 So hi everyone, if anyone ends up watching this, I am here with Ken, Ken Wells, who is a instructor on the udemy.com platform, which is the, I think, the biggest online platform for courses, or I should say the biggest place for online courses. And udemy has, I think, over 9 million students, and Ken Wells has, like, well, I'll let him introduce himself, but he's making a living teaching courses on udemy. And so we're here to ask him some questions. Me and my friend Adam is here to ask him some questions about how he's making it work. So Ken, thanks for being here. Yeah, well, thank you so much for having me. Yeah. Yeah, my journey on udemy started in June of last year. Really? Only? So it's been less than a year? Yep. I didn't realize that. Okay. So it's, there was a substantial amount of work in the beginning. I scaled it much faster than what I've seen, you know, other instructors that I've been in contact with. So yeah, I mean, I'm happy to answer any questions that you guys have. So yeah, I guess the first one is just to give us a sense of your track record on udemy. How many students you have, how many courses you have, that kind of thing. Sure. So right now I have 10 courses that are live. I have two that are about to go live next month. And I also have, like, right now I have about almost 26,000 students in 157 countries. Wow. Yeah. Yeah. And if it's okay, I'm just going to share your course page. Sure. I guess I have 11 courses. 11 courses, yeah. Yeah. Yeah, you kind of lose track, create a bunch. Yeah. So that's cool. Best selling udemy. So this is your title, I guess, on udemy. Yep. Okay. And then this is kind of your normal, or your course profile page. You got it. And then the, sort of the, some of the key words that you want people to know your courses about. Okay. Cool. And then, so it shows here, 25,000 students, 11 courses, 550, almost 55 reviews. And your courses are priced, so right now udemy's course pricing is between, is it $10 at the minimum? Or? It's, they're pricing structures between $20 to $50. $20 to $50. Okay. So what I do... $20 is the minimum now. Okay. Yeah. $20 is the minimum. Okay. Yeah. So basically what I do there is, depending on where I'm ranking, and the size of the course, I will, you know, price it. I will look at my competitors and see, like, if my two closest competitors are at $20, I'm outranking them, and I'll put mine $5 higher or something like that. Oh, I see. Oh, okay. So you, that's one of the market research techniques you use is to look at your, and how do you, how do you find your competitors? Well, it really, everything starts with keyword research. Okay. So that's, that's who my competitors are is, who is competing for, you know, keywords with me. Okay. So let's say, and maybe we could even, I don't know, Adam, if we want to use your topic as an example, or if you want us to use a different topic, what if, what if we did like a, like a little exercise, Adam, are you interested in trying some keyword research on your topic or no? Maybe we could do the course that I'm kind of thinking about later this year. Okay. Great. I'd like that. I haven't really done any research on it, so I'd love, I'd love any. Sure. Sure. And what is the topic? What's the art software that I use that for creating comics? It's called Manga Studio or Clip Studio Paint, but basically like a course teaching how to make comics. Okay. Awesome. So I'm just thinking about whether that example would be useful for everyone or for myself and maybe a few others who might be watching this. No, we can use a more general topic. Let's use a general topic, or maybe Ken, do you have a topic that you're going to be working on? I really don't have any in mind because I've already created some courses that, you know. So let's say, let's, let me give you an example then. Let's say that I'm a relationship coach, okay, and I'm wanting to create a course on how to have better, you know, better relationship with your partner. Right. So what I would do is I would go to, I would go to an incognito window for- That's so interesting. And why incognito? Oh, oh, for Chrome. Yeah. Oh, so you're going to, okay, let's just say I'm not going to use incognito. I'm just going to use this window. Sure. Just, I mean, I don't know how that is on other browsers, but it's just simply because, you know, obviously your search results are skewed based on your, your personal browsing history. Yeah. Okay. Let me actually, let me actually do share an incognito window then. That might be easier to, to, okay. So I'm just going to share this screen, which is an incognito window. Cool. Yep. And what I would do is I would, you know, I usually just go to udemy.com and I would have like another doc open, like, you know, Google doc or whatever. Right. And the thing I would do is like right here in this search bar, I would just start by typing like a single letter, like, let's say it's relationships, right? So I would type in an R and then an E. Okay. And then I'm looking in this drop down menu and I don't see anything yet. So now put in an L and we have relationships. So even though that's not like, you know, it's still pretty general. I'm going to, I'm going to take those two key words. Yeah. Relationships and relationship. Now the order that they appear in is based on how much they're searched. All those ones that say, you know, you see the little icon with the page and it says course on the far right. I don't, don't, I don't pay attention to any of that stuff. Just those key words above. Okay. Just these. Yeah. So I would take probably, I would put those three relationships, relationship and relationship building and I would put them in that order on a Google doc. Oh, okay. Yeah. I'll put in another A. Okay. And still nothing new, so then a T. Relationship coaching just popped up. I would throw that at the bottom of my list. Okay. Okay. Now, you know, again, keep going with an I, just keep going. Still nothing new. You just, you just want to keep going until we see something new here. Yeah. Hold on. Let's see. Relationship marketing. You know, relationships coaching versus relationship coaching. I guess. Okay. When it comes to these kinds of differences where there's like an S versus no S, what is your take on it? Well, I just, this is just the preliminary. Like this is where I'm just getting ideas. Later I'll, I'll do some other things to kind of condense it down and focus on which keywords I'm going to target. Got it. I'm just getting ideas. So I just kind of like type out relationships one letter at a time like that. Yeah. Let me, let me actually, you know, what I'm going to do, I'm actually going to start a Google spreadsheet and I'm going to just as a, as an actual exercise, share this, share my screen so that you can see everything. Okay. So we had relationship, we had ships relate, relationship, relationship, building, see what else we had. Relationship coaching. Relationship coaching. Well, it looks like there's ship and ships coaching. Right. Okay. I think it was, this one came first. Coaching. Coaching. Yeah. And then, and then what, so do you, you actually like order them? Sorry. I, I do, I do, but you know, at this point, we're just kind of getting ideas. So then, then if we go back to that, that search, so I would just go all the way through and you know, see if anything else pops up, doesn't look like there is. Now, if you want to get more. Oh, here, here's interesting, some interesting. Yeah. There you go. Happy relationships. Happy relationships. Bad relationships. Bad relationships. Relationships diagram. That's weird. Yeah. Okay. Okay. And interestingly, there's two types of personalities that are especially interested in relationships, ENFJs, which I'm on the borderline of actually. Right. ENFJs. Now, I'm assuming, usually I'm assuming that I have a more specific idea, right? And so if it doesn't relate to personalities and relationships, and obviously I'm not going to put those down, right? I'm just putting down, you know, happy relationships, bad relationships. And then, like, let's say, you know, let's be more specific. You mentioned that the idea was how to have a better relationship. Yeah. Let's actually get even more specific. Let's say, how to have a better relationship when you have kids, you know, maybe marriage. That's pretty specific. So, you know, I might start with how to, you know, and so then I'm starting. Interesting. Yeah. Slow down, though, because you might get ideas as you go along, but you just kind of do each letter just like we did before and just kind of see what's popping up. It's interesting. I think given that there's probably too many H's there, they're not showing it, or maybe you have to refresh. Yeah. You just got to keep going. Like, H-O. Oh, I see. You just go until you kind of start seeing stuff pop up, right? Just start spelling out, like, how to have a good relationship, see nothing so far, so we put the W in. Okay. This is weird. Look at these. What is this? Do you know what those numbers are? No. Is that a course number? Yeah. Honestly, I have no idea what that is. Okay. It's weird. Maybe it's a Udemy bug. Maybe they're showing us how many people are searching it. Yeah. Okay. How to have. Okay. How to hack a computer. How to have. Yeah. Okay. All right. Okay. Yeah. There you go. After having kids. How to have school. How to have school. That's weird. How to have less fear, more power. Hey, Ken, maybe you should teach a class on that. You could teach a class on that. How to have. Okay. So this is weird. So how to have better, let's just say better. Yeah. Apparently people are really interested in that first one. Yeah. Yeah. I don't think this is just on you to me. Okay. How I became much more productive than how you can too. That's interesting. Right. And you can do that too. Ken. Write that down. How to, how to, how top start can have a void business. Okay. I think a good course title would be how to have fun sex because that's clearly near the top. This also is helping you to, you know, maybe refine your idea. Like for example, if you look midway down through the list, it says how to be a better lover. Right. So maybe you started off with this idea that you're going to help people have a better relationships. Mm-hmm. And you decide based on this, you say, well, maybe I can focus this on just how to help someone become a better, you know, be a better lover. And then also how to be better loved. Isn't that interesting, right? Right. So I kind of use these to help me define my idea. And I'm just kind of putting everything down. Yeah. So how to, how, oh, how to be a better loved. Oh, that's probably just a miss, just a typo. That's weird. Okay. So all right, let's, let's say that we've done, we've done this keyword research and we've kind of tried different questions or different. Yeah. So you go through and you think of, you know, what do people type in like they, it's how to dot, dot in relation to whatever your thing is, how to, you know, a parenting. Yeah. Got it. Techniques, you know, parenting techniques or relationship skills or relationship techniques. And you just find the most relevant keywords that are showing up in the list. Yeah. And you make a list of those once you kind of define which ones, you know, most fit what you're trying to do. Yeah. Then I head over to, you know, Google keyword planner. Ah, okay. And this is really the litmus test. Uh-huh. So then I start plugging those words into the keyword planner. Right. Now, let me ask you this. Do you, do you ever click on any of these and look at what courses are available? Sure. Okay. So if I like click on parenting, for example, parenting. Okay. So let me just kind of, let me log in a Google keyword planner here while we're doing this. Okay. So, but, but what I'm hearing you say is you don't do this next. That's not, that's not your process is to look at the courses that are on there. You don't do the, you don't do that. You actually go to keyword planner next. I'm doing, I do the keywords first. Okay. So I'm just going to find, once I have my keywords targeted, then I go look at the competition on you to me for those specific keywords. Okay. So, so I'm obviously, we don't have a lot of time. So I'm just going to speed up the process and that's I'm just going to pick a random one that seems good. Okay. So in the keyword planner, obviously in this video, I'm not going to teach people how to use keyword planner, but I'm just going to say, relationship, happy, happy relationships, you know, okay. But see, I wouldn't, I mean, even though it's on you to me, you know, if you look at the search results here, I mean, it's 170. Yeah. Yeah. So what's your litmus test for, what would you go for in terms of numbers on the app? I mean, I look at the ones that are the most targeted, but you know, it's got to, it's got to have at least, you know, a few thousand. A few thousand. Yeah. Yeah. I'm going to just say, I'm just going to go down and quickly pick one from the list here. And do you, do you have an upper limit? Like you don't, you don't try to go for competing. I try to find the ones that are towards the top of the search results, but that are like if you have a scale between very targeted and low results and very general with high results. Yeah. I try to find the ones that are like right around here that are more targeted, but still have a healthy amount of results. Right. Okay. For example, marriage counseling, marriage counseling. So if your, if your course was focused on that, that would be a good one right there. Yeah. Marriage counseling. Okay. Well, but then people taking a course on marriage counseling might be wanting to become a marriage counselor. I'm guessing. Like if they type in marriage counseling, like they want a marriage counseling degree maybe. Um, I don't know. I think that that's probably more people that are interested in getting counseling for their own marriage. I would think unless it was like marriage counseling certificate or. I mean, I know, like if they type in Google, I think that's true, but if they type it into Udemy though, you know what I mean, like they type into Udemy marriage counseling, I imagine. Well, at the end, at the end of the day, I'm just using that to get a sense of if the keywords that are showing up on Udemy also have decent amount of search results on Google. Right. There's this guaranteed correlation that there's going to be a ton of people on Udemy. I mean really the, the courses that, you know, everybody does, seems to do very well on Udemy or like programming courses and business courses. Yeah. That's really their bread and butter, but this is just to give me a sense of if there's really even some, some. Yeah. Interesting. So I'm going to say healthy relationships. That's, you know, quite targeted and it's a couple thousand and, you know, two dollars. So that's commercial viability. So let's say that that's the keyword healthy relationships. Right. And of course we can, we can. So I would just search that and. Let's search that. And what you notice here is. So. If you go to that top result. Click on it. They have 2300 students and 32 ratings. Okay. So that's, they have a little bit of traction. Okay. Doesn't mean that you can't beat them, but those 32 ratings, you know, you're not going to be number one overnight. If you're competing with this person. Now there's some things you can do with keywords. To be more relevant, like, for example, they started their, they started their title with build. Right. Whereas I would probably start it with the keywords of healthy relationships and then put a colon. Right. And then put some things after that. Now what, what is, you to me probably doesn't reveal this, but what is your feeling of what is most important in the search results on you to me? Well, it's keyword relevance, which is again, putting it at the beginning, but that alone won't get it to that, that alone is not going to help you beat that top. Yeah. Cause like, for example, codependent no more has nothing. I mean, there's, there's no keyword. Okay. So one little side note. So you to me keeps testing a lot of different things. So it's perfect, you know, and look, I even show up on the first page even for an anger management course. Oh, you do? Oh, there it is. Oh, hey, you there. That's not even one that I'm trying. I'm not even trying for that keyword. Yeah. So why do you show up here? What do you think? Honestly, maybe because the course has a lot of students and it's got, you know, it's, it's very well rated. There's probably a lot of minutes consumed for that course. It does have the word better relationships. If you look in the subtitle there. There it is. Yep. Okay. That's part of the reason. Okay. So what you to me is looking at is. Yes. You want to do things from an SEO perspective of, you know, putting your keyword at the beginning of the title. If you want to, you know, if you look at my title and subtitle here. So anger management was the main keyword. So that shows up first. Yeah. How to control anger was the second thing that I wanted. Oh, I see. Got it. Right. And then better relationships was one and then reduced stress was another. I see. I see. So if I type in reduced stress, maybe you'll come up. We'll see. We'll see. There he goes. Oh, number two. Yeah. Both of my courses show up. Number one. That's awesome. That's really good. Okay. So what do you do next? Now that we, let's say we, let's say we pick the title and the subtitle. What's your next step? So once we've identified how so my strategy is always to rank high and let you to me carry the the brunt of the marketing for these courses. Yeah. Right. I don't do a lot of outside marketing. So everything that I do is about getting these to rank as high as possible. Got it. So what I would do next is what else do you do? Yeah. What else do you do to get them ranked high as possible? Well, another factor that you to me looks at is enrollments. Now here's, here's where a lot of people, especially when they're starting out, they're so afraid to give their course away for free because they're afraid that like if they give it away for free then nobody is going to buy it. Right. And the reality is that's not the case. We have to always remember that the internet is a very, very big place. So I give out a lot of free coupons. I have a virtual assistant that has a schedule where she's constantly giving out free coupons. Now, I have her do it. What do you offer them? Yeah, what do you offer the free coupons? Facebook groups. There's certain sites I've identified that I also give them out for free. Okay. So that works really well for you that you're giving out the free coupons? It does, but you have to get, you can't just go to the same place as you kind of have to mix it up. One thing that I do different than some instructors is that some instructors will basically like they'll do a post with all their courses for free. I don't think that's a good strategy because what I want is I want someone to come in for free on one course and then they're going to now start receiving promotional announcements from me for paid courses. Right. So I give out select courses to select areas to get people enrolled which not only helps my rankings on Udemy because again Udemy is also wanting you to build their email list which is why they still honor that's why they look so heavily on enrollments is you know you're building their student base. Yeah. Okay. So the free, so you really, you emphasize on giving free coupons for specific courses in the relevant Facebook groups and other websites. Yup. Got it. And what else do you do to rank so high? What else, what's another? Well, another thing is is and you know Udemy's changed a lot of things recently. Okay, so where it stands right now is you really need, they're prompting students three times to leave a review. Oh. They prompt them right when they start so after they've consumed about 10 percent. Okay. They're prompt. Yes. So you need to really come out of the gates really strong and fast and that's actually been a challenge with the most challenging course that I have with ratings is what you just saw in the last page of the stress management course. Okay. It was identified that you know I just got off to a slow start there so I need to reconfigure that so that they get kind of like a really strong start in the course. The first 10 percent of the course needs to be really good. Yeah. Exactly. I'm going to see, Adam, do you have any questions you want to ask? The only question that I thought of beforehand was essentially like what is the benefit of selling through Udemy as opposed to you know through your own website and is that exclusive? Like if you put something on Udemy like are you limited to just Udemy? Is it exclusive though? So excellent questions. To answer your first question the benefit of Udemy is the fact that they market your course for you and they also walk you through every step of the they basically give you a roadmap of how to create your course, what to do next. So it's very plug and play. Whereas when you're creating it on your own the main thing is you're responsible for your own marketing and there's a lot of decisions you have to make to you know how do you want it to be. So you can just fill in the column. Yeah fill in the What if you wanted to do both is that like in their terms of agreement? And I think yeah your second question had to do with if I put my course on Udemy does that mean I can't sell it somewhere else and it's your content so you're not violating their terms you can sell your course you know anywhere else you want. Respect your time so what is the if you were starting over on Udemy today what would you do differently or what would you keep doing besides what we talked about of course. Right I think in some of this you just you just learn how to do it. I mean like one thing that I do differently today than when I started is it used to take me like a month to create a course whereas now I create smaller more targeted courses that are shorter because What's the ideal length in your mind for you actually what would you I mean like for example and I also look for ways to really leverage my time like I did a webinar yesterday which I recorded on a topic that I also did keyword research on. Right So I already did all that before I recorded the webinar so that webinar is about an hour right and I'm going to turn that into a course which I'm going to pay someone to do the video editing right so it saves my time and then I'm going to put that on Udemy so that it can start earning me residual income as well. Yeah so then you have to so that's great so the entire course is an hour and a half right okay and then the Udemy has limit of 20 minutes maximum per lecture on Udemy so you just chop up the hour and a half into what 10 minutes 20 minutes what's your suggestion for ideal length of each lecture. Apparently through you know according to research I guess like 2 to 3 minutes for a length per lecture is good. Okay you can't always adhere to that but your average lecture needs to be I think less than 10 you know the average length of lecture needs to be like 10 minutes or less. Okay. So 2 to 3 minutes is really kind of people's attention span on Udemy and probably elsewhere too I know it was on YouTube like my 2 minute videos tend to do better than other ones but I kind of don't care and just kind of like whatever but yeah and one more thing is I mean you've got beautiful graphics where do you get your graphics. Oh great question so Udemy does that for you? Oh wait a second I should say that Udemy gives you the option but you can also upload your own graphics right? Yeah you can upload your own but I since the very beginning I let Udemy do that because they have a vested interest in your course doing well. Got it. So they're going to provide you with at least as good a graphic as you know you're probably likely to find on your own. But even this video thumbnail graphic that was from Udemy too? Yeah it's um they do that part automatically once they create your thumbnail they throw that on the front end of your and this is your current brand. Yeah. So then basically you recorded this video you know you do this and then Udemy threw up Udemy put up a threw up a thumbnail graphic. Yeah. Okay and the thumbnail graphic oh the thumbnail graphic is the course graphic it's the course logo graphic. You got it. Got it okay okay awesome man well Ken is there anything else like you want to say before we adjourn? Um I think you know you could make Udemy a full-time business if you treat it that way I would say that you know also look at as with anything you do online look at multiple different um income streams. Yeah. You know because Udemy is a they are a marketplace they do they can change their rules at any time. Yeah. So you know don't put all your eggs in one basket but it is a great it is a great platform for someone starting off to really just quickly put a course together get it online and start making money. Awesome man. Well I I hope those who are watching this if we do share it will follow you and buy your courses and kind of see how you do it how you promote your courses from the student perspective and I think that will be useful. Yeah. Awesome dude. Thank you so much. I appreciate your time and yeah. Thank you. Yeah. Alright. So I guess I'll end this video now and here we go.