
Why I stopped selling courses on Udemy (2014) - hoodoof
http://osherove.com/blog/2014/5/7/why-i-stopped-selling-courses-on-udemy.html
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patio11
Udemy presumably thinks that the relevant comparison for students they bring
you isn't 100% of the sale, it is zero, because but for Udemy that sale
wouldn't exist. If you don't want to pay for a built-in userbase, build your
own platform -- start an email list, build it up gradually by delighting
people, and then sell stuff to them. You'll keep 95% of the gross.

Also charge more. That's the single worst thing Udemy does to instructors:
their incentive is to build platform (user signups) but yours is to build
revenue, so they will dictate pricing low, but you want to price high. Same
story on App Store.

~~~
WestCoastJustin
You nailed it.

    
    
      1. start an email list
      2. build it up gradually by delighting people
      3. sell stuff to them
    

I have followed this method. Although, the gradually part took about two years
;)

~~~
bbody
Roy does this already. He has a lot of his courses on Fedora.

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arikrak
Udemy was able to get teachers to use their platform by sharing most of the
revenue with them, but once they had a large platform, they cut the revenue
sharing dramatically. It's very hard for competitors to take on a dominant
platform,even Craigslist still manages to dominate many areas.

However instructors can list their courses on both Udemy and on other sites,
so this could be something a competitor could try to build off. Perhaps
competitors can chip away at specific niches of Udemy, just as happened to
Craigslist. For example, one site could focus on business, while another
covered web design. Personally, I would be interested in building up a
platform around programming courses.

This site could offer a number of improvement over Udemy, such as coding
challenges and a better format for video. It could also instructors a
guaranteed lifetime revenue share above a certain point (say 75%).

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WestCoastJustin
Creating quality content is the hard part. Learning hubs need to offer value
added services, especially to programmers, as we can just create our own
platforms, and go direct. I run
[https://sysadmincasts.com/](https://sysadmincasts.com/) a weekly screencast
for sysadmins, and have been approached to create on-line courses (not by
udemy, but several similar sites). The thought of adding a middle man is
almost sickening, as it takes countless hours to create something worth
watching, so why give money away?!

Don't get me wrong, I like the idea of an on-line learning hub, where you can
add courses as needed. But as a creator, it also sucks to work extremely hard
to create something, and then have someone step in and take half of it (or
more). So, there are some things to be worked out.

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vvpan
I don't think the author is using the term "pyramid scheme" correctly.

~~~
curo
Perhaps not, but he points out at least two similarities:

\- Earlier members get bigger payouts

\- Udemy is making $0 off the first recruiting member, which would otherwise
be unsustainable, if it weren't recovering that money off future members.

(members = teachers)

~~~
bbcbasic
A pyramid scheme means the main way to make money is by recruiting more people
to join the scheme. And the only way to obtain the privilege to recruit people
is to pay to join.

The main way to make money on udemy is by selling courses (your own, or other
people's as an affiliate).

> Earlier members get bigger payouts

I don't see how this is true.

> Udemy is making $0 off the first recruiting member, which would otherwise be
> unsustainable, if it weren't recovering that money off future members

It is called a loss leader. Supermarkets do this, they are not pyramids.

P.S. I know someone will think it, but it is not a Ponzi either :-)

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fffrad
Every start up that looks like a game changer soon realize that they actually
need money.

Their motto change quickly.

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gvb
(2014)

Looks like it still has the same revenue share scheme that Roy complained
about. [https://teach.udemy.com/](https://teach.udemy.com/)

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brianbreslin
That explains why they send out so many ads for 90% off courses. The author
would get almost nothing anyway so their hit isn't terrible.

~~~
arikrak
In those cases, I think the author agrees to only get a cut of the remaining
10%.

