Udemy vs Independent Courses

I have a question here from a reader writing in and the question is Udemy courses versus independent courses and just courses in general. Let’s go ahead and get into it.

Before I get to the question here, I want to go ahead and just give you a little preface to the actual question.

Just give you some general thoughts and ideas here as far as learning material and deciding either a school to attend, a book to read, a mentor to listen to.

I’m just going to go ahead and break it down for you so you can have a roadmap to figure out if you should invest in one of these coding book camps, a college degree, self-learning, a book, an audio book you buy. Whatever it might be. Whatever kind of resource you’re using to be able to learn something new. I want to give you just a little bit of guidance for you to be able to decide if it’s a credible resource that you actually want to learn from.

Number one, I’ve already mentioned it here. Is the place you’re learning from credible? Is this somebody … is the place you’re learning from, the book you’re reading, the course you’re taking, whatever it might be, is it a credible place? At the end of whatever the course, the book, what you’re going through right now, at the end of it, are you actually going to have the result you want?

What is that result you want? Does that look like a job to you? Does that look like a degree to you? Because a job does not equal a degree. You’ve got to make sure you understand that outcome of the thing you’re doing right now so you understand why you’re doing it. If you do a Bootcamp, if you do a college degree, if you do self-learning, you’ve got to understand the outcome, to get to that outcome.

If you’re going to a university and your outcome is a degree, guess what? You’ve got to work through all the material. You’ve got to do all the assignments. You’ve got to do all the homework. You’ve got to do all the problem sets and you’ve got to get all those A’s. If that’s your outcome, which is a degree. If you’re doing a coding Bootcamp, and a coding Bootcamp, again, goes more towards the actual getting you a job phase. If you go through an entire coding Bootcamp and you reach the end and you don’t get a job, then the coding Bootcamp essentially failed.

Same thing with a university. If you’re getting a university degree and you don’t get your degree, the university has failed you. I want to really make it explicit there, just so you understand what resources are actually available to you, and you actually know what you’re going to get at the end of the resource, so now you’re just not doing this mindlessly.

Let’s go head and get to the actual question now. Here’s the question that Rennie is writing in with. The question is;

I am really not sure if need another course. I’ve taken so many on Udemy. I just want something unique that is purely learning in group and pair programming as much as possible. No offense but I don’t understand the differences in pricing. Your course is 200+ for about 14 hours or so. I see Udemy courses that are 10-40 hours for about 10-15 dollars from instructors with lots of experience. It is confusing.

Rennie writes in with this question.

This is a really good question and I want to go head and answer this question now.

We have Udemy and independent courses. I actually do offer a course here, and the course that I sell is on how to become a full-stack developer. The course itself is actually pretty short and I have a lot of prerequisites for the course. Because here’s the deal. The course is meant to give you results, and if you don’t get results I don’t want your money. I don’t want anything from you if you don’t get results because that’s the entire point of the course.

This is why I put the course together. Because I was just simply tired of actually going out there and working, and facing all these different problems and not being able to communicate that effectively. Now, what when I’m working with teammates or I’m working with other subcontractors, I just asked them to please go buy the course, you will be way better off.

That was one of the main reasons why I put the course together. The other reason why I put the course together here is specifically is for teaching about a tool that I created. I’m not sure if you might be familiar with the tool that I created, but you can access it at meanstack.net. It’s an automation tool that I’m actually working right now to put together.

Those are the main two reasons why I decided to create the course. One is to help out other people that want to get in this field, and two, to be able to educate others about the tool that I’m specifically creating. Those are the main two reasons why I specifically created the course, and this is why you will never find my course on Udemy or any other of these other places because I’m not looking for a mass market. I’m not looking to find all these different people. I’m not looking for any of that.

You’ve got to really think about all these Udemy courses and essentially what their target is. If you look at some of the instructors and you look at some of the courses that are actually there. Their job is to crank out as many courses as they can. Again, the courses on Udemy are valued at $300, $400, $500, but they sell them for 10, $11 discounted price. This is how some of the courses can actually sustain up to 150,000, 180,000, 90,000, 60,000 students, is because the price is literally $10. Everybody can afford $10. Right? Take this course and then you’re done.

But here’s the thing. The actual instructor, the ones that are teaching the class, he’s earning close to little to no money from this course. I can actually tell you from experience because I’ve talked to some of the instructors there that are teaching on Udemy and they’re making close to no money because the courses don’t sell for 2 to $300. They sell for $10. Again, the instructors, they must have to keep up this pace of constantly publishing content, content, content, content, content, content. Course after course, course after course. So if you’re a Udemy instructor, that is your primary goal is to publish as many courses and get as many students inside those courses, because every student is worth about $2 to $3.

Now, again, if that’s the business model, if that’s what you want to actually go ahead and do and actually target that many amounts of people, and actually do it that certain way, you’ve got to understand, that’s where they’re coming from. They’re not coming from a place that they actually want to help you. They’re not coming from a place that they actually want to see you succeed. They’re coming from a place to get as many people into as many courses as possible. That is their business model. That is essentially what they’re doing.

What is a college doing? What is a university doing? They’re getting you through as many classes that you can pass in order for you to get your degree. So either you fail and you don’t get your degree, or you go through all the classes and you get your degree. That is essentially what the university is doing. They’re pushing you through all these classes to get you out, give you your degree, give you your stamp and you’re good to go.

What is a coding Bootcamp doing? Again, they’re doing something, they’re taking you through an intensive training program to get you a result of a job. What is Udemy doing? Well, Udemy is getting you through a bunch of courses and leaving you nowhere. Because their business model is based on getting you through as many courses as possible and get you through that funnel of just constantly having course, after course, after course. This is why you’ll never find any of my stuff, you’ll never find anything that I publish on Udemy or any of these other platforms, just because simply that is not my target audience. If you want to go ahead and purchase one of those courses and learn from those instructors, you can, but you have to understand where they’re coming from.

This is why the course that I do teach differentiates from just about any other course you will find because it is an independent course. I am teaching this. Right now there are 28 people going through the course and you get feedback directly from me. If you have a question, I’ll answer with a video, I’ll answer with a live call, I’ll personally email you. You get that one on one touch, so you can actually ask your questions and get feedback on assignments. Plus you get to interact with everybody else in the course. Plus you get all these extra bonuses and you get to figure out if this is something you really want to pursue.

Is that worth what I’m actually charging? Absolutely, yes it is! If youlook at my sales page. It should be a no-brainer. If you’re really serious about this stuff, you should be like, yes, done deal, no problem at all. Here’s the thing, you can go out and learn all these different things. You can go learn all these different concepts and ideas, but are they going to get you results? That’s what it all comes down to. It is a result oriented program that I went ahead and put together. If you don’t get results, you don’t pay a single dime. I stand behind everything I do.

Independent courses give you that interaction with the actual instructor. The Udemy courses are meant to get as many people inside the course and to be able to get as many people out the course and to the next course. So, there you have it. Hopefully, this answer went ahead and solved the question here for Rennie, that went ahead and asked this question. If you have any specific questions for me, you can hit me up at codewithintent.com/question. That will go head and set you up with a little questionnaire that I went ahead and put together so you can just go ahead and ask me any question that you might have.

I will go head and talk to you on the next one.

Rick H.