The Complete Web Developer Course – Rob Percival
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About the Episode
Are you looking for a way to earn a living teaching what you know? Well today’s guest earns over $100,000 a month on his Udemy courses and he tells us how he got started and how you can get early traction on your courses. Also, listen to how he raised $50,000 on Kickstarter to presell his Swift course.
Rob Percival is a developer, entrepeneur and the owner of www.ecowebhosting.co.uk. Read his blog at http://www.robpercival.co.uk/
Show Notes
Getting Started and Gaining Momentum
In starting a course, you don’t need to be an absolute expert but you do need to know your stuff and have the knowledge that’s going to make you better than most of your listeners. You don’t have to know all about your topic before you start your course but you have to be prepared to do enough research that you at least come off as an expert. This is how Rob started with his Udemy courses as well: he didn’t know everything about Swift at first but he was prepared to do the work to figure it out.
His structure came out naturally as he basically ordered each section from simple to complex and set it up that each section depends on each other. The main theme of his courses is that he constantly makes people do hands on activities by encouraging them to pause the video and complete a challenge. The feedback from his students was that they really enjoyed these practice sessions where they can do something independently after being taught something as it increases retention and retains attention.
When he first got his course out, he had no following at all when he initially charged full price. He changed his strategy and gave the course completely free and that was when students started coming in – 4,000 people in 2 weeks when he first did it. It boosted up his numbers, some started writing reviews, and coupled with his marketing effort in the list that he already had in his web hosting company, he was able to gain momentum and everything went upwards from there.
Having a Great Start with Kickstarter
Rob has spent a long time crafting the video and the spiel for his Swift course which went out in Kickstarter. It paid off as the result was great as he was able to market it to his web developer list and his web hosting customers. He gave a massive discount in the price of the course to somewhat get a bulk of people pre-paying for the course and to get new users within the Kickstarter community.
His Kickstarter campaign was a great success as he wasaiming for just $4,000 but he was able to raise $50,000! The word just spread, it was promoted well by Kickstarter and it turned up in a lot of searches as his timing was good since it was the summer and Swift was a hot topic. Rob advises that if you are running a course which can potentially be big and you want to get people interested in it before it even begins, Kickstarter is a great platform to start with.
What advice would you give to anyone looking to build a mobile app?
Just build something and don’t worry too much about the success or otherwise consider it as a fun practice and learning experience. Start with my course and go there first if you don’t know how to build one. Also, start with IOS as it is still the strongest platform to be marketing your apps on.
Show Mentions
– Fav app: Headspace: (iTunes | Google Play)
– Save 75% off The Complete iOS8 and Swift Course: Learn by Building 15 Real World Apps