My Course Made it to Udemy Business: A Creator's Journey to the Top 3% 🎉🎉
Reflections on 1,026 hours of passion, overcoming hurdles, and the lessons learned
Quote of the Day:
"The future of software development will be owned by those developers who can effectively and critically prompt, evaluate, debug, and integrate AI outputs. This involves an “AI first” mindset and a commitment to continuous upskilling, particularly in areas where AI struggles, such as complex problem-solving and architectural design." — Matt Asay
Hey everyone 👋
You know those moments when an email pops up, and you have to read it twice just to make sure it’s real?
That was me this past Saturday, May 24th. I’m still buzzing as I type this, but I’m so incredibly thrilled to share that my course, Modern Software Engineering: Architecture, Cloud & Security, has been selected for the Udemy Business collection 🥳
This is huge, Udemy Business is a curated library of top-tier courses that leading companies like Adidas, Barclays, Pinterest, and Volkswagen use to empower their teams. Hearing that only 3% of courses get this VIP pass, and that my course is now part of this elite group, feels like a massive validation.
This course is close to my heart; it’s a significant chapter in my professional journey. It’s the second (and most comprehensive) in a series of 5 video courses I've published on Udemy so far, which have collectively reached over 35,000 students — a number that still wows me!
I hit publish on my very first course back in January 2022, and the initial version of this course went live in April 2024 with just about an hour of content. But I couldn’t leave it at that. I kept adding new sections, crafting quizzes for better interactivity, and trying to make the learning experience as rich as possible. What started as a small seed has grown into nearly 7 hours of in-depth material!
I poured 18 years of software engineering know-how and 1,026 hours of passion-fueled work into it:
Writing the scripts,
Creating the slides,
Generating the quizzes,
Implementing the case studies,
Screen and voiceover recording,
Filming and editing the videos.
Even my little 2nd-3rd grader, with his enthusiasm, jumped in to record parts with me. Yep, it’s officially a family production 🎤 😊
But beyond the fancy badge and the impressive logos, this milestone is more about growth and persistence.
From Overwhelm to “Aha!”
Shortly after I shared the news on LinkedIn, I received a message from a fellow LinkedIn friend (I’ll call her Sara), and our conversation touched upon something I think many of us can relate to:
Sara: “Hi Rakia, I’m seeing your post and feeling inspired 💞 May I ask, how did you start? I only know the 9-to-5 world, and I’m speaking at tech event next month. But it feels hard to juggle kids, mentoring, and creating courses.
Can you give me some tips? Do you work remotely or hybrid or onsite to be able to make time for creating courses?”
Me: “I totally agree that we might feel overwhelmed at the beginning. But even those painful steps (and not good enough early content) are worth doing because they pave the way for what is coming later :)
I kicked off by turning a tech conference talk into a mini-course. Then I added new modules and sections over time. You could follow the same strategy, it’s less overwhelming: Start small, keep it bite-sized, then build on it.
I shared parts of my journey in the following two videos and hope you would find them helpful:
From Zero to 30K Students: My Udemy Video Course Journey: a dive into how I went from an idea sparked by a work challenge to building a community of learners. I also talked about the initial struggles.
The Hidden Benefits of Sharing Your Expertise & Knowledge: creating content is about impact, personal branding, and opening new doors. In that video, I share how, despite the many hours poured into my first course, the financial return was modest, but the real value came from the connections, the learning, and the opportunities that followed, like becoming a Google Developer Expert.”
What I’ve Learned (and What I Want for You)
Progress Over Perfection
Your first draft won’t be flawless—and that’s okay. Each version teaches you something new: better explanations, sharper visuals, clearer code samples.Leverage What You Have
A talk you gave, a blog post you wrote, even an internal work presentation: these are rich seeds for a course or tutorial series.Build in Public
Share your journey, warts and all. When you invite others into your process, you gain accountability, feedback, and genuine connection.
Huge shoutout to my amazing community for this journey—I’m so grateful for you all!
🎁 🎉 To celebrate, I’m offering you a DISCOUNT on my Star Course (available for a limited time) and FREE coupons for my other courses. The links are at the bottom of this post.
This article was also published here: How My Udemy Course Made It into the Udemy Business Collection
Further Reading and Viewing
🎥 Me editing my video on service and data meshes using iMovie 🎬✨
🎥 My Go-To iMovie Hack: How I Turn 3 Videos into One Awesome Scene 🎬
📖 Mastering Microservices: Unraveling Service Mesh for Modern Software Architecture
📖 The Human Side of Software Architecture: How People, Not Just Code, Shape Systems
📖 9 Principles to Balance Flexibility & Security in Software Architecture
🎉🎁 Celebration Offers 🎉🎁
FREE & Discount access to my video courses - available for a limited time, so don’t wait too long!
🔥 Modern Software Engineering: Architecture, Cloud & Security
DISCOUNT coupon RAKIA_SOFT_ENG_DISC🔐 Secure Software Development: Principles, Design, and Gen-AI
FREE coupon RAKIA_SECURE_APPS_1FREE coupon RAKIA_API_DESIGN_1
🐳 Getting Started with Docker & Kubernetes + Hands-On
FREE coupon RAKIA_DOCKER_K8S_1⚡ Master Web Performance: From Novice to Expert
FREE coupon RAKIA_WEB_PERF_1
Until next time—keep learning and growing together!
Best,
Rakia
P.S. What’s one thing you’ve been procrastinating—even though you know it could become a course, blog post, or talk? Hit reply and let me know—I’d love to cheer you on!
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💡 🧠 I share content about engineering, technology, and leadership for a community of smart, curious people. For more insights and tech updates, join my newsletter and subscribe to my YouTube channel.