New Instructors: Stay AWAY from Fiverr!

HofmeyrdeVo128
HofmeyrdeVo128 Posts: 178 specialist rank
in First-time course creation

Its been happening with increasing and alarming frequency that Udemy instructors are contacted and threatened with bad reviews and being reported for "violation of Udemy policies" by Fiverr freelancers.

Now here's the thing, or even multiple things:

Bad reviews for a new course will be the death knell for that course. Udemy will not promote it, and the course in question it will disappear amongst the thousands of courses with the same fate, and make no mistake , these individuals are well aware of this fact.

The chances are very good that Fiverr freelancers will have no idea to promote your course other than:

  • advising you to give away unlimited free coupons( this is an exceptionally bad idea that NEVER ends well)
  • using bots to enroll in and promote your course, which IS in fact in violation of Udemy's policy on the subject( another exceptionally bad idea that NEVER ends well)

MOST of these freelancers are not marketing experts, and in fact are pretty much clueless on how to market your course other than utilizing above mentioned cookie cutter approach, and as we've seen now, will also revert to threats to attempt to force you into some kind of a deal that will only cost you money, and result in you losing your Udemy account to a ban.

So, whenever you are approached by these folks, on whichever platform (LinkedIn is another favorite) take screenshots, send to the Udemy and Fiverr policy teams as in immediately, and block them everywhere you can, including Fiverr. Do not engage with them in any way, shape or form without discussing it first with the Udemy team. From personal experience they are super helpful and will do what they can to resolve the matter.

Comments

  • MarinaT
    MarinaT Posts: 2,148 Udemy rank

    Hi @HofmeyrdeVo128
    ,

    Thank you for taking the time and for creating awareness when it comes to Fiverr .

    It's indeed frightening how many posts we've seen over the past weeks from instructors threatened by those “freelancers”.

    I agree here; the best is to report such incidents to Fiverr support and Udemy (policy@udemy.com) immediately.

  • DILLYARA
    DILLYARA Posts: 65 trailblazer rank

    Wow...what a World! Thanks for the heads up and for such an insightful advice...

    Best,

    Dillyara D.

  • Luiza G.
    Luiza G. Posts: 7 researcher rank

    Thanks a lot for the info! It was really useful!

  • DILLYARA
    DILLYARA Posts: 65 trailblazer rank

    Thanks for the heads up!

    I have been actually approached by 4 "marketers" recently whereby 3 of those reached out via LinkedIn and one via Facebook.

    Couple of them mentioned of their freelance experience and work on Upwork platform.

    But really, given the way these guys were making their service offers, made me also see that they have no clue how to market and promote the course other than using my coupon. Each of them referred to nearly the same number of enrollments, which was another BAD SIGNAL to me.

    To be fair, though, none sounded threatening...

    Best,

    Dillyara.

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