Hi all. Thanks for asking good questions and really seeking to understand goals and plans around the new subscription offering.
@Joshua George: You asked if courses in Personal Plan will require exclusivity. The short answer is yes. However, currently, the only content considered for inclusion in the Personal Plan is content that's already included in Udemy for Business. So effectively, there aren't any new requirements with respect to exclusivity
@JonAvis865: You asked about promotional announcements. For instructors, this will function similarly to Udemy for Business. Students who enroll in your course through Udemy for Business can view educational announcements you post to your course, but by default they won't receive email notifications for promotional or educational announcements. It will work the same in Personal Plan.
Then, to the question around revenue share ( @CarlosDeLeon @LawrenceMMiller, others). You're all correct that the reason we adjusted Udemy for Business revenue share from 50% to 25% a few years ago was to enable the investments that drove greater overall revenue for both Udemy and instructors. It's a similar idea for the individual subscription.
In order to make subscriptions successful -- where "success" is higher revenue overall for instructors and for Udemy -- we need to make significant investments that don't exist for a la carte purchases. This does include some short-term investments, such as building the required infrastructure, but it also includes some ongoing, additional marketing investments that are different from those required to drive a one-time sale.
Acquiring and retaining a subscription customer can be more complex and costly, but with returns that make the investment worth it. The value of a subscription offering is in retention: not just getting someone's attention and convincing them to make a one-time payment, but creating an experience that keeps them subscribing for months or even years.
We agree with Lawrence that the most important question is whether overall you make more revenue (assuming the work required of you is the same). Our work so far in individual subscriptions has strongly suggested that we can create higher returns for participating instructors by adding a subscription option than by continuing with only the direct purchase option.
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