State of Udemy 2019

The State of Udemy is our opportunity to renew our commitment to you, the instructor, and let you know what improvements you can expect over the next several months.  Before we unveil what we’ve been building to help you succeed at Udemy, we hope you’ll join us in welcoming Udemy’s new CEO, Gregg Coccari. With a record-breaking year behind us — 10 million new students, 12,000 new instructors, and 35,000 new courses — we’re excited Gregg is here to help take Udemy to the next level.

So, what’s happening for instructors in 2019?

 

Setting you up for success

 

Over the last few years, we’ve added tons of resources and tools to help you build your teaching business on Udemy. But we know it hasn’t always been easy to figure out how to use them all. This year, we’re making it easier than ever to create better content, reach more students with your marketing, and get the most out of the time you spend on Udemy.

 

• Bringing the Instructor Community home: We brought the Instructor Community from Facebook to Udemy to give you better access to the collective wisdom of your colleagues. Now organized, searchable, and connected directly to your instructor profile, the Community has already welcomed over 9,000 members since its launch in February. If you haven’t already, why not click on over and check it out?
• Relaunching the Teaching Center: We overhauled the Teaching Center, your destination for learning the ins and outs of online instruction, and distilled it to the most impactful, up-to-date content. No more hunting through page after page to try and find the right resource — simply search and get right to what you need to increase your video quality, drive more enrollments, or learn what’s new at Udemy.
• Polishing the instructor view: We introduced the new instructor view, a sleeker experience with more intuitive organization, so you can easily toggle between the student and instructor experience and get right to your to-do list.
• Enabling cross-platform search: Best of all, you can now search across the Community, the Teaching Center, and the Support Center with a single click.

 

Growing your business (and ours)

 

Today, 30 million students have come to Udemy to learn from you. We believe there are millions more out there, and we’ll continue to make huge investments to reach them in 2019.

 

• Attracting and serving more students:  This year you’ll see us invest in bringing new students to the platform, as well as giving existing students the incentive to invest in their learning. This includes continuing to refine our categories and subcategories, investing in new marketing channels like mobile-specific advertising, and using data to create powerfully personal recommendations.
• Improving pricing: Because we want sale prices to better reflect the value your courses bring students, we’re continuing to test, pilot, and improve differentiated pricing. We’ve already rolled it out in a few countries — and we’re looking to take it worldwide by the end of the year. We’ll also be building updated tools for your marketing and promotions that let you take advantage of improvements to our pricing systems. Look for these later in the year.

 

Going (even more) global

 

Finally, we continue to see massive potential in connecting students and instructors around the world. So we’re doubling down on expanding your reach.

 

• Investing in the mobile experience: Students are increasingly seeking, purchasing, and taking your courses on the go, so we’re making it even easier for them by improving the student mobile experience. This is particularly important for students in developing countries who rely on mobile phones for internet access.
• Offering more languages and payment options: Another key to more enrollments is making your courses available to as many people as possible. As we continue to break down barriers in learning, you’ll see support for even more languages, currencies, and payment options.
• Expanding Udemy for Business: For instructors whose content serves corporate learners, Udemy for Business (UFB) continues to be a rapidly-growing opportunity. We’ll continue investing to bring your content to companies around the world as we launch our first international UFB collections in German and Spanish.

 

And if taking your courses around the world wasn’t exciting enough, we’re taking our annual instructor conference on the road, too. We hope you’ll consider joining us in Berlin for Udemy LIVE 2019.  

We’re so glad you’ve decided to take your instructor journey on Udemy, and we hope you love what we’re working on. Thank you for all you do to make Udemy what it is.

 

Teach on,

Frank Visciano

SVP of Marketplace Operations at Udemy