Every course creator eventually faces this fork: publish on Udemy and tap into its millions of students, or sell on your own site and keep control (and most of the money). Both paths have produced six-figure creators. Both have produced bitter regrets. The right answer depends on five questions about you — so let’s start with the quiz, then dig into the honest pros and cons of each side.
The 5-question decision quiz
Answer honestly. Keep score: each (A) is a point for Udemy, each (B) a point for your own site.
1. How do you feel about marketing?
(A) I’d rather someone else brought the students. (B) I’m willing to learn marketing — or already know it. 
2. What’s your topic’s price ceiling?
(A) It’s a broad, popular topic (Excel, Python, photography) where courses sell for $15–$30. (B) It’s specialized or professional — students would pay $100+.
3. How much control do you need?
(A) I just want to upload videos and get paid. (B) I want my branding, my pricing, my student emails, my upsells.
4. What’s your timeline?
(A) I want sales within weeks of publishing. (B) I’m building a business over 12+ months.
5. How do you feel about discounts?
(A) Fine — volume at low prices works for me. (B) Constant 90%-off sales would cheapen what I built.
Your score: 4–5 A’s → Udemy is probably your best first move. 4–5 B’s → build on your own site. 3–2 split → read the hybrid path at the end, because it’s likely your answer.
Udemy: the honest pros and cons
| Pros ✅ | Cons ❌ |
|---|---|
| Built-in marketplace of millions of students actively searching for courses | Revenue share: Udemy takes a significant cut that varies by how the student found your course — organic marketplace sales leave you the smaller slice |
| Zero upfront cost — free to publish, they handle hosting, payments, and refunds | Permanent discount culture: courses routinely sell for $10–$20; students are trained to never pay list price |
| Fastest path to first sales — publish this week, sell this month | No student relationship: you don’t get email addresses; Udemy owns the customer |
| Social proof at scale — reviews and enrollment numbers build credibility | No pricing control — Udemy sets sale prices and enrolls your course in promos automatically |
| Great for testing ideas cheaply before investing in your own platform | Competition is brutal in popular topics — you’re one of hundreds of Python courses |
The revenue share deserves emphasis because it’s the part nobody reads: when Udemy’s own marketing brings the student, your share is the smaller one; when you bring the student through your link, you keep most of it. Either way, plan your math around the marketplace rate, not the best case. If you’re comparing platforms more broadly, our platform comparison for learners shows how students choose — useful intel when you’re deciding where to meet them.
Your own site: the honest pros and cons
| Pros ✅ | Cons ❌ |
|---|---|
| You keep nearly everything — just the platform subscription and payment processing come out | You are the marketing department. Zero students arrive on their own. |
| Full pricing control — charge $297, run tiers, raise prices whenever you want | Upfront costs: platform subscription (starting around $40/month) plus your time |
| You own the student emails — the most valuable asset in the business | Slower start — expect months, not weeks, to meaningful revenue |
| Brand, upsells, bundles, memberships — the full business toolkit | You’re also tech support, refund desk, and site admin |
| No discount culture — your price is your price | No built-in trust — every sale requires convincing a stranger |
The money math, simplified: sell a $20 course on Udemy’s marketplace and you might keep roughly half or less per sale. Sell a $197 course on your own site and you keep nearly all of it after fees. You’d need something like 15–20 Udemy sales to equal one own-site sale at those price points. Udemy wins on volume and speed; your own site wins on margin and control. Neither is “better” — they’re different businesses.
The hybrid path (what experienced creators actually do)
Here’s the move the quiz can’t capture: do both, strategically.
- Publish a streamlined version of your course on Udemy as a discovery channel — it’s advertising that pays you.
- Keep the full, premium version (bonuses, community, coaching, updates) on your own site at 5–10x the price.
- Funnel Udemy students toward your email list with genuinely useful free resources mentioned in the course.
- Never compete with yourself: the Udemy version should be clearly the “starter” edition.
This is how many full-time creators operate: Udemy for reach and credibility (“12,000 students”), their own site for revenue. The marketplace becomes the top of the funnel instead of the whole business.
Red flags for each path
Don’t choose Udemy if: your topic is hyper-niche (the marketplace search volume won’t sustain you), you need premium pricing to make the economics work, or the idea of 90%-off sales makes you angry. You’ll resent the platform within months.
Don’t choose your own site if: you have no audience, no interest in marketing, and no patience for a slow ramp. A beautiful course on an empty site earns exactly $0, and “I’ll figure out marketing later” is how courses go to die quietly. If that stings, start with our guide to choosing a topic with real demand — demand is the prerequisite for either path.
The bottom line
Udemy is a distribution deal: reach now, margin later (or never). Your own site is a business: margin now, reach whenever you earn it. Beginners who hate marketing do well starting on Udemy; entrepreneurs building a brand do well on their own site; pragmatists do both. Pick the path that matches your honest answers — not the one that sounds more impressive at dinner parties. 🎓
Whichever you choose, the course becomes proof of expertise that compounds. Build the portfolio around it, and here’s how that expertise turns into income beyond course sales themselves.
A realistic first-year comparison
Numbers make this concrete. Here’s a plausible first year for the same course on each path — not a promise, just honest math:
| Udemy path | Own-site path | |
|---|---|---|
| Price per sale | ~$15 average (after discounts) | $197 |
| Your cut per sale | Roughly $5–$8 on marketplace sales | ~$185 after fees |
| Sales in year one | 800 (marketplace does the work) | 120 (you do the work) |
| Year-one revenue | ~$5,000 | ~$22,000 |
| Assets built | Reviews, rankings, credibility | Email list of buyers, brand, pricing power |
Two honest observations: first, the Udemy column’s 800 sales require a topic with real marketplace demand — niche topics won’t get there. Second, the own-site column’s 120 sales require actual marketing skill — without it, that number is 12, not 120. Both columns demand something from you; the question is which something you’d rather give.
Migrating: start on Udemy, graduate to your own site
The most common successful trajectory looks like this:
- Months 1–6: Udemy. Publish, gather reviews, learn what students actually struggle with. Let the marketplace be your beta test with thousands of students.
- Months 6–12: both. Launch the premium version on your own site (more content, community, coaching). Mention your site and free resources inside the Udemy course — carefully, within Udemy’s rules.
- Year 2+: own site first. Udemy becomes the discovery channel and credibility badge while the real revenue moves to your platform, your prices, your email list.
This path respects a truth beginners miss: you don’t have to choose forever. Start where the students are, build where the margins are. The creators who do this well treat Udemy as a marketing channel that happens to pay, not as their business model.
One caution: check Udemy’s current terms about promoting external products inside courses — the rules exist and they’re enforced. Stay inside them and the hybrid path works beautifully.
What about Skillshare?
Quick word, since it comes up: Skillshare pays per minute watched from its subscription pool, not per sale. It’s a fine discovery channel for short, project-based courses — especially creative topics — but the per-student economics are thinner than Udemy’s and you still don’t own the customer. Treat it like Udemy’s artsier cousin: good for reach, not for building the business itself. Students comparing options can see how Skillshare looks from the learner’s side.
Final check: which regrets are you willing to risk?
Every path has a characteristic regret. Udemy creators regret the race to the bottom and the customers they’ll never reach again. Own-site creators regret the months of silence before the first sale. Hybrid creators regret the extra admin.
Pick the regret you can live with, because the only truly bad choice is the third option nobody lists: publishing nowhere while you decide. Answer the five questions, commit for twelve months, and re-evaluate with data instead of anxiety. The course you publish on the “wrong” platform still beats the perfect course that lives only in your head. 🚀
One more consideration: your topic’s natural home
Some topics just belong in marketplaces. Broad, beginner-friendly subjects — Excel basics, introductory photography, conversational Spanish — have enormous search volume on Udemy, and the volume game works in your favor. Hyper-specialized professional topics — “GDPR compliance for dental practices,” “advanced rigging in Blender” — have thin marketplace demand but buyers who’ll happily pay $300+ on your own site. Before the quiz answers, check the demand: search your topic on Udemy and look at enrollment numbers on top courses. Tens of thousands of students means the marketplace can carry you; a few hundred means you’ll be doing the marketing anyway — so you might as well keep the margin. Let demand, not preference, cast the deciding vote. 🗳️
