4 ms·

The Udemy Pyramid Scheme – Why I stopped Teaching at Udemy

22 points by royosherove 12y ago

shopinterest 12y ago
I think its based on ecommerce limitations and AdWords logic/tracking. Obviously Udemy cannot rely on pure 'organic' growth (instructors bringing students), so, Udemy would spend $x to get a user into the platform. If that user ends up in your class, Udemy paid for that student, not you, so it wouldn't make sense to reward you at the same level. Furthermore, I do understand the 'winner takes all' mentality of source tracking for retailers and affiliates. Only very, very sophisticated systems can track multi-source/multi touch and even less can do multi attribution on the fly. (e.g. you brought an Udemy student but he/she decided to use your code on someone else's class, then what? who gets what?....ad absurdum) Something in your head such as, 'why don't we all share revenue equally' is really hard to do in practice once you have to pay for growth. Someone pays for a student, or you bring your own, once at Udemy, many scenarios can happen. I do agree that a more graceful way to do this would be to give that preference for a given period of time (e.g. your student, the one you brought in December gets you 90%, but after your class, that student is taking other classes, so someone else should/may get that higher credit. Ultimately, you are right in that more 'competition' to bring new users seems to be the objective of the arrangement, but at least it rewards the right behavior. You want to reward the best teachers (for acquisition and retention purposes) so while it seems 'unfair' compared top the old system, the old system doesn't scale once Udemy starts paying for traffic. I know, sucks, but this one decision seems less motivated by greed than by the struggle of marketing spend attribution and growth
jlawer 12y ago
This instructor doesn't feel that 25-50% is a fair split for the effort of teaching the course. Given that he is now selling the course directly most likely backs this up. I am not familiar with the specifics, but I think it would be hard to argue that 50% of costs in running a online training course are administrative. One could also quite fairly argue that taking another 25% to cover paid ads either indicates that either Udemy is unfairly putting majority of the costs of marketing on the instructor OR that Paid Ads are an ineffective marketing option (50% of sales price going towards marketing?!?). Udemy needs to either offer more value to earn their cut, or optimize so they can afford to take less.
- ScottWhigham 12y ago
  but I think it would be hard to argue that 50% of costs in running a online training course are administrative... Udemy needs to either offer more value to earn their cut, or optimize so they can afford to take less. Your comment might be even remotely true if udemy was a not-for-profit company but that's not the case. The goal of a company isn't to have a net-zero sum at the end of the year (no profit). How much did udemy spend on advertising in the past years? Because the result of that advertising is what the OP is going to "cash in" on with his unbelievably high 50% revenue cut. How many conferences did udemy go to as a sponsor/have-a-booth? How many training sessions did they send their employees to so that their website + backend would be amazing fast and available? Go to Microsoft Virtual Academy, or to Cisco, or to Oracle/etc, and ask them how much you will get paid if they do the same thing as udemy is doing. Go to O'Reilly and ask them, or Lynda.com, etc. How much will Packt pay you to write a book? Complaining about a 50% revenue share is like complaining about a $49 airplane ticket from NY to Paris. First, you're talking about a small group who need to or have ever flown from NY to Paris, and second your price point is likely 100% lower than the lowest fare anyone else has ever paid. So that leaves one solution: start your own airline and DIY (which is, in effect, what it appears the OP did).

22 points by royosherove 12y ago

I think its based on ecommerce limitations and AdWords logic/tracking. Obviously Udemy cannot rely on pure 'organic' growth (instructors bringing students), so, Udemy would spend $x to get a user into the platform. If that user ends up in your class, Udemy paid for that student, not you, so it wouldn't make sense to reward you at the same level. Furthermore, I do understand the 'winner takes all' mentality of source tracking for retailers and affiliates. Only very, very sophisticated systems can track multi-source/multi touch and even less can do multi attribution on the fly. (e.g. you brought an Udemy student but he/she decided to use your code on someone else's class, then what? who gets what?....ad absurdum) Something in your head such as, 'why don't we all share revenue equally' is really hard to do in practice once you have to pay for growth. Someone pays for a student, or you bring your own, once at Udemy, many scenarios can happen. I do agree that a more graceful way to do this would be to give that preference for a given period of time (e.g. your student, the one you brought in December gets you 90%, but after your class, that student is taking other classes, so someone else should/may get that higher credit. Ultimately, you are right in that more 'competition' to bring new users seems to be the objective of the arrangement, but at least it rewards the right behavior. You want to reward the best teachers (for acquisition and retention purposes) so while it seems 'unfair' compared top the old system, the old system doesn't scale once Udemy starts paying for traffic. I know, sucks, but this one decision seems less motivated by greed than by the struggle of marketing spend attribution and growth

jlawer 12y ago

This instructor doesn't feel that 25-50% is a fair split for the effort of teaching the course. Given that he is now selling the course directly most likely backs this up. I am not familiar with the specifics, but I think it would be hard to argue that 50% of costs in running a online training course are administrative. One could also quite fairly argue that taking another 25% to cover paid ads either indicates that either Udemy is unfairly putting majority of the costs of marketing on the instructor OR that Paid Ads are an ineffective marketing option (50% of sales price going towards marketing?!?). Udemy needs to either offer more value to earn their cut, or optimize so they can afford to take less.

ScottWhigham 12y ago
but I think it would be hard to argue that 50% of costs in running a online training course are administrative... Udemy needs to either offer more value to earn their cut, or optimize so they can afford to take less. Your comment might be even remotely true if udemy was a not-for-profit company but that's not the case. The goal of a company isn't to have a net-zero sum at the end of the year (no profit). How much did udemy spend on advertising in the past years? Because the result of that advertising is what the OP is going to "cash in" on with his unbelievably high 50% revenue cut. How many conferences did udemy go to as a sponsor/have-a-booth? How many training sessions did they send their employees to so that their website + backend would be amazing fast and available? Go to Microsoft Virtual Academy, or to Cisco, or to Oracle/etc, and ask them how much you will get paid if they do the same thing as udemy is doing. Go to O'Reilly and ask them, or Lynda.com, etc. How much will Packt pay you to write a book? Complaining about a 50% revenue share is like complaining about a $49 airplane ticket from NY to Paris. First, you're talking about a small group who need to or have ever flown from NY to Paris, and second your price point is likely 100% lower than the lowest fare anyone else has ever paid. So that leaves one solution: start your own airline and DIY (which is, in effect, what it appears the OP did).