What is your view on Piracy, Plagiarism, and the small effort Udemy seems to do, to limit the damage done to course authors?
Piracy is rampant, Udemy isn't doing anything against it (afaik). If someone needs to pirate a course and download it for free that's offered for 9.99 and not get the Q&A, the downloads, the additional stuff, the updates and all of that, so be it. Can't change that. Also, a lot of the folks who pirate a course will never pay for it. It's a loss on paper. Still a loss though.
Here's the kicker: I'm thinking, if my courses teach someone the blockchain stuff and turn his life around to go from $3/h job to a $60/h job (happened), feel free to pirate. Actually, send me a message and I'll give you a free coupon if you really can't afford the whatever $10. I did this so many times, I'm happy to help, I do care more about other peoples success than about the little money udemy brings in.
Plagiarism is another category. If I catch you taking my content and repurposing it to sell it under your name, I will come after you as hard as I can. I am not sure if udemy does something actively against plagiarism or not, but if I find a person who is bluntly reuploading my stuff verbatim to udemy (happened) or slightly editing my courses and repurposing them to make money (happened too), I will not only send a takedown notice, I will come after you and collect damages and ruin your life as much as I can, because I consider that the absolut scum of the internet and I wish everyone who does that has rashes on intimate body parts for the rest of their lives and can't sit straight.
That's my take.
The cross publishing on packt is not as effective as Udemy. I think sales wise, it generates maybe 2% of the revenue that I have on Udemy
Getting in the Udemy business program was a huge revenue boost for my courses since it changes it from making money on sales to making money on watch time
My courses were about Blockchain Development. We were the first ones there.
It's a side hustle for me.
Like so many other publishers, I have one course that sells really great. I got about 15 courses now published, one sells great, one sells meh, the other ones don't sell at all.
I also have my courses on Packt. Interestingly, I have another course there that sells really great. It's a different one. No overlap. The one on udemy doesn't sell on Packt and vice versa.
I think its pure luck. It's a perpetual motion machine: Once a course sells, it gets recognized and pushed by their marketing team/algo, it gets more visibility and it sells better, which means, it gets recognized and pushed by their marketing team/algo, and sells better ... you get the idea.
Optimize for luck. Be first. Be in a niche. Or have an audience out of udemy you can drive there and drive sales, so it gets recognized by their marketing team/algo.
Which brings me to the second part: I have tried (and failed) to build my own audience. I am a bad marketer. Really bad. Saying marketing and sales are my weak points doesn't do justice at how bad I am at this. I am a builder. I love teaching. I don't love bragging. And marketing/sales for me its a shitshow of shill and brag culture. I can't. And udemy does that for me. They get their cut, I get my cut and I am fine with that. What I don't like is how restrictive they got with analytics, I really can't even guesstimate what is my target audience and cater to them better. But that's a completely different topic.
I got a family and a full time job now and only do this on the side.
Thought you might like the additional info.