Best Of

Agree with your points here. I've come across multiple courses that are either entirely AI-made and even one that just stole YouTube videos from different people without their permission. All of them made it past Udemy's approval process.

On the other hand, as we know from this forum, other – totally fine – courses were taken down because Udemy assumed they were AI-made, even though they were not. Automating the approval and QA processes has definitely caused problems in terms of the quality of courses.

The same is true for piracy: X, Reddit, and Facebook alone are full with people selling our courses for a dollar or even give them away for free. I also had Udemy students downloading the script of my courses and turning them into ebooks published under their own name, screen-recording my courses and putting them on YouTube, or turning each lesson into a free Medium article with even screenshots from my videos and the Udemy watermark on it, again, published under their own name. When I asked Udemy to block these users from my courses, there was nothing they could do (which I understand). But optimizing for revenue definitely also includes these aspects.

Also, I follow and agree your analysis, @Scott, but I also see what @Boris035 is pointing at: The facts are on the table, but what is the strategy forward? What's the way out? Sharing our knowledge for a fraction of what we consider fair? Teaching topics (like AI) that we don't feel confident about just to stay relevant on Udemy? Or leaving Udemy and rob it of high-quality instructors to leave it to those who don't have other options? Most of us don't want to leave Udemy. We need to work on a fair solution together – whatever that may look like.

It is unfortunately a zero-sum game for us. Negative-sum, really.

If what everyone wants is higher earnings per instructor in such an environment, there are two solutions:

• Have fewer instructors splitting up those earnings
• Distribute those earnings more evenly (careful what you wish for)

Maybe the answer is a moratorium on new instructors, unless they can pass some sort of application process. If the internal investigation reveals that the cause of instructor earning dilution is a flood of new instructors, something along those lines could reduce the number of slices in the pie over time - and increase the catalog's quality at the same time. Recent expansions of the subscription catalogs are probably a big factor here, where the low revshare was at least counterbalanced by less instructor competition before that expansion.

If it's the distribution of earnings that is the problem, that could have many causes and potential solutions. If recent changes to the site had an unintentional side effect of funneling the majority of revenue to a handful of instructors, then that is something that is reversible. If it's just a shift in demand for certain topics, at least that can be communicated to set realistic expectations for instructors in those topics.

Or maybe there is an accounting quirk that means we just haven't seen any benefits from the growth of Personal Plan into our own accounts yet, and things aren't as bad as it seems. But we just don't know due to our complete lack of Personal Plan metrics. That too is fixable.

I bet it's a little of everything, though.

(Actually there is a third solution as well: create entirely new revenue streams that investors have no existing revshare expectation on.)

@ScottDuffy you are right – based on my estimates, regarding the total annual Instructors’ payouts, we are stuck at USD 200mn since 2022, where the peak was at the end of 2023. That means we are in the “year 4” with plateaued payouts (probably even declining), while the total number of instructors increased meanwhile, and global inflation affected all of us.

Here you can see more details about the estimates:

When we discuss transparency (and building trust), I believe this is the starting point for all of us – is this (meaning a USD 200 million plateau) true? And, what’s the plan to change it (when Genefa speaks about sustainability and revenue strategies)?

However, I’m afraid Udemy does not have a coherent development strategy – their DNA is “optimization” driven (PP is just another tool for that).

I’ll be more than happy to be proven wrong and apologize.

As I read this, I am thinking, "Be careful what you wish for., fellow instructors."

I will be very surprised (shocked even) if Udemy goes to investors in the next investor call and tells them they will purposely reduce their gross margins. They love having 75% margins in UB/PP, and that is going to 85% with next year's cuts.

So let's say there is a fixed pool of money - let's say $200 million that they can pay us every year. Maybe that grows 5% per year from Udemy's overall growth, but that's it. That's not going up too much. So we're arguing over which instructor should get more of that money and which should get less.

The passion is great, I guess. But the reality is not. There's no magic that can turn $200 million into $400 million.

Maybe Genefa can go to the board and say they need to increase the instructor pool to $220 million, a 10% increase to help morale. So we all get an extra 10%. I won't say no, but I bet that won't make everyone happy or return to the glory days.

Unless Udemy's stock price rockets back to $20 sometime soon. Then they can have the freedom to pay us more without risking the CEO's job.

Have you looked at the background of Udemy executives? They are all business people with careers completely in business. None, as far as I can see, are academics. What are you talking about? Do some research. It is fair to completely disagree with their strategy or results, but putting them in the box of academics makes no sense.

Dear Genefa & Team, while we appreciate the acknowledgment of the issues, the communication provided lacks actionable solutions or timelines that would allow instructors to plan and adjust accordingly.

Transparency and concrete guidance are critical for instructors to continue creating high-quality content and maintaining revenue stability. We urge your team to provide clear updates on:

1. Specific actions being taken to address declining earnings.
2. Timelines for implementation of visibility and insight improvements.
3. Clarification on which policies are non-negotiable versus those under review.

We value collaboration but also expect timely, meaningful steps rather than general assurances. We look forward to concrete proposals and actionable communication in the near term.

Best regards, Beti.