The latest on Personal Plan: more countries, more ways to pay (and get paid)

In August, we announced that Personal Plan – Udemy’s subscription offering for individual learners – would be expanding to include more languages and countries. Over the last few months, we’ve introduced Personal Plan collections in Spanish, Portuguese, and German. This means that in addition to course purchases, learners in Spain, Mexico, Brazil, and Germany now have the option to subscribe to a collection of top-rated content in tech, business, and more.

 

We’re continuing to introduce Personal Plan in new regions, and to innovate on the ways individual learners can engage with the subscription. Read on for an update on this work.

 

1. Expanding English-language subscription access

 

As part of our ongoing expansion, we’ve begun to offer the English Personal Plan collection in more countries where English is spoken as a primary language, or where there are many learners with strong English proficiency. This includes Canada, India, Israel, Indonesia, and the Netherlands. We look forward to helping learners in these countries build a long-term relationship with learning through Personal Plan.

 

 

2. Deepening guidance for career-oriented learners

 

We’ve shared before that Personal Plan learners tend to be career-focused and committed to learning. Our research suggested that some of these learners needed more assistance mapping their career aims to learning goals, and identifying which courses could help them reach those goals.

 

To better provide this assistance, we’ve begun piloting occupation-specific landing pages within Personal Plan to help learners get right to the content most relevant to them. Additionally, we’ve built out career guides for a select few roles, such as “Web Developer.” These guides help learners understand the different skills required to excel in specific jobs, and allow them to explore the content that will help them build those skills.

 

Our goal with these experiences is not to create a static path through a fixed set of courses, but to leverage our data to continually suggest the most relevant courses to each subscriber based on their goals. We’ve seen these experiences improve learner conversion and engagement so far, and we plan to continue to refine and expand them over time.

 

 

3. Introducing an annual payment option

 

For committed learners who are ready to make an upfront investment in their own development, an annual plan can offer more value than a monthly one. To better serve these high-value learners, we’ve begun testing an annual payment option in certain countries, such as the United States and Australia. 

 

The exact annual price of Personal Plan differs from country to country according to the local monthly plan price and other factors. Generally, an annual payment plan offers a more cost-effective rate than paying month to month, and requires upfront payment for the full year. Early results have indicated healthy interest in this payment option, and we plan to expand it to more countries in the future.

 

Instructor payments for annual subscriptions

For payout of October earnings and onward for individual subscription earnings, annual subscription payments will be included as part of monthly instructor revenue calculations. A prorated portion of each subscriber’s annual total will be added to the instructor revenue pool each month. Payment for learner engagement in earlier tests of an annual subscription payment option will be issued as a one-time miscellaneous payment in the most recent revenue report.

 

Finally, we want to ensure instructors who successfully promote to these valuable learners are rewarded, whether that promotion results in a purchase or a subscription. If a learner who came to Udemy through an instructor coupon or referral link signs up for an annual subscription, we’ll issue the instructor a subscriber signup payment equal to 100% of the prorated first month’s net subscription payment (vs. 50% for a monthly subscriber). This is in addition to the 25% of each net subscription payment set aside for engagement-based instructor payments. You can read more about subscriber signup payments in our Personal Plan Instructor FAQ.

 

 

We’re excited to be able to offer both a purchase and a subscription option to more and more individual learners around the globe. We’ve already seen these efforts drive increased learner activation, engagement, and retention, and we’ve only just begun. Whether you already have content included in Personal Plan or you aspire to, we hope you’re excited to help these committed learners build the skills they need to succeed.