The Udemy Affiliate Program

Ben

Active Member
Your suppose to treat people well that work for you, that is very true. The question is.... how often do you see that happen. Most organizations, including some very successful ones, are very short sighted. They are in it for today don't worry too much about tomorrow.

I have seen that organizational shift in the 10 to 15 years and it is sad to see.
I understand that they are in it for today but you would think that they would also want to be around years down the road.

They are a big website/company so don't you think that at some point they might make some changes to their practices or do you honestly think they will just stick to their poor business practices?
 

Traveler

Active Member
I have seen some stuff out there about udemy and the way the pay and take care of their teachers and much is not good. I prefer to deal with companies that take care of the ones that do all the work for them. Just my thoughts.
 

ProfMike

Active Member
Yeah there is a lot of negative stuff out there on how they take care of their instructors.

I would be careful as to what credibility I lend to those comments unless they were coming from a reliable source. I try to get the information from the actual instructors, that tends to be a little more reliable. Although even that can be slightly tainted as if they speak to negatively about the organization it goes against there TOS agreement that they agree to as instructors.

Usually stipulations like that should be a red flag to potential instructors, but many of them have probably never read through those agreements. As much mumbo jumbo as they put in those they are hard to follow sometimes.
 

ulterios

Well-Known Member
Usually stipulations like that should be a red flag to potential instructors, but many of them have probably never read through those agreements. As much mumbo jumbo as they put in those they are hard to follow sometimes.
I agree with that Mike. A lot of what they put in that mumbo jumbo is there partially to keep people from reading the whole thing. ;)

Another forum I am on had a member raise a stink about something that an admin did (require a username change), yet they did nothing that the user didn't agree to when they accepted their TOS. (He registered a username that made it seem like he was a staff member)
 

Traveler

Active Member
Yeah there is a lot of negative stuff out there on how they take care of their instructors.

I would be careful as to what credibility I lend to those comments unless they were coming from a reliable source. I try to get the information from the actual instructors, that tends to be a little more reliable. Although even that can be slightly tainted as if they speak to negatively about the organization it goes against there TOS agreement that they agree to as instructors.

Usually stipulations like that should be a red flag to potential instructors, but many of them have probably never read through those agreements. As much mumbo jumbo as they put in those they are hard to follow sometimes.
Yeah I understand that. There's lots of stuff out there that just gets overstated from one person to the next.

You don't teach on there?
 

ProfMike

Active Member
They have reached out a couple of times to see if I would be interested in posting my courses there but I have not.

The biggest reason is that I want to maintain control of my course material and control the pricing. With the length of some of my courses there pricing model would price them over $200.00 and I want to keep them priced where most can afford them.

You are right many of the comments we hear can be overstated. That is why it is best to take everything with a grain of salt.
 

Maria Marketing

Active Member
I was looking into this not too long ago and found that many people were having issues getting paid. Personally I really do not want to have to worry about getting paid if I do my end of the agreement. I found a lot of information on the program by searching google.
 

ulterios

Well-Known Member
I was looking into this not too long ago and found that many people were having issues getting paid. Personally I really do not want to have to worry about getting paid if I do my end of the agreement. I found a lot of information on the program by searching google.
Are you talking about the affiliates not getting paid or the instructors?
 

ProfMike

Active Member
Ulterios, from what I have gathered, and I have done a lot of research into Udemy because at one time I was going to post some of my material on that platform, there is an issue with being paid for both the instructors and the affliate marketers.

There seems to be a long, (90 days or more), lag time in getting paid, for both the instructors and the affliate marketers. I have not looked into it in a over 6 months but the material that I was reading turned me off to using them. The material was being posted by the instructors and from what I could gather much of it had to do with there 30 day Money Back guarantee. It appeared from reading through the posts that many more people were exercising that option then they had planned for. So they were holding payments until that time had elapsed and there was no chance of a reversal of the charge.

At that time I was reading information on the Facebook page for the instructors. They had their own Facebook site. One thing I have noticed since doing that research is that they have changed the Facebook site so now unless you are approved and invited into the group, you can no longer see the postings. I thought that was interesting that it looked like Udemy was controlling access to the content of the Facebook pages.

At that time it was about a 50 / 50 mix of positive and negative comments on the platform.

Another interesting fact was they changed their pricing model right after the first of the year, 2016. They claimed that they were going to stop all the 90 and 95% off offers to their users as many instructors were not happy selling their courses for for $10.00 and receiving very little commission. Obviously that did not work out because recently they have changed it back to the original model. Which certainly has upset the instructors once again. It will be interesting to see how they address those issues.

I think, and this is a personal opinion, that is why the quality of the material is so poor. It is hard to motivate someone to write a 10 or 15 hour course with quality content if you are only receiving $3.00 to $4.00 for the material. It takes about 8 to 10 hours to write an hour of video material, then you add an hour or two for the production of that material and you can see that there is a lot of time involved with writing a good course.

When you add in the cost of all the software to develop that course and all the time involved that can make the process cost prohibitive.
 

ulterios

Well-Known Member
Ulterios, from what I have gathered, and I have done a lot of research into Udemy because at one time I was going to post some of my material on that platform, there is an issue with being paid for both the instructors and the affliate marketers.

There seems to be a long, (90 days or more), lag time in getting paid, for both the instructors and the affliate marketers. I have not looked into it in a over 6 months but the material that I was reading turned me off to using them. The material was being posted by the instructors and from what I could gather much of it had to do with there 30 day Money Back guarantee. It appeared from reading through the posts that many more people were exercising that option then they had planned for. So they were holding payments until that time had elapsed and there was no chance of a reversal of the charge.

At that time I was reading information on the Facebook page for the instructors. They had their own Facebook site. One thing I have noticed since doing that research is that they have changed the Facebook site so now unless you are approved and invited into the group, you can no longer see the postings. I thought that was interesting that it looked like Udemy was controlling access to the content of the Facebook pages.

At that time it was about a 50 / 50 mix of positive and negative comments on the platform.

Another interesting fact was they changed their pricing model right after the first of the year, 2016. They claimed that they were going to stop all the 90 and 95% off offers to their users as many instructors were not happy selling their courses for for $10.00 and receiving very little commission. Obviously that did not work out because recently they have changed it back to the original model. Which certainly has upset the instructors once again. It will be interesting to see how they address those issues.

I think, and this is a personal opinion, that is why the quality of the material is so poor. It is hard to motivate someone to write a 10 or 15 hour course with quality content if you are only receiving $3.00 to $4.00 for the material. It takes about 8 to 10 hours to write an hour of video material, then you add an hour or two for the production of that material and you can see that there is a lot of time involved with writing a good course.

When you add in the cost of all the software to develop that course and all the time involved that can make the process cost prohibitive.

Hi Mike, Well from what I have seen and learned from you and other sources it would seem like Udemy really has some aspects of their business that they need to change and improve. I'll hold my breath! ;)

Instructors receiving $3.00 to $4.00 for their material is just crazy. I mean, I could see if it was cheap junk material slapped together but for quality material is just crazy. Nobody is going to want to produce high quality material and only make that much, unless maybe they were to guarantee a huge number of sales to make it worth their while.

People are not going to work for basically nothing and put in the time to provide something of quality.

Personally, I have decided that I am not going to pursue dealing with Udemy. I have just heard too many things from multiple sources to go ahead and put my time into it. Personally I like to work with the programs that take care of all aspects of their business and so that I don't have to worry about potential issues.
 

ProfMike

Active Member
Ulterios,

I feel the same way. There are some good affliate programs out there and I will stick with the ones that have proven themselves to the web masters. I don't have the time to argue for what little money I would make through there's.
 

ulterios

Well-Known Member
Ulterios,

I feel the same way. There are some good affliate programs out there and I will stick with the ones that have proven themselves to the web masters. I don't have the time to argue for what little money I would make through there's.
Yeah, these types of programs just are not worth it when there are others that will be more money and less issues. There are too many others to pick from that can avoid the whole mess.
 

Ben

Active Member
Ulterios, from what I have gathered, and I have done a lot of research into Udemy because at one time I was going to post some of my material on that platform, there is an issue with being paid for both the instructors and the affliate marketers.

There seems to be a long, (90 days or more), lag time in getting paid, for both the instructors and the affliate marketers. I have not looked into it in a over 6 months but the material that I was reading turned me off to using them. The material was being posted by the instructors and from what I could gather much of it had to do with there 30 day Money Back guarantee. It appeared from reading through the posts that many more people were exercising that option then they had planned for. So they were holding payments until that time had elapsed and there was no chance of a reversal of the charge.

At that time I was reading information on the Facebook page for the instructors. They had their own Facebook site. One thing I have noticed since doing that research is that they have changed the Facebook site so now unless you are approved and invited into the group, you can no longer see the postings. I thought that was interesting that it looked like Udemy was controlling access to the content of the Facebook pages.

At that time it was about a 50 / 50 mix of positive and negative comments on the platform.

Another interesting fact was they changed their pricing model right after the first of the year, 2016. They claimed that they were going to stop all the 90 and 95% off offers to their users as many instructors were not happy selling their courses for for $10.00 and receiving very little commission. Obviously that did not work out because recently they have changed it back to the original model. Which certainly has upset the instructors once again. It will be interesting to see how they address those issues.

I think, and this is a personal opinion, that is why the quality of the material is so poor. It is hard to motivate someone to write a 10 or 15 hour course with quality content if you are only receiving $3.00 to $4.00 for the material. It takes about 8 to 10 hours to write an hour of video material, then you add an hour or two for the production of that material and you can see that there is a lot of time involved with writing a good course.

When you add in the cost of all the software to develop that course and all the time involved that can make the process cost prohibitive.
If the instructors are making just that then why don't they boycott udemy and sell their material somewhere else? If enough of them stand up and say they want a fair price then shouldn't udemy listen? It's only good business to take care of your resources.
 

ProfMike

Active Member
Keep in mind that many of the courses are listed for prices significantly higher than the price they actually sell for. As I explained in an earlier post, you do not have to opt in to all the sales that they publish and you can stick with your posted price. The problem with that is your sales would be almost non-existent when you are competing with material that is on the same subject as your material and selling for 90 to 95% less.

I think in many ways they have protested the practice, they do not update the material, getting accurate answers to questions is next to impossible, and something I have noticed over the last year is that it seems that one or two guys will go through the registration process for Udemy and then farm out the development of the material overseas. So you get this really nice introduction video, high quality video and audio, and when you see the actual material, different person, low quality audio, hard to understand, etc. I have noticed a couple of my college students complaining about that when they ordered some classes.

I am pretty certain that those practices have impacted the quality of the instructors they have on the site. Like most other things, they just look for instructors in other places as cheaply as possible. That is the way of the world now.

The biggest turn off for me was ownership of the material. Once it is on their site, they control it and there is no way that I would do that.
 

Ben

Active Member
The biggest turn off for me was ownership of the material. Once it is on their site, they control it and there is no way that I would do that.
That seems like something that many instructors would have a problem with. I wouldn't want to relinquish ownership of material that I spent a lot of time developing. They don't have an option to retain ownership somehow? Maybe take less money?
 

KeralMTG

Active Member
I got to have a freebie course one time in the past months and the course was just not good at all. If I paid for it I will have been very mad at this. If you are affiliate for them then people might get mad at you if they get bad junk course that they paid for so it might not be good to be an affiliate for them.
 

ulterios

Well-Known Member
I got to have a freebie course one time in the past months and the course was just not good at all. If I paid for it I will have been very mad at this. If you are affiliate for them then people might get mad at you if they get bad junk course that they paid for so it might not be good to be an affiliate for them.
I actually got a chance to watch one of their courses a couple of days ago and I was not impressed at all. Looked real cheap and had a lot of inaccuracies in it.
 

ProfMike

Active Member
This doesn't surprise me, I have watched quite a few of their courses, even purchased a few to review for my college classes and found that the majority of the content was out of date or inaccurate. Not all of the but most. The one thing I found most disturbing was that many of the courses were introduced by one person and actually delivered by another. The person delivering the course was hard to understand or had very little knowledge of the subject matter.

I have a free HTML / CSS course listed on the site if you want a short introduction course on those subjects. Feel free to download it if you are looking for an introduction course.
 

KeralMTG

Active Member
This doesn't surprise me, I have watched quite a few of their courses, even purchased a few to review for my college classes and found that the majority of the content was out of date or inaccurate. Not all of the but most. The one thing I found most disturbing was that many of the courses were introduced by one person and actually delivered by another. The person delivering the course was hard to understand or had very little knowledge of the subject matter.

I have a free HTML / CSS course listed on the site if you want a short introduction course on those subjects. Feel free to download it if you are looking for an introduction course.
Then I don't understand why udemy allows these kind of things because they can hurt the reputation of their website. Why don't they make rules about things like keeping things updated and not selling other peoples courses?



Your free course is listed here on on your own website? I might want to download it.
 

ProfMike

Active Member
I think Udemy, as a company, tries to control the quality, but when you are posting 100's of tutorials a week that can get really difficult to control. Also keep in mind that as far as content of the courses it would be very difficult for Udemy to control the content, that would require experts in all fields to review the material and approve the course. That would take a lot of resources and financial cost, I am pretty certain that is not a part of the business model.

Feel free download the course if you like. It is under the Free Videos section of the site and is very popular. I was asked by a group of my college students to write an introduction to HTML and CSS just as a quick overview of the scripting languages with a simple sample site. That course was the result. They liked it and it helped many of them decide if that was the career path they wanted to pursue.
 
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