Udemy Promotional Pricing | Testing Opting Out – Bad Idea

I really like Udemy.

They have an excellent platform and it’s getting better all the time. If you are making your first online course, Udemy is the best.

When creating an online course, there are a dump truck of little things to get stuck on. Udemy is building a platform to manage those little things for instructors like myself. New instructors get to focus on building their course and serving their students, rather than understanding the JavaScript library and other platform problems like that.

Software, hosting, credit card processing, internet traffic and a million other little things are no longer on the teacher’s ‘to-do’ list. Udemy is a great partner and if you have the opportunity to work with them, take it. It’s a great offer.

Alas, our podcast production business is growing into a larger organization. It’s important that our teaching reflects that growth too.

For that reason, I’m exploring removing our podcast production course from Udemy’s Promotional Pricing for a short time. I’ll test the results and share those results here.

TLDR? Important Stuff First

Professional Podcast Production Stats:

• Course published April 2015
• Course has been on Udemy for 21 months
• $6,009 is Freedom Podcasting’s profit for that period
• $273.15 is the average profit per month over that 21 month period
• We’ve agreed to the Udemy Deals Program for this entire period
• We opted out of the Udemy Deals Program on January 8th, 2017

What is Udemy Promotional Pricing?

There are two parts of the Udemy Promotional Pricing:

1. Percentage Promotions – Udemy’s sales team offers the teachers course at a discount of up to 75% depending on the time of year and the promotion
2. Fixed-Price Promotions – Udemy’s sales team offers the teachers course at a specified price. This is the clause that, as far as I understand it, makes it so that many instructors often see their courses listed at $10.

Why We’re Testing Opting Out

Price is a signal of quality – I’m confident that the course is worth more and it’s important that incoming students know that they are signing up for something that is really going to teach them. A low price signals that the course doesn’t need to be taken quite as seriously.

We’re really confident with the course. We have more than twenty students who have gone through the course and created their own podcasts which live on the iTunes store.

Status Updates

Jan 8th, 2017

Even though I removed the podcast production course from Udemy Promotional Pricing, that doesn’t mean the course will be removed from current promotions. We’re currently in a promotion phase that will conclude on January 11th, 2017.

For now, we wait.

Jan 12th, 2017

All the promotions have run out and I no longer see my podcast production course for sale under the listed price. So it’s clear that the instructor can opt-in and opt-out of the Udemy Deals Program.

I’m planning on running this test for at least a month to see the results.

Feb 14th, 2017

 

Well. I think this test is complete.

It turns out opting out of the Udemy Deals program is a good way to make your revenue go down. During the month of February I only received 1 sale for the Podcast Production Course. Today, that student asked for a refund.

Generally, the course would of made between $100 and $300 by this time of the month. But right now, it’s at zero.

Bottom line, I’m going to turn it back on and see what happens. I hope I haven’t angered the Udemy gods and killed my long term sales.

Feb 17th, 2017

Well, thats pretty conclusive. After turning Udemy Deals Program back on, I’ve already received 3 new students. I didn’t change a single thing in my marketing behavior and my website analytics didn’t boom elsewhere. Udemy just started promoting my course again.

So that’s it. Maybe I’ll update this post in the future, but for now, I have a conclusion.

Udemy Deals Program is a valuable offering that Udemy makes to their instructors.

Thoughts?

If you have any experience with this, I’d love to hear your thoughts in the comments section below.