How Much Do Udemy Instructors Make (2024)
sellcoursesonline.com
sellcoursesonline.com
I know I've given some thought to creating a couple of Udemy courses myself, but haven't taken the plunge yet. And for me, it would mostly be "labor of love" and "marketing". Any extra income would be like "found money" to me.
EDIT:
@fiftyacorn said something interesting in another thread.
but it did improve my understanding of the subject, and also made it easier to get work and consultancy opportunities
That also reflects some of my thinking on this subject. I remember when I did my Qualification School as a Firefighter I/II instructor, our instructor said something that has stuck with me for 30 some odd years now. He said "you don't really understand something until you've taught it to somebody else." I wholeheartedly endorse that mindset, and that would be another reason I might make a Udemy course - as a forcing function to make me do a deep dive into something, and deepen my own understanding.
Yeah, no doubt. For me, the marketing aspect really is the biggest thing in terms of any financial return. If I do create any courses, it would be part of an effort to position myself and/or my company as experts in a particular area. And that would just be one part of a multi-pronged strategy that would include making Youtube videos, possibly writing (a) book(s), etc.
I think online courses are a challenge. I've taken a number of them, and for them to work you have to get many, many things right, because you don't have the opportunities for course-correction that exist in an in-person class.
The professors who do EdX (or whatever) versions of their big lecture classes--which they've done a million times--can be pretty good and they don't get a lot of real-time feedback there either. But that is the exception, of course.
and they're more about broadening access and performing the school's charitable goal of educating lots of students,
secure in the knowledge that even a thousand hours of free online Harvard lectures can't replace a Harvard degree, so the tuition money will keep pouring in.
My courses were about Blockchain Development. We were the first ones there.
It's a side hustle for me.
Like so many other publishers, I have one course that sells really great. I got about 15 courses now published, one sells great, one sells meh, the other ones don't sell at all.
I also have my courses on Packt. Interestingly, I have another course there that sells really great. It's a different one. No overlap. The one on udemy doesn't sell on Packt and vice versa.
I think its pure luck. It's a perpetual motion machine: Once a course sells, it gets recognized and pushed by their marketing team/algo, it gets more visibility and it sells better, which means, it gets recognized and pushed by their marketing team/algo, and sells better ... you get the idea.
Optimize for luck. Be first. Be in a niche. Or have an audience out of udemy you can drive there and drive sales, so it gets recognized by their marketing team/algo.
Which brings me to the second part: I have tried (and failed) to build my own audience. I am a bad marketer. Really bad. Saying marketing and sales are my weak points doesn't do justice at how bad I am at this. I am a builder. I love teaching. I don't love bragging. And marketing/sales for me its a shitshow of shill and brag culture. I can't. And udemy does that for me. They get their cut, I get my cut and I am fine with that. What I don't like is how restrictive they got with analytics, I really can't even guesstimate what is my target audience and cater to them better. But that's a completely different topic.
I got a family and a full time job now and only do this on the side.
Thought you might like the additional info.
The cross publishing on packt is not as effective as Udemy. I think sales wise, it generates maybe 2% of the revenue that I have on Udemy
Getting in the Udemy business program was a huge revenue boost for my courses since it changes it from making money on sales to making money on watch time
What is your view on Piracy, Plagiarism, and the small effort Udemy seems to do, to limit the damage done to course authors?
Piracy is rampant, Udemy isn't doing anything against it (afaik). If someone needs to pirate a course and download it for free that's offered for 9.99 and not get the Q&A, the downloads, the additional stuff, the updates and all of that, so be it. Can't change that. Also, a lot of the folks who pirate a course will never pay for it. It's a loss on paper. Still a loss though.
Here's the kicker: I'm thinking, if my courses teach someone the blockchain stuff and turn his life around to go from $3/h job to a $60/h job (happened), feel free to pirate. Actually, send me a message and I'll give you a free coupon if you really can't afford the whatever $10. I did this so many times, I'm happy to help, I do care more about other peoples success than about the little money udemy brings in.
Plagiarism is another category. If I catch you taking my content and repurposing it to sell it under your name, I will come after you as hard as I can. I am not sure if udemy does something actively against plagiarism or not, but if I find a person who is bluntly reuploading my stuff verbatim to udemy (happened) or slightly editing my courses and repurposing them to make money (happened too), I will not only send a takedown notice, I will come after you and collect damages and ruin your life as much as I can, because I consider that the absolut scum of the internet and I wish everyone who does that has rashes on intimate body parts for the rest of their lives and can't sit straight.
That's my take.
I have been thinking of doing it (UK, smallish town) as I have some experience of training, like doing it, and there is not a lot of competition locally (a lot of publicly funded stuff for adults other than university has disappeared). No idea how to get started though.
I've done short YouTube video versions of conference presentations but never a full course. And I've never really promoted much. It doesn't really take a lot of gear (though it does take some). I'd probably start with doing some YouTube videos and branching out to Udemy or whatever if it clicks.
its a reasonable trade off for me, as a side gig
> At least in the US though, community college or some sort of continuing education isn't going to be a very good gig financially.
Nor here. They also want teaching qualifications. I would rather run something of my own. The problem is how to set it up and advertise.
If you broaden your definition of self-paid adult education, you'll probably find ballroom dance classes, yoga classes, MMA classes, sculpture classes, and things like that.
Perhaps looking at some of them could give you an idea of the economics. Assuming your class wouldn't compete with theirs, they might be happy to tell you how it's going for them :)
^ - Worth in the Marxist sense, the intrinsic value of something, not the purchase price of the current highest bidder.
What has surprised me is the lack of community centric responses. For example, to my knowledge, there is no communalist Uber. This is a system where the drivers are owners in the process. They pay the devs to maintain the system, but people could join and get a better share of the service funds. I take this to mean the Marxists out there just talk a big game.
However I agree that the gig economy artificially distorts the employment statistics by creating jobs that should, perhaps, not exist at all. A significantly increased unemployment rate might have a real impact on politics.
>Same for Airbnbs, which already cost 30-50% of a hotel.
Have rarely used them but it's probably more than that. For vacation houses, they're competing with other services like VRBO.
It's a 30 minute round trip from my home to the Chinese takeaway and back.
If I go myself, it costs fuel and 30 minutes of a person's time.
If I have Uber Eats bring it to me, it still takes fuel and 30 minutes of a person's time. Plus any time idle between orders. And on top of that, Uber's cut. And on top of that, the taxman's cut.
The economics make a lot more sense as the gap between rich and poor widens. Or if the drivers stack orders, and let the food get cold. Or in cities where most people don't have cars.
You see this in many places in SE Asia a lot where people who are not really rich have drivers, live-in housekeepers/cooks, etc. Hard to make that work in the US even if you are pretty well-off but not genuinely very rich.
Hustling people has become a big part of entrepreneurial "genius". Sure, it creates "jobs", but some jobs are awful and degrading. That's the sticking point.
Anyone on DoorDash can leave literally any time. There is no contract whatsoever .
It's hard to argue in good faith that drivers are being exploited when they willingly, actively participate in the act.
I've seen this in-person... friend was a single-mom trying to get by. These gigs market themselves in ways that are dishonest in order to get participants. Sure, there is high turnover, but that doesn't make it OK.
And yet the people voluntarily choosing to take these "jobs", apparently find their lives are in some measure better by doing the job than by not doing it.
Do I like the idea of people doing things that are awful and degrading? No. Do I think these companies should be praised for operating the way they do? Also no. But I also don't feel that I have any standing to tell people that they shouldn't do something that they find value in, because I judge it undesirable.
And: "The Price I Have To Pay (To Be A YouTuber)" - https://youtu.be/e2UbmAPYf1Q
1. "How Much YouTube Paid Me For 4,700,000 Views"
"For these 66 videos of my original music equating to 4.7 million views is roughly £4867 or just shy of $6000" "That carbon fiber guitar video I made four years ago is currently at an income of £739" "A few factors come into play there: it's a 13-minute video so it has plenty of time for ad breaks and YouTube likes it when you make people stick around which is much harder to do with a single song at just 3 and a half minutes"
(The video about her revenue got 1.1 million views)
2. "How much I made on YouTube last year (2022) // Teacher YouTube Money Talk"
"I've been putting out educational videos on YouTube for almost 10 years now. I've been monetized for two of those years and now I have just over 8000 subscribers [...] here it is 4101.22 okay so you can stay around for the rest of the video"
But that said, why would I buy a course over using an LLM? A couple of reasons come to mind:
1. I'm just more familiar/comfortable with the modality of listening to an instructor lecture and use visual aids, than chatting with an LLM when working on getting an understanding of a broad field. I see LLM's as more suited for more focused, "bite sized" interactions. For example, asking one how to solve a specific math problem that I am stuck on or something.
2. I also don't necessarily trust the LLM completely. And if I'm learning something that's very new to me, then by definition I won't be equipped to detect when the LLM is hallucinating. If I'm asking about something where it's easy to "check my answer" or confirm the information, then fine. But otherwise I still have a measure of skepticism (and I say this as somebody who is, in general, very "pro AI").
I feel this is similar to asking whether there would be value in paying for a well-written book on a topic, compared to just searching and reading information online on that topic, be it official documentation, or be it third-party information from blog posts, other articles.
In my opinion, a well-written course or book will give you a much deeper knowledge in a much more efficient way than what you get from ChatGPT or from searching the internet.
It comes down to how you view the opportunity
More seriously, teaching is usually the best way to learn.
I'm sure you know this given the ;-) but in case someone takes it the wrong way, although I speak at events even now that I'm not being paid a salary because I feel like it, very few things irk me more as analyst/consultant than someone who asks me to do something free "for the exposure."
Or, maybe what it's the best way to learn is how to make videos for Udemy. Not sure I think that has much value.
What I’m saying is that we generally don’t expect that part-time jobs get paid as much, in total, as full-time jobs. Someone working 1/4 time getting paid 1/4 what a full time person gets (maybe a little more - or a little less - for the flexibility and/or privilege) is normal.
So asking what fraction of their time Udemy instructors spend on Udemy tasks seems like a prerequisite for judging the fairness of their pay, and I don’t think this article covers that.
But I would assume a month of work would probably cover most new course content (and could be less)--given my experience in putting presentations together for conferences.
That said, given that assumption which I think is at least somewhere in the ballpark, typical revenues most seem to get don't really move the needle except as a very part-time hobby. Once upon a time I had a shareware business which brought in $7K/year for a bit but that only made financial sense in that it was something I enjoyed doing for a time and I walked away once I was sort of tired of it.
Both those numbers took me less than a minute to find.
[0] https://www.bls.gov/ooh/Education-Training-and-Library/Posts...
Paraphrasing Jeremy Irons’s character from Margin Call: “It’s a hell of a lot easier to be first.”