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🎉 Published My First AWS Udemy Course And I Want You To Have It For Free!

Andrew Brown 🇨🇦 on April 06, 2019

🆕Another Post Update First, second, third and forth, fifth and sixth time coupon got used up. So I updated the link below again with 50 more free ...
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Yaser Al-Najjar

Had a quick look over the course... love it!

I really like AWS services, only thing that I don't like its complex pricing :(

Would love to see a simple way to calculate all the expected numbers per month.

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Andrew Brown 🇨🇦

The effort to determine pricing was what kept me off on AWS platform for years.
Once you get used to its okay but it is quite the initial deterrent.

AWS Budgets is free and really good at helping you visualize what you're spending day to day.

The only pricing I calculate mostly is EC2 instances and so it's around ~730 hours per month.
So I'm doing lots of 730 x 0.XX

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yaser profile image
Yaser Al-Najjar

I do the day to day calculation, but it's still not giving me accurate numbers per month (Cuz of the calculation of the free tier 😐).

The last time I contacted the AWS support about calculations he taught me how to use the monthly report in excel and see the usage per service and estimate the price; their support is elite, but seriously, doing calculation in excel everytime I use an extra service sucks!

I had 4 instances on EC2, tried moving into digital ocean the previous month... worked pretty well, and I'm planning to move another instance just for that reason!

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André Pena

This is the reason why I use digitalcean instead. =(

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Andrew Brown 🇨🇦

I once was charged $3000 USD from AWS because I misconfigured a server forgot about it and then got a bill at the end of the month.

Another time I accidentally selected a private certificate instead of a public one and they cost something like $500 USD.

Though AWS was good enough to reverse the charges in both cases and also before they even made it onto my credit card so no refunding on my card required. So I have never been screwed by 'technicality'.

This big fear is less of a concern because I have billing alarms and I now know how pricing works for core services, and I use AWS Budgets to help me visualize or catch any weird costs.

But yeah I think I should make a video tutorial series of something like 5 videos on this.

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André Pena • Edited

I got a mini heart attack on your $3000. It was reddit.com/r/nonononoyes/ material. I'm glad they didn't charge you. It is also good to know there are ways to mitigate this "problem".

Yes indeed. I think there would be a demand for cost centered trainings. For example, I use DigitalOcean, but I would prefer to use AWS because everybody uses AWS and for the industry it would be better if I did so I could have more experience on it. But the complexity and pricing pushes me off.

@andrew Brown, thank you for the coupon code on the AWS training. If should have your Twitter listed here.

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yaser profile image
Yaser Al-Najjar

Pheeew!
Mistakes on AWS are often expensive, I had once a tough experience too: dev.to/0xrumple/comment/9e90

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Andrew Brown 🇨🇦

3000 USD in CAD is 4,017.45 so for me it was even worse after conversion.

Learning to deal with Cloud Computing pricing is like learning Regex, You put it off for years and once you feel enough friction and learn it you'll wonder why you didn't do it sooner.

Full-stack development is losing its glided title, and so to stay competitive I had to say to myself, I HATE AWS so I'm going to be a master and jumped right in. One of my junior devs told me he hated Regex and so I said: "You shouldn't have told me that because I'm going to make you do it full time for a week." Cloud computing is still a mystery to most which is really good for job progression if you learn it now but it's going to become considered fundamental knowledge required in a few years I think.

This is my twitter, though I have yet to put it to good use.
twitter.com/examproco

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David Teren

How to set up billing alarms and other AWS caveats and potential pitfalls to avoid might make for a good article or tutorial.

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Fred Richards

What an interesting thread.

I may just do this. I've been using AWS not just professionally, but for a small lab for the last 5+ years.

I actually have little test experiments I do to try and keep costs down. I spend typically between $11-20 USD a month. Think of it as TDD but for billing. Maybe I can write something up... hmm.

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yaser profile image
Yaser Al-Najjar

Yep dude waiting for that writeup😉

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Aaron Ponce

Thank you for sharing your course, very much appreciated!

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Andrew Brown 🇨🇦

no problem bud, enjoy.

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Roel Hogervorst

First of all congrats! Creating content is a lot of work! This is not an attack on you but I think a valid question to ask: (did you know or now you know) How do you feel about being part of udemy, a company known for stealing courses from over the internet? Troy Hunt for instance is often plagiarised troyhunt.com/the-piracy-paradox-at...

I can imagine you put in a lot of effort in your course, I would be pissed if Udemy would also rip from YouTube and users would pay the same for stolen content and your exclusive work.

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Andrew Brown 🇨🇦

On ExamPro I have built my own LMS with on-demand video streaming and I could have easily sent everyone to sign up there which I could have then cross-sold other exclusive AWS content but I wanted to give Udemy a try to see how to better improve my LMS, they also have lots of information on how to make better quality course content. There is also the possibility of social proof since Udemy courses are public facing they can validate me as a legit online course creator. Also, Udemy is supposed to promote your content to expose you to more people.

I don't like Udemy, but my thought is if I want to make more free content vs paid I need to reach more people and have more social proof and I will only know if Udemy can help with that by getting first-hand knowledge by publishing a course on their platform.

For me, this was low risk because I actually have 6 other courses already video-tutorialized unpublished which were from previous in-person workshops I ran.

If I were to get enough subscribers on youtube I would be comfortable with making more of my previously paid content free because the trade in social proof allows me to create even better-paid content. I didn't publish straight to youtube because I'm taking a half step approach because as soon as I make this content free it devalues my ability to monetize in-person. So if interest fails then at least I have the content paid.

Getting more youtube subscribers isn't for the ad money because I turn off ads on youtube. It creates business opportunities to sell my content to big companies.

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Kavinda Jayakody

Thank you man <3. Means a lot :)

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Adeyemo Olumide Eronmosele

Oooh shoot the coupon is sold out

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Andrew Brown 🇨🇦

I just updated the link again, give it another try

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Adeyemo Olumide Eronmosele

Thanks i just got in andrew you are the best

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Steven Torrence

This is fantastic! Just what I was looking for! Thank you so much!

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Rattanak Chea

Enrolled. AWS is sth I want to dive into. Thanks.

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faridos

Thank you so much for sharing it! , i've already shared it to my friends and colleagues.

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Akash P.

thank you, Andrew, for nice gesture for a community. I appreciate it.

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José Antonio Reyes

Ups! The link is sold out, are you still providing free access to your course? I’m very interested on doing it. Thanks for sharing Andrew.

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Andrew Brown 🇨🇦

I think I filmed a new version of this in my Solutions Architect Associate course on freeCodeCamp youtube. The only part left out is configuring Ruby on Rails.

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José Antonio Reyes

Thanks Andrew, yes i´ve found it in the freeCodeCamp´s channel 👏🏽

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Fida Muntaseer

Thanks a lot... :)

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Edgar Ortega

❤️ thank you, saw it in my Google feed and seemed very interesting

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Atilla Gündüz

thanks a lot. I am using own server never had time to dive in AWS

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Andrew Brown 🇨🇦

Yeah bud, its all about time. Hopefully this fast tracks it for you.

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Mohammad

Thank you, Andrew Brown, make it free and I have enrolled it to know more about

deploying web apps in AWS with my free time.

God Bless You Man,
Mohammad

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Abhishek Agarwal

Please give me a free link

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Andrew Brown 🇨🇦

The first 50 coupons were used up so I update the link to allow for 50 more.

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Grant Ralls

I just recently got into AWS over the past month and it's been a fun ride. I do feel there are gaps in my knowledge though. I'm super excited to go through this and fill any of those holes in.

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Andrew Brown 🇨🇦

Whatever those gaps are you tell me because I bet people are experiencing the same and I'll video them up.

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David Teren

Perfect timing! I'm so grateful for this. More so as it cove Ruby on Rails! Thanks for doing this.

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Agamy

thank you so much, would be great to the coupon for the course, building my first rails app, will need to deploy it soon.
thanks again.

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Just Another Developer

Wow.. super cool.. Just got the course for free. Will start learning from the weekend..Cheers man.. <3 from Dev.to

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nuwan-dammika

Thank you very much for making this free,

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Crystal R Williams

Hi, are the free coupons still available for this course?

Thanks!