How To Make Money On Udemy In 2022 ($291,967.50 Semi Passive Income)

Most people who want to make money on Udemy make the same mistake: they spend weeks recording a full-length course on a topic they know, upload it, and then watch it sit at zero sales because 10,000 other instructors already covered that exact ground. The real opportunity on Udemy is not about building the most comprehensive course. It is about finding the precise words buyers type into the search bar, then putting something in front of them that nobody else has bothered to create yet.

In this breakdown, we are going through two strategies that actually work: creating practice exams that sell without a single lecture video, and using keyword data from Ahrefs to find low-competition pockets where a short course can rank on page one. One practice exam product with 58,000 students at $9.99 works out to roughly $300,000 in revenue after Udemy takes its cut. These are not hypothetical numbers. They are live on the Udemy platform right now, visible to anyone who knows where to look.

What You’ll Walk Out With

A clear picture of how Udemy’s revenue split works and what you realistically keep per sale
The practice exam model that generates income without recording a single lecture video
How to use Ahrefs to find keywords with 3,000-plus monthly searches and almost no direct Udemy competition
The exact-match title trick that dropped competing courses for “Python 3.10” from 10,000 down to 17
Surprising topic categories, from birth charts to truck dispatcher training, where real buyers exist and supply is thin
A YouTube-to-Udemy traffic funnel you can build around any topic, with or without showing your face
A minimum viable course strategy for getting your first listing live in one week
Not sure which topic to build around? finder.platformproof.com matches your existing skills to the platforms most likely to pay you for them

How Udemy’s Revenue Model Actually Works

Udemy is a course marketplace where students pay once and receive lifetime access. For a $9.99 course, the creator earns somewhere between $2.46 and close to $7 per sale, depending on how the student found the course. That range exists because Udemy takes a larger cut when they drove the sale through their own ads or promotional emails, and a smaller cut when the student came directly through your own marketing link or coupon.

That split feels steep at first glance. But what Udemy provides in return is real: they handle hosting, payment processing, customer support, and most importantly, they run a recommendation engine that actively promotes your course to students who have shown interest in related topics. A student who watched one Python tutorial last month may get an email about your Python 3.10 course this week without you running a single ad. That is the semi-passive part of this model. You create the product once, and Udemy’s platform keeps working to sell it around the clock.

Alston has courses on Udemy covering AWS and affiliate marketing that he built two to three years before filming this video. They were still selling regularly at the time of recording, 24 hours a day and 7 days a week, with no active promotion on his part. That is the outcome this model is capable of when you pick the right topic and position it correctly.

Strategy 1: Make Money on Udemy Without Creating a Course

The first strategy is the one most people overlook entirely: practice exams. Not video lectures, not slide decks, not a full curriculum. Just a set of practice questions that helps someone prepare for a certification or academic test they are trying to pass.

When you search Udemy for “AWS Cloud Practitioner Practice Exams,” you find products with 23,000 reviews and tens of thousands of enrolled students. These are not hour-long video courses. They are 65-question tests with no camera required and no recording software involved. Udemy supports quiz-style products natively, which means you can publish a practice exam without ever appearing on screen.

To understand the revenue potential, the math runs like this: one exam product on Udemy had accumulated 58,000 students paying $9.99 each. Gross revenue from that product: roughly $580,000. After Udemy’s cut, the creator is looking at somewhere around $300,000 from a product that took far less time to build than a full video course. That figure is close to the $291,967.50 referenced in the title of this video, derived from the actual student counts visible on active Udemy listings.

The certification categories with consistent active demand include AWS Cloud Practitioner, AZ-104 Microsoft Azure Administrator, A+ from CompTIA, PMP project management certification, SAT, and ACT. People preparing for these exams have money set aside for study materials and a real deadline pushing them to buy. That is a buyer profile that converts well.

Where to Source Practice Exam Questions Without Copying Anyone

The source material for practice questions is widely available. AWS publishes sample questions for their own certifications directly on aws.com. CompTIA, PMI, and other certification bodies do the same. Community sites like Quizlet have large libraries of user-created study sets spanning dozens of exam categories. A simple Google search for “A+ certification quiz questions” or “AWS Cloud Practitioner practice test” returns multiple free resources.

The rule that matters: do not copy questions word-for-word from any source. Every question and answer in your product must be rewritten in your own words. Add your own explanation for why each answer is correct or incorrect. This protects you legally, makes the product genuinely more useful for buyers, and keeps you compliant with Udemy’s terms of service. The goal is to take the underlying concept that a certification tests and express it in a form that is entirely your own work.

You do not need to hold the certification yourself to create a useful and accurate practice product. What you need is enough focused research time to understand what the certification actually tests and write questions that reflect it. That is a research project, not a credentials project. Plenty of people who have never taken the AWS exam have built profitable practice products by treating the research seriously.

How to Find High-Traffic, Low-Competition Keywords with Ahrefs

Both strategies in this video rely on the same tool: Ahrefs. It is a paid keyword research platform with a 7-day trial available for $7. The specific feature you want is the keyword explorer, filtered to show what people are searching for on Udemy specifically. This surfaces exactly what buyers type into the Udemy search bar, along with monthly volume data for each term.

To find practice exam opportunities, type “practice” into the keyword explorer with Udemy as the source. The results show every practice-related search Udemy ranks for. “AWS Cloud Practitioner Practice Exams” pulls 3,000 to 4,000 searches per month. Other high-volume terms in the same category: AZ-104 practice test, A+ certification practice exam, PMP practice questions. Each of those is a product you could build.

Run the same search with “certification” and “exam” as your seed terms. Each produces a list of real searches from people actively preparing to spend money on test prep. Your job is to pick one category you can research thoroughly, build an accurate and useful set of questions, and publish before others discover the same opening. The first listing in a keyword category with strong reviews tends to hold its position for a long time.

Strategy 2: Be Strategic About the Courses You Create

The second strategy applies when you want to create actual teaching content rather than a test product. The core insight is this: broad course titles compete against thousands of other listings, while specific version or subset titles often compete with fewer than 20.

Here is the example that makes it concrete. Type “Python” into Udemy and you get over 10,000 results. Type “Python 3.10” in quotation marks and you get 17. The quotation marks matter because they filter results to only courses that include that exact phrase in the title or description. Python 3.10 is a specific version of the language that learners are actively searching for by name, but almost no instructor has published a course targeting that exact term.

The quotation mark test works across every category. Search Ahrefs for “Python bootcamp” and you see heavy competition. Search “Python 3.10 bootcamp” and the competition collapses. The same principle applies to programming stacks: “React” is crowded, but “MERN stack” (MongoDB, Express, React, Node) is more specific and has fewer courses targeting it directly. “Microsoft Excel” faces tens of thousands of competitors; “Microsoft 365” is more focused and more searchable for the specific version millions of workplaces actually run.

The method is repeatable across any skill area. Find the broad keyword that proves demand exists. Then search for the specific version, year, or subset of that keyword and check how many courses include that exact phrase in quotation marks. When the broad term returns 10,000 results and the specific phrase returns 17, you have found your opening.

Topics You Would Not Expect to Sell on Udemy

Scrolling through the Ahrefs Udemy keyword data surfaces categories that most people would assume have no paying audience. They do.

Birth chart: Udemy returns 685 results for this term. One course in that category runs 10 total hours of content. Another runs 1 hour. If you spend two weeks learning how to interpret astrology charts and record a focused 1-hour course, you are entering a real search category with thin competition from established instructors.

Dinosaur game: more than 400,000 monthly searches. When pasted directly into Udemy, it returns 5,000 results. But most of those are loosely related. A tightly targeted course on the actual topic, or a specific angle of it, can rank above broad competitors because Udemy rewards relevance in its ranking algorithm, not just seniority.

Truck dispatcher training: 8,000 Udemy results. When Alston looked at the top YouTube video on this topic during the research for this video, it had only 563 views. That gap between search demand and the quality of supply is exactly the kind of opening worth building into. You could spend one week learning the basics of freight dispatch, record a solid entry-level course, and be more thorough than most of what currently exists.

Other categories with confirmed Udemy search volume that most instructors ignore: Facebook Marketplace, Google Sheets, AliExpress dropshipping, Microsoft 365, Mailchimp email setup, and Kendo UI. These are tools millions of people use every day at work. The average creator skips them because the topics feel too basic or unglamorous. Basic and in-demand is one of the strongest combinations available on a marketplace like Udemy, where students are searching to solve immediate practical problems, not to become authorities in a field.

How Udemy Drives Traffic to Your Listing

Udemy handles a significant portion of traffic generation on its own through two systems. The first is their recommendation engine, which works similarly to YouTube’s: if a student watched one AWS course, Udemy surfaces related products in the sidebar and recommended section. If someone searched for Python 3.10 content, they will see your Python 3.10 course appear in multiple touchpoints across the platform. The second is email marketing: Udemy sends campaigns to students who have expressed interest in categories related to your course, putting your listing in front of buyers without you spending a dollar on ads.

The more proactive traffic approach is building a YouTube channel around the same topic as your Udemy product. If your Udemy listing is a practice exam for the A+ certification, create free YouTube videos that walk through sample questions, explain specific concepts covered on the test, or discuss what career paths the certification opens. At the end of each video, mention that a complete organized practice test is linked in the description. That link goes to your Udemy listing.

You do not need to appear on camera for this to work. Screen recordings of practice questions with a voiceover explanation are sufficient. Many channels in the certification prep space run entirely on screen-share content with no host visible. The traffic funnel works like this: someone searches YouTube for A+ certification help, finds your free content, watches a few videos, clicks the description link when they want a structured test product, and completes the purchase on Udemy. Each step of that chain is achievable without any specialized equipment or an existing audience.

Not sure which topic to build your Udemy course around?

The Platform Proof Finder matches what you already know to the income platforms most likely to pay you for it. Start at finder.platformproof.com.

How to Get Your First Udemy Listing Live in One Week

The consistent advice for first-time Udemy instructors is to start with a 1-hour course and build from there. A 10-hour course outline that never gets finished earns zero. A polished 1-hour course that is live on the platform starts accumulating data, collecting reviews, and generating sales while you develop the next section. Udemy’s algorithm also rewards content that is actively updated, so a shorter course you add to regularly can outperform a longer course that has not changed since it was published.

For a practice exam product, the creation timeline is even shorter. One dedicated week of research into a certification exam, writing 65 to 100 quality questions with detailed answer explanations, is a realistic output for someone who commits a few hours each evening. Once published, a practice exam product does not require the same frequency of updates as a video course, which pushes it closer to the passive end of the income spectrum.

Step-by-Step Plan: From Zero to Your First Udemy Sale

Start the Ahrefs $7 seven-day trial and open the keyword explorer filtered to Udemy as the source site
Search the terms “practice,” “exam,” and “certification” to identify keywords with 1,000-plus monthly volume and few top-selling competing products
Pick one certification or test category you can research thoroughly in 5 to 10 focused hours
Source raw material from official exam providers (AWS, CompTIA, PMI, College Board), then rewrite every question and answer in your own words with your own explanations for correct and incorrect choices
Create a free Udemy instructor account at udemy.com/teaching and build your course shell with a title that includes the exact keyword phrase from your Ahrefs research
Upload your practice exam as a quiz product inside the Udemy course builder
Set your price at $9.99 to $19.99 and publish
Create a free YouTube playlist or channel around the same certification topic and link your Udemy listing in every video description to build a secondary traffic source

Honest Drawbacks of the Udemy Model

Udemy runs platform-wide promotional sales multiple times per year that drop every course price to $9.99 regardless of your list price. This happens without your input or approval. When your course sells at $9.99 through a Udemy promotion and Udemy drove the discovery, your share drops to the lower end of the revenue range: roughly $2.46 per sale. High student volume can still produce real income at that rate, but entering this model expecting to price at $199 and keep the majority of it will lead to disappointment.

You are also building on a platform you do not own. Udemy controls the algorithm, the promotional calendar, and the terms of service. A policy change or a shift in how they rank new listings can reduce your visibility without warning. The YouTube-to-Udemy traffic approach partially addresses this because you own your YouTube relationship with subscribers, but the Udemy listing itself remains platform-dependent.

Competition is real, even with careful keyword research. A low-competition keyword you find today may attract other instructors within months of your listing going live, especially if the category starts generating visible sales. The advantage goes to whoever publishes first and accumulates the most reviews, since Udemy tends to surface products with social proof over newer listings with no review history.

None of these drawbacks make the model unworkable. They are the operating conditions that separate instructors who treat this as a passive income lottery from those who treat it as a real business. The instructors earning consistently from Udemy are picking strategic topics, publishing before the space fills, collecting reviews, and updating their content over time. That is the actual work behind the semi-passive income framing.

Find Your X

The hardest part of starting on Udemy is usually not building the course. It is deciding which topic to build around. Most people already have knowledge that other people will pay to learn: certification prep they went through themselves, a software tool they use every day at work, a technical skill they picked up over years in a specific job. The challenge is connecting that knowledge to what buyers are actively searching for right now.

The Platform Proof Finder is built to solve exactly that problem. It asks about your background, your existing skills, and what you have already learned, then points you toward the platforms and formats most likely to turn that knowledge into income. Use it before you open Ahrefs, so you walk into your keyword research already knowing which category is worth targeting. Start at finder.platformproof.com.

Frequently Asked Questions

Do I need to hold the certification to create a practice exam for it on Udemy?

No. Udemy does not require instructors to hold the credentials they teach. What you need is enough research depth to write accurate questions with correct explanations. Many people who passed a certification have not built a practice product around it, which means a motivated researcher who has not yet taken the exam can produce a competitive product by putting in more preparation time than the certified person bothered to invest.

How much does it cost to start as a Udemy instructor?

Creating and publishing a course on Udemy is free. The only paid tool in this strategy is the Ahrefs $7 seven-day trial. For a practice exam product, you do not need a microphone or recording software. For a video course, a USB microphone under $50 and free screen recording software like OBS are the minimum. Many successful instructors have started with exactly that setup and nothing more.

How does Udemy calculate my cut per sale?

Revenue share depends on the traffic source. If the student found your course through your own referral link, coupon, or external marketing, you keep a higher percentage, close to 97 percent of the sale. If Udemy drove the discovery through their own marketplace promotions or email campaigns, they take a larger share and you receive approximately 25 to 37 percent of the sale price. On a $9.99 sale with Udemy as the source, that puts your take at roughly $2.46 to $7 depending on the specifics of that sale.

Is Udemy too saturated to make money in 2024?

In broad categories like “Python” or “digital marketing,” the competition is significant. In specific keyword subsets like “Python 3.10” or “AZ-104 Microsoft Azure Administrator,” the competition is thin. The saturation claim comes from people who searched generic one-word terms and saw 10,000 results without going one level deeper into the specific phrases buyers actually type. The method in this video is specifically designed to surface the less-searched, less-competed terms that still drive real sales volume.

Can Udemy’s internal algorithm drive sales without a YouTube channel?

Yes. Udemy’s recommendation engine and email marketing system generate sales on their own for well-positioned listings. The YouTube channel is an additional layer that compounds results over time, but it is not a requirement for the first listing to earn revenue. Many instructors build consistent monthly income purely from Udemy’s organic discovery system without maintaining any external channel.

How long should the first Udemy course be?

Start with one hour and plan to add sections regularly. A completed one-hour course that is live on Udemy is worth more than a half-built ten-hour project sitting on your hard drive. Udemy has minimum content requirements for paid courses, so verify the current threshold in their instructor guidelines before publishing, but one hour of quality content meets the minimum for most categories. Regular updates after publishing help maintain search ranking within Udemy’s algorithm.

What recording equipment is actually necessary?

For a practice exam product: none. No camera, no microphone, no software beyond a web browser and word processor. For a video course: a USB microphone in the $40 to $80 range and free screen recording software are the minimum viable setup. A camera is optional. Many profitable Udemy courses run as screen-share tutorials where the instructor is never visible. Keeping production costs low removes the barrier that stops most people from publishing anything at all.

How quickly can someone expect their first Udemy sale?

There is no reliable standard timeline. New listings in low-competition keyword categories can appear in Udemy’s search results within days of publishing. First sales in the first two to four weeks are common for well-optimized listings in thin categories. In broad, heavily competed categories, new listings can sit without sales for months unless the instructor actively drives external traffic from YouTube or another source. The keyword research step in this strategy is specifically designed to put your listing in the low-competition zone where Udemy’s own systems can find you quickly.

Sources

Udemy Instructor Revenue Share details: udemy.com/teaching
Ahrefs Keyword Explorer: ahrefs.com
AWS Certification Exam Prep and Sample Questions: aws.amazon.com/certification/certification-prep
CompTIA A+ Certification Objectives: comptia.org/certifications/a
PMI Project Management Professional (PMP) Exam: pmi.org/certifications/project-management-pmp