Understanding The Udemy Business Model: Revenue Streams & How Udemy Works

Willa Anderson
9 min readMay 10, 2021

Education has always been the future and to keep the future safe and sound Udemy, an eLearning app is keeping everything intact. From educating students to get on board the best experts to teach. Udemy has made a wave in the eLearning app development. If there’s one good place online where instructors and students can exchange their thoughts and learn effectively, it’s Udemy. If you’re looking to create an education app like Udemy, then this ultimate guide will help you understand the Udemy business model, revenue model, and how it works. But before that, let’s get to know how it all started.

Udemy History

Every successful business has an interesting story to tell. And it was no different for Udemy. Eren Bali, the co-founder of Udemy grew up in the remote Turkish village of Durulova. His chance to get the proper education was not what would you call lucky as the options were quite limited. His interest to learn finally took a turn for the better when his family got a new computer. He kept himself busy with learning new things. Mathematics and chess became his buddies, but mostly he took something from this experience, and which is to provide online learning to those who need it the most.

Gagan Biyani and Oktay Caglar later on in 2010 joined hands with Eren Bali on a crusade to create an online platform for educating people across the globe. This is how their journey started. And if you’ve ever wondered what the name “Udemy” means, you’re in for a treat. U stands for “YOU” and demy is “Academy”, so it’s an amalgamation of these words that make perfect sense.

Udemy Funding Rounds

Source

Udemy Business Model

Udemy works on the “marketplace Business Model”. Keeping it basic, Udemy puts together the administrations or results of various teachers and transfers them on its site.

The association functions as a middle person among teacher and student. It doesn’t claim an item or administration. Subsequently, the expense is controlled by the individual teacher on Udemy. Additionally, Udemy charges a measure of commission from the teacher for utilizing its foundation and associating with a gigantic crowd.

Consider a famous internet business site like Amazon and Flipkart, which goes about as an arbiter between the client and dealer. These stages acquire commission on each alluded deal.

According to the new investigation, Udemy — the learning stage has brought roughly $223 million up in 2020. The cash is produced in various ways i.e selling courses, advancing teachers and that’s only the tip of the iceberg.

Udemy By The Numbers

The following table will showcase Udemy’s strength in numbers.

Udemy Numbers

Funding $296.5

Courses 1,57,000

Enrollments 425+ million

2020 Revenue $400 million

Users 40+ million

Enterprise Customers 7000+

The above stats speak for themselves and the popularity of Udemy is amazing due to its architecture and every eLearning app development factor has been perfectly implemented by Udemy.

How Does Udemy Work?

Any ideal education mobile app development company today knows how Udemy exactly works in order to provide the best services to their customers. The following figure will give you a rough idea as to how Udemy works.

Udemy depends on three significant columns. These incorporate the course creators, Udemy as a platform, and students.

1. Course Instructors or Authors

Course creators assume a critical part in the working of the Udemy platform. They are the planner and designers for the courses. Educators at Udemy transfer their video records simply to the platform. They are completely answerable for giving the information support that is needed by the students. The educators can additionally utilize extra instructing apparatuses to make a rich learning experience for students. These incorporate tests, tasks, and coding practices among others.

Udemy doesn’t accuse teachers of an exchange or month-to-month charges for facilitating content. The tool compartment to configuration content is additionally accessible free of charge on Udemy. The platform just offers income from educators. This income dividing among the teacher and Udemy depends on how the course contacts its target group. (Clarified in the following segment).

The initial 90 days are vital after a course is recorded. During this period, the educators can assume a more dynamic part to advertise their courses. They can connect with their students and construct a devoted student base, build up believability through surveys, and utilize the Udemy marketplace. They can likewise utilize other advertising endeavors including references and coupons.

2. Udemy Platform

The foundation of Udemy goes about as the primary channel for giving the substance from teachers to the students. Understanding the job of Udemy incorporates customary upkeep of the platform. This gives usability to the two students and educators.

As well as facilitating the courses, the Udemy platform gives specialized and promoting backing to the educator. The specialized group consistently audits the courses to guarantee that the students are given quality learning. Bookkeeping is likewise done by Udemy staff. They keep a tab of the pay and income dividing among the teachers and Udemy.

The Udemy platform additionally gives specialized and bookkeeping backing to the students. Udemy is liable for installment handling including assortment and discounts, and this is the kind of the thing any eLearning app development should focus on.

3. Students

The third column on which the working of Udemy is based is Students. The students can learn new subjects by utilizing Udemy’s self-guided courses. The platform permits the opportunity of the decision to students concerning when and what they need to examine. The platform continually prescribes great courses for students to enhance their learning assets.

How Udemy Makes Money?

Udemy has embraced a ‘marketplace business model.’ Its work resembles that of Amazon. This implies that Udemy just goes about as a scaffold between the students and educators. Udemy doesn’t have its substance. It just gives a platform for getting sorted out courses from various sellers or educators. Here is some fundamental data about the business model of Udemy.

Teacher/Instructor Expenses

Did you know, there is no specific expense expected to pay by the Teacher to transfer their seminars on Udemy? Indeed!!! Teachers exhibit their course for nothing. The company procures income at whatever point a client or student buys an online course.

Subsequently, the online course income will be imparted to the particular Teachers. It very well may be contingent upon how the student obtained the course.

There are 3 income share levels accessible on Udemy:

Promotion Code For Teachers

This is a fascinating thing!!! The student will buy the course utilizing a coupon code or offer or outside reference that is most likely given by the teacher. Since the student is buying the course through development, the Teacher will get 97% of the all-out course esteem. Likewise, 3% expense as an extra charge should be paid by the teacher to Udemy.

Udemy Organic

Expectation you’re mindful of the term natural. Here the student will visit the Udemy site, peruse the course and buy the course that they’re keen on. In this cycle, no coupon code or outside reference will be utilized by the student while buying the course. As it is a natural deal, Udemy and the Teacher will share half of the course income. In this situation, Udemy will charge a 30% expense for each deal that is created through Udemy mobile application.

Udemy For Business

So far we have examined how Udemy is bringing in cash from financial backers, presently how about we examine how Udemy is bringing in cash from the business.

Udemy for business, as the name infers Udemy is custom-fitted for a few setup associations and their workers. companies will buy into Udemy for Business plan. With this program, their representatives can use up to 5000+ sought-after new courses at Udemy.

Representatives can upskill their abilities through virtual preparation. Udemy for business will engage the functioning experience. Representatives can take in abilities from worldwide experts across all the specialty i.e tech, business, money, and then some. As indicated by ongoing reports, the business has developed 86% ROI after banding together with Udemy.

Udemy learning platform is offering two sorts of membership plans for the business. The membership cost may differ contingent upon the group size. For instance, if a business has more than 30 representatives, they need to pay $360/year and use it.

If your business is having a group of 20+, you can pick the Udemy Enterprise plan. Contact the Udemy outreach group and they will furnish you with Enterprise membership plan subtleties. Besides, the Udemy Enterprise membership plan is offering extra superb highlights. It incorporates custom client gatherings, no language limit, slack mix, custom classifications, and so forth.

Udemy Business Model Canvas

The Udemy business model canvas represents everything that is there to understand about Udemy. From key partners to revenue streams, this Udemy business model canvas portrays the actual version of how Udemy functions.

Udemy Revenue Model

Udemy gives two sorts of courses over its site — free and paid. Utilizing a wide scope of free seminars on its entrance which are short and exact — it makes worth and lifts informal advertising. Nonetheless, with paid courses, it produces income.

Its rule income stream is the expense it charges students and educators for facilitating courses which are applied as follows:

The stage procures half of the complete charge if it advances the course taken by the student. The leftover half goes to the teacher. Nonetheless, if a teacher advertises the course himself — he will get its 100% charge and don’t need to pay anything to Udemy.

The stage procures 25% of the charge if it advances the course and the student gets through the subsidiary connection. Out of the leftover charge — half goes to members and 25% to the educator.

Another wellspring of income for Udemy is its B2B solution called “Udemy for Business” for enormous associations that need to address their most noteworthy human asset challenges like preparing and expertise development. It offers two designs for each organization named as Team Plan and Enterprise plan.

Here are how these solutions work:

Team Plan: This solution is for associations with 6–15 workers and a yearly enrollment is needed to pick this solution. It costs $240 per client and has a base necessity of at any rate five clients. Along these lines, it will cost you at least $1200.

Enterprise Plan: It is expected for associations with more than 20 clients. At the point when a business takes on this Plan, Udemy allows it a Dedicated Customer Service Partner. In any case, it’s hazy decisively the amount you should pay for this solution. This is likely because Udemy works with the organizations to settle a negotiation that works for both.

These plans additionally have a 14-day Free Trial so that organizations can see it works for them or not. Since you thoroughly understand this brand — How Does Udemy Work, its business model, income model, and the story behind its prosperity — how about we see what you can gain from this brand to set up your own in the Edu-Tech Industry.

Key Takeaways

  • Begun as an e-learning platform, at first, Udemy needed to transfer University courses to start its site, which gave some a foothold, and it empowered it to get subsidizing and capital designated for development.
  • As it developed, the Udemy marketplace turned into a mainstream buyer educational platform. In any case, numerous seminars on the platform are sans still or offered at generally limited costs.
  • As Udemy developed, it likewise dispatched its endeavor platform, which follows a subscription..based income model, where the business power is driving venture accounts.
  • Udemy, along these lines, is a hybrid platform, both shopper confronting and undertaking, with the previous running on an exchange, put together model and the latter concerning a membership based model.
  • As Udemy got its most recent financing, it likewise disclosed its technique to continue to develop its B2B fragment in the coming years.

Conclusion

If you’re looking to an education app like Udemy, this ultimate guide must have given you enough insights on how actually Udemy works and how the revenue and business model of Udemy work. It is recommended that you go for the on-demand education mobile app development company to get you started with your own eLearning business.

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Willa Anderson

As I am working with one of the top mobile app development companies, Moon Technolabs Pvt. Ltd., I manage stuff like mobile app brainstorming and promo activity