I saw his attention-grabbing headline and was immediately put-off. Didn't bother to read his post, to me the headline was intentionally set to mislead people into believing that he did that in 1 year.
I'm not sure coming and advertising "your other business" is the spirit of this platform. I know I would quickly leave if this Joe Parys was successful and as a consequence more "Joe Paryses" showed up and started flogging snake-oil all over the place ...
I don't think there's anything wrong in promoting a business on Steemit, however like you mentioned, it's the flavour of the post, from the headline to the visual design of it, it screams scam.
To be fair to him though, seeing as I don't actually know the guy or have checked out his courses. Udemy.com is a bonafide, top quality site, so it's possible his courses are valuable, he just has a terrible way of presenting them.
Cg
I agree with your comments on Udemy.