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Andrew Brown 🇨🇦
Andrew Brown 🇨🇦

Posted on • Edited on

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

🆕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 coupons.


DEV.to has been a great experience for me since previously I wanted to create web-dev content online but it was met with little reception. I was personally discouraged for months to create free public content because it was hard to get anyone to look at it.

DEV.to's warm community has given me the confidence to keep producing more free online content because I get direct engagement and see the knowledge shared is put to use.

So as a thank you I am going to make this Udemy course free to Dev.to users. I'll explain how I'm making it free down below but let me tell what you're getting.

📖 The Course

I wanted to give you a useful skill that has made me lots of money which is how to setup web-apps the right way on AWS. Lots of startups deploy at first to Heroku or Linode or Digital Ocean but are faced with moving to AWS when they outgrow these simple server providers but they don't know how end-to-end setup a production environment. I've been paid a few thousands of dollars (USD) multiple times just to set up a production environment for a couple of days of work to save startups weeks figuring out on their own. So I hope this course will enable you to do the same.

What I say to grads or junior devs is Heroku is not enough. An easy way to tell if a junior is going to be a good hire is if they've provisioned their own server because of its a frustrating, time-consuming and error-prone process.

If you get through that end-to-end it shows you have the resourcefulness to work through hard problems and you won't need to be your hand-held on the job which is what companies really want.

The first interview question I ask when hiring full-stacker developers is always: "Have you provisioned your own web-server for production use?".

This is the Udemy course but doesn't click this link because the good one with the free coupon code is down below:

The Fast Track To Deploying A Web App On AWS The Right Way

And here is a good look at what we are going to be building.

🙏 The Thank You

I'm not sure how many of you here want it for free and I do really want to just give it for free only to Dev.to users. So what I've done is created a coupon code that makes it a free course for the first 50 people who use the coupon. The coupon is embedded in the link to save you the trouble and so here's the link:

👇👇👇👇👇
The Course with FREE Coupon Code for DEV.To
☝️☝️☝️☝️☝️

P.S. Can you help me out and smash some hearts or unicorns so other DEV.to members see this. ❤️ ❤️ ❤️ 🦄 🦄 🦄

P.S.S. Consider giving me a follow so you don't miss out on other really cool content I'm secretly working on to giveaway for free here on DEV.to

P.S.S. Subscribing to my Youtube channel really helps me out, so if you're feeling generous please give me a subscribe

P.S.S.S. I keep updating the new free link because the free coupons get all used up, if for some reason it's not free for you it could be because I'm swapping the link for a new one, if so comment here or just wait 10 mins and try again.

Top comments (40)

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yaser profile image
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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andrewbrown profile image
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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andrerpena profile image
André Pena

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

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andrewbrown profile image
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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andrerpena profile image
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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andrewbrown profile image
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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davidteren profile image
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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flrichar profile image
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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amponce profile image
Aaron Ponce

Thank you for sharing your course, very much appreciated!

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andrewbrown profile image
Andrew Brown 🇨🇦

no problem bud, enjoy.

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rmhogervorst profile image
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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andrewbrown profile image
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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kavinda1995 profile image
Kavinda Jayakody

Thank you man <3. Means a lot :)

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iameronmosele profile image
Adeyemo Olumide Eronmosele

Oooh shoot the coupon is sold out

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andrewbrown profile image
Andrew Brown 🇨🇦

I just updated the link again, give it another try

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iameronmosele profile image
Adeyemo Olumide Eronmosele

Thanks i just got in andrew you are the best

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storrence88 profile image
Steven Torrence

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

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rattanakchea profile image
Rattanak Chea

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

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faridos profile image
faridos

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

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iakashpatel profile image
Akash P.

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

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imjaroiswebdev profile image
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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andrewbrown profile image
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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imjaroiswebdev profile image
José Antonio Reyes

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