At Udemy, our mission is to be the best place to teach and learn online. To achieve that mission and to ensure our students have an amazing educational experience, we ask our instructors to abide by our ground rules when building their courses and communicating with students.
If our system detects that you are trying to add content that may violate these guidelines, you may receive one or more of the following types of system warnings asking you to review, edit, or remove some of your content. You can review some of the different reasons why you may encounter warnings below.
Links or coupons for other Udemy courses
The warning will indicate that a link has been detected that could be a coupon code, which is not allowed in that particular location. 
- Where you’ll see it: You may see this warning regarding a course link or coupon code, when sending an educational announcement, or when editing your course content (Course Discussion, Course Lectures and Lecture Descriptions) or course marketing fields (Instructor Biography, Title/Subtitle, Promo Video, Course Summary, Course Goal and Objectives, Course Requirements, Intended Audience, etc.).
- Why it appears: The appropriate place to promote your other Udemy courses is via the Promotional Email tool or in the Bonus Lecture, which keeps the students’ space for learning separate from your space for promotion. Udemy’s Instructor Community Guidelines prohibit promotional activities such as linking to your other Udemy courses in the areas named above, as these areas are meant for educational content only. If our system detects links to Udemy courses or coupon codes in those fields, this warning will appear.
- What to do next: Simply remove the link in question, and press “Save” again to proceed.
External links
The warning will report that external links are not allowed in that location and that it needs to be removed.
- Where you’ll see it: You may see this warning regarding an external link when editing your course content (Course Discussion, Course Lectures and Lecture Descriptions) or course marketing fields (Instructor Biography, Title/Subtitle, Promo Video, Course Summary, Course Goal and Objectives, Course Requirements, Intended Audience, etc.).
- Why it appears: The appropriate place to promote outside resources is in the Bonus Lecture, which keeps the students’ space for learning separate from your space for promotion. If our system detects links to external resources in those fields, this warning will appear.
- What to do next: Simply remove the link in question, and press “Save” again to proceed.
Conditional external link warning
The warning will ask you to make sure the external link that’s been detected is to direct students to free, educational content.
- Why it appears: This warning regarding an external link will appear if our system detects any external links or partial links in your educational announcements, course lectures, or lecture descriptions. 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 educational 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 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.
Other relevant policies
You may see warnings about external links or coupon links when creating your Bonus Lecture. Please make sure your content and links are in accordance with our Bonus Lecture Guidelines before proceeding.
Check out more regarding our Educational Announcements Guidelines here.