Category Archives: News

Udemy has made some serious changes to its pricing rules. This will result in some price changes in my courses, starting on April 4.

In one respect, this is a good thing. Currently, any course participating in Udemy’s marketing programs is periodically subject to huge discounts on zero notice. A $300 course might suddenly be offered for $10. If students enroll in the course through the marketing program, the instructor may get as little as 25% of that. On the other hand, if students enroll using my coupon codes, I get to keep 97% of the money. It’s not hard to see how this can put instructors in a price war against themselves. I want to sell courses through coupons so that Udemy doesn’t gobble up most of the money you pay, but this encourages instructors to set a high price and then discount it heavily so students will use the coupons.

This wasn’t making anybody happy, so Udemy has changed its policies, promising not to discount courses by more than 50%. But this comes with a new set of price restrictions on the courses. All prices have to be between $20 and $50 and — I don’t know why — be a multiple of $5. We can’t give discounts of more than 50% with our own coupons. If a coupon violates this limit, we can’t change it; it will just expire on April 4.

This means I’ll be making the following changes in my prices:

• Managing metadata with ExifTool: The list price will drop from $36 to $30.
• Personal digital preservation: The list price will go up from $16 to $20.
• How to tell a file’s format: Five open source tools: The list price will go down from $28 to $25.

If you’re here, the list prices are irrelevant, since you’ll be buying using the coupon code unless you like spending more and letting me have less. But there are also changes in the coupons. Until April 4, you’ll be able to enroll in the ExifTool course with the code EXIF14 for $14.00. Starting April 4, you’ll have to use the code EXIF15 with a price of $15.00.

The introductory offer for Personal Digital Preservation expired at the end of February. The new code PRESERVE lets you enroll for $11. This won’t change.

The coupon code TOOLKIT for How to Tell a File’s Format: Five Open Source Tools continues to get you a $20 price.

The biggest annoyance is that I like to give students a really deep discount for a course that builds on another one (e.g., on the ExifTool course for those who’ve taken the file identification tools course), and I’ll be limited in what I can do there.

By way of compensation, I’m offering a special rate on Personal Digital Preservation till April 4: Just $8 with the coupon code MARCHAIR! After April 4, you won’t be able to get that low a price for any paid Udemy course.

Hopefully this will all work out well. I’m looking into adding another course, though it’s too soon to give specifics.