Udemy's not what it used to be.

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You might think it's cool there's a platform that offers learning for super cheap.

Hell, I've benefited from it. Mosh Hamedani put out a sick Node.js course back in 2018 that I gobbled up.

Looking back, that course prepared me pretty well for API testing, since I had to literally build an API (without AI, yikes).

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But as a creator, there's no incentive to make good courses on Udemy.

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I was chatting with a QA educator/consultant yesterday, you probably know them. Big creator.

They were launching a new course and decided this one wasn't going on Udemy.

No, no. This one was too good for that platform.

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Most of their audience was probably thinking this.

From a student's perspective, Udemy's great for learning new skills without breaking the bank. It's familiar if you're used to taking courses on there. It's easy.

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From a creator's perspective? You can't make good stuff if you can only charge $20 for it.

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Udemy caps you at $20 before they start to eat a massive share of your profits.

Not only that, but they take a bigger cut of your sales if you don't refer customers via coupons (aka, if they have to do your marketing for you).

Udemy's basically just a Marketing as a Service platform. It's built to extract maximum profit from creators who don't know any better.

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So naturally when I saw them make this move, I was incredibly proud.

So I asked them if they'd ever considered starting a newsletter as a way to build their email list so they could sell through email.

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When you go off-platform and do your own marketing, you might be surprised how hard it is to get leads from content alone.

Content is like a smoke signal. It shows people where to find you, but they're still up in the air.

You need to give them a reason to land the plane.

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That's what emails do for you.

People see your content and engage with it. Then they see the link to sign up for your newsletter.

They sign up, and now they hear from you every day in their inbox.

Not just a quick post, but a personal long-form email that helps them get to know you better.

It's a quick way to weed out people who don't vibe with you (better not to waste their time, anyway, right?)

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So long story short, they agreed to try it out and I gave them some quick next steps.

They already have an email list but it's not nearly large enough given their audience size.

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Let this be a cautionary tale for you if you want to start an online business.

Start your email list from Day 1 by writing a newsletter.

Don't wait til you're "big enough" or "have enough views".

This person has an email list about the same size as mine but they have easily 10x or maybe even 100x my audience across all channels.

Imagine what would happen if they developed better relationships with the segment of their audience who actually chooses to read their newsletter?

A year from now if they actually go through with this, they're gonna wonder why they ever did anything else.

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Don't be a $20 Course Chump. We can all do better than that.

Start emailing your audience or remain dependent on Big Algo forever.

Now, I'm just spitballin' here, but figured I'd ask before I say adiós til Monday:

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And hey, if you do, and you plan to make courses or other digital products, might as well use Kit. They're a better choice than Beehiv if you're trying to sell stuff.

Plus, you know, I use Kit and they gave me that fancy affiliate link to help me shill them (the free tier's just fine, don't let them hear me say that though 😉).

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Have a great weekend,

Steven