Short answer: Udemy and Skillshare give you access to millions of learners — but you'll keep as little as 15-37% of revenue, have no pricing control, and won't own your student relationships. They're useful discovery tools, but they're not where you build a course business.
What Are Udemy and Skillshare?
Udemy and Skillshare are course marketplaces — platforms with built-in audiences of millions of learners. Instead of building your own course site, you publish courses on their marketplace and they handle discovery, hosting, and payments.
The key difference from hosted platforms: on a marketplace, the platform owns the student relationship and controls pricing. On a hosted platform (like Ruzuku, Teachable, or Thinkific), you own everything — your students, your pricing, your data.
How Do Udemy and Skillshare Work? (Revenue Model)
Udemy Revenue Share (2026)
| Sale Channel | You Keep | Udemy Keeps |
|---|---|---|
| Your own coupon/referral link | 97% | 3% |
| Udemy organic marketplace | 37% | 63% |
| Udemy Business / Personal Plan | 15% | 85% |
The subscription share is declining: Udemy's subscription revenue share for instructors has dropped steadily — from 25% to 20% (Jan 2024), to 17.5% (Jan 2025), to 15% as of January 2026. Subscription revenue is allocated based on minutes consumed (video + interactive exercises), not enrollments. If Udemy continues this trend, instructors keep less each year while Udemy's subscription business grows.
Pricing control is limited: Instructors choose from Udemy's fixed price tiers ($9.99-$199.99). If you opt into the Udemy Deals Program, Udemy can discount your course heavily — courses frequently sell for $9.99-$14.99 during promotions regardless of list price.
Skillshare Royalty Model (2026)
Skillshare uses a subscription-only model (~$13.99/month or ~$165/year for learners). Teachers earn from a monthly royalty pool based on premium minutes watched:
- Typical rate: $0.05-$0.10 per minute watched (varies monthly).
- Royalty pool size: ~$950,000/month total, split among all qualifying teachers.
- Eligibility (new in 2026): Minimum 50 followers on Skillshare AND 75+ minutes watched per month to qualify for any payout.
- Referral bonus: 60% of a referred member's subscription fee.
Skillshare says 90% of teachers who lost eligibility under the new 50-follower rule were earning less than $5/month — but for new teachers, the threshold means you need to build an audience before earning anything at all.
Why Use Course Marketplaces?
Marketplaces have genuine strengths:
- Access to millions of potential students — Udemy has over 70 million learners. That's an audience you can't replicate on your own.
- No upfront costs — Both platforms are free to publish on. No monthly subscription, no hosting fees, no setup costs.
- Built-in discovery — Students find you through marketplace search, recommendations, and category browsing. You don't need a marketing strategy to get started.
- Established brand trust — Learners trust the marketplace brand, reducing the barrier to purchasing from an unknown instructor.
Why Marketplaces and Hosted Platforms Serve Different Needs
Some significant trade-offs with marketplaces:
- Heavy revenue share — Udemy takes up to 63-85% of marketplace and subscription sales. On a $100 course sold organically, you may receive $37. Through subscriptions, just $15.
- No student email access — You can't build an email list from marketplace students. Each sale is essentially a one-time transaction.
- Race-to-the-bottom pricing — Udemy runs frequent $9.99 sales. One instructor told us the pricing was "more than offensive" but acknowledged it as a "stack it deep, sell it cheap" game.
- You don't own your audience — The marketplace controls the relationship. If they change algorithms, policies, or revenue share (as Udemy has done repeatedly), your income drops.
- Pre-recorded only — Marketplaces only support passive, pre-recorded content. Live cohorts, interactive exercises, and community discussions aren't part of the model.
Can You Build a Course Business on Udemy?
Some instructors do earn significant revenue on Udemy. One vocal studio instructor told us he was "averaging about 340 new students a month" on Udemy, though at deeply discounted prices. Another instructor with 45,000 students across Udemy and Skillshare told us directly: "I'm not a marketeer, and have no wish to become one, so me driving traffic for sales is probably not going to happen."
This highlights the core trade-off: marketplaces handle marketing for you, but you pay for it with revenue share, pricing control, and student ownership. If you're comfortable with that exchange, marketplaces can generate real income.
The dual-platform strategy is increasingly common: use Udemy to validate course ideas and reach new audiences, then move premium courses to your own platform. One educator told us: "I try everything out in Udemy and if it looks as if I might have a good thing, I switch platforms." Others run content on multiple platforms simultaneously, treating marketplaces as a discovery channel rather than a business foundation.
What Educators Tell Us
We hear from educators about Udemy and Skillshare regularly — but the conversations often reveal a fundamental confusion about what kind of platform they need.
The marketplace confusion: A surprising number of educators arrive expecting hosted platforms to work like marketplaces. One asked us: "Is this a marketplace to sell courses (like Udemy) or just creating and hosting courses?" Another wrote a formal proposal to "provide courses for your platform" — treating a hosted platform like a marketplace publisher. The distinction between "platform sells for you" vs. "platform gives you tools to sell" isn't obvious to many new course creators.
The pricing frustration: Educators who've experienced Udemy's pricing describe it in strong terms. One instructor called it "more than offensive." Another decided to stay with Udemy because "I can't justify the monthly cost" of a hosted platform — but acknowledged "my classes aren't a good match, since for me the classes are the product instead of a supplement for another established business." When courses are your only revenue stream (no coaching, consulting, or existing audience), the marketplace's free-to-list model is hard to walk away from.
The discovery dependency: The clearest pattern: instructors with large marketplace audiences (thousands of students) rely on the platform for discovery and don't want to do their own marketing. This is a legitimate reason to stay — if you have no interest in building an independent audience, a marketplace handles that for you (at a steep price).
How Does Your Own Platform Compare?
Running courses on your own platform (like Ruzuku) is fundamentally different from publishing on a marketplace:
- Zero transaction fees — Ruzuku charges a flat monthly fee with no per-sale percentage. No revenue share, period.
- Own your student relationships — Export emails, build your list, nurture relationships over time. Every student is a potential repeat customer.
- Set premium prices — Charge what your transformation is worth, without marketplace price pressure or $9.99 fire sales.
- Live cohort programs — Marketplaces only support pre-recorded content. On your own platform, you can run live, interactive programs that command premium prices.
- Interactive learning — Exercises, discussions, assignments, and community are all part of the experience — not just video playback.
For the complete comparison, see Own Platform vs Marketplaces →
Alternatives to Marketplaces
If you're considering moving off marketplaces (or starting fresh), here are hosted platform options:
- Teachable — Marketing-focused with native mobile apps (full comparison)
- Kajabi — All-in-one with email and funnels (full comparison)
- Thinkific — Feature-rich with deep customization (full comparison)
- Podia — Simple and affordable for digital products (full comparison)
- See all platform comparisons →
Frequently Asked Questions
How much do Udemy instructors actually make?
It varies enormously. Top instructors earn six figures, but the median is much lower. The key factor is how students find you: if you drive traffic with your own coupon links, you keep 97%. If Udemy's marketplace drives the sale, you keep 37%. Through Udemy's subscription plans, just 15% (and declining). Many successful Udemy instructors treat it as one channel among several, not their sole income source.
Is Skillshare worth it for course creators?
Skillshare works best for instructors who create short, visually engaging classes (design, creative skills, photography) and are comfortable with royalty-based pay. New teachers must build to 50 followers before earning anything. For instructors teaching premium, transformation-oriented programs, a hosted platform where you set your own prices will generate more revenue per student.
Can I charge my own prices on Udemy?
Partially. You choose from Udemy's fixed price tiers ($9.99-$199.99). But if you opt into the Deals Program, Udemy can discount your course heavily during promotions — courses frequently sell for $9.99-$14.99 regardless of your listed price. On a hosted platform, you set the price and it stays there.
What's the difference between Udemy and a hosted course platform?
On Udemy, the platform owns the student relationship, controls pricing, handles marketing, and takes a large revenue share. On a hosted platform like Ruzuku, you own everything — student data, pricing, brand, and experience — and pay a flat monthly fee with zero transaction fees. Marketplaces trade control for discovery; hosted platforms trade discovery for ownership.
Bottom Line
Course marketplaces like Udemy and Skillshare are genuinely useful for discovery — especially if you have no existing audience and want exposure to millions of learners. But the revenue share is steep and getting steeper (Udemy's subscription share has dropped from 25% to 15% in two years). If courses are more than a side project — if you want premium pricing, student relationships, and a business you control — your own platform is essential. Many successful course creators start on marketplaces and move to their own platform as they build an audience. That transition is often the moment a course hobby becomes a course business.