The Policy: Announcements (as opposed to Promotional Emails) are your way to share valuable learning material with your students. External links are allowed in Announcements, but must contain free educational content only (i.e., non-promotional). You may not direct students from Udemy to other promotional sites where they then would receive coupon codes, be asked to submit an email address before accessing course content, or be prompted to make an off-site purchase of a Udemy course.
The Warning Message: External links in your Announcements must provide free educational content and may not prompt students to make a purchase or provide personal details.
Please confirm that this is the case or remove the link before proceeding.
- Why it appears: This warning will appear if our system detects any external links or partial links in your announcements. As our system cannot distinguish between an educational link and a non-educational link, this warning will appear as a reminder even if your link is educational.
- What to do next: Double check your content.
- If your link does NOT lead to free educational content (i.e., it is actually promotional in nature), please remove the link and then proceed. If we find that your announcements violate this policy, you run the risk of having your messaging privileges suspended and/or having your course removed from the site, as per Udemy’s Community Guidelines.
- If your link does lead to educational content, and you believe you received this warning in error, you do not need to edit your text and may proceed.
| √ Allowed | X Not Allowed |
| Links to free, reputable, third party articles. | Links that require students to register or give contact details before they can read the article in its entirety. Links to these types of "squeeze pages" are not allowed. |
| Links to your personal blog are okay as long as students are able to consume the entire article for free, without having to give personal details. | Links to paid content, including third party book or product recommendations, are not allowed in announcements. Instead, you may add these links in the "Supplemental Materials" section of your lecture, or add an article lecture at the end of your course that covers supplemental materials. |
Everyone makes mistakes (hence the need for the warning!), but repeated violations of this policy or others may result in feature or account suspension, and eventually the removal of your course from the marketplace as per Udemy’s Community Guidelines. This is a partnership, so if you have any questions at all or if you see something that runs afoul of these guidelines, please let us know by contacting our Support team.