Hi all,
Thanks for the continued questions. I'll try to address several inquiries together here.
@Parker: I believe you created a separate thread regarding the trends you're sharing, and you'll get a more detailed response there. In general, the trends you're describing aren't universal -- we've continued to see growth, and continued to see sales driven by paid channels rise with Udemy's increased investment in growth.
@derekm1215: We definitely keep instructor costs in mind whenever we make changes to anything that would affect your return on investment. This includes pricing, promotions, revenue share, Q&A features, support changes, and more.
Overall, we don't expect that this change will meaningfully alter the average share instructors take home in 2021. Based on historical data and trends, we expect that in 2021 this system will result in the same division of revenue between Udemy and most instructors, and between Udemy and instructors overall.
To address a point both you and @EveWilliams made, it's not the case that all "big" instructors or courses will see an upside, while all "smaller" instructors or courses will see a reduction. Improvements to Udemy's marketing systems have resulted in a much greater number of courses getting sales from paid channels than would have been the case a few years ago. It's not just the top 1% or 10% of courses that get paid traffic, and all courses have the potential to benefit from the increased audience brought in by paid channels (today, many do). If we want to continue these investments (which we do! we want to keep growing for and with instructors), revenue share can't rest on real-time, 1:1 attribution.
@EveWilliams, to your larger point about trust:
We recognize that changes like this can be difficult to parse and to plan around. There are two ways we can earn trust when we make these kinds of changes: by communicating clearly, and by delivering results. Our goal with the new revenue share model is to continue to provide instructors with opportunities to monetize their expertise, which means continuing to invest in growth. We hope and expect that as time goes on, instructors will benefit from that continued investment.
No change, whether it's a new policy, a new feature or a new growth strategy, will affect every instructor the same way. In a marketplace we can't ever guarantee that every instructor will see the same level of return. Our focus is on continuing to grow, continuing to adapt to changes in the world and in the online education space, and continuing to reward instructors who deliver the content and the results students are looking for.
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