Hello, and just in case we haven’t met yet – my name is L.D. Sewell. I am a business owner and entrepreneur focused on building multiple sources of income systematically – and teaching my students how to successfully do the same things I do.
For many years now I have been teaching online courses.
I chose to teach online courses both to share information and to make a profit from doing so as an income source too.
When I first set out to do that I had already been teaching and training other people for many years face to face. I began doing training in the military and then continued in real estate and trucking. At first, my training was incidental to my employment over the years and then I began to branch out and take on students of my own for-profit independently from my job as I began building and operating my own business – Transport Resource Solutions.
TRS was always envisioned to be a company like no other – and to focus above all else on providing information, training, resources and solutions to other people to help them do better.
The initial focus was solely on trucking career and business-related topics – but that soon changed.
I quickly realized that people needed far more information on business and life management topics too – because those other areas of life were interconnected and affected work.
So I started teaching other topics to help people do better in work, in business, and in life.
Looking back, I had already been doing some of this for years without really thinking much about it. People had been coming to me for years with financial problems, productivity problems, housing problems, personal problems, and all kinds of things – which I always tried to help them as best as I could. Sometimes sharing lessons I had already learned – many of which I learned the hard way too. Other times by providing them with information and referrals to other specialists who could help them more.
While I loved teaching in person – it was very time-consuming and limiting in so many ways. I found myself repeating the exact same lectures and training over and over again. While I always enjoyed being with my students and interacting with each new class – I wanted to find a better way to reach more people more effectively.
At first, I began thinking of doing training classes in hotel conference centers and other meeting venues where I could perhaps get more people in each class.
In the course of doing research and looking for a way to do these classes on a larger scale – somehow I stumbled upon Udemy.
Udemy is a massive online course platform. Students can learn virtually anything they want on their on time and on their own schedule because the courses are prerecorded and uploaded to Udemy for them to access whenever they wish.
I found that fascinating!
I had taken online college courses for years but they were always live – kind of like a Zoom meeting where the instructor and students all met at a specific time each week and went through training for an hour or two. This was different… and BETTER!
So I signed up to become an instructor.
Then I began studying other courses and looking at both their content and how they were put together.
I bought a camera and mic and some lights from Amazon. I shot my test video in a shed in my backyard during a thunderstorm and pouring rain – and though I thought it was terrible I submitted it anyway. It was approved!
Soon after that, I uploaded my very first ever online course to Udemy.
Not long after I had my first student!
Then more, and they kept coming and I added more courses.
Now years later, I have had thousands of students take my courses – and I am grateful for each and every one of them too. I have been successfully selling courses and making money every month for years now – and I can teach you how to do the same too.
Other Instructors Don’t Understand Udemy
As you can imagine I belong to many different communities all of which help me keep learning and keep improving my own business interests – including my own courses.
Some of those communities focus on online course creators, coaches, and consultants.
Many of them focus on high-ticket (expensive) courses which they host on Thinkific, Teachable, Kajabi, or a WordPress plugin like LearnPress and they routinely bash other platforms such as Udemy because they see them as a waste of time and not profitable.
Obviously, I disagree.
The ones who complain the loudest simply do not understand Udemy and so they went out and did something foolish – like spending months and months building a single massive in-depth course. Then when they failed to get massive numbers of students or make tens of thousands of dollars from their one and only course – they took their marbles and went home mad, so to speak.
The key to success on Udemy is understanding the nature of the platform and how it works better and aligning your own course offerings with it.
While there are indeed instructors and courses that do have tens of thousands of students per course and do make thousands for the instructor of each course each month – that is unrealistic for most instructors.
For most instructors, they will need many courses – and each course will earn a relatively small amount each month consistently. When you add all of it up it adds up to a larger amount. Think of it like “Digital Real Estate”. Each course is a separate property – and as you add more and more properties you make more and more money.
You have to also know something about your own niches and your own potential students.
In my case I realized early on that I would need more than one or two courses – and in fact, would need several. So I set out with that in mind pretty much from the beginning.
I also realized that the vast majority of my students would be beginners and as such the course levels needed to be geared toward their needs and not be overwhelming.
More is not always better when it comes to specialized information products like online courses. The objective is to provide VALUE in as little time as possible – not to just create massive courses.
Solutions are what they are looking for – not massive content to wade through. With that in mind courses that are more condensed and on point tend to do better. They are also quicker and simpler to create and upload so that is better for the instructor as well as for the students.
Keep in mind that everything can be confusing at first when you begin learning new things. But soon enough it will begin to make sense, and looking back you will be amazed at how simple and easy it really is – once you understand it all.
Here are 3 Benefits to Teach On Udemy For You to Consider
These are 3 of the reason I started teaching courses on Udemy too;
- Free – It costs you nothing to upload a course to Udemy and host it there. Just the time and effort is all you need and with smartphones as good as they are now you don’t even have to buy a camera and a mic- just use your iPhone or similar smartphone and upload your lectures to Udemy!
- Marketing – Udemy spends a lot of time money and effort marketing courses – and marketing YOUR courses if you choose to upload them there. That is massive and very beneficial for you especially when first getting started.
- Credibility and Authority – When you first begin teaching courses probably no one will have ever heard of you before unless you are already an influencer or authority. If you do have a following already that is great. When that is the case you get instant trust and some authority by virtue of being known to a large group of people. If not – don’t worry, because just being on Udemy will give you some instant credibility and authority as soon as you complete and publish your first course or two. That’s because millions of students already know Udemy, even if they may not yet know you. They are much more likely to input their credit card info or PayPal info to Udemy than they are to some random site of an unknown course creator who they may be afraid isn’t even a real person.
These are all great reasons to start teaching online courses on Udemy as an Instructor – and to keep putting some courses on Udemy from now on even if you later branch out and use other platforms.
You can do both!
Udemy does not limit you or try to prevent you from putting your courses on other platforms or from teaching on multiple platforms.
What do you think so far?
You can do this if you really want to. No, it’s not going to make you wealthy overnight and yes you will have to learn some new things and work hard over a period of time (which is all true of all real opportunities too ; )
In conclusion – online courses are a great Income Production Opportunity and one you should definitely take a look at and at least consider. If you want some information and help in getting started as an online instructor on Udemy – then reach out and get in touch with me and I will be happy to help you too. Check out my Free Resources page on my site and also my Profile on Udemy for ways to connect with me.
You can check out my Udemy courses from the Courses tab on www.ldsewell.com too.
Best regards,
L.D. Sewell