Posts Tagged ‘online courses’

I received an unsolicited email from Edplx telling me I should sell my courses on their platform. They claim that the average instructor earns £2,000 per month. Are they legitimate? I don’t have an inside view, but my guess is not and here are my reasons.

They claim to be a reputable company. But there is no such company registered in the UK.

Next, all of their courses seem to have 600 to 1,200 students. That seems odd. I would normally expect a wider distribution with newer courses only having a few sales and some high sellers having much higher numbers. But they all seem to fall into that band.

And yet, every single course I checked had 0 reviews.

Also, it’s weird they have so many students and yet only three people like their Facebook page.

That is three more people than follow them on Twitter which, at time of writing, has zero followers. They have links to Instagram and YouTube on their website, too, but these just link to the respective homepages and I couldn’t find any evidence they have an account on these platforms.

They claim to have millions of customers every day but I ran their website through SimilarWeb and they said they have insufficient traffic to even rank them.

It’s not possible to evaluate the courses as they do not provide video previews, in either a trailer format or letting you preview any of the lessons. Are the courses on there real? I have no way to tell.

Conclusion

I believe that Edplx is a scam.

I’ve launched a new course on creating Facebook ads. Here is the blurb:

Do you want to master Facebook Ads? Maybe you’re an entrepreneur or small business owner looking to reach new customers. A marketer looking for new audiences. Or maybe you’re new to digital marketing and want to find out what it can do for you.

This is a complete beginner to advanced course: we’ll cover the basics from setting up your account and creating your first campaign to advanced topics like split testing, retargeting and instant experiences.

It’s a big course: three and a half hours of full HD video showing you exactly how to create ads as you follow my screen.

In June, I launched my course Digital Marketing for Restaurants to help restaurant owners and managers access new customers via digital media. Since then over a thousand people have enrolled on it and it has achieved a 5-star rating.

I’m now pleased to announce that I have launched a brand new digital marketing course, this time for therapists and counsellors.

It covers building websites, using Google Ads, using Google My Business, Facebook pages, posts and ads, and using Eventbrite. It’s available now on Udemy and you can preview it here.

Here’s the preview video:

Last week, I launched my new course Mental Health Ambassador Certificate. It offers you the chance to become a qualified Mental Health Ambassador, allowing us to improve mental health across society and help those in need.

My previous courses in mental health have predominantly been around self-help, so I’m excited to launch something that can help people help others. It teaches the fundamentals of a range of conditions, how to assist others using the Real Support Framework (REAL-SF) and how to speak confidentially about mental health.

So far, over 600 people have enrolled and the first wave has already begun to earn their certificates.

You can find the course on Udemy.

In June, I launched my Running For Beginners course. It quickly became the most popular online course I have ever taught, with nearly 2,000 people signing up in the first two months alone.

The course has received great ratings, but some students wanted to take it further. Some were existing runners and found the course content too basic. As it was a beginners course, I didn’t want to make it too advanced. So, I started work on a new course for existing runners looking to take their game to the next level.

The result is my new course, Resilient Running. It will teach you to run faster, longer, and stay injury free. It covers technique, training, injury prevention, nutrition, psychology and more. It’s targetted at people who already run on a regular basis, so we get straight down to business. There are no beginners steps because that’s all covered in my first course.

Will it prove as popular? I certainly hope so. Over 1,000 people have signed up in the first 48 hours.

Here’s the trailer:

In June, I launched my Running For Beginners course. It has been a big success with nearly 2,000 students registering in the first six weeks and plenty of five-star reviews.

Following on from that, I’m pleased to announce my next new course, Triathlon For Beginners. Here’s the blurb:

It’s available on Udemy now, and you can check it out here.

I’ve just launched a new course.

Given that I am a software consultant by background, and now a psychologist, you might imagine that courses on computer programming and mindfulness are my thing. And they are. But, surprisingly, my highest selling course is Get More Restaurant Customers.

It runs under the Restaurant Psychology brand, which given my experience as both a line cook, a critic and the author of Why Restaurants Fail has proved to be popular. So, I’ve followed it up with this one, combining my food, psychology and digital marketing knowledge into a single step-by-step course.

So far it is proving popular, with over 1,000 students in the first weekend and a 5-star rating.

I’m pleased to announce the launch of my new online course, Running For Beginners. It’s a complete introduction to running for those who want to get into it for the first time or are coming back to it after a break.

Topics covered include:

• Where to run
• What to wear
• Staying safe
• Warming up and cooling down
• Motivation
• Dealing with different weather conditions

And much more. So far, it is proving rather popular:

And best of all, it’s free. Click here to check it out.

My new Udemy course is live, Sport Psychology for Athletes. Here is the blurb:

Are you interested in sport psychology? Maybe you’re an athlete or a coach looking for practical techniques. Or maybe a student or lifelong learner who loves sport.

If so, this is the course for you. It will provide you with a beginner-level grounding in the theory, but with a focus on practical application and how to use the techniques in your own life, whatever level of sport you play.

We won’t just be looking at slides, we’ll be out there exploring, with quizzes, workbooks and practical exercises to work through.

We’ll look at:

• Motivation
• Focus
• Confidence
• Mental imagery
• Self-talk
• Mindfulness
• And much more!

Click here to check it out.

I like Udemy, both as a student and an instructor. As a student, I have done some brilliant courses on there. As an instructor, it has been easy to create courses and make them available for sale.

But there is one downside if you plan on using Udemy to make a living: the payouts are terrible.

Take a look at My IT Contracting Master Class, for example. It is a £100 course. I was excited when the first customer signed up via Udemy. That is until I realised that I would only be getting £2.68.

What is going on here?

First, Udemy discount everything. The £100 price tag is basically a lie. I’m not sure what they do is legal in the UK. They have an advertised price, but you never pay that. In the five months, I have been using them, there has not been a single day when the have not had a sale on. It’s like going to a furniture store with their ever-revolving discounts.

Sometimes the discounts are bigger than others. Sometimes it is £10, sometimes £15. But as a UK customer, you are getting screwed anyway. The US consumer gets a bigger discount. In this case, the course was sold for $9.99.

Then iTunes take a cut, so that’s $3 gone, and then Udemy split the remaining money with you 50/50. There is $7 left, so that makes £3.50 each. Or, translated into Sterling, £2.68.

Technically, I think you can opt-out of these discounts. But, in practice, very few courses do. And this means that you are competing against a market of discounted courses, which makes it impossible to do business. And Udemy is more favourable to the courses who do not opt-out. So, in reality, I don’t feel like I have a choice.

Udemy is a great platform. However, I wish they would be more transparent about their prices. You don’t ever pay the list price and so instructors are paid very little.