 5/18/2016 Keywords and Search Terms For Online Instructors!

Hello everyone and welcome to yet another online teaching case study! In this week’s case study, we are going to be discussing Keywords and Search Terms For Online Instructors!

Last night I just received an email from a student who visited my website. He said that it was a little difficult navigating around my course and he needed a “search” bar to find the courses he was looking for. This made me think of an excellent topic to discuss in this weeks case study!

How many sales are you losing out on because your course is not being found by the right students?! This is why keywords and search terms are very important to your online teaching success. So what are some great keywords and search terms to use when thinking about your title and subtitles in your next courses?

Here is a list of some of th most searched for terms on Google:

Weather, Translate, Maps, Calculator, News, Youtube, Restaurants, Movies, Calendar, Speed Test

Now, these are pretty random and may not be applicable to our online courses, but lets look a level deeper and explore why these terms are being searched.

Most people are looking for instant results and answers. This is why people will search for weather on their computers. Also, weather is something that is important to a lot of people! So when it comes to creating headlines, titles, and descriptions for your online courses, think about what your student is going to NEED and also is IMPORTANT to them!

Here are some examples from my best selling courses:

The Complete PHP Course With Bootstrap3 CMS System & Admin Panel

The Complete Online Teaching Masterclass: Teach Online Today!

The Complete Android Developer Course: Beginner To Advanced!

Using these three examples I have the keywords “The Complete” in every example. Why? This tells students that the course is very comprehensive! When students search for courses they want something complete and comprehensive. Also, I use words like Android, Teach, Masterclass PHP Course, Ect. So that students who use these keywords will be more likely to find my courses as well.

It is important to understand and using as many “keywords” that people are commonly searching for in order to get the best results possible! I suggest using google trends to help you with the most common keywords and think hard about which keywords your courses will use to stand out from!

I hope you have enjoyed this week’s case study! There are many ways to begin teaching online, but this should give you some great ideas that have worked for myself and many other online instructors! Stay tuned next week where I discuss more online teaching strategies. 

Thank you for reading our blog post today! If you have any questions please feel free to post your comments below!

Also, you can check out all of my blog posts for FREE by going to:

http://joeparysacademy.blogspot.com/

Sincerely,

Joe Parys