Earlier in 2020, I published a free course on Udemy.com on how to choose the best pillow for your neck pain. Thousands of people have signed up to view the course.
Here’s the course: Learn what kind of pillow to buy for neck pain.
Of course. I had already built a paid course on neck pain and posture. This one is doing reasonably well. I launched it as a free course, got about 2,000 students, and now it’s a paid course for $99. Of course, with Udemy sales, it probably goes for $5.
The free course? It’s still going. I don’t think Udemy likes to promote the free stuff as much as the paid stuff, so the sales of the $0.00 course trickle in. Let’s look at the demographics of my students:
and,
I’ve had plenty of Indian patients over the years, who work in the tech sector. One thing I know about Indians, is that they love to learn. They ask questions; they want to know. With over a billion Indians on this planet, maybe I can start an outreach program to get them to refer to each other. I only have 240 of them as students so far…
What I’ve learned from this course. The big takeaway is that I had to do some research into pillows to keep my recommendations evidence-based. I learned some stuff that I could then share with my patients. The best pillow is the one that you find most comfortable immediately, for example. If a pillow is uncomfortable when you first start using it, it’s like shoes. Trade it in, because you won’t adapt to it. Second, synthetic materials work better than man-made materials for neck support. I was surprised by this. And third, a cooler pillow helps you sleep better at night than a warm pillow.
I also learned my rhythm when making an online course. When I first recorded my content, I make it into long videos. 10 minutes long. A ten minute video feels like a chore to a viewer. What you want to do as a creator is make your videos about 2 minutes long. Then, as a student, you can click right through there and feel a sense of momentum. This is important, and it keeps people engaged.
I look forward to making more content in the future. I’ve always has the thought that I should now spend more time creating content rather than consuming content. It starts last year, and gets fully ramped up in 2020.