Why I stopped selling courses on Udemy (2014)

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.

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%).

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/ 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.

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

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

Their motto change quickly.

(2014)

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

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.