Online learning can be one of the most beneficial ways of accessing various types of education, at an affordable cost. Have you heard of Udemy? I’d like to give you my Udemy courses review.
Because Udemy is a global marketplace, you will find courses in a vast selection of subjects, from lifestyle to music, business to fitness etc.
But for the purpose of this article, we would be focusing on marketing courses. That is, after all, what I’m wishing to help you succeed in, lol.
First, let me share with you how Udemy got started and where they are today. I’ll show you the pros and cons, and then my honest opinion and recommendations, OK?
Would you like to see where I learned all my online training?
Contents
In The Beginning
Co-founder Eren Bali, grew up in a small Turkish village and attended a one-room schoolhouse. When his family finally got a computer, his love of chess and mathematics fueled him to access learning resources from all around the world.
Below is a video of his humble beginnings. It’s really quite interesting if you have a few minutes…
In 2007, after online learning changed his life, he travelled to the US and partnered with co-founders Oktay Caglar and Gagan Biyani. Together they worked towards their common goal: ” to make quality education more accessible and improve lives through learning.”
Initially, they tried to raise capital funding and were rejected 30 times. So they decided to bootstrap the development of the product and launched Udemy in May 2010.
Within a few months, they had attracted 1000 instructors to create about 2000 courses.
With this early success, they were able to raise $1 million by August, 2010.
From there, it kept growing and succeeding. Udemy has raised about $173 million by 2016 and is still one of the most affordable means for self study, employee upskilling, and generating credit towards techinical certificaton.
Udemy has since served 30 million students (as of early 2019), houses 130,000 courses, and lists 50,000 instructors in over 60 languages.
Many other platforms offer courses by Universities and eductional institutions. And that’s fine, but they’re accredited, and still expensive.
Udemy offers great teaching but for prices that everyone can afford.
Did you know that anyone can create and teach a course on Udemy?
This means you!! Do you have a set of skills or expertise in something? Why not market a course of your own?
What Exactly Is Udemy
This video is cute…only 1min 15sec.
For Students
Udemy is a global marketplace of online courses, for students who wish to learn from a myriad of subjects. You’ll find a little of everything there, to suit many interests.
And it grows each year as more and more courses are added.
The courses offered are a combination of lectures, videos, text and sometimes presentation slides.
Remember, these courses are not like traditional courses you would attend in a physical school or accredited online school.
These are self-paced courses with no accreditation, but can still teach you an abundance of knowledge in your given subject.
And you can receive a certificate of completion, to share your accomplishment with others, if desired.
Udemy claims that all instructors are experts in the course subject. Even so, I would check each one out carefully by:
- Read the instructor’s bio to gauge their experience
- Read the student reviews
- Check to see how many students have previously enrolled
- Check the star rating
- Read the description of the course to determine if it’s what you’re looking for
- Watch the “preview” video if offered
An important factor in today’s style of learning is that you can access your courses on different mobile platforms and apps, as well as Apple TV for the audio/video lectures.
For Teachers
Udemy offers instructors the option of adding their own courses and earn income. They encourage you to teach what you know, or what you love.
They provide multiple formats that you can use to teach in the style that makes sense for your topic.
There are 5 steps to making an online course:
- Choose your topic
- Map out your course
- Film and edit your course
- Publish your course
- Market your course
There are Udemy resources you can access for extensive help in each step. Once completed, you submit your course for review. Before publication, each course must meet Udemy’s standard for quality. Minimum standards include:
- at least 30 minutes of instruction
- at least 5 separate lectures
- provide valuable content
- HD quality
- audio quality
- landing page with a well-written detailed course description, bio and profile image, target audience, etc.
As an instructor, you can apply to be a “premium instructor” if you want to charge for your course. There are certain recommendations according to your experience, course length, and course categories. There are a minimum and a maximum amount you can select.
What’s The Platform Like?
The platform is user friendly. It’s straightforward and directs you to type in what you want to learn. Or, you could click on the “categories” to see how it’s organized.
When you type in a topic, it intuitively comes up with suggestions for you. When you click on your choice, you’re brought to their landing page, showing you their most popular and trending courses.
The page will show you the popular topics, popular instructors, and list all the courses in that category.
There are filters you can use, to help narrow down your search. Some categories can have hundreds of courses to go through.
Once you’ve decided on something, it will bring you to that course’s page. It will describe the course and let you know of any requirements on your part. If you’re happy with it, simply add to your cart or “buy now”.
Creating your new account is easy and free. Once that’s done, you have the choice to pay via a credit card or PayPal.
If you’re real lucky, you will have a coupon from somewhere, lol.
After your puchase is finalized, you can log into your account at any time to take the course. It tracks your progress so you can pick up where you left off.
Another great feature is the ability to download your course for offline viewing.
You get lifetime access to your courses, and a certificate of completion when you’re done.
Overall, Udemy seems to be genuinely concerned with it’s student’s experience. Yes, you’ll find some negative reviews, but that’s unavoidable. Thankfully, most seem satisfied with their experience.
Are The Courses Quality?
This is a hard question to answer. Mostly because there are over 130,000 courses, and who has the time to go through them all, lol.
The online reviews range from great to poor. I’m sure a lot of the poor ones are from personal experience with a course they didn’t enjoy.
You must remember that these aren’t University courses. Nor do the instructors have doctorates! If you’re already knowledgeable on a topic, and are hoping to increase that knowledge to an expert’s level, you may be disappointed, I don’t know.
Personally, I’ve purchased many courses, on social media marketing and such, and have been very happy with them.
Just remember to check it out thoroughly, and you should be ok. The nice thing is that you have a 30-day money-back guarantee.
If you have some expertise in an area, and you don’t see anything of your calibre on Udemy, why don’t you consider creating a course of your own?
You’ll not only be able to share your knowledge with others, but could make some money doing it. There are many instructors on the platform making a really great income from their courses.
How Much Will This Cost Me?
Sometimes nothing! It’s free to sign up and you will find a significant amount of free courses. This doesn’t mean they are inferior.
In fact quite the opposite. Udemy requires a higher standard from the instructors believing it will persuade students to return if they had a positive experience.
So why are they free then? Because a new instructor may be wanting to brand themselves (get themselves known) and attract a following before he or she starts charging for their courses.
The remaining courses run from $19.99 to $199.99 US. You will often find Udemy, or the instructor themselves, offering discount prices.
Just recently I was able to purchase 2 of their most expensive courses because they discounted all their courses for St. Patrick’s Day at $14.99 CA.
That’s the one thing I really enjoy about Udemy. They have almost permanent sales on their courses.
Courses worth more than $100 will often be on sale for about $10. If it isn’t on sale when you look, just wait a week or so, and you’ll probably see it come down in price.
There are many courses on all aspects of affiliate maketing. If you’re interested in checking any out, I highly recommend Alex Genadinik.
Alex currently has 125 courses, with over 156,000 students. He has over 10 years in SEO and marketing, and responds to his students within 24 hours.
I have personally talked with him, and he’s someone who cares about his students.
If you’re looking to go more indepth with any aspect of your marketing business, Alex should be your Udemy go-to guy!
Pros:
30-day guarantee for course refund- a vast range of course subjects
- many courses offer previews
- free to affordable pricing (often times discounted)
- work at your own pace
- lifetime access to your courses
- access to instructor’s email
- access to discussion boards for interaction with other students
Cons:
- no academic credit
- for the purposes of marketing, very difficult to find courses for all the different aspects of online marketing.
if you do find enough courses to get you started, it’s will become very expensive.- difficult to determine the instructor’s expertise. Udemy relies on student reviews to determine this.
- language quality can vary greatly in courses taught by non-native speaking instructors
- different courses may contain a lot of overlapping material.
- because each student is taking their course at different times, the questions posed on the discussion boards may not be answered for some time.
- teachers may create courses for income and not necessarily be available for quick support.
My Recommendation For You
Udemy is a legitimate tool for learning. It has a large selection of courses to choose from, BUT…
My concern for anyone wanting to learn online affiliate marketing is the need for step by step instruction, with an abundance of support.
When looking through the affiliate marketing courses available, there will undoubtedly be considerable overlap of information. You would need to take several courses in hopes of learning all you need to know to get started.
Another concern is the lack of continuity because of the different teaching styles of each teacher. And then there’s the potential lack of readily available support, both from the discussion board and the teacher.
As a beginner, it’s vitally important to learn each step, to build on that knowledge, then continue to the next step.
Personally, I use Udemy for supplemental information, that enhances my business. If you are already an online marketer, then take a look at Udemy.
There are many courses that can help you scale your business.
My recommendation for someone just starting out would be to join a community of like-minded people, who can “take you by the hand” to teach you all you need to know.
I am a member of such a community, and learning was both affordable (or free, depending on the amount of education you desire) and easy to understand.
They are an all-inclusive platform. They offer certification courses that take you step by step.
You earn while you learn because you are up and running in phase 1.
They also offer:
- a domain name registry
- a website builder
- website hosting
- keyword research tools
- analytics
- writing tools
- and the world’s largest “live” community for support.
The courses are all done by one person so you get a consistent teaching style. He’s an excellent teacher who is easy to understand and learn from. And if need be, you can contact him directly with any concerns.
Members can sign up for free, no credit card needed.
With your free membership, you get a free website with hosting and access to phase 1 of 2 different certification courses. It covers everything you need to start your business.
If you choose the premium membership, they offer the lowest membership price you’ll find anywhere online.
So why not check us out? You have everything to gain because it’s free! And absolutely nothing to lose but a few hours of your time.
Click on the image below to read all about it. And when you join, I’ll be there to greet you and help you as long as you want me to.
Have you ever used Udemy? What course did you take, and did you like it? I’d love to hear from you in the comments below.
And please share this post with anyone you know who would be interested.
Your friend,
Suzanne
This is a good review of Udemy, Suzanne.
I have some experience with them. That’s where I took a few courses before I finally landed at Wealthy Affiliate. I agree if you need more knowledge on a certain subject even though it’s not accredited you can learn the knowledge often times for free.
Very nice job.
Hi, Fred, and thanks for your comment.
They do offer some good courses. And some of the instructors do more than one course.
What I like is that they’ve been offering some incredible prices this year. So it makes them very affordable.
Cheers,
Suzanne
Great article on Udemy, Suzanne. I am in total agreement with everything you wrote. I have bought courses on Udemy – free and paid – and everything is just as you wrote. It is a great avenue for alternate non-traditional learning and the best thing is the convenience of it all – it is open 24 hrs a day!
Thanks for this article and I will certainly share it with others. Great job.
Michelle
Hi Michelle, and thanks for your comment.
It’s a great place if you need some training in a specific area. And the sale prices lately have been incredible.
What I appreciate is being able to download a course so I can look at it in places that don’t have an internet connection. Otherwise, your courses are kept in your account for viewing at any time.
And thanks for sharing!
Suzanne
Wow, what a great and thorough review. From the get-go I was cautious as to what Udemy really was and what their intentions were. Thanks to you, I now know that they have absolutely no academic credit, the courses end up being incredibly expensive AND they lack in the support department. I’ll be checking out your recommendation, thanks a lot for all your help 🙂
Hi Brandon. I try to be thorough and give my honest opinion. No they don’t provide academic credit, but some of the courses can be very good. As I said, I would use their courses to supplement, but not to learn starting a business from scratch. Wealthy Affiliate is the best place to do that.
Cheers,
Suzanne
Great post, accurate, and honest! Thank you for posting!
Hi Sarah, and thanks for your comment. I certainly try to be as accurate as possible. It certainly helps that I’ve taken a few of their courses too!
Cheers,
Suzanne