Hey everyone! We’ve had a few questions about our policies around self-promotion and sharing outside links on our new platform, so we spoke with our Community Champions to learn more about the needs and concerns around link sharing.

After some thoughtful conversations, we landed on one main rule: instructors should not sell to other instructors in the community. This community is about sharing knowledge and experiences to make more and better courses, not making money off of fellow instructors.

To enforce this rule and make it easier to understand, we’ve put together the following guidelines:

• No self-promotion or affiliate links. Don’t start a conversation to share your course, website, social media, etc. This community is a space to share knowledge and expertise, not to sell to your fellow instructors.
• No links in signatures. Your community profile is directly linked to your Udemy account. Other instructors can easily find your courses, website, social media accounts through your Udemy profile.
• Ask for feedback in dedicated spaces. There will be monthly feedback threads where you can share course materials for feedback. When possible, upload a specific video or share your course content directly on the community platform so it’s easier for others to access (as opposed to linking directly to your course). The more specific you are, the better your peer instructors can provide constructive feedback.

This community is all about connecting with fellow instructors and learning from one another’s experiences. One of the most effective ways to learn is by getting feedback from other instructors, so we want to create a space where instructors can get constructive feedback from their peers to improve their courses.

That said, we know the line between asking for feedback (and sharing helpful resources) and self-promotion can be hard to distinguish, so we’re relying on our community values and the community itself to keep an eye on that gray area. If you see a post that feels like self-promotion, please flag it for our moderation team. You can also let the person know directly that you feel like this post isn’t following our guidelines. When doing this, be sure to assume good intent! They may not realize that they sound like an advertisement.

Finally, we want to note that this policy may change as our community grows. We will adapt our policy to best fit our community as the need arises.

Thank you again to our Community Champions for helping us update our self-promotion policy! If you’d like to be a part of these types of conversations in the future, keep an eye out for how you can join our next cohort of Champions!