*Feedback Thread* What can Udemy do to help you reach your goals?

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Hey Instructor Community!

At the end of each month, we want to take some time to gather feedback from you! As we went through the month of January, we covered topics related to setting your goals as instructors! We’d love to hear what you think about your experience within the community and what more we can do to help you.

How can Udemy help you reach your goals in 2023?

Send us your suggestions in the comments below!

Comments

  • Thank you @Bella for asking an interesting question,

    I personally believe that the following Udemy's features can help me set/achieve my 2023 goals:

    1. Skill development: Udemy could offer courses on instructional design using the latest teaching methods and strategies.

    2. Course creation: Udemy could provide a me with a more user-friendly environment to cater my courses to a global audience.

    3. Marketing and promotion: Udemy could provide me with easy to use tools to help me promote my courses (email campaigns, social media promotions)
    4. Professional recognition: Udemy could help me build my brand and establish myself as an expert in my field.

    Best Regards.

  • RonErez
    RonErez Posts: 152 storyteller rank

    It would be nice if we had the option to conduct quarterly live meetings with our students.

    For example: It could be live coding, or Q&A, maybe even something like the coffee chat Udemy has with their instructors.

    I mean it would be good if Udemy provided some guidelines before such a meeting. For instance what is permitted and what not.

    Just thing it would be a more personalized experience that the students get to know the instructor a little better and vice versa.

    Thanks !

  • JohnBura
    JohnBura Posts: 411 mentor rank

    Remove the personal plan and replace it with instructor-level subscriptions.

  • FrankKane
    FrankKane Posts: 1,855 rolemodel rank

    Raise prices on course topics with high Q&A demands; the cost of supporting them has risen with inflation, while the revenue we get per enrollment has fallen. Margins are getting thin for instructors. (I know pricing experiments are already underway)

    Build systems to help learners support each other and build their own communities.

    Allow instructors to schedule recurring promotional announcements, so we can spend more of our time and money making content instead of promoting it.

    Or if you're looking specifically for community ideas:

    Bring in actual filmmakers and cinematographers to do webinars on how to create compelling and visually interesting videos. What can course creators learn from Hollywood?

  • ba0708
    ba0708 Posts: 217 specialist rank

    International bank transfers so we don't flush our earnings down the toilet

  • JohnBura
    JohnBura Posts: 411 mentor rank

    I usually write long posts about what should be done so here's a list. Again the idea is to grow the marketplace to 4 billion a year which means more for everyone. Im modeling my suggestions from observations of other marketplaces.

    - Reduce Udemy's share to 30%

    - Allow us to opt out of international pricing

    - Allow us to put certain courses in international pricing

    - Allow us to bundle our courses and sell bundles at a discount

    - Remove the personal subscription and replace it with instructor-level subscriptions

    - Order bumps on our coupon

    - Order bumps on free coupons

    - NO order bumps on our courses from other instructors

    - Allow us to talk about our other ventures outside of Udemy

    - Bring in a leader board of people who make the most Enrollments, sales, and reviews, on a weekly basis.

    - Change the algorithm to be more sales-based and not engagement based

    - Allow us to set our own affiliate percentages

    These suggestions are more Udemy specific

    - Put a second price floor at courses above 30 hours.

    - Get away from the minutes watched versus a la carte pricing.

    Instructors will always make more money with a la carte purchases versus minutes watched.

    All somebody has to do is make a direct competitor with the above suggestions and instructors will flock to that site.

    In short, please give us more freedom to build scaleable businesses. Udemy should be more like Steam, the App Store, Google Play, and Amazon and less like Disney+

  • Hi,

    I have a few suggestions:

    • We need a bundle system for promotions. For example get my 5 cyber security courses not four 50$ but 40$. We can promote our bundles to students. I see some instructors are trying to do this manually, but it is impossible when you reach a mass audience.
    • We need an improved Teaching Assistant dashboard. I need to see how many questions are asked and how many are answered by TAs to track their performance in a better way.
    • We used to see more country specific promotions, pr activities, local launches etc back in the day. I think you have a very well structured sales team for UfB in local countries maybe you can spare a few people working for marketplace as well. However since we are not very involved in internal dynamics, you can ignore this suggestion if it is not relevant.
    • I don't have any suggestions for pricing, marketing etc. As far as i am concerned, i see revenue consistent or going up starting from the day i signed up as an instructor. That's what it matters for me. I think what you are doing is working, just keep doing it.

    Great way to gather feedbacks btw, thanks.

    Atil.

  • Bella
    Bella Posts: 3,694 traveler rank

    Thanks to everyone for taking the time to share your feedback on how we can help you achieve your goals. This thread is a fantastic source of inspiration, and we're so grateful to have such an engaged and passionate community.

    Your ideas are being forwarded to the appropriate teams at Udemy to consider each and every one of them as we work to improve our product. We will keep you updated on any progress and let you know if any of the suggestions make it to our roadmap.

    Keep the ideas coming!

    Bella Almeida

    Udemy Community

  • JohnBura
    JohnBura Posts: 411 mentor rank

    Please also relay that we want to see significant growth in marketplace revenue. Ideally, we have double-digit growth in the marketplace, not declines.

  • Hi Bella, thanks for starting this thread, my problem is that I have listed two courses on Auto-body and Painting and have more then 1000 students, where I teach how to paint vehicles, the thing is the topic Auto-body and Painting is not listed on Udemy, please consider it as a topic to learn, and add it to the list. thank you so much..

  • A few more things. I think would be helpful

    1. Marketplace promotions and advertising . Maybe it might not be cost-effective but a few months wouldn't be so terrible.

    2. Promoting courses that are not just Business and tech. Creativity is important.

    3. Allow us to promote our other sites,courses (as long as it's not a competitor site). I think having a place where instructors can promote their courses, books, etc, to a wide marketplace would be a huge incentive for many of us to continue to make new content.

    This also would help us in the creative space since it doesn't seem like we have been a priority for the past year. Actually, I feel we have been outright ignored.

    4. Return the 50/50 split. Or at least something a bit closer. This has been a huge factor in decreasing of my revenue (I can't speak for anyone else).

    Having over 100K students is no small thing . I have a pretty good overall rating as an instructor. I would love to grow and many of us who arent in the "Million student club" would like to get there or somewhere close. We cannot succeed on Udemy without your help. Promote us and what we teach . My art courses have Doctors, engineers,IT people and those who write code. So it's obvious they are open to creativity and have other interests.

    I hope some of these are taken into account and not just responded to in "Corporate speak". I am not trying to appeal to a corporation's "heart" LOL. The more money we make, the more you make. It would be nice to be excited about creating new courses again. I think you could create "Udemy Ambassadors" who promote the overall brand alongside our courses .

    I should be able to succeed here on this platform once again without having to teach Python or AWS or a business/tech course. No diss to them, I take a few as we have amazing instruction here on the platform.

    Also, it doesn't help when you don't see yourself or your courses reflected in the "Priority topics Q1 2023".

  • JohnBura
    JohnBura Posts: 411 mentor rank

    If Steam can be a 4 billion dollar-a-year marketplace, there's no reason Udemy can't be as well. That's good for instructors, investors, and employees. Literally, everyone wins.

    It seems like Udemy simply does not care about the marketplace anymore. Numbers don't lie. I expect the marketplace to decline. What we really need is the marketplace to double in revenue.

    The only problem with that is the way Udemy accomplishes that goal is they have to give way more freedom to the instructors. IOW they have to reverse the marketplace policies over the last 7 years. It's hard to explain that to investors. Here is how that is accomplished.

    "We want the marketplace to generate 1 billion dollars a quarter. In order to do that, we have analyzed other top-performing marketplaces. Since the variables of business change over time, we have decided to reverse a lot of the policies that we have put in place since 2015. While these policies at the time lead to more growth, we have concluded due to the current business environment, that the best course of action is to change our policies to drive growth. Our target revenue of the marketplace is 4 billion dollars a year"

    It is really that simple. They have to basically give instructors more freedom to make money. But it seems like Udemy only cares about minutes watched and subscription numbers.

  • Having Udemy function closer to Steam would be incredible.

  • 1. Reduce Udemy's share of revenue.

    By the time ITunes and Udemy take their cut, I get a quarter of my retail price - and that's before discounting.

    The only reason I am on Udemy is for exposure to a larger customer base. The sales I make on this platform are a loss leader.

    2. Provide full HD streaming - we're not in the 1990s anymore.

    3) Stop the "pile 'em high, sell 'em low" philosophy. Increase the quality of courses and charge more.

    4) Deal with piracy properly.

    5) As others have said, don't give refunds if an entire course has been consumed. Generally, the students who consume a whole course in a day and get a refund are the pirates.

    For me personally, Udemy income has plummeted since June 2021. Until policies change at Udemy, I won't put my premium courses here.

    Earnings 2023-02-11_17-57.jpg

  • JohnBura
    JohnBura Posts: 411 mentor rank

    I know. It seems like management at Udemy really doesn't want this to happen even though most of the public views Udemy as "the App store" of eLearning. 🤷

  • Hi

    I was just looking for a way to voice a concern or let's say feedback for improvement if I may, and I saw this thread, thankfully.

    There is a rule on Udemy platform that once a course goes live, you cannot change its URL. For example if you choose your course name to be The A Technology Deep Dive, the URL will be like udemy.com/the-a-technology-deep-dive and it cannot be changed later.

    Given that some instructors prefer to maintain a course and overhaul it for a long time, and even maybe reorganize it in a way that it can be called with a different name, it would be good to be able to choose a different URL than what you chose years ago, reflecting the name you currently use for the course. The Udemy platform can still keep referring the old URL clicked by some users to the same course, while also allowing a new more relevant URL to be used.

    Dear Udemy, could you please kindly consider supporting this feature? You can add some restriction though, e.g. "You cannot change course URL more than twice in 6 months", or something like that.

    What do you think?

  • Bravo. Nodding my head on every point you raised.