How Much Money Can You Make as a New Udemy Instructor

Are you considering teaching online courses and want to find out how to generate revenue on Udemy?

The online learning industry is worth over 250 billion dollars and is growing faster than ever, with a growth of 21% by 2027.

More educators are shifting to selling online courses to share their knowledge, help students achieve their goals, and improve their academic performance and professional skills.

If you are interested in selling online courses on Udemy and want to know how much Udemy instructors make, this blog is for you.

What is Udemy, and What are its Benefits for Instructors?

Udemy is a massive online learning platform hosting over 210K affordable online courses where people can learn new skills or improve existing ones.

It provides a wide variety of categories and subcategories from business, personal development, design, fitness, language learning and much more, leaving users with plenty of choices.

Udemy is an excellent platform for course instructors who leverage the platform to teach part-time and even full-time.

What are the advantages Udemy offers its instructors?

Student base from all over the world

The biggest advantage of teaching on Udemy is that you get to teach students from all over the world.

With students and instructors in 190 countries and in over 50 languages, Udemy is truly a global marketplace.

Udemy course builder

Udemy comes in-built with an easy-to-use course builder that allows instructors to create and upload their own courses. Due to the high demand for online courses, Udemy instructors can earn a full-time income or supplement their income by teaching on Udemy.

Access to student data and analysis

Udemy also offers instructors access to student data and analytics that they can use to improve the quality of their online courses and target their marketing efforts better.

Instructors will know how their courses are performing, have comprehensive insights into learning activity, track student progress, identify trends, and know when to take action.

How to gauge the Revenue Potential for a Course Topic on Udemy?

If you want to know how much you can make selling courses on Udemy, you need to know the potential revenue of your online course category.

Udemy has a marketplace insights tool, an analytics tool that allows you to explore the industry and measure the traffic and sales you can generate.

The first thing you will find is the student demand and the number of online courses currently published in the specific niche.

You will also get the following details:

• Search volume for the specific course topic.
• Keywords used.
• Similar topics users have searched for.
• How and where learners purchase courses from.
• Links to some of the more popular courses available.

Tips on How to Make Money on Udemy?

Now that you know how much you can make on Udemy, we will talk about effective tips to help you make money on Udemy. Implementing these tips promptly can also help you become a popular instructor on Udemy.

Here are the tips to ease making money on Udemy:

Conduct market research on your course topic

Once you have decided to create and sell online courses on Udemy, the first thing to do is to study your online course topic.

Udemy has resources in the platform to help instructors do that.

For example, Udemy Teaching Center is a tool that comes with tools ( and resources) to help course creators, right from planning the online course to launching it and promoting it so that it reaches your audience.

It has resources to clearly define your target audience, script the videos, check the quality of your course videos, edit, promote the courses and more.

Marketplace insights will help course creators analyze the demand for your online course topic and the revenue potential.

Evaluate your skill sets

When planning your course topic and content, you must analyze your skillsets.

Consider your passion. What are you really good at? What is your expertise?

Once you identify these skills, use it for your advantage when creating your online course.

For example, if you are good at photography skills and you are confident about presenting it to your audience who want to learn more about it, make it the heart of your online courses.

If you are good at marketing, you can leverage these skills to market your courses and make great sales.

Quality equipment is a must

When building a course on Udemy, one important factor you must follow is to use high-quality equipment to create course content.

As Udemy is a highly competitive marketplace where thousands of creators would be creating courses on the same topic as yours, you must make sure your course content is of high quality.

Having quality equipment helps you create the best quality content, which impresses the students and helps increase sales.

Offer value and give off all your knowledge

Fill your online course with all the knowledge you have on the course topic. Make sure you build your lectures in a way that it packs as much value as possible.

When it comes to creating a course outline, here are the primary things you need to consider.

The course introduction must have:

• An introduction.
• Instructional lectures.
• A short engagement activity.

The mid-section must have:

• Sections.
• Lectures.
• Activities and assessments.
• Reference materials.
• Your final lecture.
• Bonus section (Optional)

Make high-quality and scripted course videos

When creating videos for your online course, prepare a script beforehand, as it can help you cover all the points you have prepared. Being in front of the camera might turn a confident course instructor into a nervous speaker.

Having a pre-prepared script can help you make the content delivery much better.

Here is what you need to include:

• Keep it simple.
• Share definitions that will be helpful throughout the course.
• Include diverse stories and examples to engage your students.
• Maintain a friendly tone so that your students will find you approachable.

Promote your online course

Lastly, you need to promote your online course; this must be decided before you publish the course, during the course, and after your online course is published on Udemy.

Most course creators think having their online course on Udmey's marketplace is enough to create exposure. While this is true to an extent, that isn't enough.

Promotion is important, and it can increase the exposure and increase the course sales, even if you are already popular and getting clients on Udemy.

How Much Do Udemy Instructors Make?

Udemy instructors are making millions, and you can do that as well. So, how much can you make selling courses on Udemy? Well, that depends on a lot of factors like your course topic, demand for the course, course quality, how much time you dedicate to your work, how consistent and patient you are, and a lot more.

In Fact, Udemy shows their top instructors who have reached $17 million in earnings and how they leveraged the potential of Udemy's marketplace model to make money on Udemy.

Another important thing to remember here is that the Udemy instructor pay or the amount you receive in your hand is the revenue you generate on the platform minus Udemy’s commission.

As you are here to learn how much do Udemy instructors make, let's explore the earnings of some of the popular creators on Udemy.

Joe Pary

Joe Pary is one of the top instructors on Udemy who has served over 5 lakh students. Joe Pary's success story is an extreme example of what success on Udemy looks like, as he has made over $500,000 since 2015.

But his success wasn't made overnight. He swears over offering quality courses and being committed to what he does on Udemy.

He also has his own website, and he is the CEO of the Joe Parys Academy in Puerto Rice as well.

Digital Nomad Girl

Digital Nomad Girl, or Louise, is another Udemy instructor who shares her experience with running online businesses.

She earned only around $1000+ a month when she started out. But later, she continued to create and publish news courses, and she started to increase her income.

Louise's example depicts Udemy's power to shape your career if you commit to the process, create a few courses, and keep promoting it.

Phil Ebiner

Phil Ebiner is a popular and well-known Udemy instructor who is an inspiration to many.

Over 2.5 million students are enrolled in his courses, and he hosts over 300,000 reviews. You can view his entire journey and earnings in this Forbes interview.

Phil offers a combination of all types of creative skills like photography, Photoshop, video production and other creative skills. He has over 160 courses published on Udemy and still counting.

Conclusion

Selling online courses on Udemy is a great way to earn a passive income stream, which works for many course creators. Connecting with learners and teaching a topic you are passionate about and have expertise is fulfilling.

Plus, it is beginner-friendly, and you don't have to set aside a budget for that; it's free.

The only thing you will be risking is your time and your money, but as a beginner., the risk is worth it.

Once you establish yourself on Udemy, you can expand your tutoring services to other channels and keep growing.