How Much Can You Make Selling Online Courses? | CalcFalcon

The promise of online courses is compelling: record your expertise once, sell it indefinitely, earn while you sleep. And to be fair, it does work that way for some creators. But between the platform you choose, the fees they charge, the refund requests that roll in, and the marketing effort required to generate sales, the gap between gross revenue and what actually lands in your bank account is wider than most course creators expect.

A $197 course sold 15 times per month looks like $2,955 in revenue. Depending on the platform, your actual take-home ranges from roughly $1,975 to $2,869. That is a $894 spread — nearly a thousand dollars per month — driven entirely by which platform hosts your course. Understanding these fee structures before you commit to a platform is one of the highest-leverage decisions you can make as a course creator. Run your own numbers through our online course revenue calculator to see exactly where you land.

The Platform Fee Landscape

Online course platforms fall into four distinct models, each with a fundamentally different relationship between you and your revenue.

Teachable charges a percentage of each transaction. Udemy takes a large cut but provides marketplace discovery. Skillshare pays royalties per enrollment rather than letting you set a price. And self-hosting means you keep nearly everything but handle all the infrastructure yourself.

The right choice depends on where your students come from. If you have an existing audience — a newsletter, a YouTube channel, a social media following — platforms that charge lower transaction fees reward you for the traffic you bring. If you are starting from zero and need the platform to find students for you, marketplace-style platforms like Udemy trade margin for discovery.

None of these models is universally better. Each one optimizes for a different stage of the creator journey. The math, though, is unambiguous — and worth calculating before you upload your first lesson.

Teachable: The Creator-Friendly Option

Teachable charges a 5 percent transaction fee on every sale, plus Stripe’s standard 2.9 percent payment processing fee. On a $197 course sale, that breaks down to $9.85 in platform fees plus $5.71 in Stripe processing — $15.56 total, leaving you $181.44 per sale. That is a 92 percent take rate, which is strong for a hosted platform.

Teachable’s monthly plans range from $39 to $199 per month. The Basic plan at $39 per month includes the 5 percent transaction fee. The Pro plan at $119 per month drops the transaction fee to zero, which means you pay only Stripe’s 2.9 percent. The crossover point is straightforward: at $2,380 or more in monthly course revenue, the Pro plan saves you money compared to the Basic plan’s 5 percent fee.

Where Teachable earns its reputation is in the tools it provides for course delivery — drip content scheduling, completion certificates, quizzes, student progress tracking. It handles the hosting, payment processing, and student management so you can focus on content creation and marketing.

The trade-off is that Teachable does not bring you students. There is no marketplace, no search algorithm, no recommendation engine. Every student who enrolls found you through your own marketing efforts. For creators with an established audience, this is fine — you are paying for infrastructure, not discovery. For creators without an audience, it means your Teachable course sits empty until you figure out acquisition.

Udemy: Discovery vs Revenue

Udemy’s fee structure is the most polarizing in the industry, and understanding it requires separating two very different scenarios.

When Udemy drives a sale organically — through its marketplace search, category browsing, or recommendation algorithm — Udemy takes 63 percent of the sale price. On a $197 course, that means Udemy keeps $124.11 and you receive $72.89. That is a painful cut, but it comes with a meaningful benefit: you did nothing to acquire that student. No ad spend, no content marketing, no email sequences. Udemy found the student and convinced them to buy.

When you drive a sale through your own coupon link or affiliate referral, Udemy takes only 3 percent. On the same $197 course, you keep $191.09. The difference is staggering — $118.20 more per sale when you bring the traffic.

In practice, most instructors see a mix of both. The blended rate depends on your organic-to-instructor ratio. If 50 percent of your sales come through Udemy’s marketplace and 50 percent through your own links, the blended take rate is approximately 33 percent. On $197, that means you keep about $132 per sale on average — $49.44 less than Teachable per sale.

The blended rate math scales linearly. At 70 percent organic traffic, Udemy’s blended take rate climbs to roughly 45 percent. At 30 percent organic, it drops to about 21 percent. The more traffic you drive yourself, the less sense Udemy’s marketplace model makes — at that point, you are subsidizing Udemy’s organic students with the audience you built elsewhere.

Udemy also runs frequent sitewide sales that discount courses to $9.99 to $19.99, regardless of your listed price. These sales drive high volume but at dramatically lower per-sale revenue. A $197 course sold for $14.99 during a Udemy sale nets you roughly $5.55 on an organic sale. Some instructors embrace the volume play. Others find it devalues their course and confuses pricing expectations.

Skillshare: The Royalty Model

Skillshare operates on an entirely different model. Students do not buy individual courses — they pay a monthly subscription ($13.99 per month) for access to the entire library. Teachers are paid from a royalty pool based on minutes watched and referral enrollments.

The per-enrollment royalty works out to roughly $2 per student, though this fluctuates based on the size of the royalty pool and total platform minutes watched in a given month. Some teachers report higher per-enrollment payouts during months with smaller participant pools, and lower payouts as more teachers join the platform.

On a pure revenue basis, Skillshare is the weakest option for course creators. Where a single $197 sale on Teachable nets you $181.44, you would need roughly 90 Skillshare enrollments to match the same revenue. The math is not competitive for direct monetization.

Where Skillshare does offer value is as a discovery and audience-building tool. Skillshare has millions of subscribers actively browsing for courses. A well-positioned class can attract thousands of students who might never have found you on Teachable or your own website. Some creators use Skillshare as a top-of-funnel channel — get students for free (to them), deliver value, then funnel interested students to a higher-priced course on a platform where you keep more of the revenue.

This strategy works, but it requires treating Skillshare as a marketing channel rather than a revenue channel. If you are evaluating Skillshare purely on earnings per student, it will always lose to every other option.

Self-Hosted: Maximum Margin, Maximum Work

Self-hosting your course means using a platform like WordPress with LearnDash, or a lightweight solution like Podia, and processing payments through Stripe directly. Your only per-transaction cost is Stripe’s 2.9 percent processing fee. On a $197 sale, you keep $191.29 — the highest take rate of any option.

The monthly costs vary. Podia charges $39 to $79 per month. Kajabi runs $149 to $399 per month. A WordPress-based setup can be as low as $20 per month for hosting plus a one-time $199 to $399 plugin license. None of these charge transaction fees on top of Stripe.

The hidden cost of self-hosting is not in dollars — it is in time and responsibility. You handle course delivery infrastructure, student support, email marketing, landing page design, payment integrations, and troubleshooting. If your video hosting goes down at 2 AM, that is your problem. If a student cannot access their content, they email you, not a support team.

For creators selling $5,000 or more per month in courses, self-hosting is almost always the most economical choice. The infrastructure overhead is fixed while the savings on per-transaction fees scale with volume. Below $2,000 per month, the time cost of managing everything yourself may not justify the marginal savings over Teachable.

Real Revenue Math: $197 Course Across Platforms

To make this concrete, here is what a $197 course sold 15 times per month looks like on each platform, with a 5 percent refund rate (meaning roughly 1 sale refunded per month). Gross revenue before any deductions is $2,955.

Teachable: Platform fee of $147.75 (5 percent of gross) plus Stripe processing of $85.70 (2.9 percent) plus $147.75 in refunds equals $381.20 in total deductions. You keep $2,573.80 per month.

Udemy (50 percent organic): Blended take rate of approximately 33 percent on course sales equals $975.15 in platform fees, plus $147.75 in refunds. You keep $1,832.10 per month. Note that Udemy includes payment processing in its take rate, so there is no separate Stripe charge.

Skillshare: At roughly $2 per enrollment on 15 monthly enrollments, your gross is approximately $30 per month. Refund rates do not apply in the same way since students are not purchasing your specific course. This is simply a different scale of revenue — $30 per month versus $2,573 on Teachable.

Self-hosted: Stripe processing of $85.70 (2.9 percent) plus $147.75 in refunds equals $233.45 in total deductions. You keep $2,721.55 per month — the highest net of any option.

The spread between self-hosted and Udemy (50 percent organic) is $889.45 per month, or $10,673 per year. That is a meaningful difference, and it illustrates why platform choice matters so much. Use the online course revenue calculator to model your specific price point and sales volume.

Beyond One-Off Sales: Subscriptions and Launch Cohorts

Single-course sales are the most common revenue model, but they are not the only one. Two alternative models can significantly change your monthly revenue: subscriptions and launch cohorts.

Subscription model. Instead of (or in addition to) selling a course for a one-time price, you charge a monthly fee for ongoing access to a library of content, community, or live coaching. A typical price point is $29 per month. If you have 50 active subscribers, that generates $1,450 per month in recurring revenue before platform fees.

The power of subscriptions is predictability. Unlike one-time sales that fluctuate month to month, subscription revenue is relatively stable (minus churn). The challenge is that subscription products require ongoing content creation to justify the recurring charge. A static course library with no updates will see high churn rates — typically 8 to 12 percent monthly for creator subscriptions, meaning you lose roughly 4 to 6 subscribers per month out of 50 and need to replace them continuously.

Launch cohort model. Cohort-based courses run on a fixed schedule — a 6 or 8-week program with live sessions, group projects, and deadlines. These command higher prices ($497 to $2,000 or more) because of the structured, interactive experience. A launch with 30 students at $497 generates $14,910 in a single event.

Amortized over 12 months, a single $497-per-student launch with 30 students adds $1,242.50 per month to your average revenue. Many cohort-based creators run 2 to 4 launches per year, which can double or triple that monthly average.

The trade-off is that launch revenue is front-loaded and unpredictable. A strong launch might bring 50 students. A weak one might bring 8. And the effort required for a launch — building a waitlist, running a launch sequence, delivering live sessions — is substantially higher than maintaining an evergreen course.

The Hidden Costs

Platform fees are the most visible cost, but several others erode your margins in ways that are easy to underestimate.

Refund rates. The industry standard for online courses is approximately 5 percent, though this varies by price point and niche. Higher-priced courses ($500 and above) tend to see slightly lower refund rates (3 to 4 percent) because buyers are more deliberate at that price. Lower-priced impulse purchases can see 7 to 10 percent refund rates. On $2,955 in monthly gross revenue, a 5 percent refund rate costs you $147.75 per month — $1,773 per year.

Ad spend. If you are running paid advertising to drive course sales, your customer acquisition cost directly reduces your per-student profit. A common range for course creators is $30 to $80 per student acquired through Facebook or Instagram ads. At $50 per acquired student and 15 monthly sales, that is $750 per month in ad spend. On a $197 course with Teachable fees, your net per student drops from $171.59 (organic) to $121.59 (paid) — a 29 percent reduction in margin.

Course creation time. A comprehensive online course takes 100 to 300 hours to create — filming, editing, building slides, writing supplementary materials, setting up the platform. At $50 per hour in opportunity cost, that is $5,000 to $15,000 in time investment before you earn your first dollar. This investment is amortized over the life of the course, but it is real and often underestimated.

Hosting and tools. Video hosting (Vimeo Pro at $20 per month or Wistia starting at $19 per month), email marketing ($20 to $80 per month depending on list size), landing page builders, and webinar tools add $50 to $200 per month in fixed costs.

Launch Cohort vs Evergreen

The choice between launching in cohorts and selling evergreen is one of the most consequential decisions for course creators, and each model has distinct financial characteristics.

Evergreen courses sell continuously. You set up the sales page, the email funnel, and the checkout process, and students can enroll at any time. Revenue comes in steadily — 10 to 20 sales per month for a well-marketed course. The advantage is consistency: you can predict monthly revenue within a reasonable range and plan accordingly. The disadvantage is that evergreen courses tend to sell at a slower pace because there is no urgency. Without a deadline or scarcity element, conversion rates are typically 1 to 3 percent from landing page to purchase.

Cohort launches concentrate all sales into a 1 to 2-week window. Scarcity is real (the cohort starts on a specific date and enrollment closes), which drives higher conversion rates — typically 5 to 10 percent during an active launch. A single launch can generate $10,000 to $50,000 in a week if you have a large enough audience. But between launches, revenue drops to zero. If you launch twice per year, you have two intense revenue periods and ten quiet months.

Some creators blend both models: an evergreen self-paced course at $197 that sells year-round, plus a premium cohort experience at $497 to $997 that launches 2 to 3 times per year. This diversifies revenue timing and captures both the steady-drip buyer and the deadline-motivated buyer.

From a platform perspective, cohort courses work best on Teachable or self-hosted platforms where you control enrollment windows. Udemy’s always-on marketplace and frequent sales undermine the scarcity that makes cohort launches effective. Skillshare’s royalty model does not support premium pricing at all.

Is Course Creation Worth It

The honest answer depends on what you are comparing it to. If you are comparing course revenue to a typical side hustle — selling templates on Gumroad, driving for DoorDash, freelancing on Upwork — a well-executed course has higher revenue potential per hour invested, but only after the initial creation period. You can explore how courses compare to other digital product models for broader context.

The median online course earns less than $1,000 in its lifetime. That is the uncomfortable truth behind the highlight reels of six-figure course launches. The creators who earn $5,000 or more per month from courses share several traits: they had an audience before they created the course, they chose a topic with demonstrated demand, and they invested seriously in both production quality and marketing.

If you have 5,000 or more email subscribers, a clear area of expertise, and the willingness to spend 100 to 200 hours creating a thorough course, the economics can work well. A $197 course selling 15 copies per month on Teachable generates $2,573 per month after fees and refunds — $30,885 per year from a single product. Add a subscription community or annual cohort launch, and you can reach $50,000 to $80,000 per year from course-related revenue.

If you are starting from zero audience, the path is longer but not impossible. Many successful course creators start by building an audience through free content — YouTube, a blog, a newsletter — and launch their first course once they have 1,000 to 3,000 engaged subscribers. The course becomes the monetization layer for an audience you built through other channels.

The platform you choose shapes your economics from day one. Self-hosting keeps the most revenue in your pocket but demands the most from you operationally. Teachable balances convenience with reasonable fees. Udemy trades margin for discovery. Skillshare is best treated as a marketing channel, not a primary revenue source.

Before you launch, running a break-even analysis on your course — factoring in creation time, platform fees, and marketing spend — tells you exactly how many enrollments you need before you see profit. It is the simplest way to pressure-test whether a course idea is financially viable at your target price point.

Run your specific scenario through the online course revenue calculator — plug in your course price, expected sales volume, and preferred platform to see exactly what you would take home each month. The numbers cut through the noise better than any advice.