Addressing Instructor Community Concerns with Personal Plan

Dear Instructors,

We have heard some of your concerns regarding Personal Plan (PP) and its impact on revenues. We want to address these openly and transparently.

Our Commitment in Action

We've assembled a dedicated team actively investigating and developing solutions for the key challenges facing our instructor community. This isn't just talk, we have people working on these issues with the goal of presenting business-backed proposals for what we can do / not do.

Key Areas Under Investigation

Declining Earnings - Analyzing revenue trends and improvement opportunities - causes, effects, regional and topic based nuances etc
Lack of Visibility and Insight - Examining how to provide better transparency into course performance
Broader Impact - Understanding wider implications of current policies and determining which are must have to deliver on business objectives and which can be modified

What We're Hearing From You

Based on your feedback, you're calling for:

✅ Transparency - Clearer revenue models and course visibility insights

✅ Communication - Regular, consistent updates to build trust

✅ Sustainability - Revenue strategies that fairly compensate quality content creation

Moving Forward

While we can't share every detail of our work, these major areas are being thoroughly investigated. We're committed to returning with concrete, business-backed proposals for discussion. Next week we are also gathering a representative group of instructors to collaborate with us in person and discuss some of the challenges being seen in the broader community.

Thank you for your patience as we work through these important issues together.

Genefa & Team

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Comments

BillyWigley

Aloha Friday! 🤙

Thank you!

macaulayfamous

Thank you very much

AkınDemir

Thank you Genefa
The information here is valuable.

LawrenceMMiller

Thank you. You heard correctly and I am sure we all look forward to hearing solutions in the future.

WilliamStewart

Congrats again for your proactive outreach to instructors. It makes a real difference.

I'm torn betwixt and between. I have a really great Negotiating course sitting in my brain. Based on the most professional training and experience I received during 15 years in aerospace. I want to put it on Udemy. I am just not sure the effort will be rewarded compared to other opportunities for my time. Please, find a way to tip me over the edge ;-)

ThomasMitchell

@GenefaMurph976 This is movement in the right direction. I do want to ask, though… How did nobody foresee any of these issues and concerns ahead of time? For example, did nobody who was sitting around the conference table raise their hand and say "Hey, I think these instructors are gonna have an issue when we roll out PP, undercut their earnings, make them wait 60 days to know what they've earned, while also not providing any supporting data on those earnings." Was this not raised as a potential issue?

It comes across as an outrageous lack of foresight and makes me wonder what else is being missed that we don't see.

I won't be at Co-Lab because I couldn't justify the expense, given where my earnings are these days. However, I would like to suggest, as I have before, that we be provided actionable metrics. If we're gonna be forced to do our own promotion to drive meaningful revenue, that's fine. We just need the tools to do so.

Those of use who know how to market need meaningful conversion rate data. We need to know how traffic from "YT Video A" is converting. We need to know how traffic from our website homepage is converting. We need to know how traffic from a paid campaign is converting. Knowing that traffic from "Coupon Code A" generated 150 visitors to our landing page is virtually useless without knowing conversion rates.

This kind of data is certainly already available. I can't grasp why we aren't being provided access to it.

Mohammad021

ok good to hear that. the most important asset of Udemy is the instructors. Udemy must make sure instructors make high quality content with high impact instead of shallow content for the purpose of gaming the system. this can be maintained by transparency and making sure the right content gets rewarded.

GenefaMurph976

We did raise it @ThomasMitchell but we admittedly did not factor in enough risk on the MX and UB side. Also this is why Zane is in role to have a permanent and loud voice at the table.

Inspired by your previous feedback we have a dedicated session on analytics and insights in next weeks meeting.

ThomasMitchell

That’s good to hear.

PV Drug Safety Academy

Thank You @GenefaMurph976 for addressing this concern. Hope we will be back on track.

Naresh498

Thanks a lot for all your efforts on this.

MichaelPog

@GenefaMurph976, as always, I appreciate you joining in the community discussions and having an active dialogue with us.
And I appreciate your commitment to action.

At the same time, as someone who's been with Udemy since 2018, I'm scratching my head reading this message, and here is why:

New Groups and Advisory Board?

Before the launch of the Personal Plan, I was (along with a few other instructors) part of the Udemy Personal Plan Advisory Board. We met weekly with the Udemy senior product marketing manager and other Udemy staff for several months.

I can conclude that it was a complete waste of time because none of the many potential issues we're now dealing with were addressed.
All the issues we are experiencing, including a lack of transparency and declining revenue, were mentioned many times. And that was even before the revenue cuts were announced.

And now, somehow, it's a big surprise to Udemy that we are experiencing a revenue decline and a lack of transparency.
It's such a "big surprise" that Udemy is only now, months/years later, assembling a team to address problems we've been warning about years ago?

Another instructor's advisory board? While I wasn't invited to the new representative group of instructors, I already know it's going to be a waste of their time. We've done it already!

Commitment in Action?

Now I understand that most of it happened before you came in. In fact, most, if not all, Udemy leadership has changed.
However, I hope you understand where my frustration is coming from - It feels like we are going in circles here.
Udemy already knows everything.
So please excuse my brutal honesty, but respectfully, the time for committees, groups, and advisory boards has passed.
The time for action was yesterday.

I really hope that under your leadership, things will change because a lot of things need to change and change fast.

Dr. Kat

"I can conclude that it was a complete waste of time because none of the many potential issues we're now dealing with were addressed. All the issues we are experiencing, including a lack of transparency and declining revenue, were mentioned many times."

Well… holy moly.

Oneness

Interesting…

RajuDyapur745

The way this was rolled out is a PERFECT example of the book "Inmates are Running the Asylum" by Alan Cooper.

FrankKane

I believe Udemy has had almost complete turnover since the layoffs, resignations, offshoring, and RTO mandates last year. We instructors are now the stewards of lost tribal knowledge. We can't really blame the current regime for that. But yeah, it can be frustrating.

LindsayMarsh

same! I really wanted to go to the Co-Lab because i really think I can add a ton of value to this initiative/event and realized there was no compensation for travel expenses. I have to fly from the east coast and pay for my hotel room. I had Adobe recently offer me all expense paid trip out to san francisco with zero expenses so they could pick my brain with others in the community. Even though I had a schedule conflict, I feel like Adobe valued me and Udemy no longer values instructor input. You would think if you spent a few days getting ideas and input from us that we would at least not have to pay for that or have are basic expenses paid for. We are helping contribute and we have to pay for that. Makes so no sense.

I used to be part of several udemy pricing boards back and the day and really felt heard as I have a huge amount of knowledge about the status and interworking of online course platforms being involved at the top level on multiple platforms.

Udemy before going public was a partner with instructors and I felt it personally on many levels. Many of the staff I worked with closely have left. Now, I see so much staff turnover.

We are not commodities to squeeze but we can be valuable contributors.

LindsayMarsh

I participated in several boards. I don't think any of the people I worked with are working on Udemy anymore. Almost all had left. Frank is right.

LindsayMarsh

PLEASE READ! As you can see Udemy has really missed the ball on a lot of things with instructors. You can only push instructors profits so low until we are no longer motivated to participate. You will find the higher quality instructors in the very topics you want to promote slowly reducing the amount we publish or just cancel future classes all together like me.

I just canceled an AI course with Udemy because of the dropping sales in the last 2 months. I can no longer justify having a course with exclusivity rights on a platform where revenue is cut in half in 60 days. I am a multi-million dollar instructor by the way and have talked to other top instructors and they have similar feelings and plans. YOU ARE LOSING YOUR TOP TALENT!

The Personal plan really reduces our income for those who were active in the marketplace initiatives. The share really is low because a lot of students do not finish courses. We only get paid for each minute watched while before we got an upfront payment right away. It is hard to motivate students to finish courses and that responsibility has shifted totally to us, we only get paid if we can get students to watch most of the courses. Yet, we have limited access to students and the ability to contact them.

We have also built our courses based on the marketplace one time sales. Now that we are on a sub model mostly, our courses have to be built differently. I have 22 million minutes watched on another platform that has only been a sub model and I can tell you, I have to build courses special there. Shorter, less downloads, more project based results. We had zero time to adapt our courses for a sub model.

Dr. Kat

Adding to that: I also believe the subscription model can de-motivate students to finish courses, because it makes jumping from one course to another much easier.

When I purchase a course on a specific topic, I take time to decide if it’s the right one – I read the description, check the quality, watch the promo video. And once I’ve paid for it, I’m more likely to push through less engaging parts, simply because I don’t want my money to be wasted.

With a subscription, however, it’s pretty effortless to abandon a course at the first sign of boredom and move on to the next. And I’m not really sure whether making our courses more engaging will totally balance out that effect.

Also, how does Udemy actually make more money off subscriptions compared to individual sales? Or is it just to get the (non-financial) numbers up? In the Udemy–instructor-student triangle, I genuinely wonder who the real beneficiary of that strategy is.

BassamDaoud696

To answer you, Udemy is the only beneficiary here.

MrHJ

@LindsayMarsh, I believe you may be both on target and off target considering the new Udemy management and the implementation of the personal plan.

Personal Plan (PP) / Udemy Business (UB) Basics:

PP/UB economics on a true and fair market; The profits are higher but "delayed" in the time dimension partly due to Udemy's accounting system and non-display of data, and partly because most customers pay per month, or in some cases per year. Everyone gets their fair cut, all students are real and only watch movies they want to watch, angels are singing, cats and dogs are playing with each other, and everything is fine as Udemy's reputation is great.
PP/UB economics on a crooked and unfair market; A large part of the customers are credit card drones that takes other instructors shares and give to the drone overlord. Drones can watch 24/7/12/365. State and company actors creates their own courses and sends thousands or tensofthousands or hundredsofthousands of employees to UB/PP for a bit of profitable video watching, paid for by other instructors. Some customers gets rebates and are more motivated and therefore further skews the instructor shares towards some particular instructors (for example if a plan costs $30 in the USA, it may cost $3-5 somewhere else - creating a huge growth for somewhere else and if all things equal a lowering of US instructors share down to 10% of the fair and equal share.
The only way to improve PP/UB is to leave the collective time-watch payment model for an individual formula. Maybe the collective payment can remain for paying non-active customers who pay the bill but watch zero minutes of movies, but otherwise, the payment model must be individualized or the system is guaranteed to break as all other socialist payment system (this is the same reason that the Soviet Union crashed and the DDR built the wall in Berlin). Perhaps a better model is to divide the payment among the videos earlier watched and totally leave the collective time-watch payment model.

Udemy's new management (as it appears) is more bureaucratic-academic than businesslike. This is clear from all Udemy videos showing internal functions and persons. The new Udemy company is more of an extension of one or more US Universities. As such it is to be expected that their reflexes are academic and bureaucratic before business minded and that they have a book studied or prejudiced view of the concept of business. They simply need to learn to swim fast as they are there now.

The hastily implementation and extension of the Personal Plan, while theoretically an improvement, may have other intentions due to certain misunderstandings of lock-in periods and creates a flight/Berlin wall mindset in the minds of the instructors.
Some academic-bureaucratic persons may view Udemy as a competitor to their own academy and therefore try to destroy the company. Udemy appears to perform slightly better than its explicit university competitors under both the new and old management.

Udemy's new management has a lot of poisoned wells and internal sabotage to cope with, and need to train its reflexes for business instead of academics, politics, and bureaucracy. Instructors should be able to give some warning about effects of sabotage and poisoned wells.

Regards

LawrenceMMiller

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.

MrHJ

Well, Mr. @LawrenceMMiller, it seems you are at it again, and it seems even more desperate when you repeat the same "make something up" behavior over and over. It looks weak and desperate.

Let's just say, that most Udemy executives are explicit academic-bureaucrats (on their own C.V.s), with lots of business appearing experiences. A quick oversight of these business-appearing experiences yields that many of them indeed are G.O.s, G.O. owned/funded/controlled, parastatal, or extensions of G.O.s. Some have very long histories, that in principle always start in the academic bureaucracy, changes to business, and then back again, or where the company has had the crew replaced with academic bureaucrats (a not so unusual event when for example the founders want to do something new).

As is clear from my text, considering the behavior it is an observed behavior from their own created movies, and you may take a look at the movies from the AI implementation for example.

Other than that, I am very much agreeing with the overall strategy, whereas the current negative general morale behavior (among Udemy employees and instructors) created by stumbling and bumbling in the minefield of academic-bureaucratic governance + defense mechanisms merits some guidance for the personal and overall good.

Regards

WilliamStewart

@FrankKane makes a key comment when he notes that most of the Udemy team when the revenue cut decision was made have moved on.

To the executive team that remains: I believe one of the best ways to reach into the past and understand the situation we are in today will be to read (if you have not already) what I believe is one of the most highly upvoted posts on these forums, made at the time of the cuts: Udemy Executives: The Animal Spirit Cost Of The Revenue Reduction. Understanding that post is one of the best ways of understanding how we got here, and hopefully then how to best handle the future.

Also please note then CEO Greg Brown's response on that post: "MichaelPog WilliamStewart, thank you both for the reply. We fully understand that teaching on Udemy is a choice, not a given. We think what ultimately matters most are actual instructor payouts and we want to be transparent about that. Our plan is to deliver strong payouts today and grow those payouts into the future."

So this is the context of today. First, CEO Greg C told us that revenue shares would not be cut. Based on that, some of us committed ourselves 100% to Udemy. Then it was cut anyway. But then CEO Greg B told us that the cuts would be offset by future growth. That did not happen. As with others, my own revenue continues to decline. Therefore I have not created any new courses. This is the context in which we find ourselves today.

As per my Nov 2023 post, can I suggest consideration that instructor "animal spirits" are what grew Udemy in the past, and are very likely what will fuel its future growth?

LawrenceMMiller

OK. Pardon my ignorance, but what is a G.O.?

Beti P

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:

Specific actions being taken to address declining earnings.
Timelines for implementation of visibility and insight improvements.
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.

Rharkins

Lindsay, Your point "We have also built our courses based on the marketplace one-time sales." is super important. The majority of my courses are long, comprehensive courses that I regularly update and expand. I do this to 1) keep my ratings up, and 2) provide the maximum perceived value. These factors work great in the marketplace model. But the completion rate in UB is low. Only recently have I begun to shift my thinking toward making fast and short classes, and truthfully, I'm still not sure how to craft a class specifically for UB.

Rafał Podraza

I would also like to point out that the “Subscribe to Personal Plan” button is placed higher and is more prominent than the standard course purchase button. In practice, this means we don’t really have a fair chance to generate direct sales from our individual promotions, because the purchase button is almost invisible – overshadowed by the Personal Plan option.

ScottDuffy

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.

Boris035

@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:

https://community.udemy.com/en/discussion/comment/173086#Comment_173086

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.

FrankKane

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.)

Dr. Kat

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.

AHardin

@Boris035 - I looked at Udemy's annual and quarterly filings, and they state how much they paid us each year in PART I. Item 1. Business in each annual report.

What they reported:

2020: Instructors Paid $161.4 million
2021: Instructors Paid $176.9 Million (+9.6%)
2022: Instructors Paid $192 Million (+8.5%)
2023: Instructors Paid $208.2 Million (+8.4%)
2024: Instructors Paid $190.6 Million (-8.5%)
2025: 1st Half (Q1 7 Q2) is $86.8 Million in Payouts, so around $170-175 Million by the end of the year. (-8% to -11%)

So you were definitely right when you said, "those 5% means USD 15mn p.a. – redistributed from instructors to Udemy." In fact, your estimate looks a bit conservative.

SivakamiS2017

Almost the entire Udemy Leadership has changed since the Revenue Share Cuts decision was made.
I think it's very important to roll back previously made mistakes, when you are re-evaluating everything, as this new Leadership Team seems to be doing so well !
So I totally fail to understand the decision to not roll back these cuts, at least partially ?!

Mohammad021

well, their bonuses are based on the stock price!

Boris035

@AHardin Thanks for pointing this out….I missed the original numbers, and I’m glad to be close when making the estimates…I wouldn’t like to spread the panic around.

Dr. Kat

Thank you so much for sharing these exact numbers @AHardin! Really interesting. Am I correct in assuming that these decreasing instructor total payments are being shared among an increasing number of instructors?

ThomasMitchell

Yes

Boris035

So, if I understand it properly, we can summarize and structure our priorities in the following way:

Udemy should define a Strategy to reverse the trend regarding total Instructors’ payouts.
As part of a broader strategy, Udemy should define an optimal number of instructors and courses on the Platform in order to make it sustainable.
All differences between Instructors are “on hold” until we solve the core issues.

When speaking about instructors’ payouts, it would be helpful if Udemy is willing to apply some sort of moratorium on cutting further into our margins (both UfB and Marketplace via PP) as long as we can see some improvements. For example:

The upcoming Rev.Share cut for UfB can be on hold. And/or,
When speaking about PP, why does Udemy apply the same margins relevant for UfB on the Marketplace space? As I understand, UfB has lower margins because the sales process is different (contacting and maintaining B2B relationships). PP is the B2C approach, relying on marketing, just like the Transactional side. So, why 17.5% instead of 37%? If our PP margin is 37% - maybe the subscription might be feasible!?

Next, to prevent “favoritism” and wealth re-distribution among Instructors, why not establish two tiers for the PP:

Standard (those already selected 26,000-30,000 courses); and
Premium (all courses on the Platform) – so everyone can see the benefits;

I think that would be a more appropriate value proposition from the Instructors’ standpoint, and it will restore the trust.

And, I understand Udemy should deliver value to Investors as well – that’s OK. Yet, the primary source for that should be a healthy growth, not taking the bread from Instructors (as an easier alternative based on the power abuse).

When speaking about the optimal number of courses and Instructors, I would like to see some hints from Udemy based on data. My gut feeling (meaning not a data-driven conclusion) is more like:

Keep 150,000-200,000 courses (current number 250,000); and
Keep 50,000-70,000 instructors (current number 85,000).

And that can be achieved in a civilized way by the end of the year, without pushing people at each other.

For example, we can agree to do some initial triage on our own – instructors with an above-average number of courses (say, over 5 or whatever is meaningful) can unpublish 1-2 courses each (as some form of solidarity – we all have some low performing stuff).

In addition, Udemy can unpublish already dead courses (very low sales on an annual level), especially those coming from non-active instructors (based on the total annual income and log-in data). Plus, to eliminate pure AI-generated courses.

To make it sustainable, we can agree on some sort of a moratorium period (or restrictions) for adding new courses (and new instructors’ entrance) – of course, some hot topics should be excluded from those restrictions since Udemy should keep being innovative.

Easy like that.

SivakamiS2017

Longer term, if Instructors get more revenue, we may be re-motivated to create more and more awesome Courses, better ratings, more enrollments and subscriptions (both UB and PP), more repeat customers … and stock prices may go up again ?!

Col (Dr) Shabbar Shahid (Veteran)

My Perspective on the Current Discussions

I have been hoping to see more constructive dialogue on this forum, but unfortunately, it has increasingly become a place for venting anger and frustration against Udemy. While I completely understand the grievances many of us feel, I believe we should approach the situation with a balanced mindset. After all, Udemy still provides us with a platform and an opportunity to earn from our expertise.

Even instructors who have earned significant revenues in the past are now facing challenges. I, too, share concerns, but not purely about declining revenues. My perspective is slightly different, and I’d like to briefly share it here.

Relationship Between Udemy and Instructors
To me, Udemy is a business, and we instructors are essentially vendors offering our products. The Udemy leadership will naturally make decisions they believe are in the best interest of their business. While instructors are undeniably important, it would be unrealistic to assume Udemy exists solely because of us.

Is Udemy Sinking?
Looking at their financial data, I don’t think so. While things have been difficult in the past, there are clear signs of revival.

Are Instructors Sinking?
Some are, but not all. Revenue has reduced, but this reflects broader global market conditions in online education.

Udemy’s Strategy: PP and UfB
Personally, I believe this is the right direction. With free content widely available on YouTube and piracy rampant, the open marketplace is becoming less relevant. Corporate organizations, however, continue to value quality, original content, and they access it through subscriptions like UfB or PP. PP may be by individuals but they are primarily those individuals who are reimbursed their subscription by their employers.

Revenue Share (17.5%, moving to 15%)
From a business management perspective, the share is fair and realistic keeping in mind the global business environment. Let’s be honest, this is education, not show business. If someone chooses to pour huge sums into high-end studios, cinematic promos, and glossy marketing, that’s a personal choice, they may not find the returns commensurate with the input cost. The focus should be on delivering genuine learning value, not producing Hollywood-style trailers. For those of us who stick to substance over frills and glamour, the returns are still reasonable and justifiable.

The Real Challenges
In my analysis, the challenges are structural:

(a) A Fixed Pie, More Slices – The overall revenue pool is fairly constant, but the number of courses and instructors keeps rising. Naturally, this reduces average earnings per course and per instructor. Udemy may need to consider limiting the number of courses and instructors admitted into PP and UfB to maintain balance.

(b) Uneven Revenue Distribution – In PP and UfB, students sample many courses-good, bad, and mediocre. As a result, weaker content still receives some share of revenue, while stronger content does not always get its fair due. This makes distribution appear uneven and at times unfair.

(c ) Flawed Quality Control – Selection for PP and UfB relies too heavily on reviews and algorithms, both of which can be manipulated through free coupons. This allows some undeserving courses to thrive while deserving ones struggle. Course selection for PP and UfB is not an easy task, but Udemy could strengthen the process by involving subject-matter experts rather than depending primarily on reviews and automated systems. (Doing away with free coupons may turnout to be a sound strategy. I hope Udemy considers this, at least on a trial basis)

What Next?
I believe Udemy’s management is aware of these challenges and is taking steps to address them. It is also evident that the management and office bearers are doing their best under the circumstances. As instructors, the least we can do is allow them the time and space to act, rather than resorting to constant blame and criticism. We need to be patient and see how things unfold.

Personally, I don’t feel motivated to create new content at this stage, mainly due to the uncertainty around inclusion in PP or UfB. However, I remain committed to updating and refining my existing courses until more clarity emerges. In the end, our courses will succeed only if learners find genuine value in them, and I am hopeful that Udemy will continue to enhance its mechanisms for highlighting quality based on objective and reliable parameters rather than reviews alone.

With Regards to all….

ThomasMitchell

@FrankKane

Distribute those earnings more evenly (careful what you wish for)

I don't think anyone is asking for Udemy to "distribute" anything. They are asking for fairness in how things work. Udemy should not ever be actively and prominently promoting my competitors above the fold on MY course landing page.

When I send traffic to MY landing page, be it paid traffic or organic, I did the work. Why is Udemy trying to tell the student that they should enroll in someone else's course - and doing so above the fold no less? And to compound this, Udemy then further promotes (via the flywheel effect) those courses that they have promoted on the back of MY effort from MY page. So, MY efforts are directly responsible for my competition being promoted everywhere I'm not.

I have no issue with "students also bought" AT THE BOTTOM OF THE PAGE. But immediately sending visitors to MY PAGE to my competition is simply unacceptable. The instructor-created bundles are a great starting point. They should be the only upsell on an instructor's course landing page outside of "students also bought" (which should be AT THE BOTTOM of the page).

As badly as it appears (because we don't' know yet) that the personal plan buttons are hurting us, if I'm being fair, I can't even really complain, since it IS Udemy's platform - but they DO need to provide more timely data, because I'm also a Udemy affiliate, and have been for years, and I already know what personal plan enrollments my affiliate links were responsible for LAST WEEK.

Also… does Udemy really need 5000 more courses/instructors in Udemy Business this month?

AHardin

You’re welcome! Yes, which is why, when you factor in increased courses and competition, the shift to a subscription-based model, and the declining revenue share, our revenues continue to decrease.

DamianMcKinnon

I agree completely. Someone started another thread titled "I Wish I Had Known.." and I'm constantly fighting the urge to post "I wish I had known Udemy would bait and switch the marketplace without transparency or consultation…"

TaimurIjlal570

Can you please check why many instructors are reporting a MASSIVE decline in Udemy business earnings in September .. I thought mine was an isolated case but something is seriously wrong here . I used to love Udemy but this is really not the right way to treat instructors

MuhammadDuj869

Workable suggestion

yazanyaser_1984

Just now I realized what’s happening with my course. I’ve seen a sharp drop in enrollments, even though it’s one of the top in its niche on Udemy and search engin (auto locksmithing) a course that has literally changed lives by helping jobless people learn skills and start earning real money. At the same time, I’ve started noticing random reviews, some of which feel more like personal criticism than genuine feedback.

After 10 months of a great journey with Udemy, things are now turning in a disappointing direction. The hard work, family time, and money we invest in creating life changing, industry level courses seems to end up benefiting Udemy far more than the instructors.

I truly hope Udemy will consider the instructors who use on this platform to put food on the table. One solution, in my view, is to give instructors the choice to opt out of the personal plan promotions on their course pages promotions that undermine the months of effort we’ve put into building these pages SEO. because when I reached out to Udmey instructor soppurt via email to seek an answer to whats going on! and why this sudden drop happen, the response was that it takes 12 months for my course to be out from this promotion after optout.

Come on guys! I’ve built 11.5 hours of industrial-level content, over a full year of hard work, tears, and sleepless nights. All I’m asking is simple, give instructors the option to opt out of the free personal plan promotion buttons that overshadow the individual course “add to cart” page.

I want my course to stand on its own, independent from unrelated promotions. I trust the quality of my content, and it deserves a fair chance without being buried under banners that don’t reflect the effort put into creating it.

At the end of the day it's a mutual benefits, and should remain the same. Kindy stop it and keep Udemy unique as it IS.

yazanyaser_1984

Glad it hit the mark!

MuhammadDuj869

I think Udemy Instructors community is satisfied with Udemy policies that's why everyone is silent now?

DamianMcKinnon

Well said Beti I completely agree. I want to get past the "your call is important to us" stage this discussion seems locked in and get some straight answers - something painfully absent as the situation we all find ourselves in unfolded.

Boris035

No. Now, we understand the root cause. Some still keep thinking, others have made up their mind and start building solutions on their own.

No need to complain anymore.

SivakamiS2017

I don't think anyone is silent … there have been a zillion threads about this problem, and others.

GenefaMurph976

I will continue to review the thread - in the meantime one of the outcomes of the working group (based on prior feedback not directly this thread) has been implemented. Namely giving instructors the ability to see what revenue is coming from Personal Plan - the PP tab is now available in your dashboards with the goal of more transparency. Example below.

ThomasMitchell

Definitely a step in the right direction. Is there an ETA on when the data for Aug will be available? UfB data is already shown.

GenefaMurph976

let me check for you

LawrenceMMiller

Thank you, Genefa, that is very helpful. And, thank you for all of your responses to instructors. We appreciate you.

DamianMcKinnon

LawrenceMMiller

What, are you complaining that people aren't complaining enough! It makes no sense to just keep complaining. We have been heard. Now we need to work on what we can control to improve our own situation.

DamianMcKinnon

I must say Genefa - you've been given what feels like an impossible task right now. But you're doing it with dignity and commitment - kudos to you.

Boris035

Larry, you just don’t get the spirit of ‘rebellion.’ Too many years with the Empire… or was it prison?

GenefaMurph976

Trying @DamianMcKinnon I know how important this is to you all.

Boris035

@GenefaMurph976 We really appreciate all your efforts. And, you should know that if you ever get tired, it will be our pleasure if you decide to join us as an Instructor…you have the right spirit for that! We can feel it!

MuhammadDuj869

Dear @GenefaMurph976 the instructor community appreciate your efforts. Can you please let the community about outcome of last meeting? We all are early waiting for some positive outcomes.

GenefaMurph976

Yes @MuhammadDuj869 the team will be preparing a summary and ill post here

GenefaMurph976

@ThomasMitchell reply wasn't working - but August should now be available

ThomasMitchell

Thanks. I saw that. But, why is there a delay? Why isn't this data available at the same time as UB?

AHardin

@GenefaMurph976 and team, thank you for doing this and being an active participant within the instructor community.

One thing I wanted to point out for your team's analysis is that the declining revenues aren't just a Personal Plan (PP) issue, but also an Udemy Business (UB) issue, and based on the information that's available, they both follow the same 17.5% revenue share and minutes calculation model (soon to be 15%).

With the exclusivity requirement and around a 6-month waiting period to have any course removed from the UB catalog, the UB revenue share and minutes calculation model should be considerably higher than the PP plan model. If Udemy wants them to continue to follow the same revenue share model, you should consider dropping the exclusivity requirement.

A good example of this is ACX (Audible). I earn 40% when I agree to exclusive distribution with them for my audiobooks, whereas if I choose non-exclusive distribution, I only get 25% royalties.

Matthieu

You're right about the exclusivity. Unfortunately, we agreed the terms long ago when Udemy was still a strong source of revenue.

We knew the about the cuts years ago, and yet, we didn't stop to put our new courses on UB.
I am not talking about you personally but in general. Us instructors, at least the ones in UB didn't make a move to stop it.

I know we had the promise minutes in UB will grow drastically to compensate the cut… It used to be, it's not anymore.

I think we have now 2 choices:
- Continue believing in our future in Udemy
- Do something else or sell our courses elsewhere.

Complaining is on for several months and nothing has changed. As long as people only talk and do nothing, it won't change…

I have not decided yet what to do… I hope you do and you will find a way to be successful.

Peace

FrankKane

Inclusion in Personal Plan also comes with exclusivity terms, as stated here:

https://community.udemy.com/en/discussion/comment/171580#Comment_171580

There is no difference with UB in that respect. The terms are identical, including the terms for removal.

AHardin

@FrankKane thanks for sharing; I wasn't aware PP also requires exclusivity. The opt in/out is still only for UB, so there's no option to opt out of the PP for instructors that don't want to exclusively host their courses here.

I wonder how many other instructors aren't aware that by agreeing to Udemy's instructor terms, and their course is added to the PP, they have agreed to exclusivity here on Udemy.

AHardin

@Matthieu I agree to an extent, but I think there's a difference from complaining and sharing your thoughts and opinions. I also think we can do so while still hoping and believing in the future of Udemy. The reason Udemy hosted the recent instructor co-lab and started this dedicated team is because instructors voiced their opinions and concerns.

I'm hopeful for Udemy's future, and shared in other posts that we have to understand that Udemy just reached profitability last quarter, so we have to temper our expectations. Hopefully, their Q3 results next month will show sustained and growing profits because without Udemy, all of our revenue here goes to zero.

I think we also need to be mindful that some instructors have seen their revenue fall of a cliff in the past few months (luckily not me), so if that's the case, it's okay for them to vent here.

SivakamiS2017

I am not so sure we can categorically say that "We have been heard!". Maybe not about everything. While I agree that endless complaining is pointless, I can certainly understand and empathize with the frustration !

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nice!!!

I fully agree with the points you’ve raised, Beti.
Clear communication backed by objective actions and defined timelines is essential for instructors to plan effectively and maintain confidence in the platform. Without such clarity, these statements risk remaining broad and non-actionable.