• Who: Artem Bondar
• Website: bondaracademy.com
• Course Topic: Software Quality Engineers
• Interesting Stats: 50,000 students enrolled

Who are you and what course have you created?

I am a test automation engineer with multiple years of experience in the industry. Since 2020 instructor at Udemy, creating several best-seller classes such as “Cypress: From Zero to Hero” and “Playwright: From Zero to Hero”. More than 50,000 students enrolled in my classes so far with more than 10,000 reviews left for my courses with an average rating of 4.7. In 2023 I came up with an idea to push the effectiveness of online education to the next level and in 2024 launched a Bondar Academy. The first class already available in the new platform is SDET with Playwright.

What market does your online course serve?

This course is for Software Quality Engineers, who are looking to improve their technical skills to advance the QA career. It’s designed for Manual QAs who want to take the first step in test automation, as well as for Test Automation Engineers who are looking to pick up a new modern framework such as Playwright. Many companies are looking for a transition from Selenium to more modern frameworks such as Cypress and Playwright. This course will help to make this transition smooth, as it starts from scratch, and covers all best practices and advanced topics.

What’s the biggest benefit of taking your course?

You can study at your own pace, as the class lectures are pre-recorded. So, if you are a quick learner and can dedicate time to it, you can complete the course within a few weeks. But unlike Udemy, at Bondar Academy a primary focus is on hands-on skills development through practice activities.

How did you get into the market?

It all started in 2019. I joined the company SignifyHealh in 2019 as an Automation Engineer, and my goal was to automate the testing of web applications with the Cypress framework. It was a very new framework at that time and I didn’t have any experience with it. Also, there were only 3 classes available in Udemy related to this topic. A few months later, when I completed the automation of the project, I knew Cypress exceptionally well. I have noticed that existing Cypress classes on Udemy had a lot of gaps in the content so I thought that I could create a better course based on my experience with Cypress. This is how I came up with the idea of creating a course “Cypress: From Zero to Hero” which immediately became a best seller and remains in this status today.

Why did you decide to create an online course in the first place?

Everything is more and more transitioning online, including education. This is a way to reach a wider audience for me as for instructor, and it’s more comfortable for the learner to study from a comfortable place. So it’s a win-win for everyone!

Did you have any moments of doubt before you created/launched it?

There is always a level of uncertainty, whether students like the class or not. But the only way to find this out – is to launch the class and analyze the feedback. My success on Udemy gave me the confidence that students like my content and my teaching style. This helped me to make the next step in launching Bondar Academy with an even better and more efficient education approach. Since this project is new, I am learning from the feedback to perform future improvements.

What’s your online course like?

The online course has 4 main components: pre-recorded lectures, self-assessments, homework assignments, and online support over Slack.

The pre-recorded lecture is the main source of theoretical knowledge. The duration of each lecture is around 10 to 15 minutes. During the lecture, students get the first understanding of the particular concept and repeat the code along with the video. Right after the video is a self-assessment in the format of a quiz. The goal of self-assessment is to cover the “knowledge gaps” to make sure that students don’t miss any important information during the lecture and can move to the next one. The 3-rd component is a homework assignment. Students will have a test case and a test application which they will need to automate from scratch, according to the test case. The completed code needs to be submitted for the code review on GitHub and the instructor provide feedback. The practice activities under the instructor’s supervision help to develop hands-on skills following the industry’s best practices. The last component is the Slack Workspace. A student has access to the private Slack channel where he can ask any questions related to the course and get online support.

How long did it take you to create your course?

On average it takes about 4 months to create a course, including the curriculum planning, recording, and editing of the final content. First, I create the initial high-level curriculum plan, highlighting the main topics that have to be covered. Then I begin lecture recording. On average it takes one full day of work to plan, record, and edit a single video lecture. I finalize a more detailed curriculum along the way because it’s hard to see all possible nuances from the very beginning. Sometimes a single planned lecture can be split into 3 separate topics, or two topics can be combined into one. I focus on the logical structure of the content, so each next lecture is a logical continuation of the previous lecture.

Tell us a little about the process of launching your course and getting your first sale(s).

Social networks I the best way to build awareness of the course launch in my opinion. After I launched the course, I made a post on the LinkedIn network, where I have almost 4000 followers. This gathered some attention. Then I performed a live-stream webinar on LinkedIn and YouTube and invited my followers to it. I had about 40 people watching live and somewhere about 500 views later. During the webinar, I offered a coupon discount for webinar attendees and this is how I got my first sale.

Do you have a lead magnet?

I have a free class JavaScript Fundamentals. Just create a new account and enroll in the class. It’s completely free. The SDET with Playwright course has the first 5 sections of the course available for free preview as well. Unfortunately, I can’t say that I help me to sell the online course so far, but we will see, I am still learning how to do it right ☺

What’s the traffic strategy that works best for you?

So far, the best organic way of organic traffic for me is by making YouTube videos and Blog posts. Sharing blog posts on social media drives the organic traffic pretty well. SEO is super important for organic search, but unfortunately, it’s impossible to achieve the results quickly. For the long term is super important and I need to work on it regularly increasing website awareness. As for the paid traffic, a good start is Google Ads and Bing ads. Both of them have promotions of $500 that can be spent on advertisement, which is a great support for beginners.

What online course platform are you using?

I use LearnWorlds.

Do you like it?

I do. I have done deep research on all platforms, and so far, LearnWorlds fits the best for my needs.

Are there any features you wish it had?

This platform has many useful features, but unfortunately, some of them are not very flexible or limited in functionality. For example, Learnworlds supports SSO integration which I use, but there is no way how I can use email confirmation functionality with this integration. I need to develop my custom solution if I want to use SSO.

What made you decide to use your chosen platform over others?

I use SSO integration with Auth0. This is a future-proof approach because this will help me easier to control access of the students to other applications that can be used for the education process. APIs and Webhooks. Again, more of a future-proof as I see how this can be used to automate some of the processes. Self-assessments and other types of learning activities helped to create a more engaging learning experience rather than just “watching the videos”.

What other tools do you use to run your online course business?

To record the videos, I use ScreenFlow for screen recording and Final Cut Pro for editing. Slack for communication. Tawk.to integration for live chat on the website. Zoom for online sessions. Restream for live streaming to YouTube and LinkedIn. For SEO: Google Analytics, Google Search Console, Ahrefs. For hosting test applications, I use Google Cloud. Stripe for payments. Calendly integration for 1-on-1 mentorship session scheduling. MailerLite for email marketing. Canva and Desygner for video thumbnails.

What books or training programs have you found useful on your journey to a successful business owner that others might find valuable too?

“The GAP and the GAIN”, is a fantastic book to set the mindset. Focus on personal results and progress instead of comparing to others to keep the intrinsic motivation to move forward. Starting a new business is not always easy. “Atomic Habits” is the second book that helps to build new habits and systems of action, which is very important for every new entrepreneur.

Do you have any big mistakes you’ve made along the way that you’d be willing to share?

I can’t call out big mistakes but one of the things I keep reminding myself is to try to use the time efficiently and don’t try to make everything perfect from the first attempt. Seeking perfection consumes a lot of time which is always not enough for entrepreneurs. Before doing something perfectly, need to test the idea, is it worth the effort or not in the first place.

Please share some idea of revenue.

I can’t boast the strong numbers yet, unfortunately. After almost two months since launching the Bondar Academy, I have only two active students so far. Compared to my more established Udemy classes where I have 2000 new students per month. So a lot of work ahead to bring awareness to my new project.

Please tell us a little about what the money you’ve earned from your course has done for you.

Online education became a full-time job for me. When I started teaching at Udemy back in 2020, combined with a primary full-time job, it later became a very good additional source of income. Now I have quit the job, developing the Bondar Academy and the income from Udemy helps to keep me afloat while working on the development of the new project.

What has creating your course done for you personally?

Teaching others is the best way to become an expert in the topic that you teach. While preparing for the classes, I had to deep dive into the subject by myself first of all. It’s not just knowing it well it’s knowing it inside out.

Do you have a story of a transformation from any of your clients?

This is one of the best things that happens to the teacher – seeing the thrive of your students. I have hundreds of students who changed their career paths, improved their skills, and increased their income. Getting the appreciation letters is one of the higher rewards for the efforts.

What advice do you have for people just starting out?

Not everyone will like your course and you will get negative feedback. Don’t take this too personally. If possible, extract the constructive portion from it for future improvements. Also, I wish I knew that getting traffic to the course at launch would be so challenging task.

Learn more about Artem Bondar of bondaracademy.com:

• Website: bondaracademy.com
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