
Less than 24 hours on Udemy as an instructor and I’m close to leaving - baobaba
http://blog.nickjanetakis.com/post/133482093993/less-than-24-hours-on-udemy-as-an-instructor-and
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mr_luc
Wow!

To some people, that article is going to seem like nit-picking, and insofar as
it affects most people, it may be.

But my feeling on reading this article is gratitude. Thanks for writing it.

It's good for Udemy. If their business practices end up costing some content
creators 87.5% of list price, then it's because the evil and/or lazy forces in
the company have gained ground, and this kind of sunshine may weaken them.

It's good for content creators.

It's good for consumers. As a potential customer of courses like yours, I was
discouraged at seeing their incentivization of cheaper, spammier courses. Why?
Because even if education is turned into a product, it's is still a "buy-it-
for-life" product where quality matters, and quality is the only metric I (and
probably many of Udemy's shoppers!) really care about. Anything that could
result in less noise/spam in their signal is appreciated.

It'll be interesting to see how Udemy responds.

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mmaunder
As someone who has been doing screencasts with voice, I can tell you the mic
is really important. If you use a headset, even a good one, you can generally
hear the spit swishing around in your mouth. It's awful.

A buddy runs a pro recording studio and recommended Aphex Microphone X. I
haven't looked back. Aphex makes amazing pro microphone preamps that are
pricey. They launched something called Microphone X which has a compressor and
a "big bottom" feature that were previously only in their high end pro gear.
It's quite affordable - about $200 compared to an EV RE20 broadcaster mic for
$600. It's a USB mic, so you don't need a preamp or digi interface. You just
plug it into your computer and you're all set. I use it with a boom stand and
pop filter. I love them so much I use them for everything including skype
calls.

What this does is negate the changes in volume as you get closer or further
from the mic (compressor). Add some nice radio bass to your voice with the big
bottom effect. And generally give you a pro quality mic with a USB interface.

Here are all three:

[http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00B73OJT2?psc=1&redirect=t...](http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00B73OJT2?psc=1&redirect=true&ref_=oh_aui_search_detailpage)

[http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00DY1F2CS?psc=1&redirect=t...](http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00DY1F2CS?psc=1&redirect=true&ref_=oh_aui_search_detailpage)

[http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B008AOH1O6?psc=1&redirect=t...](http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B008AOH1O6?psc=1&redirect=true&ref_=oh_aui_search_detailpage)

Sure, purists will argue the EV20 is worth every penny. But pre's like the
aphex have gotten so good that they've made the gains from a high-end source
mic worth a lot less, if anything.

~~~
jacquesm
Thanks for that. I really _hate_ the sound of my own voice when I hear a
recording back. The only microphone I did not have that with was an AKG that
was priced way out of the ballpark and it needed an equally expensive pre-amp
to go with it. Nice to see a reasonably affordable ($200 is still quite a bit
of money) alternative.

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anderspitman
The author raised $12,451 USD from 13 backers for a Flask course?

[https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/nickjj/build-a-saas-
app...](https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/nickjj/build-a-saas-app-with-
flask-and-deploy-it-with-doc?ref=nav_search)

Maybe I'm in the wrong line of work.

~~~
toyg
IT education is a huge market. Unfortunately it also attracts a lot of fakers
and cheapos -- in this case, the Udemy owners.

~~~
protomyth
Its amazing how many phone calls you get in a week for IT education even at a
small business / community college. These course aren't cheap either.

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devonoel
Udemy's getting absolutely slammed today on HN. I wonder if they're paying
attention.

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ivan_ah
Very informative writup about a platform I had only heard of before.

Some comments on book publishers:

> A book publisher will happily give you better margins >

No. If, an author makes 5% royalties on their book sales they're really lucky!
Mainstream publishers must make a cut, so they'll only fork out a tiny
percentage of the profits, which is a tiny percentage of the wholesale price,
which is 45% of the list price (standard wholesale discount).

So 12% royalties, is really like 4-5% of profits, and if the book is sold with
extra discount, we're dropping into the 2-3% range.

> than that AND print you high quality hard cover books > while bending the
> world to sell it for you in the process. >

More no. They'll put the book in a few catalogues, and maybe make a flyer or
two. No world bending stuff.

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grogenaut
takeaway: break you lessons up into $5 (to you) chunks and the let them go on
sale for $10.

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kkt262
Udemy is a TERRIBLE platform. I'm surprised that so many instructors consent
to putting their stuff on there. It's so much better to just have your content
on your own hosted solution or Teachable (previously Fedora). Looks like
there's a lot of room to innovate in this space.

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listic
I don't know if it's an open course hosting platform, but there's
[http://02geek.com/](http://02geek.com/)

