Venturing out into the world of online course business can be quite daunting. Trying to get leads on where to start will almost always introduce you to the much renowned Udemy. Let us take a look at whether Udemy would provide you with the finest platform for you to start your course-building business.
What Exactly is Udemy
To make an informed decision about how to start your business, we need to first get educated on Udemy and how they function. Udemy is what we call a MOOC, or massive online course creator, this means that Udemy has thousands (upwards of 100,000) of online courses being offered on their platform.
Udemy lets you create a course and include it in their online library. Users or students can then choose to preview and enroll in these courses as they wish. This is in our opinion a wonderful gateway for fresh creators to test the waters for online course creation.
The question then remains, why should you not go for Udemy. As wonderful as this all sounds Udemy employs a nefarious revenue model to sweep up as much of the revenue generated while leaving the course creator with a rather bad cut.
What Are Some Limitations of Udemy
Udemy, while a great platform limits a lot of the activities that instructors want to perform. In a glance let us see the highlights of where Udemy creates trouble for its users:
- Big cut from the revenue
- Have to be on Udemy from early
- Ownership Issues
- Advertisement Trap
- Lack of Design Flexibility
Follow along as we take an in-depth look at these issues.
Big Cut From Revenue
A quick Google search can show you how well some course creators and instructors have done for themselves on Udemy. They have acquired large sums of money through their courses. But this is due to the credit of the instructors themselves rather than the platform they used. Udemy has two primary systems for revenue sharing with instructors:
- Instructors can bring in new students with their promo codes of which they keep 97% of the revenue
- Sales that occur without the use of an instructor specific promo code from which instructors receive 37% of the revenue
97% of course revenue seems very appealing. You create a promo code and self-market your course on the internet. If a student decides to purchase your course using your link you keep the major share. Easy enough. The problem though is with the second revenue system, if a student decides to purchase your course without the use of your code you receive only 37% or less than half of the revenue.
Have to Be On Udemy Early
None of this seems to be doing creators justice, here is what makes it worse. If you have brought in a student to Udemy and had them sign up to Udemy after which they decide to purchase another creator’s course, you have essentially cut off a part of that creator’s paycheck. This means there’s almost a “battle royale” between instructors to bring in new students with their promo link lest Udemy takes the bigger cut from one’s meticulously designed course.
In this scenario, the best way to succeed would be to have started as early as possible at Udemy. But Udemy has been running for many years now, realistically we can only bring in so many new students to the platform. Since Udemy has already far exceeded its target number of students, new instructors are at a major disadvantage.
Lack of Content Ownership
Now if you thought after all the revenue dilemma at least I own the rights to my course, right? You might want to rethink. Since you do not own the platform where you uploaded the course, you are, in essence giving up ownership of your material. Udemy will not allow you access to:
- Course statistics
- Student emails
- Business analytics
- Admin panels
You cannot see which of your courses are bringing in more students, or what are areas of improvement for you. Udemy very strictly restricts access for creators, with your course in Udemy you may only have access to the student’s name and other unhelpful details. Since you cannot access students’ emails you lose the option to later reach out to students for future courses and updates.
Adding salt to the wound Udemy will also put a watermark on the videos that you have uploaded with your course. Had you decided to use your watermark on the videos, congratulations, there is now a clutter of watermarks all over your curated course videos.
Lack of Design Flexibility
With Udemy your course page has no personality, Udemy only lets you add descriptive text to advertise your course. But when you are passionate about your course creation this passion should ooze out of every corner. You should be able to add your flair to the design of the homepage of your course.
With Udemy yours and everyone else’s courses visually are all the same so it is easier to trick students with the tricky advert traps Udemy has set up.
Taking Control Using a Tool Like Tutor Lms
There are many alternatives to Udemy that you can take advantage of to create your own eLearning platform with features similar to that found while using Udemy. The market is saturated with solutions so choosing the right one is difficult. In our recommendation, self-hosting your own LMS platform is the best solution.
Self Hosted LMS Platform
What then is the alternative solution for someone wanting to begin an online course selling business. As mentioned above we promote self-hosting your website, creating and selling your courses with your own rules where you reap all the benefits of your hard work.
The best way to do this is to use an LMS or learning management system plugin tagged with a WordPress website. One of the best tools for this and our prime suggestion is to use Tutor LMS, an extremely easy-to-use plugin that lets you be in control over your course selling business.
For useful tips on hosting solutions take a look at one of our articles on this topic.
Full Revenue and All the Stats
Tutor LMS or any other self-hosted website using an LMS for that matter eliminates almost all of the issues Udemy posed for us and more. Firstly with Tutor LMS, you have all of the power over revenue. You alone receive the money students pay to enroll in your course. Tutor LMS has brilliant documentation and easy well-designed layouts to help you set up monetization for your courses.
Additionally, you receive extensive statistics that show which of your courses are bringing in exactly how much revenue and which courses are your best sellers. You can also generate passive income through student membership plans using WooCommerce on your site that Udemy does not allow us to do. Here’s an article to understand the complete money management process on Tutor LMS.
Design Your Course Page Your Way
When we are the designer of our course page it seems as if the sky’s the limit. We can have the students see a glimpse of our wonderful personalities through our design. Unlike Udemy’s unchangeable page view, Tutor LMS allows for all freedom when you want to give form to the course page of your dreams.
The less technologically adept among us might be wondering, “Well I don’t know how to use complicated design tools”. We have you covered there too. Tutor LMS has wonderful integrations with website builders like:
These extra features make building an eLearning site with Tutor LMS simple even for non-technical people. Clicking on the names above will take you to a blog pages that walks us through how we can integrate these with Tutor LMS. These tools give us all the customizability options we need to design our website exactly how we envision it. You could even create a website that looks exactly like Udemy through Tutor LMS if you fancy. For more on that, we have an article on how to create a Udemy like site on WordPress.
Build Your Courses and More!
Ownership issues get blown out the door as Tutor LMS gives only you all the access to everything you create. It comes with brilliantly integrated video players that make the experience a blast for students. The extremely well-designed course builder and quiz builder that comes with Tutor LMS makes setting up your course a breeze.
This is only a small peak at the plethora of easy-to-navigate features Tutor LMS has to offer its users, with all these benefits it is almost difficult NOT to use Tutor LMS for your course selling website.
For a more detailed window into Tutor LMS and how to set it up, we suggest going through the wonderful documentation we have on our website. You can find all the relevant instructions needed and for pricing plans check out Tutor LMS prices. We hope this can get you started on your course selling website journey.
Verdict
Finally, while Udemy might be a great platform for small-time creators looking to step into the world of online course creation, for someone looking to start a business it is in our opinion not the way to go. As an online creator, you want to set up your business exactly the way you want it to be, and what better way to make that happen than Tutor LMS.
Have you used Tutor LMS to create your own eLearning website? Let us know your experience with Tutor LMS down below.
