Analysis of Enrollment Data - Five Year Perspective

[LawrenceMMiller]

This might be helpful, particularly for newer instructors. If you've been around a while you know that I plot my enrollment data by course and by month as reflected in this graph. It allows me to see month over month, year over year, and unusual data events. Keep in mind that this is not revenue, but enrollments, although there is a very high correlation. This also includes both marketplace and UFB enrollments. 

Please note that I am NOT one of the most successful instructors on Udemy. I am a "moderately" successful instructor, which means I am now averaging around 20k per month. My "success" is only success over my own previous results. I suggest that this is a healthy way to measure your own success. I don't want to compare my results to folks like Phil Ebiner, Frank Kane, Scott Duffy, or others because that just makes me feel crappy. I think my data is probably representative of other instructors who are both in the marketplace promotions and in UFB. Please understand that I do very little marketing myself and rely on Udemy's marketing. 

Here are some results that may be interesting:

1. This March just completed was up 30% compared to March last year. Note that the best months are always Nov-Jan and the worst months are most often Feb-Apr. 
2. I think taking the average of a few months for comparison is always more reliable than any single month. So, I looked at the three best months (typically) of Nov-Jan for 2019-2022. I have the average for these indicated as "Peak Month Ave." This past period was up 19% yoy in revenue and you can see the growth in enrollments. Notably, the marketplace revenue for me was down 4% while the UB revenue was up 45%. 
3. If you look at Jan 2020 you can see why I find this graph helpful. You will notice that one course, in dark purple, had a very large number of enrollments relative to a normal month. This is from one UB client who decided to assign it to their managers. You can also see that beginning in June 2021 I had a large increase in another course (in light blue) and that was the result of a similar assignment to a UB client. That has now ended, unfortunately. 
4. You can clearly see the Covid19 effect in 2020. The good news is that if you draw a trend line from four or five years ago you can see a relatively stable growth pattern discounting that. 

 So, I offer this for what its worth. There is still reason to be optimistic about Udemy's growth and marketing. 

[EricYeboah294]

Good day Lawrence, l must confess that your level of maturity in analysis is very great, this kind of analysis open our eyes on Udemy platform, and give some of us the assurance that there is light at the end of the tunnel, just that it take time and hard work. God bless you.

[LawrenceMMiller]

@EricYeboah294 You are right about the time and hard work. Thanks. 

[RobertBrown028]

Lawrence-You sharing your experience has been enlightening and inspiring for me. As we share similar backgrounds, I hope to follow closely in your footsteps, perhaps getting close, but never catching up (you do good work). Thank you for leading the way, leaving a trail and guiding when needed. 

[GuilhermeMP]

Always love your graphical analyses, Lawrence!

This March was my best month ever. However, this is due to a promotion of a course launched in a partnership with a coinstructor. This course is interdisciplinary. But besides the promotion, this March is on par with January, after a 'recovery' com February, which presented a sharp decline. However, this may be due to the fact that I am a relatively new instructor (I started in August 2020) and my monthly revenue and enrollments are very low (~ 300 enrollments). Since I'm still a small player, I hope I still have a considerable growth potential. 

I'd be very happy if I was able to achieve what I achieved in March steadily and consistently

[AndreiD]

Hi Lawrence,

Thank you for such an analysis and congratulations on your success!

I have a few questions:

1. What is the percentage of your total income that comes from UFB? 

What is the UFB trend over years? 

2. Where do you get the total no. of enrollments from? If you export the monthly report as CSV you’ll get only the marketplace enrollments. 

Do you go to each course’s students section and select the daily UFB enrollments? This is a manual and time-consuming job and maybe you know another way to do that.

I suppose the Mach 2022 numbers do not include UFB yet.

Thank you!

[LawrenceMMiller]

@AndreiD To answer your questions...

1. The percent of my revenue that is from UFB is running around 60%. The UFB trend is definitely up. In the last quarterly report the company reported an 80% increase, year over year for UFB revenue. My own revenue from UFB was up 45% for the past quarter. 

2. I get the total enrollments by tracking the enrollments for each course and totally them. I have been keeping a spreadsheet for the past six years. This is where my graphic comes from, not from Udemy directly. For each of my seventeen courses I input the following five variables: New students this month; total students; this months revenue; total revenue for this course; current course rating. That data comes directly off the course page that give all your courses. I don't download the CSV files. I don't need them. 

For example:

Below all of my course data I summarize or compile the data as follows:

So with this data I can track trends for each course, trends for my "business", etc. 

I hope that helps.