How I made $78,034 with one $97 online course
By: Krystal Wascher
Tags: Online Courses, Money, Blogging, Making Money Online, Business

How I made $78,034 with one $97 online course

You can earn a full time living without selling high ticket programs.

Image by Porapak Apichodilok, edited by the author.

I’ve been obsessed with online courses since I first heard about them in 2010.

My first introduction to the online course world was Udemy. It was the first platform that I can remember that let ordinary people share their knowledge online and get paid for it.

I created dozens of courses on Udemy back in the day.

Topics ranged from forming LLCs and other business legal issues to tutorials on how to record and edit audio files. I had finally found a platform to explore all of my passions and make some side income in the process.

I was in heaven.

But the problem with Udemy is that it’s not a platform for people who want to earn a substantial amount of revenue with their online courses.

Sure, there are some course creators there who have managed to attract tens of thousands of students and are doing quite well.

But most Udemy course creators are not able to earn a full-time income on the platform because Udemy routinely discounts courses by up to 90%. For example, courses priced at $100 often sell for a mere $10.99.

Image from Udemy.com

The only way to prevent Udemy from discounting your course is to opt-out of its promotional program. This means you will be responsible for doing all of your own marketing and advertising because Udemy will no longer promote your course for you.

That wouldn’t be so bad except for the fact that Udemy has strict rules on how and when you can communicate with your students.

For example, you are not allowed access to student email addresses. You can only promote your other Udemy courses to your students a limited number of times per month through Udemy’s internal messaging system. You are not allowed to promote other products and programs outside of Udemy.

Plus, a lot of people opt-out of receiving instructor emails, which limits the effectiveness of your marketing efforts on Udemy.

The moral of the story is that Udemy was built to cater to students by providing inexpensive education. It wasn’t created with the primary intention of helping online course instructors earn a full time living from their work.

Just to be clear, I don’t have a problem with the Udemy model. I think it serves a unique purpose in the marketplace, and it’s a great place to get started if you are interested in creating courses but don’t really know where to start. They make it really easy to upload your content.

But I found myself at an impasse.

In the year that I had been creating courses for Udemy, I had enrolled 26,943 students in both my free and paid classes but earned only $600.

Image from Udemy.com sales report.

If I wanted to reach my goal of making the equivalent of a full-time income with my online courses, I had two choices:

1. I could make 9100 sales on Udemy per year at $10.99 a pop (an unlikely feat), or

2. I could move to a different platform where I could sell my courses at full price and have free access to communicate with my students directly.

I ended up taking one of my courses off of Udemy in December 2017 and put it on the Teachable platform (referral link.)

I priced the course at $97, which was the same price I listed it for on Udemy before they applied their 90% discount.

In December 2018 — which was my first month selling the course on Teachable — my revenue jumped to $6,218.

Image courtesy of the author.

I had effectively gone from making a few bucks here and there to earning a full-time income in one month from the same program. This wasn’t a fluke. Throughout 2018, that one little $97 online course made me $78,034.

Image courtesy of the author.

Now, this didn’t happen just because I moved my course from Udemy over to Teachable. My increase in earnings was a direct result of my marketing and advertising efforts.

Let’s talk about that.