If you really want to make a significant passive income from your Udemy courses then you need to do more than leave it to Udemy to promote them for you. There are a lot of things that you can do to promote your courses yourself and we will take a look at some of the best strategies for promotion here.

Use your Personal Network

When your course goes live tell your personal network about it immediately. This is your friends, family members, colleagues and other people that you know. Create a free coupon for your course and provide it to your personal network. Ask them to enroll in your course, watch all of it and then leave you a positive review.
You need student numbers and some good reviews to make your Udemy course appealing to paying customers. Some Udemy instructors hate the idea of giving their courses away for nothing. But this is short term thinking. You will make a lot more money in the long run if you get lots of people to enroll in your course for free and leave good reviews.

Build Social Proof

Aim to get around 500 to 1,000 students as quickly as you can. It doesn’t matter if you have to give your course away for free to do this. What you are doing here is building social proof. If a potential customer sees your course but it has low student numbers and reviews then they will be less likely to make a purchase.
We live in a review culture. Very few people will want to try or purchase anything if they don’t see any reviews. When they see a lot of positive reviews they are many times more likely to enroll in your course.

Create Discount Coupons

You have the opportunity to create discount coupons for your Udemy course so take advantage of this. When you sell your course directly for whatever price, you will receive 97% of the revenue (less an admin fee).
There are deal websites that you can use to promote your course. Sites like Crunch A Deal actually specialize in discounted Udemy coupons. Do your homework here and find deal sites that you think would be a good fit for your course subject.

Facebook Ads

When you have reached your social proof levels for the number of students and reviews and you know that your course converts well you can consider using paid ads. Facebook Ads are good because you can specify your target audience precisely. You can do the same with Instagram Ads too.

Promote your Course on Social Media

If you have a following on social media platforms then make posts about your course and provide a discount coupon. Join related Facebook Groups and interact with people. Be careful about direct advertising here. Use subtlety to introduce your course and tell group members to direct message you if they want a discount coupon.

Use your Website or Blog to Promote your Udemy Course

We strongly recommend that you have a website or blog when you start to create Udemy courses. This will help your credibility with potential students and you can also use it to directly promote your courses.
Write posts about your subject and add links to your Udemy courses. Do keyword research and identify long tail keywords that you can rank fairly easily for on Google and the other search engines for additional traffic.