How to Make Money Teaching Online Courses (Where You Host It Changes Everything)

Most people who decide to make money teaching online courses get one thing right and one thing completely wrong. Creating a course on something you actually know is the straightforward part. Choosing where to post it is where the money either flows to you or gets handed over to a platform. If you put a $94.99 course on Udemy, they will discount it to $9.99, take their share, and leave you with approximately $2.73 per sale. That is not a rounding error. That is the business model.

This guide walks through the exact approach Alston Godbolt uses to go from a course idea to passive income, including a full look at where to host your course so that the money you earn actually stays with you. No experience required, no credentials needed, and your first course can be recorded on a smartphone today.

What You’ll Walk Out With

A repeatable method for finding course topics with low competition and real student demand
Two free tools to build a complete course outline in under an hour
The real math on why Udemy is the wrong platform for anyone trying to earn $100 a day
A straight comparison of Udemy, Skillshare, Thinkific, WordPress, and all-in-one funnel builders
Free and paid traffic strategies that can put your course in front of buyers without a huge budget
Honest drawbacks of each hosting option so you choose the right fit for your situation
A fast way to find which online income path fits you best at finder.platformproof.com

Why Online Courses Are One of the Strongest Passive Income Models

The core appeal of an online course is that you create it once and it can sell around the clock. Someone in a different time zone can purchase your course at 2 AM while you are asleep, and that transaction requires nothing more from you. That kind of income is rare. Most side hustles require you to show up every time you get paid. Courses do not.

Course creation also requires no formal credentials. You do not need a degree, professional certifications, or years of documented results. What you need is knowledge that someone else wants to acquire. That opens the door to almost any topic: keto cooking, watercolor painting, basketball fundamentals, freelance bookkeeping, home organization, soccer drills, makeup techniques, basket weaving, or any skill you have spent time developing that other people are actively searching to learn.

Startup costs are low as well. You can record your first course on a smartphone. As revenue comes in, you reinvest back into better audio equipment, better lighting, and better hosting. You do not need to spend money before you make money, which is a meaningful distinction compared to most business models.

Step 1: Find a Course Topic With Real Demand and Low Competition

Before you record a single video, you need to know whether people are actually searching for what you plan to teach. Udemy makes this easier than most people realize. When you sign up as an instructor, which is completely free, you get access to Udemy’s marketplace insights tool. You type in any topic and it returns three numbers that matter: student demand, the number of competing courses already on the platform, and the median monthly revenue for that category.

Here is a real example from the video. When searching “basketball” in the tool, student demand showed as average, the number of courses was high, and the median monthly revenue was around $14. That is a crowded topic with modest returns. When searching “ketosis,” the numbers looked completely different: student demand was high, the number of courses was low, and the median monthly revenue came in at $34 with a top-end of $465 per month. Low competition combined with high demand is what you are looking for.

Even if you already know your topic, running it through the Udemy marketplace tool gives you real data before you invest hours recording content. The goal at this stage is to find a topic where a real audience exists and where the field is not already packed with established creators. Spend time here. Getting this step right makes every step downstream faster and more effective.

Step 2: Build a Full Course Outline in Under an Hour

Once you have a topic, you need a structure. Most people get stuck staring at a blank document and waste days trying to build a curriculum from scratch. You do not need to do that. Two free resources will give you a ready-made outline in a fraction of the time.

The first is Amazon’s book search. Go to Amazon, search your topic, and filter by Books. Start browsing results and look for something specific: the table of contents. You are not buying or copying these books. You are reading how established authors have organized the topic. The chapters in a bestselling book on your subject are essentially the modules of your course. If a book called “The Keto Blueprint” has chapters on what ketosis is, how to calculate macros, meal planning for beginners, and managing social situations while eating keto, those are four ready-made course sections. Use the table of contents as your planning framework, then do your own research to fill each section with accurate, useful content.

The second resource is idplr.com, a site that sells PLR books and content on a wide range of topics. You search your topic there and browse the tables of contents available for purchase. Again, you are not repurposing the writing directly. You are using the organizational structure as a starting point and building your own course content from there.

A third quick technique costs nothing at all. Go to YouTube, type your topic into the search bar, and hit the spacebar. The autocomplete suggestions tell you exactly what real people are searching for right now. Typing “keto for beginners” and hitting space pulls up suggestions like “keto for beginners recipes,” “keto for beginners diet plan,” and “keto for beginners vegetarian.” Each of those autocomplete terms is a potential course module title and a signal that real student demand exists for that specific subtopic.

Step 3: Record Your Course Without Expensive Equipment

There are three standard formats for online course videos. The first is a screen recording with slides, where you build a presentation in Google Slides or PowerPoint and narrate over it. The second is a talking head video where you appear on camera and explain the material directly to the viewer. The third is a combination of both, switching between slides and on-camera segments depending on what the content requires. All three formats work. Your choice depends on what you are teaching and what you are comfortable recording.

Course length should fall somewhere between 30 minutes and four hours, depending on how much material your topic genuinely requires. Do not pad the course to make it look more substantial. Students notice immediately when lessons are stretched with filler, and it damages your reviews and refund rates. Make each section as long as it needs to be to fully teach that piece of the topic, and cut everything that does not directly serve the student. A tight, high-value 45-minute course will outperform a bloated three-hour course in reviews, completion rates, and word-of-mouth referrals.

Your smartphone camera is enough to start. Audio quality matters more to students than video resolution, so if you invest in one upgrade first, make it a simple lapel microphone or a USB desktop microphone. Record in a quiet room with natural light hitting your face and you will produce a professional-enough result for your first course without spending money on a studio setup.

Step 4: Why Udemy Is the Wrong Platform to Build Income On

This is the step that most online course tutorials skip entirely, and it is the most important one to understand. Nearly every generic guide tells you to post your course on Udemy because it has a large built-in audience. What those guides leave out is what that built-in audience actually costs you in lost revenue.

Here is the real math from the video. One of Alston’s courses on Udemy is listed at $94.99. Udemy’s standard practice is to discount it to $9.99 to drive sales volume. After Udemy markets the course and takes their share, the creator’s take-home is approximately $2.73 per sale. That is for a course that represents hours of planning, recording, editing, and all of your domain knowledge in a given area.

To earn $100 a day at $2.73 per sale, you would need to sell more than 36 copies every single day. That requires a volume of traffic that almost no individual creator can sustain without a massive existing audience. Udemy can be useful for building social proof, getting your first student reviews, and testing whether a topic has demand. But it is not where you build real income. There are better options.

Step 5: Platform Options That Let You Actually Keep the Revenue

Once you accept that Udemy is not your primary income platform, several real alternatives exist. Here is how each one compares based on what the video covers.

Skillshare pays through a revenue share model based on minutes watched rather than per-sale pricing. It is a step up from Udemy’s discount math, but it still requires large student numbers to generate meaningful monthly income. It works better as an audience builder than a primary revenue channel.

Thinkific is where the picture starts to improve meaningfully. You set your own price, you can start for free, and you retain a much larger share of each sale than Udemy allows. As your audience grows and you add features, you move to paid monthly tiers. The fundamental difference from Udemy is that you control the pricing. Charging $97 for your course means you collect $97 minus Thinkific’s cut, not $9.99 minus Udemy’s cut. That changes the math completely.

Learndash and Podia are two additional dedicated course platforms worth considering. Both are user-friendly, both give you more pricing control than the big marketplace platforms, and both are reasonable options if you want a built-out course hosting experience without building your own website from scratch.

Self-hosted WordPress is the maximum-control option and the lowest monthly cost. Hosting through a service like Bluehost starts at $3 to $5 per month. A course-specific WordPress theme or plugin can cost as little as $25 as a one-time fee, bringing your total overhead to roughly $10 to $15 per month. You keep all of your revenue. The trade-off is that you manage everything: security, payment gateway configuration, plugin compatibility, and site maintenance. If you have no prior experience with WordPress, the ongoing friction can turn into a significant time cost.

All-in-one funnel builders like Kartra, ClickFunnels, and Builderall are the option Alston points to as the strongest choice for building a real course business. These platforms put your sales page, payment processing, email list, and funnel automation under one roof. They come with prebuilt templates you can import and customize, free trials to test before committing, and extensive tutorial libraries. You can offer recurring membership pricing or one-time purchases, build upsell sequences, and expand into a full online business rather than selling a standalone product. You keep significantly more revenue per sale than Udemy, and the tools grow with you as your audience grows.

Step 6: How to Get Your Course in Front of Buyers

Creating the course covers roughly half the work. The other half is making sure people find it and buy it. The video outlines a two-track marketing approach: start with free traffic sources, then add paid traffic once revenue is coming in.

Free traffic channels include Facebook groups, YouTube videos, and Pinterest. Facebook groups work well because interest communities already exist around almost every topic imaginable. Find the groups where your potential students are already gathering, show up consistently, answer questions, provide real value, and let your course be a natural next step for people who want to go deeper than a Facebook conversation allows. YouTube videos build search traffic that can bring in new students for years from a single piece of content. Pinterest is consistently underrated for course creators in health, lifestyle, cooking, craft, and education niches.

Once your course is generating consistent revenue, you can reinvest a portion into paid traffic through YouTube ads, Facebook ads, and Pinterest ads. Paid traffic accelerates what is already working organically. The key timing distinction: start with free traffic first, validate that your course actually converts real buyers, and only then add paid spend behind something you know performs. Spending money to find out what free traffic already tells you for nothing is an expensive way to learn a lesson.

Not sure whether selling online courses is the right path for your income goals?

Find the online income method that fits your actual skills and schedule at finder.platformproof.com.

Honest Drawbacks Before You Commit

The passive income framing around online courses is accurate, but it can create unrealistic expectations about how much front-loaded work is involved. Here are the real challenges worth knowing before you commit time and money to this path.

Self-hosting requires more ongoing work than it sounds. WordPress gives you maximum control and minimum monthly cost, but it also makes you responsible for everything. Security updates, payment gateway configuration, plugin compatibility, and site performance issues are real time sinks. If you have no prior experience with WordPress websites, budget meaningful time or hire someone to handle setup and maintenance.

Traffic does not appear automatically. Uploading a course to Thinkific or even Udemy does not mean students will discover it. You need to invest real time into free traffic strategies before paid traffic makes financial sense, and the first wave of organic traffic takes longer to build than most guides suggest. Expect weeks or months before you see consistent student flow from content you create today.

Udemy can still serve a limited strategic purpose. Even though Udemy is the wrong platform for income, its brand recognition is real. Some course creators post a simplified or free version of their course on Udemy purely for social proof, collecting reviews and enrollment numbers they can reference on their own higher-margin platform. The strategy is: use Udemy for credibility, use everything else for profit.

All-in-one platforms carry monthly costs. Kartra, ClickFunnels, and Builderall all require a monthly subscription. They are worth it once your course brings in consistent revenue, but signing up before you have validated your course idea adds financial pressure you do not need early on. Each offers a free trial period. Use it to test your course and your traffic strategy before committing to an ongoing fee.

No platform compensates for a weak course. Every platform discussed here is just a distribution channel. What determines long-term course income is whether your content genuinely helps students get what they came for. Good reviews, high completion rates, and student referrals are the most durable marketing foundation you can build. Get the course quality right before you focus on scaling the business around it.

Find Your X

Online courses are one of the strongest passive income models available, but they are not the right fit for every person or every situation. The amount of upfront work involved, the marketing required, and the platform decisions can feel overwhelming when you are still figuring out which income path actually fits your skills, schedule, and financial goals. The Platform Proof Finder at finder.platformproof.com walks you through a short set of questions and matches you to the online income method that makes sense for where you actually are, not where a generic guide assumes you are.

Frequently Asked Questions

Do I need experience or credentials to create an online course?

No. The video is explicit on this point: no experience, no proof, and no formal education are required. What you need is knowledge that someone else wants to acquire and the ability to teach it clearly in a structured format. If you can do that, you have everything you need to build a course people will pay for.

What equipment do I need to record my first online course?

A smartphone is enough to get started. A quiet room with good natural light handles the basic production requirements. If you want to invest in a single upgrade, a lapel microphone or a simple USB desktop microphone will improve audio quality significantly. Audio matters more to students than video resolution, so prioritize sound over picture quality if you have to choose between the two.

How long should an online course be?

Somewhere between 30 minutes and four hours, depending on how much material your topic genuinely requires. Make each lesson as long as it needs to be to fully cover that section of the subject, and no longer. Students notice immediately when content is stretched with filler, and it costs you in reviews and completion rates. A tight, high-value 45-minute course will consistently outperform a padded three-hour course in student satisfaction and referral rates.

Why does Udemy pay course creators so little?

Udemy’s business model is built around volume and low prices, not around creator revenue. They heavily discount courses to drive purchase volume, which serves their platform metrics but not yours. A course priced at $94.99 gets discounted to $9.99, and after Udemy’s share, the creator takes home approximately $2.73 per sale. The platform is designed to sell a lot of courses at low prices, not to make individual course creators financially successful.

What is Thinkific and how does it compare to Udemy?

Thinkific is a dedicated course hosting platform that lets you set your own price, start for free, and keep a much larger share of your revenue than Udemy’s model allows. The trade-off is that Thinkific does not have Udemy’s built-in audience, so you are responsible for driving your own traffic. As your student count grows and you add features, you move to paid monthly tiers. For anyone serious about building income from course sales, the pricing control alone makes Thinkific a significantly better option than Udemy.

What is the best all-in-one platform for selling online courses?

Kartra, ClickFunnels, and Builderall are the three platforms highlighted in this video as strong all-in-one options. Each combines sales page building, payment processing, email list management, and funnel automation under a single subscription. They all offer free trials, prebuilt templates, and extensive tutorial resources. Which one fits best depends on your budget and how much technical setup you are comfortable managing, but all three give you more revenue per sale and more business-building tools than Udemy provides.

How do I market an online course without a paid advertising budget?

Three free traffic channels work consistently well for course creators: Facebook groups in your niche, YouTube videos on your topic, and Pinterest. Facebook groups let you find an existing, interest-driven audience without building one from scratch. YouTube videos build search traffic that continues bringing in students for years from a single piece of content. Pinterest works especially well for course creators in lifestyle, health, cooking, fitness, and education categories. Start with the channel you are already most comfortable producing content for and expand from there.

Can I host my online course on my own WordPress website?

Yes. WordPress with a course-specific theme or plugin is a fully viable option. Hosting through a provider like Bluehost runs $3 to $5 per month, and many course themes or plugins are available for as little as $25 as a one-time fee, bringing your total to roughly $10 to $15 per month. You keep all of your revenue with this setup. The trade-off is that you take on full responsibility for security, payment processing configuration, and site maintenance. It is the highest-control option but also the highest-maintenance one, especially if you have limited experience with WordPress.

Sources

Alston Godbolt, “How To Make Money Teaching Online Courses 2021” — YouTube, https://youtu.be/fbzchJ1De-0
Udemy Marketplace Insights Tool — udemy.com (free for registered instructors)
idplr.com — PLR book and content resource referenced in video
Thinkific course hosting platform — thinkific.com
Bluehost web hosting — bluehost.com (referenced at $3-5/month in video)