Don't reject PP... but adapt

Hi,

I see a lot of negative posts about PP and low sales. We are all in the same boat. It's really really hard to see a good ending. But somehow I want ton remain optimistic. Because other industries like music and video have done it before us… And they are still alive

The digital world is evolving…. And really fast. And the way to consume it too

iTunes made way for Apple Music.
DVDs and pay per view were replaced by Netflix.
Now, Udemy’s Personal Plan (PP) is embracing the subscription model,

Let's be honest. On a learner's perspective it’s easy to see why: unlimited access is a game-changer. But for instructors, this shift isn’t just about change. it’s about opportunity, if the rules are fair and transparent.

A Model Built for Learners… and Creators?

Subscriptions can be a win for everyone. Learners get more value, and instructors gain access to a broader, more engaged audience. The marketplace model rewarded standout courses, but subscriptions could democratize discovery, helping hidden gems shine. The key? Transparency. Right now, many instructors don’t know how their content performs in terms of minutes consumed or how payouts are calculated. Without clear metrics, it’s hard to optimize—or even trust—the system.

The Power of Predictability

For creators, subscriptions offer something precious: stable, recurring income. No more feast-or-famine cycles tied to individual sales. But to truly thrive, instructors need insights: How many minutes were watched? How does engagement translate to earnings?

Own Your Future

The rise of subscriptions doesn’t have to mean losing control. Savvy instructors can use this model to build loyalty, cross-promote courses, and even diversify with exclusive content outside the platform. The challenge? Staying informed and adaptable. not just survive, but grow.

A Call for Clarity

Let’s be honest: subscriptions are here to stay. But their success depends on trust. Platforms that empower creators with transparency will attract the best talent. Those that don’t risk losing them to competitors—or to their own independent ventures.

The Opportunity Ahead T

his isn’t the end of the creator economy—it’s a new chapter. With the right tools and transparency, subscriptions could unlock unprecedented reach and revenue. The question isn’t if we adapt, but how.

Good Luck

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Comments

kvjoyocm

Very well articulated @Matthieu

Col (Dr) Shabbar Shahid (Veteran)

@Matthieu Great perspective and has lot of meaning in it. Patience is a virtue we need now.

Salman Alhiary

Thanks @Matthieu
One more point: with the personal plan, there is no chance for the instructors to compete with Udemy on marketing (Using Social media or Website) as the course landing page is designed to convince the student to go with the PP, not buy the course.

That makes the only way for the instructors to earn is via the Udemy marketing funnel, not the instructors' funnel.

ETrupja

Thanks @Matthieu

LindsayMarsh

The pay per minute model only works if you can get students to commit and watch most of your course. Even then, if you compare the upfront profit from selling the course on the marketplace compared with all the minutes in an average course, the upfront payment usually still is higher.

Most of how we have made money in the past was students would pay upfront for the course even if they actually finished it or not. Most udemy students would not get more than one hour into a course. This was not due to our courses but rather the impulsively of udemy's marketing model. People would feel motivated by an ad, buy a course then just let it sit there. This shifts that risk to us as instructors. Now we must encourage students who are not encouraged. We do not have the proper communication channels and methods to motivate students (limited email and messaging). We also have no way to measure our attempts at encouraging minutes watched.

I have been part of a pay per minutes model for over 8 years on skillshare (and made over a million there) so if anyone can give a masterclass in how to be successful in a pay per min model it is me. I hate the fact that udemy is switching over to this model, it is less profit for us instructors and once again shifts more responsibility to us without the proper tools to interact with students like skillshare allows.

If you want a quick tip on how to succeed in this model is by creating very short courses (1-2 hours max). My 30 hour masterclass will continue to fail under this model switch and I believe 30 hours is required to master the skills I teach. I now have to break that up into 20 courses and I have no way to tell which students the order or encourage them to buy each one (personal plan does not have bundles yet although they could create grouped courses or "course tracks").

Anyways, a lot to discuss. Positivity is good but don't ignore that this is another switch that benefits Udemy over instructors, don't let anyone spin it any other way.

FettahBen

@Matthieu as @LindsayMarsh say The the upfront payment usually still is higher. upfront payment model has always provided higher and fairer returns for instructors. The subscription model may be the “new trend,” but its biggest problem is the constant erosion of revenue sharing. In Udemy for Business (UFB), the instructor’s share was cut from 50% to 25%, then to 17.5%, and now it’s set to fall further to just 15% in the next three months.

The old model motivated instructors to invest time and effort into creating longer, comprehensive courses because the payout per enrollment rewarded depth and quality. The new Personal Plan (PP), however, flips this upside down. By paying only per minute watched, it pushes instructors to design shorter, surface-level content. Long, complete courses—where students rarely watch 100% of the content—are heavily penalized, since even if the course is rich and valuable, the instructor only gets paid for the minutes actually consumed.

We’ve effectively gone from earning 50% on organic sales, to about 37% per enrollment, to now just $0.014 per minute in PP & UFB. This drastic downgrade not only devalues the instructor’s hard work but also risks lowering the quality of learning itself. Instead of encouraging excellence, the PP model incentivizes minimalism and quick, short videos at the expense of real education.

Matthieu

I understand your point of view and the reality about higher revenues with upfront paiement.

Remember 10 years ago when Spotify, Apple music and other streaming Platforms came to life. Of course artists we're not happy with the new share. But they needed to adapt in order to continue seeling songs, even if shared were way lower than upfront paid disks.

We are at that point. And that's just my point of view.

Am i Happy with my revenue ? Of course not!

Can i change the new subscription trend? No.

So i will adapt or die. Complaining is just wasting time and energy.

It's the darwin's way

Paul-N

The "positive" bottom half was literally written by ChatGPT. It's quite easy to ask it to look at things from a positive perspective

LindsayMarsh

I don't think any of us are going to not adapt, we have to. But we can go down trying to fight for our share of profits instead of just shrugging our shoulders and saying "oh well" just another cut for instructors. They will continue to find ways to cut our share if we do not bring it up as an issue. Something has to give. Without quality instructors they will loose their edge.

Sergio-Apasoft

As @LindsayMarsh points out, it's very difficult to adapt without the right tools.
And I think courses will have to be much shorter and focused on very specific topics that might interest students and capture their attention.
Why create a 25-hour course that, no matter how good it is, only a small percentage of students will finish (at least in my experience)?
Anyway, if I don't have the ability to know if my courses are well received, which ones are most popular, etc., how can I plan the next courses?
Right now, I only have one piece of information: the total monthly income :-(

AHardin

It's nearly impossible to adapt without any meaningful metrics and data in the instructor dashboard. I also think that it's too early to tell what the long-term impacts of Udemy transitioning to a subscription-focused platform and our instructor earnings will be, given that Hugo announced the increased emphasis at the Q2 earnings call.

With that said, I can share some personal insights from my online school that's been subscription-based for 5+ years:
1) Top-ranked and best-selling courses always tend to outperform others. Think of Google search - how often do you actually browse through the 2nd or even 3rd page of results?
2) Course length hasn't been a metric for success, at least for me. At my school, my longer courses regularly outperform my shorter ones, with the longest being almost 30 hours in length.
3) Monthly revenue is predictable. I almost never see massive shifts in monthly revenue. It states consistent month-to-month. I see the same thing with my audiobooks on Audible (ACX) as well.
4) Individual & bundle sales are almost non-existent. It's very rare that someone will choose to purchase a single course or course bundle on my site over my subscription offering. So as Udemy continues to ramp up subscription sales, I expect my individual course sales (for courses in the PP) to continue to decline here.
5) People rarely cancel. I see this as the largest benefit to Udemy (and possibly instructors). If you set up your welcome offer and monthly/annual pricing right, where people see it as an amazing value, they rarely cancel and keep their plan active.

These are my personal insights from my small online school (roughly 11k students), so there's no way to tell if Udemy's trends will be similar, but I figured my insights might be helpful.

FrankKane

One key adaptation is pivoting to a focus on engagement, instead of just driving that initial sale.

That doesn't have to mean short courses. It could mean project-based courses that motivate the learner to complete some larger task, or courses that prepare you for a certification or credential where you must complete the content in order to pass. Longer courses can still be a thing, but the learner needs to have a good reason to complete them.

Matthieu

@Paul-N

Just translated, not written. I can still think by myself.

And by Mistral, not ChatGPT. Let's use french ai.

It's so easy to judge and be negative nowadays... This is sad.

ChrisBankes120

It seems to me that if we split courses into three categories:

0-1 hour

1-10 hours

10 - 100 hours

The subscriber won't enrol on the long course as almost certainly they won't finish it within 4 months and that's 4 months of subs - plus they will be continually bombarded with adverts for other courses.

Most likely the subscriber will enrol in the short course and thus get fantastic value for the sub fee - 10 courses instead of 1 !!!!

OK they're on the short course. They might even finish it - especially if it has an Internationally Accredited Diploma. Even more so if they can print and edit their own Diploma.

They can become anything they want inside an hour - no cheating, they actually WATCH the course.

OK, so two key facts in the course:

a. short as possible

b. giving some sort of Diploma

What about engagement?

Well…they could do a quiz…but hang on - they have a subscription so why not do TEN of these 1 hour courses and get some sort of super-dooper Diploma? It doesn't cost any more as they have a subscription.

So, that's it then….churn out a number of 40 minute courses, with a Diploma Internationally Accredited, don't encourage posting in the Q/A (as that slows down course completion and anyway if you wanted to spend a long time on a course then you'd not have a subscription!)

I reckon I could churn out about 6 of these courses a day - bit boring, but it could be done. (I used to teach 13 hours a day of direct contact) And if I can then others can. They'll all be pretty shallow but they'll be easy, have a Diploma…..I can do so many I won't even know what the topic is any more. Anyone who is used to teaching in a school/college who teaches 8 x 1 hour lessons a day can churn out courses, it's not that different (talking to an unresponsive class compared to talking to a camera).

So that scenario reduces the human interaction to almost zero .

Step forward AI-generated courses.

(The above is not for me; even if my sales dwindle to zero I have my existing students; highly active Q/A; a range of subjects - job satisfaction over income anytime.)

FettahBen

@Matthieu We instructors are not against the Personal Plan (PP) model itself. What we oppose is the extremely low revenue share that comes with it. If Udemy truly wants to make things fair, the solution is simple: adjust the revenue share to 25%. That would create a balanced and sustainable model for both instructors and Udemy.

Mufaddal

Hi @AHardin .
That is amazing !

I am curious to know about the subscription offering on your own website. 11k students is massive.
1, How do you generate traffic to your subscription ? Organic ? Ads?

2. Do you offer any 1 to 1 support along with the subscription ?
3. Do you use the same content on Udemy on your own website subscription or is there any exclusive content only available on your website ?
4. Which subscription do you see the best results monthly or annual ?

Thank you ,

Mufaddal

AHardin

@Mufaddal, thanks.
1) I generate traffic organically via search engines, referrals, online communities and forums, my books, and my sales funnels; I haven't had to run a single ad for the school since its inception, since it started as an online community with free resources that eventually morphed into an online school. It's a poker school, so gambling-related ads are heavily regulated with a lot of restrictions anyway.
2) Yes, I handle student support myself, but the school tends to run on autopilot since I use a good SaaS solution (Teachable). I may get 1-2 student support requests per month. But I do answer student Q&A questions just like on Udemy.
3) No, I have over 35 courses on my site, with only a few of them on Udemy.
4) I only offer a monthly subscription; it's a much lower barrier to entry for students with limited budgets. I tried quarterly and annual subscriptions, but got very little interest, so I eliminated them years ago.

Mufaddal

Wow ! Thanks for the transparency and willingness to share.
Just one last query .
Had a look at your website I see that you have two schools one for IT and other for Poker.
Which niche have you had more success in ?
I figure you have courses in IT on Udemy and not on Poker.
Great stuff!
Wish you the Best !

Beti P

Let’s be real. “Subscriptions are the future! Unlimited access is a game-changer!” And sure… if you’re teaching tech, business, or mainstream personal development. But for niche instructors like us—spiritual mentoring, witchcraft, esoteric courses—this “opportunity” feels more like a punch to the gut.

Here’s what’s really happening:

Sales are dropping. Students now pay a monthly fee, and suddenly your carefully crafted course is “just one of 26,000.” Lifetime purchases? Gone. Deep engagement? Harder to get. Browsing over commitment is now the default.

Visibility is a problem. Personal Plan’s curation favors tech, business, and broadly popular topics. Niche courses? Rarely highlighted. Hidden gems remain hidden. If your course isn’t mainstream, good luck being discovered.

Payouts are opaque. “Stable recurring income”? Only if you understand how minutes watched translate to earnings—which we don’t. No transparency = no predictability = more stress for niche instructors.

Learners win, instructors… not so much. Sure, students get value. But the people creating the courses—the ones giving their knowledge, time, and heart—get less sales, less recognition, less control.

“Own your future, diversify, grow!” Easy to say when you’re not watching your sales tank. The reality is: we have to scramble, cross-promote, and find other ways to survive—while the subscription model benefits mainly Udemy.

The truth: subscriptions aren’t inherently bad. They can work—if the rules are fair, transparent, and inclusive of niche creators. Right now, they aren’t. And that’s the reality for us spiritual and esoteric instructors.

We aren’t whining—we’re pointing out a real problem. And we deserve visibility, transparency, and respect for the work we put into our courses.

PuneetGupta453

In my opinion, the lack of transparency from Udemy around PP revenue and reporting is what’s driving this friction and the ongoing concerns.

Even today(what I understand), the Instructor Dashboard does not provide clear visibility into PP revenue, learner activity, or related metrics. May be if Udemy comes with few Dashboard then PP model will start making difference and WINS for instructors like me, for whom a $20 revenue is also a lot :)

Another challenge is that under the PP model(what I understand), student enrollments don’t increase—so even if my course is included, the enrollment count remains unchanged. This creates a disadvantage compared to instructors who had an early start and already have millions of students enrolled.

The problem is that Udemy is not clearing questions in PP model, is there a dedicated page for PP where FAQs like these are answered?

SoyMarketer

@AHardin amazing. Congratulations. Is there any chance you give us the link so that we can check it out? This is a great idea for me to implement. And I'm in the marketing niche, so I wouldn't be a competitor. I'd greatly appreciate this. Thanks!

FettahBen

The real problem with the Personal Plan (PP) isn’t transparency or access to data—it’s the extremely low revenue it generates for instructors. Data or no data, I’ve been tracking my subscription income closely (Individual Subscription), and the results are disappointing:

April 2025 to today → average of $150/month
2023 to 2024 → average between $30 and $100/month
July 2021 to 2022 → average between $0.10 and $10/month, with just a couple of months reaching about $20

This trend makes it very clear: PP is not rewarding instructors fairly for their work. We invest months (sometimes years) building comprehensive, high-quality courses, yet the PP model treats our content as if it were low-value, short, or disposable.

Instead of encouraging instructors to create in-depth, professional courses, the PP model drives revenues down to a level that makes such efforts unsustainable. That’s why many of us feel that PP is not a healthy model for long-term instructor growth—or for learners who deserve complete, well-structured courses.

ChrisBankes120

If a learner wants a complete well-structured course then I tell them to BUY. If they want to sample many many courses, fast forward to get multiple Diplomas, watch very little, pop in to Udemy courses occasionally and just pick and choose - then subscribe. For the marketplace at least, I think the minority are in the first category. Just looking at the most recent August paid enrolments on a variety of courses, the average % of those who have even started is 10%

PuneetGupta453

You’re lucky, buddy! Now that I know PP refers to 'Individual Subscription' in the revenue report, I checked mine—and it’s not even in double digits for any month since I started on Udemy. That makes me wonder if PP is really adding value for me.

Udemy promotes PP because it has 30,000+ courses in the program, but if the revenue is so minimal, shouldn’t instructors have the choice to opt in or out, just like with UfB? If revenue sharing is based on minutes watched, then there should be a detailed per-minute report, similar to UfB. If it follows another model, that should be made transparent so instructors can make informed decisions about whether to include their courses in PP.

I am sure Udemy don't want to promote PP saying "Subscribe, and get 100+ courses." because it seems large chunk of revenue is going only to big players!!

SivakamiS2017

Psychology Research tells us that too much choice paralyses us, and we are then likely not to act/decide.
So a subscription for 100+ Courses may not really motivate much. Except in a Corporate Scenario, where they can be curated and structured, which is UB.

@Matthieu it might be a teeny bit patronizing for you to assume that we don't want to adapt, most of us do very much want to ! The question is how exactly do we adapt, whats likely to succeed and what's not !

Matthieu

I didn't say that we don't want to adapt. I said we have to!
- Musicians had to adapt from selling disks or albums online to streaming platforms like Apple Music or Spotify.
- Movies producers had to adapt with the rise of Netflix, Amazon video, HBO Max and others…
Willingness was not an option. I know it's hard, and it's even harder when we don't know the path to follow.

Motivation comes with transparency as I said.
- We need clear datas and it has been said by many of us in the forum.
- We also need to know what Udemy wants clearly like shorter courses and more specific?
- We also have to stop lying about certifications, diplomas, etc… How can a 30 min course lead to a tech related diploma? Will really Human Resources give a damn about Udemy certification on a curriculum or during an interview?

And the most important. We have to be considered as partners ! Right now, that's not the feeling. I feel like being a simple reseller from amazon. Selling some articles online…

I hope people from Udemy will answer those questions quickly, for the good of all of us. But I am not sure they are allowed right now to talk about it.

Good luck and I really hope you, me and all the other instructors will find a way be able to be profitable again.

Peace

DamianMcKinnon

You're basically saying change or shut up and leave. You do what you want with your energy but I don't appreciate the preaching.

DamianMcKinnon

The problem for many of us now is where not included in that group of courses that are able to take this opportunity. more of us are being dropped off the side of Udemy as they focus energy into moneymaker courses.