Positive stories?

I’ve been following the discussions here closely over the past few months, and there’s a clear sense of uncertainty around Udemy’s recent changes, especially regarding Marketplace course sales.

Still, I remain optimistic that there’s opportunity ahead as the platform continues to adapt and evolve. Personally, I’m trying to focus on what’s within my control: improving existing courses, creating new content where it makes sense, and staying engaged with students to keep delivering value.

I’d love to hear from instructors who focus on Marketplace or UFB. If anyone has a positive story or experience to share, I think it would be encouraging for the community to hear!

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Comments

BrianJackson

Viktoriya,

Good for you. I'm trying to do the same. As my Udemy generated revenue declines, I'm able to compensate with Udemy promotional emails containing $9.99 discount links. I won't be able to keep this up much longer though (students soon experience promotion burn-out).

With all 50+ of my courses, I try to target each specific course with a coupon code for a course they need, and a tailored email explaining why they need it, while excluding all students already enrolled in the targeted course. I manage to generate over 43% of my revenue in this way.

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Of course, I use a spreadsheet to manage my promotional announcements:

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Supposedly, I have half a million emails going out, but in reality many are eliminated through opting out, duplicates per course and excluding students that already own a target course. Still, that a lot of promotional email.

And I dig even deeper to find out how each campaign is going:

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I've been on Udemy for 11 years now. I've seen my ups and downs. But the hunt is still addictive ;-).

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So far, constant change has been the only constant ;-).

Hang in there everyone!

—BrianP.S. Keep beating up on Udemy. They deserve it on so many fronts.

Haritha 089

Thank you, @ViktoriyaMaya . this is exactly done by myself too. I totally agree with your positive thoughts. Let's keep hopes for the best while focusing on improving existing courses. Also, thank you, @BrianJackson, for your factful information and insights, which encouraged us with some hope based on its patterns.

All the best.

ChrisBankes120

Very very unusually…. last week two students paid $56+ for a course AND started straight away AND did the whole course (it's about an hour) so no refund! Usually - nearly always - if a student pays the full whack then they look at a sudden 'sale' and immediately get a refund and don't even re-buy.

The only slight downside is that although it's 'my' course I made it for someone else as a birthday gift…and he gets all the revenue!

LawrenceMMiller

How positive or negative, how satisfied one is, with the Udemy experience varies widely and depends on a set of variables, including your category, your course quality, etc. Much of the recent dissatisfaction is the result of declining revenue share and a decline in the overall business. It matters greatly what your individual needs and expectations are. It is good to have modest expectations. Sharing our results has unfortunately become a source of contention, so there is hesitancy.

On my part, I am very grateful for my Udemy experience. It has been a blessing. I came to Udemy after 45 years of consulting, constantly on the road (airplanes) and living in hotel rooms. I was burned out and sold my company to get away from the travel. Udemy came at exactly the right time for me. It allowed me to employ my IP, my experience, yet do it from home. I am not suggesting that others have or will experience the same, we are all unique, but for me, it has provided a good and reliable income for eleven years. I have earned more than $1.5 million on Udemy. Of course it has declined in the last couple of years, but my Udemy revenue still pays all of my bills without tapping into my retirement investments. I have posted this before, but the following is a graph of my total revenue and marketplace revenue, the difference being UB. My goal is just to maintain the current level.

RonErez

I published another 6 courses over the summer so now my sales have only dropped by 40% instead of 70%. I'm still hoping things will pick up on Black Friday. I probably will publish one or two more courses and then stop publishing and just maintain my existing courses.

KylePew

This isn’t so much a positive story as it is a positive realization about how I’ll be approaching my future courses.

With Udemy shifting more toward subscription-based models like Udemy Business and Personal Plan—and with companies increasingly seeking structured learning paths for employee training—I’ve decided to move away from producing long, 10–20+ hour courses. Instead, I’ll be creating a series of shorter, 2–6-hour courses designed to guide learners step-by-step through a complete learning path on specific topics.

This approach is a significant change from my earlier experience on Udemy. When I first started, I created separate Level 1, Level 2, and Level 3 courses, but soon discovered that students preferred comprehensive, all-in-one courses. That led me to combine my smaller courses into larger, 20+ hour masterclasses—which have continued to perform well.

However, as the platform and learner expectations evolve, my goal is to experiment with these smaller, more focused courses that clearly build upon each other, offering students a structured path to mastery while aligning with Udemy’s new direction.

I am curious to see how Udemy plans to market this holiday season (Black Friday).

Tom1

A positive for me is that I might just scrape another best month for October once UB and Personal Plan numbers are finalized. For context I decided to go "full time" on udemy in September 2022 hence the steady growth since then, and I think I've averaged 6 courses a year since then (published 5 new courses this year and also revamped a couple). Due to UB and Personal Plan seemingly being udemy's focus / push right now, my plan moving forward has been similar to @KylePew - shorter, more focused courses, that all overlap slightly and link so students are more likely to hop over to another one of my courses.

ChrisBankes120

Maybe I am misreading things…

That's two posts extolling the advantage of shorter courses.

Let's say before, for PP you sold three courses of Course A. You received $9.

So you now make Courses B,C and D - each is 100 minutes long. You also update/shorten Course A so that too is 100 minutes long and owing to its success in sales it too is in Personal Plan.

So you have four courses in Personal Plan.

NINETY students enrol in November. They average 20 minutes each - but 50% have yet to start.

You receive in total…$9.

Michael_D_Nwaogu

Wow! I can't help but to commend you, you are a very hardworking man.😶

KuljotSB

To be honest, I am blessed to have gotten this opportunity to publish courses on udemy and make quite some bucks for my age (still 20).

To give you a bit of context, I hail from India and by god's grace, made it into the most prestigious engineering colleges in my country (I am currently in my 3rd year, pursuing a major in Environmental Science and Engineering). I started two years ago and its been one hell of a ride. My courses are mainly on Microsoft's offering in AI (these are developer heavy courses and involve a lot of IT infra and coding related tasks). I have 13 courses now with somewhere around 8 in the Udemy Business Program. I have been consistently hitting the 5K USD mark per month with all revenue streams combined but UfB makes up the major chunk followed by marketplace and then personal plan; although the gap between personal plan and marketplace is closing down very quickly. The marketplace has no doubt experienced a drop in revenue but I think personal plan is slowly making up for it.

Udemy opened up many opportunities for me. Due to my courses I got to do a lot of consulting work and all that while still being in college - talk about that! The journey has been so good that I have decided to skip my college internships and placements and focus on growing my own venture( I could have got some great interships provided the prestige my college carries in STEM in India). My father's venture does the same thing - Cloud consultancy and Corporate trainings - he also has been a Regional Director for Microsoft - he's also quite impressed with what I've achieved and thinks I might build something great from here on!

I do agree that a lot of instructors, especially the ones that have been on this platform for long would have a different opinion than me, but things are looking very bright for me and I'm highly optimistic for the future!

Cheers,
Kuljot

RonErez

Indeed on the personal plan I made

$15.5 in June

$4.5 in July

$21 in August

I should have added that I created 6 courses over the summer but they are not that short. Each probably ranging between 6-8 hours. Most of my topics are pretty technical (programming/math) and I haven't found a successful way to cover a topic in an hour or so. I do think it is possible, I just haven't figured it out yet.

If I didn't enjoy the process so much I probably would have given up already. In any case I'll create 1-2 more courses and then just respond to Q&A and update from time to time.

ChrisBankes120

$5000 a month with fewer than 14,000 students in total - that’s impressive. Well done!

ChrisBankes120

Is ANYONE making more than, say, $100 a month on the Personal Plan?

Tom1

I have, every month since April 2024.

Robert_Marzullo

Nice work Brian. It's crazy how similar our graphs are from Udemy. I have similar peaks and valleys in my earnings.

Robert_Marzullo

I have a positive spin on what has happened in my situation. I was so dependent upon Udemy for my income that I had to start looking for work again. ( My fault for going full time but I was doing pretty good with it so I went all in. )

I got an offer a few months ago to work in comics. I typically would have turned this work down because I was so busy making video content and helping students. Since this has all been in decline, I took the offer. The money isn't anything to brag about but working on a published comic is a pretty exciting thing to be part of.

It has always been a dream of mine and it is really why I teach art on Udemy on the first place.

So now I am back in the field doing the work. Maybe it will teach me some things that I can deliver in my next course. Maybe it will lead to something better one day. I don't know but it is better than worrying about what might or might not happen.

As they say, "One door closes and another one opens."

BrianJackson

Robert, I love your story. I had a (kinda) similar experience. With Udemy no longer requiring my attention, I've begun writing screenplays. I am completely new to writing screenplays and would never have begun if Udemy hadn't fallen into decline.

The only constant is change. Search for your best self in every change.

—Brian

KuljotSB

Yeah, this is pretty crazy - I do have longer courses (each one is more than 10 hours, some even hitting the 20 mark and above) and surprisingly quite a good amount of learner engagement which probably explains this correlation

Robert_Marzullo

That’s awesome man! Writing screenplays must be very challenging and rewarding. I am happy to hear that you are exploring other opportunities!

You are entirely right about change being a constant and our ability to adapt is extremely important.

ViktoriyaMaya

Oh wow, I posted this right before catching a bad flu bug going around. It's nice to come back so many insightful comments. I'll take the time to respond to everyone individually. Thanks, everyone.

Keep the positive stories coming :) I'm sure they're helpful and uplifting for anyone following this discussion!

AnilThomas1692

Crossed 50 this month

LindsayMarsh

Congrats my friend! that is awesome! I think you will love the stability of that income too and you can just focus on doing what you love during the day instead of watching numbers, stats and writing catchy titles for socials, courses etc.

I would have never taken a job offer last year, but now for the first time I am open to it. Perhaps a in-person teaching job at a university? I would take it in a heartbeat and cancel all my social media accounts.

LawrenceMMiller

Yes. Around $300 a month. Not much.

Robert_Marzullo

Thank you Lindsay! Yes, it does come with a lot less stress. Staring at analytics and trying to figure out what is working and what is not, can be frustrating.

I bet you would get a lot of satisfaction out of that with some peace of mind as well!

Umar_Fayyaz01

That’s a great perspective — focusing on what we can control is key. I’ve also noticed that consistent course updates and active engagement with students really help maintain momentum, even amid platform changes. Staying adaptable seems to make all the difference!