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@AlexGenadinik - me too, approaching 1,000,000 people in my classes. I've earned a ton here… feeling really discouraged and sad to experience this, and hear the same from other instructors. It's been a good ride.

Not addressing the issue of falling instructor revenue, in my opinion, is the message. Or the message is, too bad. If you don't like your revenue, some other instructor will.

January is coming and instructor revenue will be cut again. I don't see a path to keep shareholders and instructors happy, and when people aren't happy, they should look elsewhere…

@FrankKane

Traffic data from various channels are public and available + accessible to anyone with internet.

• Here is a graph from Google that show Udemy's Google traffic trend to be increasing (you have to add organic and paid traffic to get the total. For trends cancel out the Pandemic effect. Google has a reputation of being best at canceling out traffic from bot farms, etc.

• Considering newer market places, Coursera is now selling single courses and there are plenty of other competitors such as something new in Singapore, Tencent - China, and a number of other competitors.
• Most academic-bureaucratic organizations become fat over time. Udemy is not different in that aspect and have the same type of organizational issues which all organizations in the middle moving towards large size will have.

Regards

My Udemy revenue has been declining for years ($2,500/mo. > $1,000/mo.). Thank you for the vigorous conversation here. I've learned a lot. I've been managing my decline in the meantime. Udemy has always been a side game for me anyway. Rather than unpublishing, I'd recommend people let it ride and try to milk Udemy for the last drops of revenue. Certainly stop publishing courses.

With Udemy demanding less time, I finally wrote and submitted several screenplays to contests. This would not have happened if Udemy hadn't crashed.

I truly feel sorry for the instructors who were making a lot of money from Udemy and depending up it. Udemy pulled the rug out from under all of us and it hurt some of us a lot more than others.

I've hated Udemy for years for their corrupt policies (I may post some of them you don't know about), it was just so easy to stay. I recently rejoined this chat group after having left multiple times because of people like @LawrenceMMiller.

@MuhammadDuj869, please keep posting, if for no other reason then to annoy the privileged ;-).

This is a nightmare. Happy Halloween. I'm so disgusted - can't believe the constant stream of bad news I keep discovering… It's just one thing after another. My PP is pretty flat, actually down about $50 month over month… not a good sign.

I think the PP report numbers are causing it to sink in just how ridiculous 15% is for what Udemy is actually providing.

Say over a year a course brings $100,000 USD in watched minutes. The instructor gets $15,000. $85,000 in platform and marketing costs?

You can host yourself on other platforms that do everything Udemy does (except marketing) for $2400 / year.

Is Udemy providing $80,000 USD in value in that case?

Hello Ned,

First, allow me to introduce myself. I am the new head of Content and Instructor strategy on Udemy’s leadership team reporting directly to our CEO Hugo. I joined just over two months ago and my background is a mix of technology, education, and entertainment across both large-scale companies and entrepreneurial roles.

I’ve been fortunate to meet many instructors over the past months, in person and virtually, and I look forward to meeting you as well. Meeting instructors and sharing dialog like this has been critical in understanding Udemy, our current challenges, and to inform our planning so thank you for asking the hard questions.

I will share some immediate replies here to your questions, but I want to assure you that we are aware of the complicated dynamics in play and are committed to finding the right balance of company growth and a thriving instructor community. We are hard at work on several tangible initiatives that will address this balance and reaffirm our deep partnership and commitment to our instructors. More specifics on that as soon as confirmed, but for now to your questions:

"Intentionally" reducing transactional course sales effectively accounts to another rev share cut for instructors, doesn't it?

Our shift toward subscription-based growth is imperative in a world of significantly increased customer acquisition costs. In short, it’s more expensive than ever to bring learners into the ecosystem, and in all of our interest for them to keep coming back. This means evolving the way learners engage with Udemy beyond a single course purchase, and we are seeing great promise in this as Hugo shared in Q3 results. Our North Star is to increase the overall number of learners that are subscribed, and the overall time they are learning on the platform, with the objective to increase the LTV of the learner for both Udemy and instructors alike. So while I understand why you’re seeing that as an “effective rev share cut”, please know it is an investment in trying to achieve more predictable earnings, more ongoing leaner engagement, and higher lifetime value per learner.

• How are Udemy incentives and Instructor incentives aligned in this situation?

We also understand that this transition is taking time, and that we need a solution to better align incentives during the transition while the overall subscriber pool is growing. As I mentioned above, this work is underway and we are also tapping many instructors’ creativity and business acumen for suggestions and feedback how to grow and retain subscribers together.

• Does Udemy consider the impact this sharp change in instructor income may have on the value of the catalog in the mid and long-term?

Very much so Ned, in many dimensions. It also makes us think a lot about how we need to align incentives with the outcomes that both learners and our enterprise customers need, and what new forms of content this may take in addition to our existing course formats. There’s a lot of pressure on learners these days to learn new skills fast, and for skill acquisition to be a constant, on-going process.

Know that all across Udemy we deeply recognize that it is our instructors, your creativity, and your insights into what learners want and need to learn that is a unique differentiator for us all.

So yes, we do recognize the significant challenges of today’s competitive environment, and the dynamics impacting instructors, and are working hard on solutions. I believe we have the vision and see the bold strategic decisions happening. We are committed to the true win-win partnership that has made Udemy a success, and adapting to the future together.

Thank you again and I look forward to collaborating in the future.