Another way for Udemy to screw things up

Udemy now expires all free coupons older than 30 days. This is to prevent "coupon abuse", though they don't say what that actually is.

It's in Udemy's interest that people pay as much as possible for every course they take. Some instructors use free coupons for a class intended to be free, to attract customers who might later pay for a  course. Yes, you could make a course free from the get-go, but experience shows that those who take such a course tend to discount it, to give it exceptionally poor evaluations (ratings). That's evidently just part of user mentality.

I have two such courses working via free coupons. Even if I make a new coupon when the old one expires, that new one will not be in circulation, that is, people won't see it.

Both from student and teacher points of view, I recommend Skillshare over Udemy.

Udemy introduced "charm pricing" (e.g. $14.99 instead of $15). Odd thing is, I could swear I'd read that consumers don't like it, and tend to be turned off by it, even if it increases sales. Udemy thinks it'll "generate more sales for you by better highlighting your course's value to students!" Doh!? What kind of BS is that?

And if research showed that "charm pricing" was better, why haven't Udemy (a marketing organization, not an education organization) been using it the past 4-5 years?

(I have no respect for Udemy's research based on past events.)

Response to quora question about Udemy

This is a response to a question on Quora: How much money did I make in my first year on Udemy?

This question depends so much on when I started, how many classes I had, and other factors that it isn’t worth answering with numbers. My topic is game design, a niche, so I’ve never made the vast sums some instructors have.  I will say that I make less now annually, despite having many more classes.

Udemy has turned online non-degree teaching into a low-brow, commodity market, and that’s not the kind of class I make. I conceive of a class as a sort of online book (or part of a book), a treasure-trove of information, not as an entertainment or a bagatel. I discourage the not uncommon notion of the Age of Instant Gratification that a 30 or 60 minute class can tell you “all you need to know” about a topic. That’s a ridiculous idea that fundamentally rests on the also-ridiculous notion that there’s a “secret formula” or set of secrets that you can quickly learn to become an expert at something.

By changing the pricing standards twice, and by constantly engaging in what I call kamikaze marketing that reduces all classes to $10 (unless the instructor opts out), Udemy has shoehorned virtually all classes into a $10 market. Instructors price classes where they want, but can only discount them 50% (instructors earn more per registration from their own coupons than from Udemy’s sales). So many make their classes $20 (and consequently short) and discount to $10 constantly. I am in process of doing this myself with a second account, but only ut of necessity. I had to use a second account because you cannot choose to have some of your classes in the kamikaze marketing sector, and others not.

Commodity marketing of courses can be an insult to the intelligence - a “$199 course” for $10? , really? - but that doesn’t seem to make any difference to the typical student.

I make more now from Skillshare, which is subscription based, and I think subscription based online non-degree teaching will ultimately prevail over the kamikaze. Time will tell.