Is selling online courses profitable? The cost side, honestly

Published prices, verified

Working out whether your course is profitable

1. Estimate reach, not hope. Count the people you can put the course in front of: your list, your followers who click, the partners who will mail for you. A launch converts a low single-digit percentage of a warm list; use 1% to be conservative and 3% to be optimistic, and multiply by the price.
2. Subtract the platform, from the verified table. Take the entry plan per month and the platform cut for the vendor you would use. On a free plan with a 10% cut, the platform costs 10% of sales; on a $179 plan with 0%, it costs $179 whatever you sell. Add card processing of about 3% plus a fixed fee per sale on both.
3. Subtract marketing and tools. Email sending, a landing page tool and any ad spend. Several platforms include the first two on the entry plan; the vendor's page says which. Ads should be counted only after a launch has proven the page converts.
4. Price your own time. A first course takes tens of hours to build and a launch takes a week of writing. Divide expected profit by those hours and compare it to what the same hours earn you elsewhere. A course is profitable when that number is acceptable and grows on the second launch, because the build cost is paid once.

Where the margin actually comes from

A course has no cost of goods, so the margin is set by three things: the platform cut, the acquisition cost of each sale, and how many times the same course sells. A course that launches once is a project; a course that relaunches quarterly to a growing list is a business, and its second launch is where profit starts, because the build is already paid for.

The platform's share of the margin is the one line you can read off this page. On a $200 course, a 7.5% cut is $15 a sale; a 0% cut on a $179 plan is nothing per sale and $179 a month. At twelve sales a month those are equal; the table lets you do the same sum for every vendor.

The cases where it is not profitable

No list and no partners: the launch has nobody to sell to, and ads to a cold audience rarely pay back on a first course. A topic with no paid competition: usually no buyer. A price that ignores the outcome: either too low to cover the platform and the time, or too high for a page that has not earned it. A platform chosen on features rather than on the cut at your volume: a cost that grows with every sale.

None of those is fixed by a different platform. They are fixed by the audience and the offer, which is why the platform is the last decision and this site's tables are the last step, not the first.

Common questions

How much do online course creators make?

This site does not say, because there is no honest average: outcomes range from nothing to a living, and depend on audience, price and repetition. What can be stated exactly is the cost side, and the verified table gives the platform's share of it.

What are the costs of selling an online course?

The platform plan or cut (verified in the table), card processing of about 3% plus a fixed fee per sale, email and page tools where the platform does not include them, ads if any, and your time to build and launch.

Is a free platform that takes a cut better than a paid plan?

For a first course selling a few copies, yes. Past a sales volume you can calculate by dividing the plan by the cut, a flat plan with no cut is cheaper. Both models' published figures are in the table.

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