Are you looking for a way to make passive income online? Creating an online course may be your best bet. Lots of course creators are making thousands of dollars per month using the best online course platforms.
On the high end, course creators are making $50,000+ per month – or about $600,000 per year.
The great thing about online courses is you create them once and then continue to generate revenue every month for each student who signs up. You may add new courses or update your courses from time to time, but it truly is a set-it-and-forget-it way to make money.
One thing I will say is that even though courses are truly passive income, you do have to market them. If you’re not actively promoting your courses, you’ll struggle to get students and earn money. I highly recommend that you go into this with a solid marketing plan. You’ll also have a much easier time generating income if you already have an established audience on social media.
The question is: where do you sell your courses? There are so many options today. Let’s look at some of the top ones.
The Best Online Course Platforms
Teach:able
Pricing: $39-$499/month; free plan option
Teachable is a complete platform for selling online courses, and they offer many tools to help you succeed.
They’ll even help you create your course. If you’re not sure where to start, you can use their AI course starter, which will create your curriculum, lesson content and sales page in a snap.
I don’t necessarily recommend that you go full AI, but it can definitely help you get the ball rolling.
Along with their AI assistant, Teachable offers:
- A simple drag-and-drop builder for uploading your videos, audio, calendar events, guides and more.
- Branding to customize your course.
- Built-in checkout that includes tax-inclusive pricing, fraud protection and flexible payment options.
- Integrations with MailChimp, Google Analytics, Zapier and more.
- Student engagement features, like comments, quizzes and certificates.
- Marketing automation features, like lead magnets, affiliate marketing and more.
If you’re looking for a complete, all-in-one platform for your course, Teachable is a great option.
You can see examples of their courses right on their site – and there are lots of them.
Pros
- Easy course-building tools, including an AI-powered assistant
- Drag-and-drop interface
- Built-in marketing features
Cons
- Pricing structure isn’t easily scalable
- Not enough design templates
Despite these minor issues, there are still over 100,000 creators who have sold more than $1 billion in courses and coaching on the platform.
You can get started with a free account to test it out and see if it’s the right fit for you.
Udemy
Pricing: 63% of revenue from signups for paid courses if the student doesn’t use a referral link or coupon; 3% of revenue if students sign up with up with a referral link or coupon
Udemy is one of the best online course platforms because it’s absolutely free to create courses and use their platform.
If you want to offer paid courses, you’ll need to apply to become a premium instructor. The word “apply” is used loosely here because they really don’t reject applications. You’re basically just agreeing to their terms, and once approved, you can set your own pricing for your course.
The biggest advantage of using Udemy is that you get access to a huge audience. The platform has 62 million students.
The biggest disadvantage of this platform is that you don’t get access to a ton of tools. It’s up to you to create your curriculum from scratch.
You do benefit from Udemy’s marketing, although you can opt out of their promotions if you wish.
Pros
- Established audience of millions of students
- Easy course uploading with minimal design and editing needed
- Udemy will promote your course through its advertising campaigns
- Free to create courses on the platform
Cons
- Courses must include videos
- Steep revenue-sharing costs
Udemy does offer a ton of support to instructors and you get a built-in audience, but the revenue-sharing structure will eat into your profits significantly.
Related: How to drive 100K visitors per month from Pinterest to your website?
Skillshare
Pricing: Free to publish classes; Revenue sharing model
Some teachers on Skillshare make $100K per year. The platform’s huge audience and subscription-style fee structure make it an easy choice for anyone wanting to sell an online course.
But there’s a lot of red tape and there are some restrictions that will get in your way.
It’s free to publish courses on Skillshare, but here are a few important things to know:
- 20% of Skillshare’s total subscription revenue is allocated to teachers.
- Teachers are paid based on metrics, including minutes watched and engagement.
- You have to apply to become an instructor and be approved. As part of the process, you’ll need to submit a video sample, key lessons and class project.
Using Skillshare isn’t as simple as just creating a course and trying to sell it. You need to be approved, and your earnings will really depend on your performance.
Pros
- Built-in audience from the start
- Easy interface for uploading courses
- Free to upload courses
Cons
- Requires an application process
- Earnings are based on metrics (i.e., your course’s performance)
Despite these cons, there are tons of instructors out there making lots of money on Skillshare. YouTuber Ali Abdaal, for example, made $859,106 from his courses on Skillshare in 2021 alone.
Thinkific
Pricing: $36 – $199/month; 14-day trial
Thinkific is one of the best online course platforms, and they offer an Accelerator Program for free, which is very helpful for new creators who don’t know where to begin with their courses.
Even the basic tier offers:
- Unlimited courses
- 0% transaction fees
- Unlimited students
- 5 digital downloaded
- 100% ownership of content
New course makers can use templates or view sample courses to help speed up course creation. Creators can pre-sell courses and offer resource libraries for members.
Pros
- Integrates with leading platforms and tools, such as Zapier
- Affiliate selling options
- Courses, quizzes, surveys and drag-and-drop builder
Cons
- Payment plans only on the higher tiers
- Branding until the highest tier
If you want to use a robust platform for course selling, it doesn’t get much better than Thinkific. Over 50,000 creators and businesses use the platform, and the platform can easily scale to 100k students without any issues.
LearnDash
Pricing: $25 – $799/year
LearnDash dubs itself as an LMS, and it is plugin-based with tons of add-on options. You can use the LearnDash cloud option, which includes hosting, but the website plugin for WordPress may be the better option for you.
You don’t have to pay commission on sales, and you own all of the data from your own site.
Security and cohesion are your responsibility, so you’re given far more control than many of the other options on the list. You can also monetize any content that you wish, which is a nice, added perk.
For example, offer premium articles on your site and require a membership to read them.
Pros
- Host the plugin on your own site
- Widely used by big-name brands
- You own the data from your users
Cons
- Too many plugin options
Yoast, Tony Robbins and others use LearnDash to power their sites, and it integrates seamlessly with many of the top tools, such as Stripe and Woo. You can customize courses, manage assignments, create collaborative environments and more right through the plugin/platform.
Mighty
Pricing: $99 – $360/month; free trial available
Mighty is one of the best online course platforms, but it’s expensive. You’ll pay more per month than most other solutions, but you’ll have a suite of tools and features that help you grow your community.
Even on the most basic tier, you can:
- Upload unlimited course videos
- Add sales landing pages
- Integrate quizzes and assessments
- Use chat and messaging
- Access premium analytics
- Integrate with the top tools and API: Zoom, Events, Zapier, etc.
- AI-generated outlines
I recommend starting with the lowest tier rather than jumping into the Business or higher tier options unless you have a major audience already.
Pros
- AI helps with course outlining
- Community-driven tools
- Native livestreaming
Cons
- Expensive pricing tiers
- Lack of platform marketing options
Mighty offers a lot of community-related tools with resource libraries, live chat and messaging. Integrating your favorite tools into Mighty will help you streamline course production further and earn more money.
“Mighty Co-Host” is the platform’s outlining AI, but I recommend extensive editing to make sure everything sounds good and that you’re not plagiarizing.
Related: How These 3 Shops Make $20K+ Per Month on Etsy
Which Platform is Right for You?
E-learning is big business. If you have a skill that’s in demand, you can make a lot of money teaching others what you already know. Selecting the right platform for you is tricky because they all have their perks.
But a few of the things to consider are:
- Audience: What is the typical audience of the platform? Some tend to be more niche-specific than others, so this is something to consider.
- Pricing: What pricing structure does the platform offer?
- Reliability: How reliable is the platform? Read through reviews to learn the pros and cons of each platform to find one that is reliable enough for your course needs.
Online learning has grown over 900% since 2000, and the barrier of entry is low. If you want to start earning money online, you can create your own course. Some creators make hundreds of thousands of dollars a year from courses that they made years ago.
You can follow in their footsteps, add to your income and diversify your revenue streams with a course of your own.
