Hey @MichaelPog, I think I confused both you and @Bella with a poor explanation here -- let me jump in directly to try and remedy that.
1 is correct, ultimately, but I want to take a second crack at explaining this statement, which used too few words to hint at too much math: "As long as trialers are consuming roughly the same content as subscribers, this doesn’t actually affect instructor payouts for Personal Plan, since it’s relative consumption that determines your share of instructor revenue pool."
Instructor payouts for Personal Plan are determined by two things: the total money being paid by subscribers for a particular month, and the proportion of minutes spent on each instructor's content. If subscriber payments create an instructor revenue pool of $10,000 in a month and an instructor accounts for 2% of total minutes of consumption, that instructor will get $200. Trialers don't contribute anything to the money being paid in, of course, but they do contribute minutes to the pool. Ultimately, though, the number of minutes doesn't determine payout; the proportion of minutes do.
If trialers consumed really different content than paying subscribers, then including them would change how much each instructor takes home, since the proportional minutes for each course would be different. But if trialers' consumption patterns are basically the same as paying subscribers', then the proportional minutes consumed is the same either way, and instructor payouts aren't actually affected by including or excluding them.
I'll illustrate with an example, using an imaginary miniature subscription:
Let's say in March there are just three courses in the subscription: A, B, and C.
Trialers spend 100 minutes on A, 400 on B, and 500 on C (total 1000)
Subscribers spend 50 on A, 200 on B, and 250 on C (total 500)
The net instructor revenue is $100
If we include trial minutes in the revenue calculation...
A has 150 minutes, B has 600, and C has 750 (total 1500)
A would get 10% of the payout, B would get 40%, and C would get 50%.
A would get $10, B would get $40, and C would get $50.
If we exclude them and only look at paying subscribers...
A still has 10% of the payout, B still has 40%, C still has 50%.
A still gets $10, B still gets $40, C still has $50.
Currently, we don't have reason to believe trialers consume content in a substantially different way than paying subscribers. We exclude their consumption today to ensure we're directly rewarding instructors whose content is getting engagement from our most valuable learners, and to avoid a situation where someone could sign up for free and deliberately consume content differently to skew proportional minutes and influence instructor payouts.
Does this make any more sense than the first attempt?
Then, while I'm in the neighborhood: @EveWilliams to your question about exclusivity, I want to emphasize that there aren't any new exclusivity requirements here. The Udemy Business content collection and the Personal Plan collection are generally the same (with some differences in addition/removal timing, as noted above). So, the only content with an exclusivity requirement is content that was already in Udemy Business, which has had that requirement for several years already. If what you're doing now is working for you, you shouldn't expect that staying the course on exclusivity (no pun intended) will change your performance. I hope that helps clarify.
Zooming out, I appreciate all the questions in this thread. They've made me realize that although we've announced the fundamental aspects of Personal Plan as we've rolled it out and grown the pilot, those details are scattered across a lot of blog posts and not easily referenced. With the pilot hitting its stride, it's a great time for us to move information about the program (what content is included, how instructors are paid, etc.) into a more permanent home in our Help Center. We'll work on getting a resource up in the next few weeks, and appreciate you helping us understand what's crucial for you to know when it comes to individual subscriptions.
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