Udemy

Thanks, @Bella. Wish you the best for the future. 🖖 ... View more

Go to performance > Revenue report > click on current month march 2023 you will see the transaction details there. I guess following has occurred  the student used your promotion url to visit course searched course on Udemy separately  due to deals programs on your courses the lower price offer was suitable for purchase which student chose to execute. The coupon code in transaction will inform you that piece. please tag a community administrator for getting attention faster. readup about deals programs in teaching center. ... View more

So the bad ratings triggered by the low quality audio are actually due the platform using lower resolution content and nothing to do with content we uploaded. Is that fair? ... View more

Check out the marketing insights tool on the instructor course management page. Opinion: Udemy is saturated with the topics you mentioned. Doing it as a side hustle might not generate the desired revenues. There aren't many junior high students on Udemy. Considering a cramped market, longer time is needed for content creation and mixing with education, so Udemy might not be a good fit. Instead, you may explore shorter content platforms to understand content creation and revenue models better. I am being practical. Also, the courses don't sell at the prices mentioned; most classes sell under the deals program, yielding less income. You may build an audience first on the social media platform. That is the key to selling; as you might discover, that market is saturated too. Try posting 100+ reels without bothering about the likes etc., on Instagram. Tiktok, Shortz. Then you will have the most precise idea about your target audience. ... View more

It's all based on revenue. As a new instructor in the saturated programming space, I can safely inform the forum that being here is only stressful. The revenue achievement posts, with few exceptions, are just bragging and sometimes even demotivating after looking at the course quality fueling the sales. The biased selling algorithms, template responses in the community, and missing platform features are a daily drain. It's just another social media platform in most ways, and the drain is exponentially higher since a course is a single post at the end of the day. Such generic posts where all instructors get clubbed under a single category sometimes seem insensitive. Most will overlook the facts, assuming I am bad at selling, hence complaining. I have written many posts with data, so best to keep this one short for sanity. 🙂 🖖 ... View more

I noticed this behavior and concluded that the first anonymous purchase might be the (contract-based) reviewer hired by Udemy. You might have noticed that only instructors and co-creators have admin rights to watch content in a dedicated preview mode. A discount coupon for third-party contracts/or full-time employee reviewers can be accommodated to save software costs. To get paid, they must refund the course. I can imagine the sales algorithms ignoring the first few sales; this is cleanly swiped under the carpet. @Bella, please confirm with the product team if such mechanisms are in place. ... View more

Please update the question with the screenshot to help readers. Thanks. ... View more

Please add a screenshot to help readers understand the exact page. If you are talking about the course landing page, then have you confirmed that all the Mandatory fields and word limit requirements are met? Is the any other error message in pop ups? ... View more

Your assumption that all Udemy courses sell at listed prices as seen publicly are misplaced. I request you go over these forums in depth. All your questions have been answered in past. In short, the quick passive income strategy is no longer valid in the saturated topics. Use the marketing insights tool to understand the details around the low median earnings of most courses. Please use the getting started links about course creation in the teaching center. You will benefit by reading pinned posts on all the boards/forums as well. Hope this helps. ... View more

Tough news to process as a human being, but such is the nature of business. Thanks, @ChrystieV, for informing the community. Let's hope the trends change in a positive direction for the industry in the coming months. 🤞 ... View more

Apart from the options in the drop-down in the top panel of the page, there is no other customization available for ordering the list. ... View more

Please post a screenshot to help readers understand the problem better. How many words have you added exactly? Was it some system glitch in the backend that has got now? Are you using any browser plugins that might interfere with the portal page? ... View more

@Thor assuming you replied to my post. I mean common Udemy maintained courses. The platform experience being dissociated from community queries might reduce burden and frequency of usage related questions and bad reviews related grievances. If a product team runs those courses, they get the feedback directly instead of convoluted email and community media. Just a thought.   The cloud vendors have such getting started courses running as automated environments so something the user experience team at Udemy might be able to adopt after necessary tweaks. ... View more

@ChrystieVAdding a few more ideas based on the conversation till now. As a relatively new community member, I could easily see the noise suppressing polite queries unintentionally.  This is a common problem across the medium itself, not just this forum but the internet in general. There is no silver bullet, but my concern is about burning out people who are genuinely engaging for the betterment of the community and reaching out voluntarily. This includes instructors as well as community managers.   The following suggestions might reduce the workload and help human intervention organically. ( Based on my limited experience and opinions.) 1. The instructor badge ranking system seems to have increased the noise. Toning down hierarchies might help. Only being vocal getting incentivized over adding value is an issue. I understand it's a tightrope to walk. But "less is more" should be prioritized. 2. Make instructor and student onboarding courses mandatory before moving to the following stages. Instructors must know about all tools before publishing, and students about the platform. Make free course completion a check.  Won't eliminate issues, but it might reduce the unanswered backlog. 3. Publish more stats fortnightly or monthly. The earning milestone posts can be autogenerated. Limit the response to likes and disable comments.  Publish category-wise earnings distribution monthly. Holding back the earner's name will do. The trends matter. Automated dashboard alerts for instructors about payment issues might reduce confusion. 4. Publish the top categories of posts per month as word clouds. As mentioned, sometimes, knowing others face the same issue is all one wants to hear.  Having a daily updated banner might be too fancy. 5. Publish the instructor partners list regularly. It's a built-in indication of being familiar with the platform. If the instructor partners are not active in the community, then much experience-based information will continue to get reposted. Here is an example of a similar situation with a famous text editor called Vim https://stackoverflow.blog/2017/05/23/stack-overflow-helping-one-million-developers-exit-vim/  6. A nuanced feedback system beyond ratings is needed. This will need some initiatives across the platform, but AFAIK, it's an innovation that might easily earn a couple of years of advantage over competitors. The ad-seller platform mentality heavily influences the current system. The anxiety in the community posts reflects the same. The average content quality confirms the same. The lack of incentives for accountability towards the community proves the same. 7. Removing inactive members' access might improve the login rate. But logging in to maintain active status rarely add value to the conversation.   A (even more) random thought, as long as this community is closed to the student's views, the accountability aspect will never happen. The moment actions here become part of the public image of the instructors among potential customers, the community will go from Twitter to Instagram overnight! I guess we are looking for a middle ground. If only I could think of some monetary correlation to design such an incentive... 😃     ... View more

@ChrystieV , the tags should be a predetermined set from which instructor should pick while posting. Example, beginner, course creation, finance. You may check Dev.to for a sample user experience. ... View more

I agree. Instead, the ability to add "tags" and filter the latest streams based on tags might provide a richer experience. Minimum 1 and Max 3 tags per thread while creation could suffice. ... View more

You seem to have chosen this course's "Practice Test" option. I don't think that's reversible. Try creating a new course, and select the other option at the beginning of the course creation flow. ... View more

Thanks, @Bella. Appreciate you following up.   The following is for the management or strategy team. The information is insufficient for me to create courses about two high-priority topics. I have the right diverse experience to provide a course with practical first-hand experience-based advice, but if it is not going to sell, what's the point? This experience is like going through the rigors of medical school only to sell snake oil door to door.   UFB is a walled garden. I fell for this trap by creating a "High priority" course based on UFB insights and had to unpublish because of one low rating and close to zero marketplace traction. Some of my courses apply to every single person coding, and yet no reach out from the UFB team to improve the course for "Business priority." These confusing legal terms and conditions brand responses are painful reminders of being just a row on some excel in a meeting room full of geniuses waiting for their stocks to vest or just being numb to reality. Either way, the new instructor experience is getting worst by the week. The influx of more is just going to lead to more irrelevant content. A few months back, the UFB customer count was 17K, then saw 14 K a few weeks ago, and today it was 12.5 K on the landing page banner. I thought joining Udemy might help me focus on teaching instead of reverse engineering some convoluted strategies of someone trying to prove their worth by creating more confusion under the name of innovation. But clearly, Conway's law is universal.   ... View more

@RyanJaress could the priority list also mention the expected audience size? Without knowing the target audience it’s hard to decide if it’s worth pursuing and the extent of effort that needs to be put in. ... View more

@Bella, Thanks for starting the thread. Following are my two cents and opinions/rant. Not targeting any individual, the data is in marketplace insights. Many observations might not apply to every category, but I can vouch for them as factual stats since they apply to the content I am posting. The rating system is broken. Improve it. The 4.4 ratings heuristic is built in retrospect. A more straightforward like/dislike-based approach might help. At least update the rating calculation to be average across the last 90 days OR the previous 20 ratings. The window protects the newer longer courses with slower organic growth. Show only ratings, not the numbers accumulated since launch. If the rating reflects 90 days, why show the more significant number against it? The same applies to total registrations as well. That creates a bias in the mind of the viewer. Let SEO drive the traffic; promo and previews decide the outcome. Remove spammers and bot accounts. I can provide a list of accounts that abused my naive goodwill of sharing free coupons earlier. UFB inclusion should be more instructor friendly. Have a separate program where content can be created and polished with the assurance of inclusion. The bloated and irrelevant courses are killing technical learning significantly. Set some standards. The influx of new instructors will result in the same content creation story, bloating the platform at the mercy of SEO. How about an instructor onboarding course that is a prerequisite to launch the first course? Categorization is still very stringent. Some older courses abuse the momentum to add unnecessary content and retain the benevolence of sales algorithms. Coupons are cluttered. Spending time finding shady coupon-sharing sites is disgusting. Abolish the complexity. Simple models work. Udemy owns pricing, and the income share depends on who generated the lead, just like now. Create a preview link for instructors to share with no access to ratings or is considered minutes watched and wholly isolated from marketplace stats. "Get initial reviews from family and friends" is a metric of the instructors bonding in their "social circle," not the content sold. It is a false metric by design! Start a paid course incubator program with lower early access prices. Selling courses here and entertaining the audience on other platforms for resale is inefficient. With over 50 million accounts being mentioned in sales pitches, Udemy MUST invest in an interactive forum tool for instructors to post to the audience efficiently. Not just their students but the entire audience. Reddit and Quora might be better case studies. Demographic information is crucial for success. Gen Z scrolls midway through a 15-second reel. Selling them knowledge means knowing a lot more about the content interactions as well. Of course, this factor does not affect everyone, but I firmly believe beginner-level courses are susceptible to being "boring" far more quickly. Per-video, like, and dislike options to get granular feedback and student interactions. If the best length is 2-7 minutes, why allow an upload outside that reference? "Eating your dog food." Have product managers run high-quality courses about content creation and become community champions organically. If instructor partners have a say in platform improvements, then the program should be more inclusive to get better diversity. The lack of SEO tools integration in the course creation suite and broken browser integrations in many text fields make search compatibility a nightmare. Focus on the last mile. Youtube Courses is launching to capitalize on this internationalization opportunity. Udemy has missed this for years; people prefer to learn complex things in their mother tongue. No data to share or not sharing it is killing this growth opportunity. It's rare to find technical experts who are multilingual and good at teaching. Find them and groom them. Finally, Udemy needs to wake up to capitalize on the slowdown in big tech. The udemy certificates in tech interviews are becoming a red flag. Earning back credibility with simplicity is possible. Start with decluttering the landing page and take a leaf from search engines, not content portals that drown the viewers into the abyss of cringe. Innovation is still legal; not following the footsteps of social media platforms might be the easiest thing to do. Use their tech, not their incentives. 🙂 Edit: I found this moments after posting https://www.wired.com/story/tiktok-platforms-cory-doctorow/ ... View more

Unfortunately, many policies are not applied in retrospect. I, too, realized some inconsistencies the hard way. 🙂 ... View more

It is mentioned in one of the links that policy teams will flag it; I don't have it handy. Just work with them to get the necessary compliance and move on. Logos are allowed but not explicit text like course titles etc. ... View more

Looking forward to the recording. ... View more

AFAIK it will get overridden by the web player. I checked the preview lectures to confirm since I haven't used ScreenFlow. The player in the preview doesn't seem to recognize the markers. - You may preview the lectures through the "curriculum" in the course creation and admin suite. - You could also check through preview from incognito or logged out session of Udemy.   ... View more

Did you try Opting out of deals programs? ... View more

I have the following questions/suggestions. The rating system needs an overhaul. The "5 stars" is unclear enough to understand the rating. Reduce it to a "like" based binary. Profiles must show a clear trending rating for the last 90 days and a separate overall rating. There are categories where old courses pile on irrelevant content and still retain the highest rating and sales. How is it fair? UFB inclusion is a mystery; now, a personal plan has become part of the mix. Inactive accounts and a trolling tendency among students needs to be penalized. A dissatisfactory review and an irrelevant review have no separation. Course categorization is again not helping new courses in a crowded space. The "Marketing tool" advice of great opportunity leads to creating a dud which no one will end up seeing in search results. How are new categories being selected and shaped for instructors? Any plans to reduce the content clutter by removing inactive courses? No data is available to decide if making a course in the local language is a worthy endeavor. Without search evolving, such content may remain hidden. Any suggestions on this front? If new instructors cannot succeed in the existing ecosystem, stop accepting new courses for a quarter or so. With so few student interaction tools, it's hard already; the rest of the hidden signals make it closer to being miserable.   edit: feature requests  drip content optional content flag to allow a partial coverage based completion  allow multiple levels for content like “beginner and intermediate” or other permutations. ... View more

I cannot comment on behalf of students and mislead you. I would suggest uploading a course in English from a separate account and gauge the market. If it works well link the two accounts else stick to your strengths. You may check the teaching center resources for how to manage two accounts. Hopefully this helps. All the best! ... View more

Maybe dropping a mail to the instructor support id might get you more information. Or just raising a support ticket might help you reach the right person. ... View more

Was surprised to see "sleep" as a high-priority demand in UFB so checked the marketplace and found this gem of a result from the search algorithm! (Check the number of ratings in both)   ... View more