hosted by: AskPat 702 Episode Transcript
Pat Flynn: Hey, what's up everybody. Pat Flynn here and welcome to Episode 702 of AskPat. Thank you so much for joining me today. As always, I'm here to help you by answering your online business questions, five days a week. We have a great question today from Keri.
Before we get to that, I do want to tell you about my free book called, Ebooks the Smart Way. It was actually just redesigned and updated, so it's current and it's going to help you understand how to write, publish, and automate a killer ebook. That's how I got started online. You can check it out. It's helped over a 150,000 people, actually have downloaded it. Many people I know have written ebooks that have done very well, because of the instructions in that book. Check it out. Again, completely free: EbooksTheSmartWay.com. All right. Now, here's today's question from Keri.
Keri: Hi, Pat. This is Keri. I really enjoy your show, thanks so much. I have a question about what your thoughts about Udemy and whether that's a good place to repurpose content. Thanks again.
Pat Flynn: Hey, Keri. Thank you so much for the question, truly appreciate it. Now, Udemy for those of you who don't know, is a website where you can go and create your own online course. There's many other course creators there. You can categorize them and what not. You can actually make money through the courses that you sell. For awhile, a few years back, it was actually something that I considered being a primary source of income for me with some of the courses that I was going to be creating. I ended up ditching those courses, because they weren't up to SPI standards. The question is, well, would I publish those on Udemy now? I'm actually not doing that because I'm actually coming out with courses that are not going to be on Udemy.
Now, you mentioned repurposing content for Udemy, not necessarily the online course and profitability part of it. I'll get to the repurposing part in just second. More on Udemy really quick, because a lot of people may consider that, that's a good option. The reason why Udemy is good, is because that platform already exists. It's a marketplace with people. People go there searching for content and courses. Some are free, some are paid. They go there and they look for those things. It's a great way for you to potential find some customers. Also, people for your audience as well.
Here's the thing with Udemy, because it's their own site, they have a lot of control of your content, in terms of how it's promoted. For many people, I've even heard some pretty bad horror stories. Where they have a course and it's x-number of dollars. Then, all of the sudden, they start to see a bunch of sales come in. They're getting really excited and then they soon realize that Udemy had priced their course for $1 for just that day, for promotion. They had no idea that was happening. Maybe they missed the email, I don't know. It just didn't work out very well. He had all these people going through the course, who didn't pay full price for it. It wasn't up to him, it was up to Udemy.
What I would recommend if you are going the course route, is to use something like Teachable.com. Which is what I'm using, where it's similar in terms of how it's set up. Where you can create multiple courses, just one login access for everybody through all those courses, which is really cool. You get to control how much each of those courses are priced. You get to see analytics for each of them. There's other WordPress plugins too, that you can create your course from as well, like Zippy Courses and WP Wishlist.
I'm using Teachable. I'm really excited about it. The reason that it's different than Udemy is, because you own that stuff. You just happen to be using the platform, you own that stuff. It lives on your own site. You get to setup your own courses store, which is really cool. I'm excited to involved with that.
Now, you had asked the question about repurposing content. Taking content that already exists somewhere else on your website, on your podcast, on a web series, or a video series. Repurposing that onto Udemy. I think that's actually a great idea, because that allows you to take some stuff that you've already done and potentially get it in front of people who have never found you, or heard of you before. If you offer those things for free, which is what I would recommend, because if you have those things for free on your blog and podcast, and elsewhere. Then, start charging for them, those people who find you through that space, may end up getting upset if they find that well, all of that content could be found for free.
That being said, people will pay for convenience. If you're taking a mix of old posts, a mix of old podcasts, and you're putting sort of your best stuff up there. Maybe you reread some of the stuff and make it more up to date. Not necessarily just taking those videos one for one, but taking bits of pieces of them and making them into one course. Then, yeah, you could absolutely charge for that. Like I said earlier, people will pay for convenience.
I think it's a good place to repurpose content, because there's a marketplace there. You always want to repurpose stuff and put it in places where people are. Udemy is just one of the several different places that you could actually post stuff. Now, I don't know Udemy's rules on that. In terms of, does that content have to be unique to Udemy only. I would highly recommend you just research that and make sure.
Now, I am on their website right and there is something called a course quality checklist. On one of the pages it talks about PLR content, which is private label rights. That's where you can buy existing things and use them as your own. You know, it's private label. They say here specifically, that PLR or spam courses are not permitted. PLR courses are courses that you purchased. Spam courses are courses that provide no educational benefit. Hopefully, your creating courses that are educational, obviously.
PLR, you don't want to buy something and then just post it as your own. You don't want to do that. PLR can be useful in some cases. Where you buy it and use that as sort of framework for your other stuff. Interviewed a woman named Nicole Dean on my podcast. I think it was episode four, way back in 2010 about PLR and proper use of PLR. She runs a site called, The Easy PLR, where you can actually download content and article, and pay for them. Then, use those as a structure of your own. We talk about kind of ethics behind all that, in that particular episode as well.
I don't read anything here necessarily about taking unique content . . . like that the content has to be exclusive to Udemy. I don't see that here, but I wouldn't quote me on that, because I had just looked at this document and there maybe other information somewhere else related to that. Yeah, so just make sure that's the case. That you're allowed to do that first, before you go and start building your course, because you don't want to create a Udemy account and you have students in there. Potentially getting paid for it, if you are actually charging for it or not. If your giving it away for free and then having your account deleted, because you've kind of went against the terms.
Again, just to make sure. If anybody has any information about that, who has experience with Udemy, that would be fantastic. Use the hashtag #AskOat702. #AskPat702 on Twitter, if you have any advice or knowledge about that. Anyway, Keri. Thank you so much for the question. I appreciate this. I think this is out of the box thinking and I think it's something that we can all potentially explore. Again, depending on the answer. Definitely make sure to followup.
Everybody who is interesting in something like this use the hashtag #AskPat702. You'll probably be able to find the conversation going on already, if you are listening to this in the future about that, so you can get a clear answer on that. Keri, thank you so much. We appreciate you. I want to send you an AskPat t-shirt for having your questions featured here on the show. For those of you listening, if you have a question that you'd like potentially featured here on the show, just head on over to AskPat.com and you can ask right there on that page.
Thanks so much. I appreciate you and I look forward to serving you in the next episode of AskPat. Until then, here's a quote to finish off the day by Jimmy Dean. He said, “I can't change the direction of the wind, but I can adjust my sails to always reach my destination.”
Thanks Jimmy Dean, appreciate it. Take care. I'll see you in the next episode of AskPat. Bye.