A sad reality

Almost every thread at instructor community is full of unsatisfied instructors with current Udemy policies. From last two months, we all are speaking about decline in revenues and our course outreach. We all know that marketplace is good for instructors but PP is a pure win for Udemy.

Despite instructors concerns, unfortunately not too much is done by Udemy. Our concerns and suggestions are either ignored or undervalued. I wish this platform will grow but looking at current level of demotivation of instructors who are associated with Udemy from quite long, I now have doubts.

When these beautiful instructors were gone from this platform or stop publishing new courses then they will be replaced by those who will fill this space with junk that will be largely produced by AI without any credibility and it will be highly damaging for this platform.

Many will say that this is time of AI and if you are not teaching AI it means that you will get small revenue. With due respect, I do acknowledge the AI wave and it's importance but still there are billion of people on this planet that may have some different needs like social science, biology, arts, law, personal training, dance, photography, etc. we have to reach them.

I hope something good will come up soon but right now most of us are demotivated

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DanaIsseh561

SufaniGarza078

Sadly, UDEMY doesn't care about any of this. Behavior is a language. They are out for themselves. The thing that makes me look at this with total betrayal, is that we are not making any money anymore, but they are still profiting from our courses with PP. I have over 80k students, over 60 courses and they aren't paying hardly anything to me at all for PP payouts, if I get anything at all. I find that impossible to believe considering my students are on diploma tracts with me and take 20-30 courses with me. I hope someone with a lawyer in the family does a class action suit because UDEMY is not and has not been honest. Something very shifty is going on here. This is why they are not putting students in our roster who take our courses on PP. So we have no way to demand payout. They don't care though. They have that hard core Silicon Valley attitude of if you complain, someone else will just take your place. I lived there and that is the attitude. The business model has changed but in the process, they simply didn't care to make the changes in a way that didn't destroy people's lives. Bummer. They could have been mindful of that, but they didn't care. I no longer create courses for Udemy. It's a waste of time. Theres no money to be made now. I make a small fraction of what I used to, but I will take even the small residual. I gave up on believing in Udemy a while ago and protected myself by finding a job! Now I am figuring out my next move…

LawrenceMMiller

@MuhammadDuj869 So you post what seems like a new complaining post almost every day. You have stated how you feel, we got it, over and over again. But you mistakenly believe that your poor performance is indicative of most instructors. It is not.

I am sorry you are unhappy with your results. If any of us could do anything about it I am sure we would. If you are paying attention to Genefa's posts you know that she is doing what she can and sharing information on Udemy's efforts. One more post like these won't get anything else from anyone.

@SufaniGarza078 Your courses, your "Bliss Academy", are on topics like spiritual healing, voodoo and witchcraft. I am sorry to inform you of this, but please listen. Regardless of whatever intrinsic merit your courses may have, Udemy is not going to spend any money promoting your courses. They cannot make any money selling those types of courses. It won't happen! If you want to sell them on Udemy then you need to rely on your own marketing. Udemy is a business and like every business, they have to spend their marketing dollars on products that they can sell at a profitable return. That is a requirement. You won't change that anymore than you will change the movement of the planets. Unfortunately many of the most vociferous unhappy instructors also teach courses similar to your own. They will also continue to be unhappy here. Sometimes the truth sucks! But, you will have much more "bliss" if you accept reality.

Just so you know, my marketplace sales for September are almost exactly the same as previous months. My engagement numbers (UB is 80%of my revenue) was up a little from August and about average for the previous 12 months. And, I have done nothing special to market my courses. No significant change. At the same time my earnings are down from previous years, but we all understand that. No news there.

ThomasMitchell

But you mistakenly believe that your poor performance is indicative of most instructors. It is not.

If this was a true statement, I hardly believe Genefa and her team would be looking into things.

If you want to sell them on Udemy then you need to rely on your own marketing.

Marketing is precisely the reason Udemy claims to take so much of our revenue to begin with.

Based on the feedback in this forum, and the fact that Genefa is in here every week trying to address things, and the fact that this stuff was discussed at Co-Lab, I'd suggest that you are more the exception than the rule.

LawrenceMMiller

@ThomasMitchell I am glad you point out that Genefa is on the case. She and the team are doing what they can.

a) The OP instructor has reported that his sales are down 80%. Are yours down that much? I am sure they aren't. I have many times acknowledged that sales are down for most instructors. Mine are down what I guess is an average amount, but we don't have the data to know what is normal, up or down.

b) Yes, we are on here for Udemy's marketing. But neither you nor I teach courses on witchcraft or on "Shaman Sacred Healing Practitioner (Accredited)". Are you suggesting that Udemy is going to spend money promoting those courses? You don't mean that, do you?

C) I was at the Co-Lab. There was lots of discussion about the state of the business. However, the spirit was surprisingly up-beat. Those who post on this forum are not a representative sample of instructors. Those who attended Co-Lab weren't either because they all invested their own money, as I did, to fly to San Francisco. A number of instructors flew from Europe, Africa, Japan and India. They obviously are among the more successful instructors and they were all looking for ways to improve their courses and contribute to the marketing process. Most of them are very aware that they have to contribute to the marketing process. That was a major topic of discussion.

Udemy, like every publisher of creative product, spends marketing dollars on topics that are hot. The hot Udemy courses are almost all AI related. Instructors who are much smarter than me have incorporated AI into their courses and their titles and sub-titles. That is what is selling well. There are a lot of music artists who are upset because Sony, or their label, isn't spending money promoting their music (like 98% of them). There is a science to promoting creative product and it is all about trends, name recognition, etc. Udemy is no different. There is no equality here.

Oneness

Hi @LawrenceMMiller

With all due respect, your responses come across as dismissive and patronizing. This is not just about her personally. The way you frame the conversation about SufaniGarza078’s courses, specifically mentioning spiritual healing, voodoo, or witchcraft, feels judgmental and irrelevant to the real issue. The concern she is raising is about significant drops in revenue and minimal or nonexistent PP payouts, despite Udemy profiting from her courses. That is a serious and measurable problem that deserves acknowledgment.

Suggesting that the subject of her courses is why she sees drops in earnings ignores the systemic issues that affect many instructors, not just those in niche fields. Udemy’s platform and payout structures impact instructors across categories, and using course topic as a reason to dismiss legitimate complaints undermines the validity of her experience. Instructors teaching non-mainstream topics are entitled to the same transparency and fairness as anyone else.

SufaniGarza078 is not complaining without cause. She has concrete data from her dashboard and a large student base, and she is raising issues that affect her livelihood. These issues include lack of transparency, declining visibility, and unfair PP payouts. Telling her to “accept reality” or implying her courses are the problem does nothing to address the actual structural concerns.

The forum should be a place for constructive discussion and mutual support. Dismissing valid experiences because they do not fit a certain narrative discourages honest sharing and leaves systemic problems unaddressed. Sufani’s situation highlights the gaps in the platform that are harming instructors, and the community should take these issues seriously instead of framing them as complaints or poor performance.

Acknowledging and addressing these concerns would benefit all instructors and the platform itself. Patronizing comments about course topics are not helpful and risk alienating instructors.

LawrenceMMiller

@Oneness I am sorry. but Voodoo, witchcraft, etc. are actually titles of her courses. She may be a wonderful person. Her courses may be brilliant. But topics like that are not being promoted and are not going to be promoted by Udemy. It is not dismissive, it is facing reality.

Of course there are issues about Personal Plan, etc. and they have been discussed at length and Udemy is addressing them. I have made my own unhappiness known loudly and clearly, but I don't publish a new thread every few days to say the same things over and over again.

The subject of your courses matters a lot. The only equality here is that everyone is free to post courses on almost any subject. That is where equality it ends. There is nothing in Udemy's contract or statements that claims they will promote all courses equally. They will promote courses that contribute to their business interests. If you think that is dismissive then so be it.

Oneness

@LawrenceMMiller Point taken, but income transparency and PP issues are bigger than course titles.

JamieDixon

For the record, my sales have not differed much at all over the last 12 months. I've only got about 5 courses, I'm not making huge amounts of money but the money I am making pretty much matches the money I make from a rental property I own. My courses are all management/soft skills related, and these topics will always have a solid demand (unless AI replaces people managers in which case we have a lot more to be concerned about than Udemy sales!). And now that they are about to introduce the one-to-one coaching to the platform I fully intend to release another course in the next few months.

ChrisBankes120

That’s impressive given they’ve not been updated for a few years and total students is quite low.

Sunny dimalu

Hey Jamie,
You mentioned "they are about to introduce the one-to-one coaching."
Is that true? If so, when?

SivakamiS2017

I believe many of us are facing declining revenues … it's not an exception.

Esther

There are plenty of instructors that have done well enough over the years on Udemy. Not every topic will generate millions as it does for you, true, but believe it or not, for many of us that was never the goal. Just like a nurse knows that she will never have the income of a top surgeon, many of us know that there will always be those fiancial limits for us. But just like the nurse, we have a place in the world and a purpose to exist, even if you and the likes of you believe that whatever you do is so much more important because you make so much more money.

We've done well enough in our own respect in our own area. I, for example, was at some stage able to live (and raise my kid) on my Udemy income alone for a few years. My courses were always high rated and I had a stable students base, plenty of people who looked at my courses and a fine conversion rate. All this is gone now. As you stated correctly, Udemy does not do the marketing for us anymore. Like you, they think we are just worthless little players in a game that's "obviously" too big for us.

We don't make enough money anymore to pay the rent; now we get some pocket money and we're supposed to just accept it and stop whining because somehow all this is our own fault - we just picked the wrong topic, right! It's not like we signed up with Udemy under certain conditions, that were then changed over and over and over without our consent. It's not like we actually put a lot of time and effort into our courses, it's not like we purchased equipment and software, it's not like we acquired additional skills to do it right, it's not like we spent time updating, adding and answering questions in the Q&A to keep our students happy and engaged, no! And it's not like this used to work for us just fine! Somehow, all of a sudden, we're just all a bunch of know-nothings with our silly little topics and this silly little idea that we deserve to not be exploited, that our work should not be used without our consent to make money for others while leaving peanuts for us.

And yes, we should definitely stop complaining about this because it might offend or annoy some platform millionaires, who are just so above and beyond us that we couldn't ever comprehend it anyways. Congratulations, Lawrence, you are the perfect spokesperson for this platform because you certainly have a talent to put in words what they stand for and make it clear for even the dumbest of us. Thank you for your contribution!

MuhammadDuj869

Dear @LawrenceMMiller many thanks for your response and insight. I greatly appreciate it but i think my concern is valid. The PP was rolled out in 2022. We (instructors) did not focus on this model too much because our main revenue stream was marketplace. Three years were adequate time for Udemy to build a proper statistical portal for instructors to have insight about PP revenue. Why not Udemy did this in three years? This is main concerns. Furthermore, i can understand that market is changing and sales depends on needs. Currently, AI is at boom but it does not mean that there is no need for other courses. Either udemy provide us the adequate resources to market our courses or should invest to advertise our courses. For instance, i was looking at my promotional email statistics and i found that among 14K students (only marketplace) only 2K students received my emails? Why? If we talk about course bundle then why not we have privilege to set the course bundle Promotional Coupon Code at our own price or at least price decided by Udemy. There are currently many gray areas. These are not just complaints. I truly wish that Udemy prosper. This platform has contributed a lot in my personal and professional development. I am just humbly presenting instructor case here. We have symbiotic relationship with this platform. If this will grow then we will grow.

macaulayfamous

@LawrenceMMiller ,I appreciate your perspective, and while I agree with some of the points you made, I see things a little differently in certain areas. From what I’ve observed, many instructors who are raising concerns today were previously earning a sustainable income on Udemy before things started to decline. This makes me wonder if the “Course Title” explanation fully captures the reasons behind lower revenue.

For example, @Esther mentioned that she was able to cover all her bills with Udemy income until recently . That suggests the issue may not be as simple as course topic choice alone.

Of course, it’s difficult for anyone to fully relate to a situation they haven’t personally experienced, which is understandable. Still, I think it helps to consider the perspective of those instructors: if you had once been able to live comfortably on your course income and suddenly could no longer do so, it would be a significant challenge. Your perspective: You are not heavily affected, so you might see things more calmly.Their perspective: They used to earn $20k/month and now earn $5k, so from their point of view, it feels like a big loss and a real struggle.

That said, I don’t place blame on Udemy, it is, after all, a business and has to make decisions to remain profitable. At the same time, I do believe there’s value in finding ways to promote a broader range of courses. The world’s needs go beyond AI and Business Management; subjects like Biology, Music, Health, and Spirituality are also important. Many instructors came to Udemy with the hope that the platform would help promote their work, especially since Udemy takes a large share of marketplace revenue. Otherwise, many might have chosen to build their own platforms for greater control over pricing, branding, and student emails etc.

Although I’ve not been very active in publishing courses until recently due to my studies , I’ve been part of Udemy since 2020 and active in the Instructor Community. Looking back, earlier discussions were often filled with inspiring success stories that motivated me to begin teaching Lately, however, the tone has shifted more toward concerns and frustrations, which I think reflects the real challenges instructors are facing.

Even though I’m not as affected as some others, I can empathize, if I had once earned $20k per month and now earned only $5k, I would also find that difficult.

At the end of the day, I believe we all share the same goal as instructors: to provide real value to learners and to be fairly rewarded for the work we put in. Supporting each other and recognizing different perspectives can help us move forward together.

Dr. Kat

@LawrenceMMiller Making a post about a complaint every other day is just as pointless as reacting to it by writing endless paragraphs on why the person's experience is unique, why their course topics are sh*t, and why their downfall is basically just their own fault.

DamianMcKinnon

I'm getting pretty sick of your constant gaslighting. You've made a lot of money in your time and Udemy has singled you out as being some special so I can see how you you may feel your swagger is justified. I've seen you condemn other people's content before and become extremely aggressive and abusive to the point that i watched you drive an instructor to delete all his content and leave the platform and Udemy has never once pulled you up for it so I can imagine it's made you feel that your aggression must align with what Udemy wants to see happen here in the community. But the right to express concerns is not a meritocracy and that right doesn't end when you feel it's time to stop so pull your neck in.

My expectation is the moment we stop talking about it is the moment Udemy will stop doing anything about it so say your piece MuhammadDuj869.

LawrenceMMiller

@DamianMcKinnon Why don't you address the topic of the conversation rather that once again engaging in your supercilious condescension. The topic, if you are addressing my comments are two thing: a) whether it is necessary to start another thread every other day to say the same things; and b) Whether or not the topic, the category of your courses is a factor in how they are performing. My own results are not the issue and I consider my results to be very modest.

I have not insulted, attacked, demeaned anyone here. I have pointed out what I think was an obvious fact, that Udemy is focusing their marketing on corporations and courses that meet the needs of those corporations. If your courses do not meet those needs your results are going to correspondingly suffer. Why don't you address those topics, or address someone else.

Also, please look up the definition of the word "gaslighting" because you are misusing it. My comments are as direct as possible, almost always referring to facts and data. They are not confusing or intended to confuse. They are the opposite of gaslighting.

MrHJ

@Esther When you began talking about student issues here, I actually took a look at one of your courses; as it appears at that time (about a year ago), your main three competitors for the top space in "German" were AI-instructors. One may have been legit, in terms of claiming that he was wheelchair-injured in a traffic accident and therefore used AI (10-20 years old almost pre-digital camera recordings, somehow changed with AI).

Perhaps the main cause for your losses is that Udemy's automatic system has stopped marketing German courses due to quality complaints on these AI-instructors.
Perhaps the AI-courses soak up most of the customers with better marketing and positioning, and makes the customer leave the market before purchasing your course?
German language is a competitive area with the toughest real competition being external to Udemy.

Other than that, recent PP-marketing may have lowered the number of customers in the market place or maybe the general economy in the world has caused around 10-20% of the customers to do other things than searching the market place for courses.

Considering economy and PP, PP means that a customer according to a general silly model (fairy tale goodness land model) must pay 3 months to compensate the instructors fully as compared to a market place purchase, this due to PP/UB only having an estimated 80% customer retention per month. After those 3 months, the instructor starts to profit. If the customers leaves the PP/UB program before 3 months the instructor losses money.

A conclusion from this silly model is that you don't know how well you are doing until 3 months afterward. The PP-September marketing campaign result will not be visible until November-December and has created both a real and artifical "accounting gap" for instructors, in total a 3-5 month delay in knowing the true outcome, and what could be a stable future outcome.
Economically in a "fairy tale goodness land model", subscriptions is much more profitable over time than market place purchases. If you have good customer retention and can maintain a good reputation, there are lots of examples of companies 2x or 10x revenues using subscription models.

Considering @LawrenceMMiller witchcraft allegations, he is both right and wrong. Naturally Udemy can't market courses in witchcraft everywhere, but could theoretically market such in witchcraft communities, after all, "witches" seems to be some kind of new underground movement with maybe a few 100k progressive witches only in the USA if you look at instagram, tiktok, or other social media.

@LawrenceMMiller is not a spokesperson for Udemy and neither are the platform moderators. He is likely worried about the general morale and its potential effect on the number of customers.

Generating a positive aura and shine is good for business, generating a "the market place is dead and not vibrant" aura naturally leads to that place.

If Udemy doesn't work for you, you could try other companies.

Regards

Veasna, M.

Since their new marketing strategies are implemented, our sales become bad!

ThomasMitchell

I’m in those verticals that Udemy is after…. and I’m getting killed.

LawrenceMMiller

@ThomasMitchell I agree that sales are down for most of us, including in the business sector. But even within our sector there is some kind of curve. Some are doing better and some are doing worse. I am probably in the middle somewhere. My sales are 50% of what they were two or three years ago. This year they have been pretty flat. What are the factors that might be resulting in your results being on the worse side of the curve? I certainly do not know. As you know, I have made my unhappiness about the decline in revenue share well known and I have very directly addressed Udemy management.

ThomasMitchell

I don’t know what it is, man… But I lost nearly 50% of my UfB engagement for my flagship course literally overnight. It’s not a competition thing or topic thing. My guess, and Frank has also mentioned this, is that Udemy has suddenly begun funneling an inordinate share of traffic to a few heavy hitters in each vertical. I noticed that nobody from Udemy has refuted the allegation.

I’ll be honest, you do come off as somewhat insulting in the way you say things. This isn’t an issue with topic selection.

LawrenceMMiller

@Dr. Kat I have never referred to anyone's course topics as "sh*t". I have said that those topics are not ones that meet Udemy's marketing focus on the corporate sector. If you disagree with that why don't you say so?

SivakamiS2017

UB minutes are a little better for September, they did another refresh. But this is not a trend. It's a one-off. The trend is downward. Slowly but steadily.

Dr. Kat

Because

a) your assumption that people in the corporate/business or tech sector are less affected than those outside these categories is simply not true. This has been both explained and illustrated to you many times, but you don’t seem willing to listen. So why should I waste my time pointing it out again?

b) The course topic is irrelevant here. The point is: Udemy drastically changed its strategy without clearly communicating the details and consequences. People used to make a living from their courses — and suddenly, from one quarter to the next, they can’t even pay their rent anymore. What does that have to do with the topic itself?

c) You also seem unaware of the economic potential in the esoteric and spiritual sector. I can guarantee you that Udemy has made a lot of money there, regardless of Udemy promoting them – they probably never have promoted them in the first place, and instructors still made a lot of money. Again, the shrinking revenue has little to do with the course topic.

Overall, multiple people on this forum have criticized your takes, and you’ve dismissed all of them without once questioning your own perspective or tone. You seem so convinced of your own opinion that no other experience counts.

When someone makes a point or shares their thoughts, you go to their course overview, pick it apart, and tell them that they don’t matter to Udemy. That's your entire communication strategy with other instructors.

This isn’t only unfair, insulting (as Damian and Thomas have also pointed out in this thread), and exhausting – it also makes a constructive exchange impossible. Debating with you is a lost cause, and at this point, I will stop doing so.

DamianMcKinnon

He gets a lot of mileage by just brute forcing his views on others making him unpleasant to deal with - a level that most people just don't want to go to when they're already concerned about legitimate issues or genuine concerns they have that he does not share.

Some years back a discussion blew up here in the instructor community with one instructor very vocal about some concerns they had with the way Udemy handled their business. If memory is correct it started around that old chestnut of why Udemy Trust and Safety never advocate for the instructor when a student drops a blatantly false or abusive review - something that coms up year after year and the admins are careful to avoid when people bring it up.

LawrenceMMiller was a staunch advocate of Udemy at the time and took his usual tone with this person. Things quickly blew up over the course of a few days to the point that he became outright hostile and abusive with this instructor - attacking his course and his content choices until this instructor rage quit and deleted all of his courses.

Never once in the course of this conversation did Udemy intervene - not at the beginning, during the escalation (and a lot of instructors were involved) and not after this person left. There was no follow up or debrief and memory may fail me but I believe MartinaT was an admin at that time. Apologies if you weren't this is some time ago. But I've never trusted Udemy since at least in regard to the value or level of protection they offer to instructors. And I've always been wary of you since LawrenceMMiller.

To give LawrenceMMiller his due - he's an extremely talented and credentialed individual who has also been incredibly generous in the past - I attended his seminar on how to analyze and interpret your monthly Udemy course data and it was incredibly valuable (I was on holiday, sick and it was 4am over here when it aired but still made the effort and I was not disappointed).

But you're always the closest to being an outright bully here in the instructor community. You could have been an incredible advocate for this community. but more often than not you're an obstacle to conversation rather than an asset. I can't ever remember I time I have seen you curious in a topic - time and gain you swagger in like you're an authority and you drop your "truth bombs" to derail another person's thread then try and brute force everyone into your own narrow point of view, dismissing those who don't follow. Getting increasingly aggressive and things continue.

You've got so much to give. It's disappointing when you behave the way you do sometimes.

LawrenceMMiller

@Dr. Kat

a) I have repeatedly acknowledged that those in the business sector have seen reduced results. You don't need to convince me of something I have said repeatedly. I have said that my earnings are about one half of what they were a few years ago. I have presented graphs showing my enrollments and revenue over the past six years. I don't think anyone has been more transparent. Two things can be true at the same time. I still think, just because it is logical, that the business sectors, particularly the IT sector, is doing better than others because that is what Udemy marketing has been focused on. It is worth noting that there are 85 thousand instructors on Udemy. Those participating on this forum are a tiny fraction and I would not conclude very much by this small sample.

b) OK, you feel that the course topic is irrelevant. So, a course on baking bread should do just as well as a course on artificial intelligence in today's market? If the topic of your course does not matter, than what does?

c) I honestly do not know what the economic potential is of "esoteric and spiritual" courses. I am happy for you if that potential is great. I have no influence on that and I know that many topics have potential. I originally came to Udemy to take a course on acoustic blues guitar. Great course. I hope they all can make a lot of money.

Finally, please don't say things that aren't true. You said "When someone makes a point or shares their thoughts, you go to their course overview, pick it apart, and tell them that they don’t matter to Udemy." I have never picked apart anyone's course overview. Not once. And, I have never told anyone that they don't matter to Udemy. What I have said is that Udemy has focused their marketing on the business sector. That is what they have said. You can find this in their 10Qs.

DamianMcKinnon

Seeing a small upward bump too but last month was the worst month for me in the last two years. And I agree - it's a

Oneness

@LawrenceMMiller I will address your 2 main comments.

a) On starting new threads:
Yes, it is necessary. If people stop voicing concerns, the company wins by silence. As the saying goes, “The squeaky wheel gets the grease.” Repetition isn’t noise, it’s pressure.

b) On whether topic matters:
Of course topics play a role, but data speaks louder. If someone made $5k consistently for years, then suddenly makes half of that in a few months, that’s a red flag. Numbers don’t lie, but they do tell stories. If the story suddenly changes, we have to ask why.

That’s the real conversation worth having, not ignoring. When the canary in the coal mine drops, you don’t argue about the song, you check the air.

Oneness

@LawrenceMMiller You’re right that Udemy has a corporate-driven focus, and nobody disputes that. But the way you delivered your point matters. Saying “It won’t happen!” and “Sometimes the truth sucks!” might not use the word “sh*t,” but it lands the same way, dismissive and personal rather than constructive.

And telling her she would have more “bliss” if she accepted reality? That comes across as condescending. The reality is, instructors outside corporate topics already know they face an uphill battle with Udemy marketing. What they need is clarity, not dismissal. The same fact could be stated in a way that helps: “Udemy’s marketing focus is corporate, so courses outside that space won’t get much direct support. Success in those niches depends more on self-driven marketing.”

I know you’re only trying to help, and your experience is valuable. You teach leadership, and you’ve been here a long time, many people look up to you as a veteran voice in this community. That’s exactly why a little more compassion in the delivery would go a long way. Tone doesn’t change the facts, but it does change whether people are able to actually hear them.

ScottDuffy

Re: a customer "must pay 3 months to compensate the instructors fully"

I don't think this is accurate.

In the marketplace, say your course sells for $10 and you make 37%, or $3.70 today
In the PP plan, say a student watches 3.25 hours of your course in a month, and you make $3.97

There's no minimum number of months customer must be subscribed to PP to recover the same income as the marketplace. Your income depends on how many video minutes are watched.

Now I will say this is true:

Not every course is in the Personal Plan. In fact, only about 10% of courses are in Personal Plan.
Udemy benefits greatly from the Personal Plan more than the marketplace
Udemy's income will go up faster than ours will, by a long shot

But that statement about how many months it takes isn't how it works.

ScottDuffy

None of your courses are in the Personal Plan that I can see. So that's the number 1 cause of your income from PP being "hardly anything".

ScottDuffy

First, I would guess that most instructors have lower incomes now than they did 2 years ago. And so, we can all sympathize with that. Udemy has been hearing this comment from all instructors (top to bottom) this year.

Our collective concerns aren't ignored or undervalued, in my view. It's just that they are trying to grow the company, and it's not working. There is no magic to increasing a company's revenue. I think that's what they are working on.

It's like, they're lost at sea in a storm. And they think there's a safe port just over there. But they can't get there. The wind is strong, and the ship isn't going in the direction they want. The crew is complaining and telling the captain to do something. But the captain is trying to get to the safe port. It's the only option the captain sees.

Udemy can't see any successful path except the subscription model. The marketplace model is dead.

Udemy grew from 2014-2022 based on FB ads. They'd buy a student for $8 and sell them a course for $10. And then the student would buy 2 or 3 more courses and everyone would be happy. But now a student costs $80 to get from ads, and that model doesn't work.

The pandemic is over as well. The growth that came from that is not coming back.

So Udemy can't see any successful model except subscriptions. That's just what it is.

— — — —

Is your company/Udemy profile called "Human and Emotion"? If so, I see you have a couple of courses in Personal Plan, but the majority of your 152 courses are not.

Perhaps unrelated, but I looked everywhere to find the names of the people behind Human and Emotion. The Udemy profile doesn't list any names. Your profile picture in this community is a cartoon and your name is not complete. Teachable doesn't list any names. LinkedIn doesn't list any name. Instagram has pictures but not names. I actually got distracted from writing this post trying to find the names of people running this company, which is about "humans" and "emotions". There's an irony there. But if this is your company, why is everything so anonymous? Be human! Have a name!

I know, that's extremely minor. But my brain is stuck. Why doesn't Human and Emotion have names?

Oneness

@ScottDuffy I appreciate the perspective, but there are some gaps in this analogy and reasoning.

Calling the marketplace model “dead” assumes demand disappeared. It didn’t, the stream was simply redirected. When a company stops investing in ads, visibility, and incentives for marketplace sales, of course revenue falls. That’s not death, that’s design.

Your “lost at sea” image is dramatic, but maybe the issue isn’t the storm, it’s the navigation. If the captain keeps steering toward the wrong lighthouse, the crew warning him isn’t mutiny; it’s common sense.

Also, saying “it’s the only option they see” isn’t proof it’s the right one. If the medicine isn’t helping, taking more of it doesn’t fix the patient.

And about “Human and Emotion”, names and faces aren’t what matter here. We’re discussing logic, not identities. You don’t need a LinkedIn profile on this forum to make a valid point.

SivakamiS2017

Scott, great analogy regarding the ship in a storm.
I only hope that the ship doesn't finally reach port having lost most of its crew !🤞🤞

ScottDuffy

I generally agree with you on a lot of what you said. I purposely said "that's the only option the captain sees" and not "that's the only option". Udemy is doing what it thinks is best for itself.

Keeping instructors reasonably happy is part of that, but not the central part of that. And keeping us happy is not their primary goal. Udemy and Instructors main goals are misaligned right now, and they used to be more aligned.

I disagree, however, that the marketplace isn't dead. It is dying. Demand for courses is dying, generally. AI is here. YouTube is here. TikTok is here. The demand for attention online is greater than ever, and the free offers are better than ever, too.

Even organic SEO is in crisis as Google AI is answering students directly instead of directing them to another website for an answer. We can't minimize the crisis in "selling courses" that online education is facing.

There is no other company winning in the market for paid video courses that Udemy is losing to. Coursera is not doing better. LinkedIn is not doing better. The entire educational video market is not growing worldwide. Amazon is not in this business. Netflix is not in this business. Apple is not in this business. Google is not in this business. There is a reason these giant companies are not trying to sell video courses!

And again, if you have to pay $80 to find that student, it's not profitable. You'd have to raise the sales price of your course to compensate.

And lastly, I said it was a minor issue. But I do think hiding behind a company name when you are a small creator is probably a mistake. My opinion, at least.

All the best!

ScottDuffy

I'm not saying, "don't tell Udemy to get better." I just think there's no way back to the halcyon days of the late 2000's.

Buying a student for $8 on FB ads … those were golden days!

Instructors must face the fact that the marketplace model is shrinking by 10% per year, and the rate of decline may be accelerating.

MuhammadDuj869

@ScottDuffy great comment. I totally agree with you. I do not think that most of instructors would disagree with you. You tried to elaborate the whole scaniro in simple words. That's what we're asking to the Udemy administration to take proactive steps and take us on board. Keeping the marketplace in view what do you think how we can grow our revenues?

MrHJ

Let's talk about a happy market place reality!

The market place is vibrant ("full of energy and life") according to Udemy's new CEO
- The market place traffic is growing YoY according to Udemy's employees. As it appears the traffic to the market place is growing double digits or single high digits every year.

Personal Plans main place to gain new customers is the market place and the market place customers are gained more or less for free at a fixed cost. Around 20-40% of new market place customers likely choose personal plan instead of buying the course that made them enter the market place.
- As it appears, the market place is the only tool available to Udemy which don't entail personal relationships with customers and clients in companies such as UB.
- The market place is also the main net used to capture the interest of new customers,
  - the market place is a known entity
  - the market place has a simple attractive no-problems quality, 1 course, 1 purchase, 0 commitment. It is easy to convince customers to accept that, and in some cases, many instructors have already done the job for Udemy with promotions.
  - It is much harder to convince customers to start a subscription and this is the reason for the 7d trial vs. credit card exposure (which still is considered a though sales model on the internet). It is also the reason that Udemy's marketeers earlier tried to intercept market place customer during the purchase process, which is kind of suboptimal as compared to giving the customer a special PP-offer after having completed the purchase - this is likely due to personal plan/UB having an estimated 80% customer retention level.

What is the cause of some non-Udemy employed instructors actually trying to convince the forum that "the market place is dead"?

Some earlier Udemy employees tricked them into believing that and they just keep repeating the message.
Some of these complainers are university bureaucrats and are jealous of Udemy students getting better education than themselves, and at a bargain price. Other may work for universities (governments) and may view all other education places as competitors to be destroyed.
Some may have found a way to abuse the collective socialist UB/PP payment model to capture the fruits of other instructors work. Udemy will likely switch to an individual capitalist payment model to get more profitable and effective, and that change will likely come with the next UB/PP pay%cut due to Udemy becoming less reliant on the abuse of the collective socialist payment model.

The market place is vibrant and it is not going away anytime soon, if at all.

Personal plan subscriptions are the payment model which theoretically will yield the larger profits but it is also in need of future updates.

Regards

ScottDuffy

I think this reply conflates a lot of issues. Let's try to unpack them.

When I say "marketplace", I mean the business of selling a course to a customer for a fixed price. Udemy is the only major course provider that does this. And according to their financial reports, the marketplace (MX) is falling about 12% year over year in revenues. The personal plan is growing about 2% per quarter (8% per year), but Udemy doesn't break these figures out in its revenue reports.

(I hear that the fall in MX is accelerating in 2025. Course sales are falling faster than 10% year over year and thus everyone in this thread is starting to panic.)

Udemy, of course, wants you to focus on the consumer segment as a whole, which includes the Personal Plan (PP). That's growing for Udemy. Netflix, Spotify, Amazon Prime, Disney+, LinkedIn Learning, Coursera… the world is full of companies that offer subscriptions. Udemy wants to swim in this water too.

We should also not conflate Udemy's growing consumer revenue with instructors' incomes.

Notice revenue is falling, but their profit is increasing. That's us! Soylent Green is people!

Udemy Reports Second Quarter 2025 Results _ Udemy - Brave 2025-10-06 at 8.03.39 AM.jpeg

That gross margin is heading to 85% (and gross profit to 75%) as Udemy promotes PP over MX. They call this "mixshift" on their investor conference calls.

So what's my point?

It's way too expensive for them to attract a consumer using ads for a single course sale (and it's true)
They think they can survive by selling subscriptions (we'll see if they can, but let's hope!)
Simply wishing Udemy would go back to its business model of 2019 is like wishing time would go backwards. That business model no longer works. You can't just keep screaming at them to go back to 2019. There's no way back.

Questioning MY motives is a cherry on the cake. It's true that I don't really care about YOUR personal success in some deep way. I don't know you, but I do know quite a few people in here that I do care about.

I'm just a guy who pays attention, cares about instructors as a whole, cares about my students, cares about Udemy, and has formed an opinion after 11 years of creating courses. Maybe I know nothing.

By the way, I don't know the answer to how to solve the broken business model. I hope the subscription model works but it's clearly worse for us as a whole. If Udemy can become the next Netflix or Spotify, it can survive and some of us can thrive. Not everyone, though - no way back.

MrHJ

@ScottDuffy I believe you need to read financial reports with critical eyes. The numbers say nothing about the size of the different accounting baskets, just in what basket Udemy funneled the dollars.

Considering the market place we know it is growing traffic wise with large numbers. This has been stated by Udemy's employees on this forum and is also a well-known fact from internet publications.
Considering customer transitions we know that Udemy spends 2-4 days a week heavily promoting PP to all market place customers at all stages, in the beginning of the year it was 2/7 days, now it is 3-4/7 days.
Earlier months Udemy utilized an intercept function on market place customers and tried to make them switch a started market place purchase to a PP purchase. As it appears that function is no longer in use, likely because it caused an artificial PP-growth with a resulting overall loss for that particular function.

As a consequence of these three bullet list it can be determined that your position is not real with 99.9% chance, and that the market place is extremely useful to attract new customers and also new PP-customers.

Many Udemy competitors has started their own market places lately.

Other objective statements of yours;

Udemy can likely lower its costs on the order of $100M-200M per year.
Udemy has some competition in the business of selling courses market place style. As a matter-of-fact, Udemy's most similar competitor, Coursera (an extension of a state university), utilizes a near similar administrative envelope.
Your marketing cost ideas assumes "silly targeting".
Take a look at the USD inflation calculator.
Udemy doesn't have a broken business model and all its issues is under the control of the leadership and management.

Other subjective statements of yours;

It seems you are the third person in this forum who believed that my text was pointed at them. This is likely an unintentional effect of the text, but seems useful as the other two appears to have changed opinions.

Regards

FrankKane

"Considering the market place we know it is growing traffic wise with large numbers."

What is your source for this data? Please link to it. Is this traffic humans, or bots?

"Many Udemy competitors has started their own market places lately."

Apart from new ventures with zero revenue… like who?

"Udemy can likely lower its costs on the order of $100M-200M per year."

How? They already went through some brutal layoffs and offshoring last year.

ScottDuffy

I'll be honest, I have no idea who you are. Or what authority do you have to say things that are obviously incorrect.

Dr. Kat

@HenrikJohan618 Can't reply to your latest post that shows the traffic data, and I might be wrong here, but: These graphs don't seem to show marketplace traffic data – they show traffic data for the entire website, don't they? You said "Considering the market place we know it is growing traffic wise with large numbers." I don't think we can say that based on these data sets.

The current issue is: People visit the Udemy website and are immediately directed to the PP option (per placing of the CTA, changes in ads etc), which is probably why many of us experience decreasing revenue. More website traffic doesn't change that.

SivakamiS2017

Many many of us have been experiencing plunging Marketplace revenue for years now … too many to be just anecdotal !

JosephPhillips

Soylent Green is people! - best Scott Duffy line. LOL You crack me up, buddy.

BrianJackson

"I agree that sales are down for most of us, including in the business sector." This after you just said your revenue is unaffected because you're in the business sector. Get your story straight.

BrianJackson

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 ;-).