TL;DR: A membership site turns one-time course sales into a monthly or annual subscription that keeps paying once you stop launching. The most common way memberships fail is launching without a defined member problem and a first month of content ready to go. Start from one specific problem for a defined audience, then pick a platform that handles billing, member tiers, and tax before you touch a line of code. With us, a tier can bundle courses, coaching, and digital downloads, and members can upgrade, downgrade, or cancel from their own account. Launch to your warmest subscribers first, keep one predictable content release each month, and track a churn metric from day one, since retention matters more than audience size.

Most membership sites don't fail because the content is bad. They fail because the creator spent three weeks configuring payment plugins and tax settings instead of talking to their audience. If you're tired of the launch-to-launch cash flow roller coaster, a membership site offers predictable recurring revenue, but only if you build it on infrastructure that handles the administrative load for you.

This guide walks you through every step: from deciding whether a membership fits your model, to configuring tiers and billing, to launching and keeping members active month after month.

Here’s the short answer: to build a membership site, define the problem your membership solves for one specific audience, choose a platform that handles recurring billing and tax, set up one or more membership tiers with the courses, coaching or downloads each tier unlocks, prepare your first month of content, then launch to your email list with founding member pricing.

Defining the membership site business model

Deciding between memberships and courses

A standalone course is a one-time sale. You launch, close the cart, and repeat the cycle every few months, creating unpredictable revenue spikes. A membership runs at a lower monthly price but it compounds. Each new member adds to a base that pays every month whether you run a launch or not.

The strongest model bundles both: a membership grants access to a course library plus new monthly workshops, while individual courses sell separately at full price, creating multiple revenue paths from the same audience. You can see how creators structure this in the made on Teachable archive.

Predictable revenue through recurring billing

Making 50 individual course sales every month requires constant new traffic and conversion. Maintaining 150 active members at $40 per month would generate $6,000 MRR whether you run a launch or not. Recurring billing creates a compounding baseline where growth becomes a function of retention rather than constant acquisition. The revenue and pricing section of our blog covers this model across niches and pricing levels.

Checklist for your membership site launch

Defining your ideal member profile

Start with the specific problem your membership solves, not the content you plan to create. "I teach personal finance" is a topic. "I help people in their 30s pay off student debt while building an emergency fund on a $60,000 salary" is a problem worth paying $40 per month to solve. The most common cause of launching to silence isn't a bad product, it's a product aimed at a category so broad that no individual feels it was built for them. The audience building resources on our blog cover niche selection across finance, health, languages, and professional education.

Find your first paying members

Your email list is the most reliable source of founding members because it's the one asset you fully control. Before your public launch, segment your warmest 500 to 1,000 subscribers and offer founding member pricing with a clear cap on spots available. Before you do, answer these five questions:

1. Can you name 10 specific people who have this exact problem right now?
2. Has anyone already paid you for related help, a course, a coaching call, or a consultation?
3. Do you have an email list or an active social audience?
4. Have you tested your checkout end-to-end with a real payment?
5. Do you have your first month of core content ready, including a welcome video and a quick-start guide?

If you answered no to two or more, spend the next 60 days on audience-building. Learning to build an email list before you configure your membership platform is the most reliable way to avoid launching to silence.

Curating your monthly membership content

Content relevance, not volume, drives retention: low engagement is a common membership challenge, often caused by overwhelming members with content they don’t know how to start. Build a content calendar anchored to one clear deliverable per month: one masterclass, one downloadable playbook, or one live Q&A session. Before launch, prepare at least three to five pieces of members-only content so new joiners see immediate value on day one. The course designresources on our blog cover curriculum planning frameworks that apply directly to monthly membership content.

Example: when Abbey Ashley, founder of The Virtual Savvy, wrote about her membership for our blog, her SavvyVault charged $47 a month for a library of more than 40 tech trainings, with at least one new training added every month. Most members stayed six months or more. The membership has since scaled: it's now called SavvySociety and runs $97 a month, more than double the original price. To keep the calendar full without producing every lesson herself, she partnered with software companies, who supplied training videos for their own tools. Her advice: brainstorm at least 25 viable topics, about two years of releases, before you launch.

Compare membership tiers for your audience

Offer your full catalog for members

The all-access model gives members full library access from day one. Perceived value is high, but the trade-off is real: all-access works best when your library is evergreen and you pair it with ongoing live sessions that keep members engaged beyond the initial catalog.

How to set up drip sequences

Drip content releases new lessons on a schedule tied to enrollment date rather than giving instant full access. A member who joins September 1 unlocks Module 1 immediately, Module 2 on October 1, and Module 3 on November 1. Drip delivery pairs directly with recurring billing because members have a concrete reason to stay subscribed each month with new content waiting.

How to create member-only spaces

Member-only spaces work by gating specific content behind tier-based access controls. With us, each membership tier can be configured to unlock a distinct set of products (courses, coaching sessions, or digital downloads) so a free member sees only what you allow, and a paid member sees more. Access updates automatically when a member upgrades, downgrades, or cancels, with no manual intervention required. Members can make those changes themselves from their account, and upgrades are charged at a prorated rate.

How to offer hybrid membership tiers

A hybrid tier bundles courses, digital downloads, and live coaching into a single recurring subscription at a premium price point, allowing you to generate more revenue per member rather than scaling headcount alone. With us, each membership tier can bundle courses, coaching, and downloads in any combination, with access levels customized per tier.

Find your ideal membership tech stack

How to evaluate membership software

Circle is used below as a representative example of dedicated membership platforms, the setup and tax mechanics shown are typical of the category, not unique to Circle. Mighty Networks, for instance, does not automate tax remittance by default and requires a separate manual integration (Quaderno) to turn it on at all.

When to move from free tools to an integrated platform

• Your recurring revenue passes $533 per month on annual billing, where our 7.5% Starter platform fee costs more than upgrading to Builder.
• You have members in more than one country and manual VAT tracking creates compliance risk.
• A checkout failure during a launch would cost you more than $69 in lost revenue.

How platform fees affect net revenue

The fee stack is every cost that reduces your take-home from a membership payment: the platform transaction fee, the payment processing fee, and any currency conversion charge. Comparing our Starter plan ($29/month annual) against Builder ($69/month annual), the platform fee difference is the key variable since payment processing applies equally to both plans.

The break-even on annual billing is approximately $533 per month in revenue, where the 7.5% transaction fee equals the $40 monthly price gap between the two plans. On monthly billing, the break-even shifts to approximately $667 per month. Payment processing fees apply to both plans through Teachable Payments, our Stripe-powered payments system. Run the full math for your revenue level on our pricing page before committing to a plan.

How we support membership sites

Start with tax compliance. Four things to verify in any membership platform:

1. Does the platform automatically calculate tax based on the buyer's location at checkout?
2. Does it collect the tax from the buyer on your behalf?
3. Does it remit collected tax directly to the relevant tax authority in each country?
4. Does this apply across 45 or more countries, covering the EU, UK, Australia, Canada, and India?

Teachable Payments checks all four, automatically calculating, collecting, and remitting sales tax, VAT, and GST across 45+ countries on every sale, so you never file those taxes, track jurisdictions, or chase deadlines yourself. Kajabi’s tax tools cover a limited set of registered countries and still leave filing and remittance to you. Thinkific remits US and Canada sales tax automatically but only calculates UK and EU VAT, you still file that yourself. Podia calculates tax where it's registered but never files or remits it anywhere.

We include iOS and Android apps on all plans at no additional cost, giving students app access with progress sync. Memberships, courses, coaching and digital downloads all sell from one school on our online course platform, and our memberships page shows how tiers work.

Configure your membership site for recurring revenue

You need no code and no developer to complete any of these steps with us.

1. Define your membership tiers and prepare launch content: Map your access levels and write the member benefit for each tier in one plain sentence. Prepare a welcome video, a quick-start guide, and your first month's core content before going live, then set a content calendar to drip the remaining content on a schedule after you open.
2. Define billing cycles: In your admin panel, click the Memberships tab, then click Create a Membership Tier. Note the plan caps before you build: the Starter plan supports one membership tier. Builder and Growth plans support more tiers, with your published-product count (10 on Builder, 50 on Growth) as the real ceiling on what you can bundle. Members are unlimited on every plan. Name the tier, then add products to bundle inside it. Courses, coaching sessions, and digital downloads can all be included. Set monthly and annual pricing using the currency drop-down, and consider offering annual pricing at a discount to reduce month-to-month cancellation decisions.
3. Set up your payment and checkout flow: Connect Teachable Payments to activate automatic tax remittance and the full checkout feature set. Configure order bumps and verify mobile payment options display correctly.
4. Automate your onboarding sequence: Set up an automated welcome email that fires on purchase and links directly to a "Start Here" guide. Follow it with a prompt to access the first lesson within 24 hours. We use passwordless login with one-time passcodes sent to the student's email, so students can access their account immediately without waiting for credentials. Automating this sequence ensures every new member gets the same consistent onboarding experience regardless of when they join.

"Since I moved them to Teachable, my sign ups have tripled and my cancellations have gone down to almost nothing. They have an incredibly easy to use system that has everything and that my students love. Plus they offer an affiliate system so I don't have to worry about anything." - Stephanie L. on G2

Proven strategies to launch your membership

Soft launch vs. public launch strategies

A soft launch targets your warmest 500 to 1,000 subscribers with a founding member offer before any public announcement. Founding member pricing is locked and limited to a specific number of spots, creating real urgency. You gather feedback, fix onboarding gaps, and collect social proof before your public launch amplifies everything. Antoine van der Lee made approximately $40,000 on his first course launch by launching to a prepared email list.

A public launch uses your full email list, social channels, and potentially a webinar to maximize first-month acquisition. Choose this approach when you have a proven offer, an established audience, and social proof from a soft launch phase.

Email templates for your membership launch

Teaser email (10 days before launch):

Subject: [Name], this opens in 10 days

Hi [First Name],

For the past [X] months I've been building a monthly membership where you get [benefit 1], [benefit 2], and direct access to ask me questions every month. It opens to my email list first on [DATE], and I'm capping the founding member rate at [X] spots.

Reply to this email if you want to be first in line.

[Your name]

Last-call urgency email (final 24 hours):

Subject: Closes tomorrow at midnight

Hi [First Name],

Last call. The founding member rate of [$X/month] expires tomorrow at 11:59 PM. After that, it goes to [$X+Y/month]. No exceptions.

[CTA: Lock in your founding rate]

[Your name]

P.S. [X] spots left.

Launch day checklist for memberships

Before you send your launch email, run through this five-point check:

1. Complete a full test purchase and verify tier-specific content access.
2. Confirm the welcome email fires automatically with a sign-in link and a start-here link.
3. Test mobile app login on both iOS and Android and verify video playback and progress tracking.
4. Check that your drip schedule releases content on the correct dates for a Day 1 enrollment.
5. Verify that recurring billing displays correctly and the payment processor is live.

See the how to enroll students walkthrough for detailed configuration guidance before launch day.

How to keep your members active and subscribed

Schedule predictable monthly content updates

Predictable schedules reduce member anxiety. A member who knows a new masterclass drops on the first Tuesday of every month doesn't have to wonder whether they're getting value this month. Set one anchor event per month and communicate that schedule at signup. Annual plans strengthen this further because a member paying annually isn't making a cancellation decision every 30 days. Offering annual pricing at a discount shifts members toward longer-term commitment. The business operations section of our blog covers how to structure predictable content delivery without burning out.

How to keep members engaged between releases

Three tactics that keep members active without adding much work for you:

1. Monthly live Q&A: add a coaching product to the tier and hold one live session a month, so members can bring questions about the latest release.
2. Member spotlight series: feature one member per month in a brief email covering their progress and one insight they’ve applied from inside the membership.
3. Progress check-in emails: email members who haven’t opened the latest release within a week, with a direct link and a two-minute starting point.

Measure what drives renewal rates

The financial impact of churn reduction is direct and compounding. For example, a membership with 500 members paying $40 per month at 40% annual churn would lose roughly 200 members per year. At 20% annual churn, it would lose roughly 100. The difference in retained revenue from those 100 additional members over 12 months would be up to $48,000 per year (100 members × $40/month × 12 months), without acquiring a single new member. As you layer in new acquisition, that gap expands significantly. Churn reduction operates independently of marketing spend and is one of the highest-leverage growth levers in a membership business.

Track these metrics monthly to catch problems before they show up in your cancellation numbers:

• Active login rate: Login frequency is an early leading indicator worth monitoring, as engagement patterns often shift before cancellations occur.
• Content consumption rate: Track what percentage of members engage with each new content release. Low engagement signals a content-strategy mismatch worth addressing before scaling acquisition.
• Live session attendance: Members who attend your monthly live session are usually more engaged than those who only watch recordings.
• Monthly churn rate: Calculate cancellations divided by starting members. Track this metric consistently to establish your baseline and identify trends. The teaching and learning and student engagement resources on our blog cover completion-rate strategies and engagement frameworks that correlate directly with renewal rates.

Compare the full cost stack across our plans, including processing fees at your expected revenue level, on our pricing page. Start a 7-day trial and build your first membership tier before committing to a plan.

FAQs

How much should I charge for my membership?

Membership pricing varies widely based on niche and the depth of value delivered. Model your target monthly income against your current email list size at a conservative conversion rate, then validate by comparing your price point to comparable memberships already selling in your niche.

What content do I need ready before I launch my membership?

You need a welcome video, a quick-start guide, and your first month's core content ready on launch day, not a full library. Overwhelming new members with a massive backlog causes decision paralysis and reduces the completion and engagement rates that drive retention.

How do I reduce cancellations in the early months of my membership?

Implement an automated exit survey at cancellation. Teachable doesn't have a native pause feature, so a one to three month pause has to be a manual policy you set up yourself, not a checkout toggle. If growth stalls, run a feedback loop with canceled members and use their responses to pivot your content strategy before your next acquisition push.

Can I add my existing courses to my membership?

Yes. You can bundle existing courses into your membership tiers using the product bundling feature inside the Memberships tab. When you add a product to a tier, every current member of that tier gets access to it automatically.

What happens if a member’s payment fails?

With us, a failed membership payment is retried automatically up to three times. If all three attempts fail, the member is unenrolled from the membership, and they can rejoin from your sales page.

Key terms

Monthly recurring revenue (MRR): The total predictable revenue your membership generates each month from active subscribers, calculated by multiplying your member count by the monthly subscription price.

Churn rate: The percentage of members who cancel their subscription in a given month, calculated by dividing cancellations by total members at the start of that period. Monthly churn benchmarks vary widely by niche and price point. Track your own baseline across the first few months, and treat any month meaningfully above it as a signal worth investigating before it compounds.

Drip content: A delivery method that releases lessons or modules on a fixed schedule tied to a member's enrollment date, rather than granting instant access to the full library.

Teachable Payments: Teachable Payments is our native payment gateway, which automatically calculates, collects, and remits sales tax, VAT, and GST across 45+ countries on every sale, removing international tax filing from the creator's workflow.

Founding member pricing: A discounted subscription rate offered to the first cohort of members before a public launch, typically capped at a set number of spots to create real urgency and gather early feedback.

TL;DR The best online learning platform depends on what you're trying to do. If you want to own your brand, pricing, and student list while selling your own courses, we're the strongest fit, with built-in payments that remit VAT and GST across 45+ countries. If you want a ready-made audience instead, marketplaces like Udemy give you reach but control your pricing and discounting. If you're after accredited, university-backed learning rather than a platform to sell your own course, academic providers like Coursera and edX cover that instead. This guide compares all 11 platforms, from course-selling tools to marketplaces to academic providers, so you can match one to how you actually want to teach, sell, or learn.

Picking a place to teach, sell, or learn online can feel harder than it should be, because "online learning platform" covers a lot of very different products. Some are built for course creators who want to sell under their own brand. Others are marketplaces that bring you students but keep control of pricing. Others are academic providers offering accredited, university-backed learning that has nothing to do with selling a course at all. That mismatch is why the wrong choice costs real time: months spent building on a platform that was never designed for what you're trying to do. If you want a deeper walkthrough of that decision, see our guide to choosing a course platform that includes pricing too.

Why choosing the right platform matters

Online learning has grown into a major market. The online education market generated $185.20 billion in 2024 and is projected to reach $279.30 billion by 2029. This growth underscores the increasing demand for flexible and accessible learning solutions. Whether you're a creator turning your expertise into courses, a coach building a paid program, or a learner picking up a new skill, choosing the best online learning platform for you can make or break your results.

The challenge is that not all platforms serve the same purpose. Some focus on hosting and selling courses, while others specialize in structured academic learning or creative skills development. This guide breaks down the best online learning platforms, helping you determine which one fits your needs best.

What to look for in the best online learning platforms

Before you start comparing platforms, it's important to understand the key factors that determine the right fit. Whether you're a course creator, or a lifelong learner, consider the following aspects:

1. Ownership & branding control

• Do you want full control over your courses, pricing, and student experience?
• We let you own your student list and create a branded experience, while marketplaces like Udemy control pricing and limit your access to learners.

2. Audience & discoverability

• Are you willing to market your own courses, or do you need built-in audience reach?
• Marketplaces like Udemy and LinkedIn Learning bring massive exposure but may require revenue sharing.

3. Monetization & pricing flexibility

• Can you set your own prices, offer payment plans, or bundle products?
• We allow custom pricing models, and our built-in payment tool, Teachable Payments, remits VAT and GST in 45+ countries for you, while some marketplaces cap course prices or take a significant revenue cut.

4. Course format & engagement features

• Does the platform support video, quizzes, downloads, certificates, or completion tracking?
• Platforms like Skillshare cater to creative, video-based learning, while others like EdX and Coursera focus on structured, academic courses with milestones and LinkedIn integrated certifications.

By keeping these factors in mind, let's explore the best platforms for different learning and teaching styles and needs.

The 11 best online learning platforms, compared

1. Teachable: Best for course creators and coaches

If you're looking to sell online courses, coaching, or digital products under your own brand, we're built for exactly this: you set pricing, own your student list, and keep 100% of revenue from the Builder plan up at $69/month on annual billing. Over 150,000 creators use us to build, sell, and run their online courses.

Why choose Teachable?

• Full ownership of content, pricing, and student relationships.
• Customizable course sites (with branding, domains, and page builders).
• Integrated payment processing with Teachable Payments, which remits VAT and GST across 45+ countries.
• Course engagement tools like quizzes, certificates, and student analytics.
• Native iOS and Android apps on every plan, so students learn on mobile.
• Transparent fee stack: $29/month Starter (annual) at 7.5% per sale, or $69/month Builder (annual) at 0% platform fees; US card processing runs 2.9% + $0.30, international cards 3.9% + $0.30, plus a 0.95% currency conversion fee where Stripe converts non-USD payments.

Best for: Creators, coaches, and educators who want full control over their online school.

Example: A fitness coach could launch a paid video course with us, bundle it with 1-on-1 coaching, and sell it directly to their audience.

2. Udemy: Best marketplace for broad exposure

Udemy is one of the largest online learning marketplaces, with hundreds of thousands of courses across dozens of languages.

Pros & cons

Pros:

• Built-in audience: millions of students searching for courses daily.
• Easy course setup: a simple upload process, no need to build a website.

Cons:

• Limited pricing control: Udemy often discounts courses without instructor input.
• High competition: thousands of similar courses in every niche.

Best for: Instructors who want to reach a massive audience but don't need full control over branding or pricing.

3. Coursera: Best for university-level education

Coursera offers university-level courses, degrees, and certifications in partnership with top institutions worldwide.

What makes Coursera unique?

• Courses from prestigious universities (e.g., Stanford, Yale) and industry leaders (e.g., Google, IBM).
• Options for free courses, paid certifications, and full degree programs.
• Structured, instructor-led learning with quizzes, peer grading, and final assessments.

Best for: Professionals seeking accredited certifications, university-backed courses, or corporate training programs.

For creators: Coursera's instructors are university faculty and industry partners invited onto the platform, not a self-serve place to publish and sell your own course. Worth recommending to students who want an accredited, university-backed credential alongside what you teach them.

4. EdX: Open access to high-quality education

EdX provides an extensive catalog of university and professional courses, including MicroMasters programs.

Why EdX stands out:

• Partnerships with Harvard, MIT, and other top universities.
• Offers verified certificates and even pathways to full master's degrees.
• Open-source learning with many free courses available.

Best for: Lifelong learners and professionals looking for structured, high-level education without committing to a full degree program.

For creators: Like Coursera, edX's courses come from university and industry partners rather than an open self-serve upload, so it is not built as a place to sell your own course. Worth recommending to students who want structured, university-partnered coursework beyond your own.

5. MIT OpenCourseWare: Free, high-quality learning

MIT OpenCourseWare (MIT OCW) provides free access to lecture notes, exams, and videos from MIT courses.

Why choose MIT OCW?

• Completely free and open-source learning.
• Covers a wide range of STEM, humanities, and business courses.
• Learn from MIT faculty at your own pace.

Best for: Independent learners who want high-quality, no-cost education from a top institution.

For creators: MIT publishes its own course materials here for free, there is no path for outside instructors, individual or institutional, to sell anything on it. Worth recommending to students who want deeper, no-cost study of a subject you teach.

6. BBC Maestro: Best for high-quality creative learning

BBC Maestro offers masterclasses by leading experts, similar to MasterClass but with a UK-centric focus.

What makes BBC Maestro unique?

• Courses from renowned UK-based experts in writing, music, and business.
• High-production value with in-depth, engaging lessons.
• Focuses on real-world storytelling and industry insights.

Best for: Creative professionals and learners looking for expert-led courses in storytelling, music, and business.

For creators: Instructors are selected and invited by BBC Maestro's curation team rather than applying to self-publish, so it is not a place to sell your own course. Worth mentioning if your students want a UK-centric masterclass experience from recognized experts.

7. MasterClass: Best for learning from industry leaders

MasterClass offers high-production video courses taught by celebrity experts across various fields.

Pros & cons

Pros:

• Lessons from world-renowned professionals (e.g., Gordon Ramsay, Serena Williams, Neil Gaiman).
• Cinematic-quality video production makes learning immersive and engaging.
• Wide range of topics, from business to creative arts.

Cons:

• No structured assessments or certifications.
• Subscription model only, no option to buy individual courses.

Best for: Those looking to gain insights and inspiration from top industry leaders rather than structured skill-building.

For creators: MasterClass invites its instructors directly with no public application or self-serve path, so it is not a place to sell your own course. Worth naming if your students want inspiration from celebrity experts rather than the structured skill-building your course provides.

8. Udacity: Best for tech & AI education

Udacity specializes in technology and AI-related courses, often in collaboration with major tech companies.

Pros & cons

Pros:

• Industry-specific courses in data science, AI, programming, and more.
• Recognized "Nanodegree" programs.

Cons:

• Expensive compared to other online platforms.
• Limited non-tech course selection.

Best for: Tech professionals looking to upskill in AI, programming, and data science.

For creators: Udacity instructors go through an interest-form and selection process and are compensated by contract rather than per-sale, so it is not a self-serve place to sell your own course. Still a reasonable recommendation if your students want deeper technical upskilling than your course covers.

9. Pluralsight: Best for IT & software development

Pluralsight offers cutting-edge courses in software development, IT, and cybersecurity.

Pros & cons

Pros:

• Advanced courses tailored to professionals.
• Skill assessments to measure progress.

Cons:

• Monthly subscription model can be expensive.
• Focused mostly on IT and coding fields.

Best for: IT professionals, developers, and cybersecurity experts.

For creators: Pluralsight's Author program lets individuals apply to create courses, but it is a competitive vetting process, and authors earn royalties on Pluralsight's pricing rather than owning their own pricing and student list the way you do with your own course. Worth pointing IT or developer students toward it for depth beyond your own curriculum.

10. Khan Academy: Best for free educational resources

Khan Academy provides high-quality, free educational courses in subjects like math, science, economics, and humanities.

Pros & cons

Pros:

• Completely free with no hidden costs.
• Well-structured courses for students of all levels.
• Interactive exercises and progress tracking.

Cons:

• Limited advanced courses for professionals.
• Not ideal for certification or career advancement.

Best for: Students, educators, and lifelong learners looking for accessible, high-quality education in core academic subjects.

For creators: Khan Academy is a nonprofit with no paid courses or creator payouts, so it is not a place to sell anything. Worth recommending as a free resource if your students need to shore up core academic fundamentals alongside your course.

11. YouTube "University": Best free learn anything hub

YouTube has become an informal learning powerhouse, with countless channels offering free educational content.

Why YouTube stands out:

• Completely free, with thousands of expert-led tutorials.
• Covers every imaginable topic, from tech skills to personal finance.
• Some channels offer structured course playlists for in-depth learning.

Best for: Self-motivated learners who prefer flexible, video-based education at no cost.

For creators: Anyone can upload to YouTube, but it has no built-in course structure, checkout, or student management, so it is not a course platform you would sell through the way you do with your own course. Worth acknowledging as the free discovery channel where many students already look first.

Which online learning platform is right for you?

With so many choices, picking the right platform depends on your goals. If you're a creator or educator looking to teach and sell your own courses, we're built for exactly this, with 0% platform fees on the Builder plan and up. We offer complete ownership, flexible pricing, built-in payments through Teachable Payments, and tools to grow a course business you own.

Do you have an existing audience through a Youtube channel, podcast, newsletter, social posts, or books? You can turn it into a paid course. With a free trial, you can be up and running in a few days.

Explore how we can help you build, sell, and grow your online courses. Start with a free trial today. Join the creators who use us to build and sell their courses.

FAQs

What is the best online learning platform?

It depends on your goal. To sell your own branded courses, we're the best fit because you own your pricing, content, and student list. For a ready-made audience, Udemy is the largest marketplace. For accredited academic learning, Coursera and edX partner with top universities.

What is the best platform to sell online courses?

We're built for selling your own courses: you set your own prices, keep your student list, and our Teachable Payments checkout remits VAT and GST across 45+ countries. Marketplaces like Udemy reach more people but control discounting and take a larger cut.

What is the best free online learning platform?

For free study, Khan Academy, MIT OpenCourseWare, and YouTube offer high-quality content at no cost. They are built for learning rather than for selling your own courses, so creators who want to earn from their content will still need a course platform.

What is the difference between an online learning platform and a course marketplace?

We're a course platform: you build and sell courses under your own brand, keeping ownership of pricing and students. A marketplace, like Udemy, lists your course alongside others and brings its own audience, but controls pricing and discounting.

How much does an online course platform cost?

It varies by platform and plan. Our paid plans start at $29 per month (billed annually), with higher tiers removing transaction fees and adding more products. Marketplaces are often free to publish on but take a share of each sale.

Key terms

Course platform: A tool built for creating, hosting, and selling your own branded online courses, where you set the price and keep ownership of your student list, unlike a marketplace.

Marketplace: A platform, like Udemy, that lists your course alongside thousands of others and brings its own built-in audience, in exchange for control over pricing and discounting.

Teachable Payments: Our integrated payment system that processes checkout and automatically calculates, collects, and remits VAT and GST across 45+ countries on your behalf.

Transaction fee: A percentage taken from every course sale on top of your monthly subscription. Ours starts at 7.5% on the Starter plan and drops to 0% from the Builder plan up.

Accredited certification: A credential issued in partnership with a recognized academic institution, as offered by platforms like Coursera and edX, distinct from the completion certificates course creators issue on their own.

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TL;DR: Most course creators use roughly a third of Kajabi's built-in tools. If your actual workflow is a course builder, a checkout page, and an email list you run elsewhere, you are paying for a marketing stack you do not open. Kajabi Basic sits at $143/month on annual billing. Our Builder plan at $69/month includes 0% platform fees, native mobile delivery, and automated VAT and GST remittance across 45+ countries. If Kajabi's email automation runs your business daily, switching adds external tool costs that close the gap. This guide runs the numbers.

Kajabi's entry tier costs $143 a month on annual billing, and many creators use less than a third of its built-in marketing features, effectively paying a large premium on course hosting alone. If you pay that monthly invoice while running your actual email marketing through a separate tool, you are carrying the "Unused Feature Tax," and it compounds every month you stay.

Leaving Kajabi to protect your margins is a financially sound move, but only if you audit your usage first. For creators who live inside Kajabi's email automation and CRM every week, switching platforms means rebuilding a marketing stack, and that cost can quickly erase your savings. This guide breaks down the real cost of ownership across the top Kajabi alternatives so you can choose based on your actual revenue model.

Identify your essential creator tools

Before looking at any alternative, answer one honest question: which Kajabi features do you open every week? Two clear paths follow, and which one describes you changes everything about the math.

1. Path 1: You use the funnels, email automation, and CRM actively. Kajabi's pipeline builder fires email steps automatically as contacts move through your funnel, and its native CRM tracks every student interaction in one place (though Kajabi's own users and reviewers consistently describe that CRM's pipeline management specifically as limited relative to standalone CRM platforms, worth confirming it actually covers your needs before counting it as a full replacement). If you manage nurture sequences, automated launch sequences, and a contact list through Kajabi's built-in tools, switching to a course-first platform means rebuilding each of those workflows with external software. At 5,000 subscribers, a MailerLite plan runs approximately $32/month on annual billing and a basic Zapier connection adds roughly $30/month on monthly billing or $20/month on annual billing. That replacement stack, on top of a new course platform subscription, closes much of the gap against Kajabi's $143/month entry price before you account for setup time.
2. Path 2: You use Kajabi mainly to host and sell courses. You record your course, upload it, send checkout links to an email list that lives in Kit or MailerLite, and that is the extent of it. If this sounds familiar, you are paying $143/month to host a product catalog that course platforms handle for $17 to $249/month across different feature tiers. Running $1,716 a year through a system you use at 30% capacity is an expensive habit.

Calculating your true cost of ownership

Platform pricing comparisons almost always mislead because they anchor on the subscription line and ignore the full fee stack. Think of it like a receipt with multiple line items: the headline subscription is the sticker price, but transaction fees and processing fees are the line items at the bottom that determine your actual take-home.

Kajabi's Basic plan charges 2.9% + $0.30 per transaction on top of its $143/month subscription. At $5,000 in monthly course revenue, that processing fee adds approximately $145/month to your cost. Our Builder plan has 0% platform fees, and US card processing via Teachable Payments (our native payment gateway) runs 2.9% + $0.30, so processing costs are equivalent. The difference is the $74/month gap between the two subscription fees, or $888 in fixed annual savings before a single transaction is processed. Check our full pricing breakdown for processing rates across all plans.

Focusing only on course delivery

Course-first platforms are built around one job: getting a student from checkout to course completion with as little friction as possible. That narrow focus produces tangible differences in the student experience, particularly on mobile. We include native iOS and Android apps on every paid plan, so students download the Teachable app, find your course, and consume it with offline playback and push notifications, starting at $29/month on the Starter plan.

Real cost breakdown of Kajabi alternatives

The verified cost and fee comparison below splits across two tables because the key decision factors span more than four columns. Table 1 covers subscription and fee structure. Table 2 covers business model fit and migration trade-offs.

Table 1: Subscription and fee structure

Table 2: Business model fit and what you lose vs. Kajabi

What replaces Kajabi's email and funnels

If you move to a course-first platform, you need a standalone email tool. At 5,000 subscribers, the most common options are:

• MailerLite: Approximately $32/month at 5,000 subscribers on the Growing Business plan on annual billing, which covers automation, landing pages, and website.
• Kit (ConvertKit): Starts at $39/month (monthly billing) for 1,000 subscribers on the Creator plan and scales with list size.
• ActiveCampaign: Pricing scales with contacts and feature tier. The entry-level Starter plan starts at $15/month for 1,000 contacts, while the Pro plan with comparable automation capabilities starts at $79/month on annual billing.

A MailerLite stack at $32/month plus Teachable Builder at $69/month totals $101/month, still $42 cheaper than Kajabi Basic at $143/month, and you carry 0% platform fees. Our business operations blog covers cost modeling for creators at different revenue stages.

Teachable: Lowering your monthly platform spend

Our Builder plan at $69/month (annual) is the most direct margin-saving alternative for course-first creators who already own an external email tool. The plan removes the 7.5% transaction fee that sits on the Starter plan and adds affiliate marketing tools. At $74/month less than Kajabi Basic, the annual saving is $888 before fees, and the 0% platform fee means every dollar of revenue stays with you rather than going back to the platform.

One reviewer's experience captures the core appeal:

"With Teachable, you can go from idea to execution fairly quickly, and get your course up and running and (potentially) making sales fast." - Verified user on G2

The Builder tier is the effective starting point for anyone earning more than $533/month in course revenue on annual billing. At $533/month, our Starter plan's 7.5% fee adds exactly $40/month, which equals the cost of upgrading. Above that threshold, upgrading costs less than staying on Starter. Our revenue and pricing blog covers this break-even math in more detail.

Ideal creator profiles for Teachable

Teachable works best for two specific creator types:

1. The creator with an existing email list on Kit or MailerLite. You already handle your own marketing outside of whatever course platform you use. You want a clean, reliable checkout with built-in affiliate tools and 0% transaction fees, not a second email system running in parallel.
2. The creator selling to international students. You have buyers in Germany, Australia, Canada, and Japan. Each purchase carries a potential VAT or GST obligation. Our native gateway handles filing automatically across 45+ countries, reducing the manual compliance work from your workflow. Our case studies section includes examples of creators at different revenue levels who moved from manual tax filing to automated remittance.

Where Teachable outperforms Kajabi

We built Teachable Payments to automatically calculate, collect, and remit VAT and GST across 45+ countries on every sale. When a student in Germany buys your course, we charge the correct VAT rate, collect it at checkout, and remit it through the EU's VAT One Stop Shop (OSS) system on your behalf each quarter. You do not register in Germany, file anything, or track the liability manually. Teachable Payments also accepts payments in 130+ currencies, so your German, Australian, and Japanese students pay in their own currency without you building separate pricing sheets for each market. Kajabi offers no equivalent, leaving creators responsible for registering and filing taxes in every country where they sell. Our product updates section explains how the gateway handles EU VAT through the OSS system on a quarterly basis.

We also include native iOS and Android apps on every paid plan starting at $29/month. Kajabi's branded mobile app is included on the Pro tier at $399/month on annual billing and available as a $199/month add-on for Basic and Growth tiers. Basic and Growth plan subscribers do not receive a branded app for their school.

Our course-specific tooling, gradebook, compliance settings, minimum watch-time enforcement, and per-student progress tracking, also goes deeper than Kajabi's at the same price point. Kajabi's strength is the marketing stack wrapped around the course, several third-party reviews of both platforms note our learning-management depth as more developed at comparable tiers, which matters for creators whose students need structured progress tracking, not just a purchase funnel.

What to model before you migrate

For non-USD transactions processed through Stripe where currency conversion is required, Stripe charges a 0.95% currency conversion fee shown separately from our processing rate. UK-based creators and those with high-volume EUR or AUD sales should model this fee against expected transaction volume before comparing net revenue across platforms. At $5,000/month in international sales, the conversion fee adds approximately $47.50/month.

We do not include a built-in email funnel builder or CRM. If Kajabi's automation is central to your business today, you need to rebuild those workflows in an external tool before migrating, and that is a real cost to model honestly.

Manual tax compliance

Thinkific's Basic plan at $40/month on annual billing includes 0% platform fees, undercutting Kajabi's $143/month entry tier by 72% on subscription. Thinkific helps you configure tax collection for US and Canadian sales, but remittance remains the creator's responsibility, and VAT collection for UK and EU sales requires additional manual configuration.

Thinkific's Trustpilot rating, 1.8 of 5 as of mid-2026, is worth checking directly before committing. For any creator with international buyers, the Builder plan at $69/month covers automated VAT and GST remittance across 45+ countries without manual configuration, at $29/month more than Thinkific's entry price.

Broad product catalog support, no mobile delivery

Podia's Shaker plan at approximately $84/month on annual billing (as of the June 2026 relaunch, confirm the current figure on Podia's pricing page before publishing) with 0% transaction fees caps you at 150 products (Earthquaker, at $150/month annual, is the only unlimited-product tier). Kajabi's Basic tier caps you at 5 products, which pushes many growing creators into the Growth plan at $199/month (annual) simply to expand their catalog. If you sell a large catalog of downloads, mini-courses, and webinars without needing deep educational infrastructure, Podia's product limits work in your favor. However, Podia does not offer a native mobile app, and students access content through their web browser on every plan.

There is also no automated international VAT remittance. The Builder plan at $69/month sits roughly $15/month below Podia's Shaker plan, and adds native iOS and Android delivery and automated international tax remittance, the two areas Podia leaves open at every tier.

Is LearnWorlds worth the subscription cost?

LearnWorlds' Starter plan at $24/month on annual billing carries the lowest subscription price in this comparison, but the $5-per-course-sale fee scales quickly. At 50 enrollments a month, you pay $24 plus $250 in enrollment fees before card processing, totaling $274/month. That far exceeds our Builder plan at $69/month with 0% platform fees at the same enrollment volume.

LearnWorlds' Learning Center plan at $249/month removes the per-sale fee entirely, but that subscription cost exceeds Kajabi's entry tier and undercuts the value proposition for a margin-conscious creator. SCORM compliance is a narrow requirement. For creators whose courses do not depend on it, the fee structure and subscription cost of LearnWorlds erases the value proposition quickly compared to 0% platform fees at $69/month on the Builder plan.

Built-in funnels, basic course delivery

Systeme.io's Startup plan at $17/month on annual billing includes built-in email marketing, sales funnels, and basic course hosting with 0% transaction fees. If you are leaving Kajabi primarily because of cost and need funnels built in, Systeme is the cheapest way to maintain that capability, at $126/month less than Kajabi Basic. However, the course player is basic, student management tools lack depth, and automated international tax handling requires manual VAT configuration.

Our course player, mobile delivery via native iOS and Android apps, and automated tax remittance through Teachable Payments are meaningfully more polished at $69/month. For any creator where student experience and completion rate affect refund rates and word-of-mouth, a basic course player is a real business cost that does not appear in Systeme's subscription comparison.

Migrating assets: A realistic checklist

A complete Kajabi-to-Teachable migration covers three phases and typically takes anywhere from a few days for a small catalog to several weeks for a large, multi-integration setup, your migration specialist will confirm a specific date range for your setup:

1. Export and import student data: Download your student list, contact records, and transaction history as CSV files from Kajabi's account settings, then import them into Teachable and your email tool.
2. Course content upload (time scales with your course count and complexity): Download video lessons individually from Kajabi (bulk export is not available), upload them to our drag-and-drop course builder, and rebuild quiz and drip settings manually since course structure does not port between platforms. You can apply for a migration consultation to get a specific estimate based on your catalog.
3. Email and checkout reconnection (time varies by integration count): Connect your email tool via Teachable's native integration in Settings, set up enrollment triggers so new students are added to your list automatically, and test a live checkout transaction before going live. Kajabi's custom website pages and landing pages do not port between platforms and require a full rebuild. Kit, MailerLite, and Mailchimp connect via Zapier, available from the Builder tier up.

Our launch strategy blog covers post-migration email sequence setup in practical detail. Weighed against $888/year in subscription savings and the elimination of international VAT filing, the migration time pays back in weeks for any creator earning above $2,000/month. Our success stories section includes creator accounts of the migration experience at different scales.

Decision criteria for leaving your stack

• If your course catalog is small, your email list runs through Kit or MailerLite, and Kajabi's pipeline builder goes largely unused, the Builder plan at $69/month saves you $888/year in subscription costs alone, before accounting for 0% platform fees on every sale. Your Unused Feature Tax is real and eliminating it returns those dollars to your business immediately. Teachable Payments calculates, collects, and remits VAT and GST across 45+ countries automatically.
• If you currently file international VAT manually or carry unresolved EU, Australian, or Canadian tax obligations, that compliance gap is a real financial liability. The Builder plan closes it at no additional cost beyond the $69/month subscription.
• Kajabi Basic's 5-product cap pushes growing creators toward the $199/month Growth plan. Our Builder plan supports 10 products with 0% platform fees at $69/month, $130/month less than the Kajabi tier the product limit forces you into.
• Model the external tool cost first if your marketing runs entirely inside Kajabi's pipeline builder and CRM. At 5,000 subscribers, a MailerLite replacement runs approximately $32/month on annual billing. A MailerLite plus Builder stack totals $101/month, still $42/month less than Kajabi Basic, but the 10-plus hours of sequence rebuild is a one-time cost to scope honestly before committing to a migration date.
• Factor in landing page rebuild time if Kajabi's native website builder and landing pages are your primary web presence. That content does not port between platforms and requires a full rebuild. Weigh that one-time setup cost against $888/year in subscription savings and 0% platform fees, for most creators earning above $2,000/month, the rebuild pays back within the first quarter.
• The math on leaving Kajabi is straightforward for course-first creators. The subscription saving is real, the tax compliance benefit is structural, and the migration cost is bounded and one-time. The only question worth settling before you move is which Kajabi features you actually open every week. If the honest answer is mostly the course builder and checkout, the numbers point clearly toward the switch.

Run the full fee comparison across our plans, including processing rates. The 7-day trial requires a credit card, and a 30-day money-back guarantee covers the first month if the platform does not fit your workflow.

FAQs

When does Kajabi pay for itself?

Kajabi pays for itself when you actively use its native email marketing, automated funnels, and CRM to manage a contact list that would otherwise cost $39 to $79/month on a standalone tool like MailerLite or ActiveCampaign. If you only use it to host courses, the $143/month entry price costs more than a course-first platform plus an external email tool combined.

What are the top Kajabi alternatives for low budgets?

Our Starter plan at $29/month on annual billing is the lowest-cost entry option that includes automated international VAT and GST remittance through Teachable Payments, which no other budget-tier platform in this comparison covers. For creators with any international sales volume, that remittance capability removes a compliance obligation that carries real cost and risk if ignored.

How do I export my Kajabi course content?

You can export student lists and transaction history as CSV files from Kajabi's account settings, but video lessons and text content must be downloaded and re-uploaded to your new platform manually. Our Custom plan includes migration support for high-volume creators moving from another platform.

Do I need a separate email provider?

Yes, if you leave Kajabi for a course-first platform like Teachable or Thinkific, you need a standalone email provider like MailerLite or Kit to run automated marketing campaigns. Zapier integrations with tools like Kit and MailerLite are available from the Builder tier up, so you can automate student list updates after each purchase.

How do platforms handle VAT and sales tax?

Most platforms, including Kajabi, Thinkific, and Podia, leave VAT and sales tax compliance entirely to the creator, requiring manual registration and filing in every country where you sell. We are the exception: our native gateway, Teachable Payments, automatically calculates, collects, and remits VAT and GST across 45+ countries on your behalf, removing you from the tax filing loop entirely.

Key terms

Platform fee: A percentage Teachable or another course platform charges on each sale, on top of payment processing. Our Builder plan charges 0%, our Starter plan charges 7.5%.

Transaction fee: Used interchangeably with platform fee in most course platform contexts. Always confirm whether a platform's stated fee is the platform's cut, the processor's cut, or both stacked together.

VAT (Value Added Tax): A consumption tax applied to digital product sales in the EU, UK, and several other jurisdictions. Rates and registration thresholds vary by country. Teachable Payments remits VAT automatically when you use the native gateway.

GST (Goods and Services Tax): The equivalent of VAT in Australia, Canada, New Zealand, and other markets. Teachable Payments handles GST remittance in covered countries automatically.

VAT OSS (One Stop Shop): The EU system that lets a single quarterly VAT filing cover sales across all EU member states. Teachable files through OSS on your behalf each quarter so you do not register separately in Germany, France, or any other member state.

Annual billing: Paying a platform subscription in one upfront yearly payment rather than month to month. Annual billing typically reduces the effective monthly rate. All plan prices in this article use the annual billing rate unless stated otherwise.

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TL;DR: Start from a base price of at least $100, then add the value of each extra you include, such as live Q&A calls or templates. Divide your income goal by that price to find the buyers you need: a $5,000 goal takes 50 sales at $100 or 20 at $250. Then subtract the transaction and processing fees to see your take-home per sale. Our Starter plan charges 7.5%, Builder and Growth charge 0%, and processing on Teachable Payments is 2.9%. On annual billing, Builder costs less than Starter once you sell more than $667 a month.

Deciding how to price your course can be difficult. This online course pricing calculator walks you through it in five steps, from a base price to what you keep after fees.

By using this worksheet you’ll be able to see which extras in your course are worth charging for. And each extra you include in your course can make it more valuable. Expert interviews, office hours, and one-on-one consulting are all extras you can build into the price of your course. The worksheet turns each one into a number, so you can see what your full offer is worth and what it earns after fees.

You can use the calculator to tick off each extra your course already includes. Or you can use it as inspiration for what to add to your course if you’re looking to add to the value. Maybe after running your course once you’ll want to add in coaching or live workshops for your students to bump up the value.

How to use the online course pricing calculator in 5 steps

Work through the steps in order, and write each number into the worksheet further down the page.

Step 1: Set your base price

Your base price is what the core course is worth with no extras. Online course prices run from around $50 for short, introductory courses to $1,000 or more for comprehensive or cohort-based programs. Our pricing guide explains why we recommend a base of at least $100: a very low price leaves little room to cover your time and marketing.

Step 2: Add the value of your extras

Extras raise what your course is worth, and they make higher price points or pricing tiers easier to justify. For each extra you include, write down what a student would pay for it on its own, then add those amounts to your base price.

For example, a $197 course with two group Q&A calls valued at $50 each becomes a $297 offer. You can also sell an extra separately: our digital downloads can go on sale as an order bump at checkout, and coaching can be its own product.

Step 3: Check the price against your income goal

Divide your income goal by your course price to see how many buyers you need: buyers needed = income goal ÷ course price. A $5,000 goal takes 50 sales at $100, 20 sales at $250 and 10 sales at $500.

Then compare that number with the audience you can reach. Our pricing guide works from roughly 2 buyers for every 100 people on your email list. At that rate, 20 sales needs a list of about 1,000. If the buyers you need are more than your list can supply, raise the price, add an extra, or grow the list before launch.

Step 4: Subtract fees to find your take-home per sale

The price a student pays isn’t what you keep. Two fees come out of every sale: our transaction fee, which depends on your plan, and the processing fee. On Teachable Payments, our Stripe-powered payments system, processing is 2.9% per transaction. Teachable Payments also calculates, collects and remits sales tax, VAT and GST for you across 45+ countries, so tax doesn’t come out of your pricing math as a separate filing job. Here are our current plans, from our pricing page:

Students who enroll through a paid checkout are unlimited on every plan. Take-home per sale = price − transaction fee − processing fee. For a $200 course:

Two more lines can apply. If you sell in a currency other than USD, a 0.95% Stripe currency conversion fee applies to those sales. And if you enroll students for free, through a $0 checkout or a 100% coupon, we include 100 free students per school, then charge $0.50 per student per month above that for schools on our current policy, per our usage fees. For the full fee stack across platforms, see our course platform fees comparison.

Step 5: Pick the plan your sales volume supports

Think of Starter like renting: the lower monthly price makes sense early on, but the 7.5% fee grows with every sale. On annual billing, Builder ($89/month) costs less than Starter ($39/month) once you sell more than $667 a month. On monthly billing, the break-even is $800 a month. Builder also adds our affiliate program, and Growth adds course certificates and room for 50 products.

Work out break-even for any two plans: break-even monthly sales = (higher plan price − lower plan price) ÷ the difference in transaction fee.

Worked example: Pricing a $297 course

Here’s the calculator run end to end for one course:

• Base price: $197 for a self-paced course.
• Extras: two group Q&A calls valued at $50 each, for a $297 course price.
• Income goal: $3,000 a month, which needs 11 sales (3,000 ÷ 297 = 10.1, rounded up).
• Monthly sales: 11 × $297 = $3,267.
• On Builder (annual billing): processing of $94.74, plus the $89 plan, leaves $3,083 a month.
• On Starter (annual billing): a transaction fee of $245.03, processing of $94.74 and the $39 plan leave $2,888 a month.

At this volume, Builder keeps about $195 more a month, because $3,267 in sales is well past the $667 break-even.

Copy the course pricing worksheet

Fill in your own numbers line by line. The example column repeats the $297 course on Builder.

Save the worksheet and rerun it before every launch. Remember, you can always review it later and re-evaluate as your course evolves, especially when you add extras or your monthly sales pass a plan’s break-even point.

When your numbers are ready, you can build and sell the course on our online course platform. Run the fee math for your expected revenue volume on our pricing page, then start a 7-day trial and build your first course before committing to a plan.

FAQs

How do you calculate the price of an online course?

Start with a base price for the core course, add what each extra is worth on its own, such as live calls or templates, and check the total against your income goal by dividing the goal by the price. Then subtract the transaction and processing fees to confirm what you keep per sale.

How many sales do I need to make $1,000 a month?

Divide $1,000 by your course price: 10 sales at $100, 5 at $200 and 4 at $250. Then add a margin for fees. On our Builder plan, processing at 2.9% means about 11 sales at $100 to take home $1,000 before the plan price.

Should I raise my course price after the first launch?

Raise it when you add extras, collect results you can show, or sell out a cohort at the current price. Rerun the worksheet with the new price to see how many fewer sales you need for the same income.

Key terms

Base price: What your core course is worth before adding any extras. We recommend starting at $100 or more.

Extras: Additions like live Q&A calls, coaching, or templates that raise what your course is worth beyond the base price.

Transaction fee: The percentage we charge per sale based on your plan: 7.5% on Starter, 0% on Builder and Growth.

Processing fee: The 2.9% payment processing charge on every sale through Teachable Payments, regardless of plan.

Break-even point: The monthly sales level where a higher-priced plan starts costing less than a lower-priced one, once its lower fees offset the price difference.

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TL;DR: To sell an ebook, pick a topic your audience will pay to learn, write and design it, then export it as a PDF or EPUB. Price it against the value it delivers, not its length, then sell from your own website to keep each buyer’s email address, or list on a marketplace like Amazon KDP or Etsy for built-in reach. If you also teach, sell the ebook as a digital download alongside your courses, as a low-priced first product or a lead magnet. Market it to your own email list first, then social posts, podcasts, and reviews.

Are you ready to expand your digital product selection and want to learn how to sell ebooks? Ebooks work across a wide range of niches, genres, and industries. They’re quicker to create than a full course, and once one is written, every new sale needs no extra production work.

So, let’s talk about the step-by-step process of how to successfully create and sell ebooks.

Why sell ebooks online

Creating and selling ebooks is a great addition to your online business for many reasons. Here are the three most important ones:

Income that keeps coming after the work is done

Most of the work on an ebook happens before launch: writing, editing and design. After that, each sale costs you no extra production time, whatever industry you’re in or genre you write.

Marketing still takes ongoing effort, but each book you publish gives readers a reason to come back for the next one.

Introductory offer

If you only sell high-ticket online courses, you might want to introduce a cheaper introductory offer to your brand to have it as an easy sell to new customers. An ebook is a great option because they are often much cheaper than online courses, and less intimidating because people can quickly read them, rather than taking a few weeks to go through an online course curriculum.

Once people see that your ebooks are good and give them value, they’ll be much more willing to try your more premium products that require more money and time investment. Plus, an ebook can later serve as an order bump to increase your average order value. With us, you can sell an ebook on its own, include it in a course bundle, or offer it as an order bump at checkout.

Brand building

Lastly, writing and selling an ebook on a topic you specialize in is a great way to position yourself as an expert in your field. It is a great way to build your personal brand and strengthen people’s trust in your expertise.

You can then go on to do guest blog posts and podcasts, and people in your industry will be able to quote you as a source if you provide tons of value in your ebook. In the long term, this can help grow your business.

How to sell ebooks

Now, the process of creating an ebook is less daunting than it sounds. You can create a professional ebook in a few steps:

Identify your audience

First and foremost, you’ll want to think about your audience and what they are looking for. Are you trying to solve an issue they have? Or maybe, you want to entertain them? Answering these questions and identifying your target audiencewill be crucial for your ebook success.

Write your ebook

Writing your ebook will be the most time-consuming step. You’ll want to outline the contents, just like you do with your online course curriculum. You can repurpose some of your content from your online courses, or blog posts and turn them into ebook chapters if the content is valuable.

For writing and formatting tools, see our roundup of tools to create an ebook.

You always have the option to hire a ghostwriter to write a book for you. It might save you time and allow you to work on other aspects of releasing an ebook, so it might be worth it. While it is an investment in most cases, you can find more affordable ghostwriters on online marketplaces like Fiverr.

Design your ebook

Designing your ebook includes things such as:

• Designing an eye-catching book cover
• Formatting the interior
• Including images, infographics, and other visual elements
• Choosing fonts

You don’t have to be a designer to design a professional ebook. Tools like Canva help you do just that with little to no graphic design skill, and you can do that for free. Canva even has premade templates for ebooks.

Export your ebook file

Export the finished ebook as a PDF, which opens on almost any device, or as an EPUB, which reflows text to fit e-readers and phones. If you sell from your own site, you can offer both. Marketplaces like Amazon KDP set their own file requirements, so check their guidelines before you upload.

Price your ebook

Price against the result your reader gets, not the page count. A short guide that solves an expensive problem can be priced well above a long general read. If you also sell a course on the same topic, price the ebook as the low-cost first step toward it. Our guide to pricing your online course walks through the same thinking.

Choose a platform to sell

Once your ebook is written, designed, and ready to be published, you’ll have to make a very important decision on a platform where you want to sell it. You can do it on your own website, or publish it on online book marketplaces like Amazon or Google Books.

Which platform you will choose will depend on your niche and your business goals. For example, if you decided to publish a fiction ebook, Amazon might be a better fit than your own website. If your book is on the topic of “how to start a blog”, or any skill you also teach, you will probably find more success selling it directly to your audience from your website.

Where to sell ebooks

Here are the best places to sell your ebook online:

Your own website, with Teachable

The best way to sell your books online is through your own website. You don’t need to create an ebook store for that, a simple yet powerful landing page is more than enough for you to start selling.

With us, an ebook is a digital download product. You create it from the Digital Downloads tab, choose “ebook” as the category, upload your PDF or EPUB, and build a sales page in the page editor. You can price it as free, a one-time payment or a payment plan, and use coupons. Buyers create a login and download the file right away. Our help centercovers each step.

We handle checkout and delivery for you. If you sell with Teachable Payments, our Stripe-powered payments system, we also calculate and remit sales tax, VAT and GST on your sales in 45+ countries, which matters for ebooks because digital products are taxed where the buyer lives in many countries.

Our sales page tools let you include many different elements that will help you sell your book, like social proof and reviews. Ebook sales are greatly influenced by reviews, and being able to include them on your sales page is key.

Etsy

Etsy is an online marketplace for many different things, from wedding invitations, to dream catchers. And you can also sell ebooks online through Etsy.

Anyone can create a store and upload products for sale, whether physical or digital. Etsy is amazing because it is a search engine, so you can optimize your ebook product pages with keywords. And they even have a built-in ads manager if you’d like to run ads on your ebook.

To list a product on Etsy costs a small $0.20 listing fee, plus they take a small percentage of each sale you make through their platform.

KDP

Amazon is the biggest online store for books in the world. So, you might want to have your ebook published on the platform. And you can do it through the KDP (Kindle Direct Publishing) platform.

You can create a free account and upload your ebooks in a few steps. They even allow you to create paperbacks and hardbacks, if that’s something you’re interested in as well.

When setting up you have to choose the categories and genres and add keywords so that Amazon can categorize your ebook correctly. You are also able to set the price yourself, but KDP pays either a 35% or 70% royalty, depending on the royalty option you choose and whether your book qualifies for it. Keep in mind that marketplaces own the customer relationship, so you won’t get your buyers’ email addresses.

How to sell ebooks alongside your courses

If you already teach a course or coaching program, an ebook works best as part of the same offer rather than a separate business. Four ways to use it:

• A low-priced first product. A reader who buys a $15 ebook from you is a warm lead for the course that goes deeper.
• A free lead magnet. Price one ebook at $0 to grow your email list, then follow up with your paid offer.
• A bundle or an order bump. Add the ebook to a course bundle, or offer it at checkout as a small add-on.
• A test for your next course. Not sure a topic deserves a full course? Sell it as an ebook first and see who buys. Later, you can turn your ebook into an online course.

Digital downloads, courses and coaching all sell from the same school, with one checkout and one student list.

How to market ebooks

Once you create an ebook and put it up for sale, it’s time to market your ebooks! Here are a few marketing strategies we recommend you employ, and our full guide to ebook marketing goes deeper:

Email list

If you have an email list, use it to sell your ebooks. People on your email list are your #1 fans, who are interested in products you are selling, so tell them about your new release.

If you don’t have an email list yet, no worries! It is never too late to start one. You can build an email list in anticipation of your book release, which is the perfect opportunity to use some book materials to help grow your email list.

Use excerpts from your ebook as lead magnets to collect people’s email addresses and invite them to join your email list. Once they are on your list, though, don’t forget to send out nurture emails to introduce people to your brand and yourself. When the time is right, create a promotion plan for your ebook that involves sending a series of promotional emails to your list leading up to your book release.

Paid ads

Paid ads on Google, Facebook, or Amazon are an effective way to get your ebooks in front of a new audience that’s excited to read them. All of the platforms allow you to tailor your ads to target people who are interested in similar books to yours, which is a super efficient way to reach people who you wouldn’t be able to reach otherwise.

This is not a free marketing strategy and will require some initial time investment to set up the ads. But it can offer a great return on investment.

Social media

Of course, don’t forget your social media following – let them know when you release new ebooks. You can share snippets and teasers, or quotes from the book. Visuals of quotes from books do pretty well on social media and make for easy-to-share content.

Collaborate

One effective way to promote your ebooks is to collaborate with other authors in your niche and do giveaways. You can always do giveaways by yourself, but it is much more effective to involve other authors because it gives you a chance to reach a new audience.

So, find a few authors who are in the same niche and sell ebooks. Consider what prizes your audience would be interested in. Then, create simple rules for entry, such as – follow the accounts, share this post, and tag a friend. Usually, a week is enough time to gather enough attention.

Collect reviews

Reviews are your social proof that your ebook is worth people’s time, attention, and money. And they are one of the most effective book marketing tools. Whenever you can, encourage people to leave a review of your ebooks.

You can collect reviews yourself, or on platforms like Goodreads and Amazon. Before launch, send free advance copies to a few readers and ask for an honest review. Don’t pay for reviews: Amazon’s review rules don’t allow it, and reviews readers can’t trust won’t help you sell.

Guest podcasting

Guest podcasting is a great way to promote your ebooks. If you are an expert on a certain topic and have an ebook on the topic, pitch yourself to relevant podcasts. Once you’re on the podcast, the host usually allows the guests to promote themselves and their businesses, which is a fantastic way to reach a new audience.

Once you’ve written, priced, and started marketing your ebook, the same online course platform can host your next course or coaching program, all under one checkout and one student list. Start a 7-day trial and build your first course before committing to a plan.

How to sell ebooks FAQs

Which platform is best for selling ebooks?

It depends on the book. If your ebook teaches a skill and you plan to sell courses or coaching to the same readers, selling from your own website keeps their email addresses and lets you offer the next product directly. Fiction and general-interest books benefit most from Amazon’s reach, since readers already shop there.

Many authors do both: list on Amazon for discovery, and sell from their own site to readers who already know them.

Is it hard to sell an ebook?

It depends. Creating and selling an ebook on a platform like Amazon is easier than let’s say, creating and selling an online course. It’s quicker to create and put up for sale than larger digital products.

If your ebook has tons of valuable content inside, and you have written it with your target audience in mind, selling it will be much easier. You’ll know exactly who to market the ebook to and how.

Is it profitable to make an ebook?

It can be. Ebooks cost relatively little money and time to create, and there’s no printing or shipping.

You can set your ebook price to be as low or high as you wish (depending on the contents and your industry), and because the cost of selling an ebook is much lower than physical products, you’ll be keeping most of the profit, minus marketplace fees or payment processing.

How do I sell an ebook on my own website?

Use a platform that handles checkout and file delivery for you. With us, you create a digital download, upload your PDF or EPUB, set a price and publish a sales page. Buyers pay at checkout and download the file straight away, and you keep their email address.

Can I sell an ebook I wrote with AI?

Yes, as long as you have the rights to the content and it’s accurate. Check each platform’s current content rules before you publish. Amazon KDP, for example, requires you to disclose AI-generated content when you publish. Adding your own expertise and examples is also what makes an ebook worth buying.

Key terms

Digital download: A product a buyer purchases and receives as a file to keep, like an ebook, template, or guide, delivered automatically after checkout.

EPUB: A reflowable ebook file format that adjusts text size and layout to fit e-readers, tablets, and phones, unlike a fixed-layout PDF.

Royalty: The percentage of each sale a marketplace like Amazon KDP pays the author, after the marketplace takes its share.

Order bump: A low-priced add-on offered at checkout, such as an ebook alongside a course purchase, that increases the average order value.

Lead magnet: A free piece of content, like an ebook, offered in exchange for an email address to grow an audience.

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TL;DR: Hobbies make money three ways: selling what you make, selling your time as a service, or teaching the skill through a course, coaching or digital downloads. Teaching scales best, since one course can serve many students without trading more time per sale. A hobby is teachable when beginners would pay to skip your years of trial and error, like photography, graphic design, writing, baking, gardening or crafts. The table below shows which of these 25 hobbies translate into a teaching business, and which only pay for your time. Check demand first by searching your hobby plus “course” or “class.”

Do you have any hobbies that make money or could be a source of extra income? While we tend to have hobbies to help us relax, escape from the daily routine or fulfill our creativity, some hobbies can be turned into profitable businesses.

If you’re already doing something you enjoy in your free time, why not start making money while doing it? So, if you’re interested to earn extra cash with your passion, we have a list of 25 lucrative hobbies that have the potential to be a business.

Hobbies that make good online courses or coaching business

Sometimes, a lot of our hobbies can actually translate nicely into an online course or coaching business. You don’t need formal credentials to teach a course on one of your hobbies, but you do need real skill and results you can show. Everyone from artists to musicians to coders to gardeners to marketing experts have found success with online courses on our platform.

Our course builder, checkout, payments and tax handling sit in one place, so your time goes into teaching rather than setup. No matter what niche area you’re interested in, you can find success and make a profit sharing what you know. Our guide shows how to launch an online course or start coaching based on one of your hobbies.

Which hobbies translate into teachable skills?

A hobby makes a good course when it has a skill people struggle to learn alone and a result they can see, like a finished painting, a first sourdough loaf or a working website. Here’s what you could teach for the hobbies on this list:

Service and gig hobbies like dog walking, driving and grocery delivery pay for your time, so they don’t usually turn into courses.

Best hobbies that can make good money

1. Social media

Social media can be a very profitable hobby. Billions of people are using it to socialize with friends and with brands. You can become an influencer and build your own audience, which you can later monetize.

Influencers have many monetization options, from affiliate marketing to brand sponsorships. It’s also one of the most sought-after careers now because you have a chance to make money while sharing your life or things you’re passionate about.

Consider choosing a niche to accelerate your growth:

• Travel
• Makeup
• Hair
• Skincare
• Fashion
• Sustainable living
• Personal Finance
• Personal development
• Fitness
• Food

Another way to make money with social media is by working as a social media manager. Most brands now have an online presence and teams that run their social media profiles.

If you’re good at noticing trends and creating good quality content, you might approach brands and offer your services as a freelancer or online coach. Your best bet when getting started is to approach small businesses and offer to work for free to build up a reputation and portfolio of successful social media campaigns. Teaching social media through an online course is another way to earn from what you know, without trading every hour for client work.

2. Graphic design

Graphic design and illustration are lucrative hobbies and skills to have. If you have good knowledge of software like Adobe Illustrator and can create logos and visual art, then you can offer freelance services to brands.

Graphic design is versatile because you can work on a whole range of projects:

• Create advertisement visuals
• Come up with branding and logos for small businesses
• Create social media posts
• Work with authors and publishing houses on book covers
• Design websites and apps

You can start looking for clients on online marketplaces like Upwork or 99Designs.

If working with clients isn’t for you, consider creating digital products and selling them online. You can create posters, prints, fonts, and website designs, graphic details and upload them to market places like Society 6 or Creative Market for sale. Have a passion for teaching? Share your favorite techniques and tips with an online course as well. You can build the lessons in our course builder, or have our AI curriculum generator draft a first outline from a short description.

3. Writing

If writing is your hobby, you can make money online by working as a freelance writer. There are many different types of freelance writing you can do, depending on your skillset:

• Copywriting
• Content writing
• SEO writing
• Technical writing
• Ghostwriting

Choose what type of writing you want to do. Then, create a blog or start writing on Medium to build your portfolio before you start approaching clients and applying to jobs.

Once you have a decent portfolio, you can start looking for a writing job on websites like ProBlogger. Alternatively, you can Google businesses in your niche and cold pitch them your services.

Writing for clients is not the only way to monetize your writing. If you write fiction and are a fast writer, you can write books and self-publish on Amazon. It does require investment in the professional cover and editor, and you’ll have to market your books, but you can turn this into a profitable business.

Now, not all self-published books sell well. It highly depends on the niche. Here is a list of the most profitable self-published book niches for fiction authors:

• Romance: Contemporary, dark romance, and new adult & college romance have the highest earning potential.
• Mystery, Thriller, Suspense: Crime and psychological thrillers sell the best.
• Women’s Fiction: Historical, suspense, and new adult & college are best-selling sub-categories.
• Science Fiction & Fantasy: Dark fantasy and epic fantasy have the most potential.

4. Photography

Another hobby with high earning potential is photography. It’s a skill that can be utilized in many different ways, and there is always a demand for visual content.

Here are a few ways you can turn your photography hobby into a profitable business:

• Photography journalism: Magazines and publications pay thousands of dollars for photography journalism features.
• Wedding photography: Take pictures of weddings and other important celebrations.
• Sell stock images: Websites like Shutterstock allow photographers to make money by uploading stock photos for sale.
• Product photography: Work with brands and small businesses to take pictures of their products.
• Sell prints: Put your photos on prints and sell them online on Society 6 and similar websites.
• Photography course: Create an online course or an online workshop where you teach people how to take pictures. Once it’s recorded, a course can keep selling without you teaching each student live.

5. Website design and development

Every business needs a website these days. If you have an eye for design and understand the code, you can make a lot of money designing and building websites.

There are multiple ways you can monetize your hobby:

• Work with clients: Work with small or big businesses to help design, build and maintain their websites.
• Sell templates: Design templates for WordPress, Shopify, Squarespace, and other website builders and sell them on Etsy, Creative Market, or directly in your website store.
• Start an agency: If you’re up for a bigger challenge, you can start an agency and hire other employers to work with you on client projects.
• Launch a mini course: Start small and build up your audience with a mini course that acts as a lead magnet. This is a great way to condense and focus your knowledge into a digital product while you build up your audience base and build your full course.

6. Start a blog

Blogging is still one of the most fun hobbies to have. And it’s also one of the best business ideas for women, particularly stay-at-home moms, with the biggest potential for making a lot of money from the comfort of their own homes.

You might already have a blog where you share your favorite recipes, travel destinations, or outfits. Or you might only be thinking about how to start a blog. Either way, if you want to make money, you need to consider who your audience is and what they want to read.

Consider niching down and writing about one topic at the start, allowing you to establish yourself as an expert quicker. You can always grow and expand later down the line. Here are the seven most profitable niches according to Themeisle:

• Digital marketing
• Tech and AI
• Blogging and making money online
• Health and fitness
• Personal finance and investing
• Recipes and food
• Personal development and self-care

Blogging also offers you a plethora of different ways to monetize your hobby:

• Sell digital products
• Affiliate marketing
• Sponsored posts
• Ads
• Online courses
• Monthly memberships

Retirement hobbies that make money

7. Teach art

If you’re a retiring art teacher or have secretly dreamed of being an artist for years while busy with life, you might want to turn your art hobby into a profitable small business.

You can teach art online in the comfort of your own home by creating an online course with video classes. Or do live masterclasses and webinars for people interested in learning to paint or draw.

On our platform, you can build a sales page, organize your curriculum and take payments in one place. This way, you can focus on sharing your art online to find an audience.

8. Sell antiques

Selling or re-selling antiques and second-hand items can be a hobby that makes money if you have a passion for thrifting. Re-selling vintage clothing has become a popular side hustle since the rise of Nasty Gal almost a decade ago. But you can re-sell much more than vintage Levi’s.

Visit your local flea markets and thrift stores to find antiques and interesting old items and furniture. You might also drive around your neighborhood and look for furniture left on a curb. While it might be damaged, it’s always for free, and you can always upcycle it before you sell it.

A more time-efficient way is to browse Craigslist or Facebook Marketplace, where people sell their used household items and furniture. Sometimes, you can find really good antique items for a good price when people are moving or trying to get rid of unwanted items.

Once you have an inventory, put your items online. A great place is Etsy or Instagram. But you might also want to create your website for your antique store.

Pro tip: You can monetize your expertise and eye for thrifting or antiquing with a course or digital guides. Create digital downloadable guides on your best thrifting tips, upcycling ideas, and pricing guides. You can even teach other antique lovers and sellers how to run a business online. The options are endless.

Crafting hobbies that make money

9. Pottery

Pottery can be turned from a hobby to a profitable small business. You can put your creations on marketplaces like Etsy. People go on Etsy to look for handmade things, so you don’t have to work on attracting the audience to your website.

You might also opt to teach other people how to work with clay through online courses, online masterclasses, or in-person lessons.

10. Sell your paintings

You might want to consider selling your art if you’re a painter. You can sell the original canvas, offer custom painting services where you take orders from people, and sell print copies of original artwork for a lower price.

Social media platforms like TikTok are great for attracting an audience interested in your work. You can share your process behind the scenes of what it takes to get from a sketch to a final piece and much more.

11. Baking

Cooking and baking are useful hobbies and are also perfect for monetizing. Everyone loves food, either eating it, looking at it, or making it. So if you’re a skilled baker with secret recipes for mouthwatering brownies or chocolate cupcakes, take advantage of it!

You can create an online store where you sell baked goods. You can take orders for special events or choose to teach people how to bake their own sweets at home.

Just with everything, certain food trends come and go. During the lockdown, many people turned to learn how to bake bread at home. Many small businesses appeared online, teaching people how to bake sourdough bread.

So, see what recipes you can utilize to attract attention from most people and start baking! A number of bakers and chefs on our platform have found success sharing their tips, recipes, and expertise online through coaching or courses, including a sourdough baker who turned years of recipe testing into a full course.

12. Knitting

Knitting is a relaxing hobby that can produce wonderful things. If you know how to knit, you might want to consider selling your goods to people online.

You can set up an Instagram account or an Etsy store and sell your products there. Or, you can take custom orders from people working on a 1:1 basis.

Pro tip: Create downloadable patterns as free lead magnets to offer to your shoppers to grow your email list. When you’re ready to launch a course or knitting academy, you’ll already have an email list that’s ready and eager to learn!

13. Beauty products

The beauty industry has been growing rapidly in recent years. If you love making your own soaps and organic facemasks, think about turning your hobby into a money-making machine.

Quite a few organic skincare brands started as a one-person team, making organic products in the kitchen for personal use and later turned into profitable businesses.

You can specialize in one product, like a whipped soap or a sugar lip scrub. Or, you might create a whole line and sell different products for the body and face. Here are a few ideas to help you get started:

• Face mask
• Body scrub
• Body butter
• Handmade soaps with dried herbs
• Bath soaks
• Bath bombs
• Feet mask
• Feet scrub
• Facial exfoliator

14. Candlemaking

Candlemaking is relaxing, and it’s also a great way to make extra money. Every year when September comes around, many people worldwide want to snuggle up with a blanket and light a candle in the evening, so take advantage of that!

Also, there are tons of different niches for candlemaking, so you can target a specific niche depending on what you like to make:

• Seasonal candles
• Book-related candles
• Massage oil candles
• Aromatherapy candles
• Ritual candles

Home hobbies that can earn money

15. Video gaming

Gaming has a poor reputation, but it can be an extremely profitable hobby that makes you a lot of money. And it’s also a very lucrative money-making hobby as you can do it from the comfort of your own home.

Gamers like Ninja had made millions of dollars by simply playing their favorite games and streaming for other people to watch. So, you can start by streaming your gaming on platforms like Twitch.

You can get subscribers who pay a monthly fee, and viewers might tip you money or digital currency during your streams. You might also monetize your streams with ads or get sponsors as your audience grows.

If you’re extremely good at your chosen game, you might even want to consider entering e-sport competitions. These ventures are competitive, but most offer huge cash prizes, especially for the most popular games like Fortnite.

16. Website flipping

Do you enjoy creating and tinkering with websites? Or maybe you’re good at SEO? Well, then you can make money online by turning your hobby of website creation into a profitable business.

Website flipping is a lot like house flipping. You buy an already existing website that needs to be updated, and you work on improving it and making it shine. Then, sell it for a profit. Use a marketplace like Flippa to find a website for your first project.

17. Gardening

If you’re a green thumb and love spending time outdoors, you can turn your favorite hobby into a small business! It might look like gardening is a hard hobby to monetize, but it couldn’t be further from the truth. There are so many different ways to make money with gardening:

• Sell seedlings: Grow seedlings at home and sell them at your local farmers’ market or directly to farmers.
• Do landscaping: Offer landscaping and gardening services to people.
• Sell seeds: If you grow your own vegetables, harvest the seeds and sell them to other farmers.
• Sell harvestables: Anything you grow in your garden, from tomatoes, cucumbers, lettuce, and pumpkins, can be sold in a farmers’ market.
• Apple picking: If you have apple trees in your garden, let people come in when it’s apple picking season and charge for what they pick.
• Sell flowers: Maybe you’re more into growing flowers than tomatoes. That’s great! You can still bring your flowers to the market and sell them there.
• Sell dried herbs: Open your own spice and herb shop where you sell dried herbs from your garden.
• Sell microgreens: Microgreens are very popular due to their health benefits and everyone’s obsession with wellness. Grow them and sell them in the farmer’s market.
• Supply to restaurants: Instead of selling produce directly to people, sell it to local restaurants.
• Teach gardening lessons: Share your knowledge about gardening by teaching online or in-person classes.

All of this is highly valuable knowledge that a gardening or plant-loving audience would pay for. Consider honing in on a niche subject such as “flower drying” and building an entire course around it.

Easy side hobbies that make money

18. Dog walking

If you love pets and are great with dogs, walking other people’s dogs is a great way to make money on the side. You can do it after work, or on the weekends.

It’s a great hobby if you love dogs but can’t have one for whatever reason, as you get to spend time and play with dogs. And, walking dogs means getting in those recommended 10,000 steps which also has tons of health benefits.

You can put an old-school advertisement in your apartment building to let your neighbors know you offer dog walking services. Or, you can put up a local ad on Craigslist. Alternatively, you can join dog walking companies online that specialize in connecting dog walkers with dog owners.

Here are a few recommended dog walking companies to get you started:

• Rover
• Wag!
• Fetch

19. Pet sitting

Another opportunity for pet lovers is pet sitting. It’s a bit more involved than dog walking as you’ll usually need to look after people’s pets for longer than a walk.

If you already have pets, it might be a great way to socialize your pets with others and make money enjoying fun company while you babysit someone’s pet while they’re on holiday.

You might want to try registering with pet sitting companies that help connect pet sitters with pet owners. Here are a few popular options to help you get started:

• Wag!
• Fetch
• PetBacker
• Holidog

20. Deliver groceries

Do you find yourself strolling at Target on a random Saturday afternoon fairly often? If the answer is a yes, you might want to consider turning your shopping hobby into a side hustle by shopping for groceries for other people.

You can join companies like Instacart, where you’ll take orders from people, do grocery runs for them, and then deliver their goods to their homes.

What’s great about it is that you can work whenever you want or have a free minute. Pay varies by city and order volume, so check the current rates in your area before you sign up.

21. Driving

Some people love driving. If you’re one of those people who often go for a drive when you want to relax or when you’re bored, then consider joining Lyft or Uber and make extra cash by driving people.

These companies make it easy to apply to be a driver, set up your account, and start earning money immediately.

22. Review books

If you’re an avid book lover and reader, consider turning your fun hobby into an easy side hustle. Yes, you can read books and get paid to express your opinions about them!

One way is to create your own book blog and review books there. As you build your audience and credibility, you’ll be able to start charging for book reviews and other book-related services. This way, you’ll get free books from publishers, which is every book lover’s dream!

If you want something simpler and more instant, you can join book review companies that hire reviewers and pay them a small fee to read and review books. Most of these companies are easy to join and get started earning extra cash.

Here are a few recommendations for book review websites/publications that pay their reviewers:

• Online Book Club
• Reedsy Discovery
• Kirkus
• BookBrowse
• The US Review of Books
• Booklist

Trending hobbies that make money in 2026

23. Generative AI content creation

Generative AI continues to explode in popularity, making it a highly profitable hobby turned business. Content creators are monetizing their knowledge of tools like ChatGPT, Midjourney, and Adobe Firefly by teaching prompt engineering, AI-driven storytelling, and marketing automation.

Key Stats:

• According to Grand View Research, the global generative AI market is projected to grow at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 40.8%, reaching approximately $324.68 billion by 2033. This robust growth underscores the expanding opportunities in the generative AI sector, making it a compelling area for content creators and businesses to explore.

24. Live shopping and creator commerce

Live shopping has become a popular way for hobbyists and creators to monetize their passion for fashion, beauty, tech, and more. Hosting engaging live streams, product demonstrations, and exclusive sales has become highly profitable.Gary Vaynerchuk is shouting from the roof-tops about what he thinks of the future of live shopping and the new 'attention economy'. Creators, heed the video below:

Key Stats:

• According to Transparency Market Research, the live shopping market is projected to grow at a CAGR of 18.5%, from $940.3 billion in 2024 to an estimated $6,079.8 billion by 2035. Other analysts put the 2035 figure far lower, so treat this as one firm’s estimate, not an industry consensus.

Here’s the best example of live shopping Gary gave, Mary Ruths Organics. How can you take your TikTok obsession and couple it with your shopping hobby into a money making opportunity?

25. Cozy video game development

The rise of cozy video games, those that emphasize relaxation, creativity, and low-stress environments - has opened new avenues for hobbyist game developers. Creating games that focus on building, farming simulations, or gentle adventure appeals to a broad audience seeking comfort and escapism. Developers can monetize these games through direct sales, in-game purchases, or by offering workshops on cozy game development.

How to turn your hobby into a business

If you want to make money from your hobby, here are the steps you want to take:

Step 1: Do market research

Before you pour your time and money into your hobby, do market research to validate your idea. See if there is a demand for what you’re offering and how your product/service fits into the market.

Step 2: Write a business plan

A business plan will help you stay on track and be organized about growing your business. If you’re not getting investors involved, it will only be for your eyes, so keep it short and to the point.

Step 3: Brand mission and name

Think about what makes your business stand out in a crowd. Why it’s special, and how can it change people’s lives or make them easier? Then, come up with a name that resonates with your brand’s mission and is easy to remember.

Step 4: Build structures

While you can start a business without fancy setups in place and register it only when it starts generating revenue, it might be easier to legitimize your business from the start.

Choose a business structure, register it with your state, pick an accounting and invoicing software and ensure you have everything you might need set up.

Step 5: Refine the product/service

Now it’s time to work on making your product or service ready for the market! That will look different for everyone, but it might include polishing your skills, hiring help, and getting beta testers.

Step 6: Start marketing

When you’re ready, let the world know you’re in business! Build a website for your business, launch your social media profiles, and start running a coordinated marketing campaign to build an audience interested in your products and services.

No matter what hobbies you have, realizing that anything you’re passionate about can be a viable way to make money is key. At Teachable, we believe in the power of knowledge, and what’s more, we believe that everyone has something to share. Many of the hobbies above, whether skill-based or hands-on, can become a course, coaching program or digital download. Courses, coaching and downloads all sell from one school on our online course platform. Start a 7-day trial and build your first course before committing to a plan.

FAQs

What hobbies can earn money?

Tons of different hobbies can make you money, and most fall into three profitable categories. Skill-based hobbies, like photography, writing, editing, audio production, voice acting or dancing, can be turned into service-based businesses. Product-based hobbies, like knitting, sewing, jewelry-making, pottery and painting, let you sell what you make on marketplaces like Etsy. Teaching hobbies, like yoga, meditation, piano and language, can become a business where you teach others the skill itself.

How can I make money from my hobby?

Research the demand for your hobby, then write a short business plan and pick a name that fits your brand. Choose a business structure, and get your legal and accounting basics in order if you plan to sell long-term. Refine your product or service with early customer feedback, then start marketing through your website, social channels and a steady promotional push.

Can a hobby turn into a profitable business?

Yes. If you have a hobby for which there is a demand, it can definitely become a profitable business. Before you dive head-on into turning your hobby into a business, spend some time researching the market to see if there is an audience interested in what you are offering. If you see that your hobby is in demand and that people would benefit from your products/services, you can start taking it more seriously.

Building a business, big or small, takes a huge amount of dedication, patience, and time. So, be prepared for your venture to take up much of your time and attention if you want it to be profitable, and be patient! Remember, Rome wasn’t built in a day.

What's the easiest hobby to monetize online in 2026?

The easiest hobby to monetize online in 2026 is creating and selling digital products, such as downloadable templates, checklists, or guides. With us, you can sell templates, checklists and guides as digital downloads, on their own or bundled with a course.

Can live shopping be profitable as a hobby in 2026?

It can be. Live shopping combines entertainment and e-commerce. Creators hosting live shopping streams can earn through product sales, brand sponsorships, and affiliate commissions.

Which hobbies can you teach online?

Any hobby with a learnable skill and a visible result: photography, painting, graphic design, writing, baking, knitting, pottery, gardening, web design and social media are among the most common. If beginners would pay to avoid your years of trial and error, you can teach it as a course, coaching or a set of downloadable guides.

Key terms

Teachable skill: a hobby with a learnable technique and a visible result, the kind beginners will pay to shortcut.

Side hustle: work you do alongside your main income to earn extra money, often starting small before it grows.

Niche: a specific, well-defined focus within a broader hobby or market that helps you stand out and attract the right audience.

Monetize: to turn a hobby, skill or piece of content into a source of income, whether through products, services or teaching.

Digital download: a downloadable product, like a template, pattern or guide, sold once and delivered instantly with no physical shipping.

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Elizabeth Ann West has been self-publishing since 2011. Her co-founder, Stacey Anderson, has been doing it since 2015.

When AI started reshaping their industry, they saw two problems at once. Nobody was teaching authors how to use it well, and nobody was telling them they would be okay.

So in May 2023, they opened Future Fiction Academy (FFA), a school where professional authors teach other authors about the future of fiction: AI, automation, and the business skills to publish professionally. Today, more than 27,000 students have joined FFA's free class, the catalog holds 140 classes, and live sessions have drawn more than 100 authors at once.

"Our mission was to train as many authors as we could." – Elizabeth Ann West

Future Fiction Academy's Teachable story at a glance

The turning point: From self-published author to a $20K/month school

Elizabeth didn't set out to build a school. She was already a working author, and she saw Teachable as the fastest way to organize a curriculum, handle payments, and get information to authors while AI models changed every three to six months.

The response surprised her. Within two or three months on Teachable, FFA reached $20,000 a month in recurring revenue. As a self-published author, her best years had been six-figure years that took a lot of work. Now she had a six-figure run rate in a single quarter.

"I was like, okay, wait a minute, Elizabeth. You are a quarter of the way to a million-dollar company." – Elizabeth Ann West

The second moment came in the mail. When FFA crossed a Teachable revenue milestone, a pair of Teachable headphones arrived.

"You're working by yourself, so you have no idea how good your performance is in the Teachable ecosystem. That was the first time I knew I was doing a good job." – Elizabeth Ann West

That early traction came from a handful of choices Elizabeth made from day one. Here are the ones doing the heaviest lifting.

Elizabeth's strategies for building an AI-era school

Elizabeth runs FFA the way she teaches: move fast, show the work, including the mistakes, and keep people at the center. Here are five strategies behind the school, and the role Teachable plays in each.

Strategy 1: Start with a narrow customer you know well

Elizabeth was told to go big and go cheap. She did the opposite. She built FFA for professional or seriously aspiring authors who needed to understand AI to protect their business and who were ready to invest in their education.

"I understood that customer base really well because I was a member of it. When you start with somebody very specific in mind, the other people who can be served by you will show up." – Elizabeth Ann West

That narrow focus is how FFA grew to more than 27,000 students in its free class. It also drew audiences she never expected, like tech professionals moving into the creative world.

Take action

• Write down the one customer you understand best, ideally one you used to be.
• Launch a small, tightly scoped course for that customer on Teachable before you expand.

Strategy 2: Build a team that can help

Elizabeth ran a one-woman school on another platform in 2018, and it didn't have the tooling for people to work together. FFA needed that from day one. In the early days, the school ran eight live sessions a week, and at its peak the team included 15 contractors, many of them authors teaching their own classes.

Teachable gave her two things that made that team possible. Roles and permissions let instructors and contractors build inside the school without full admin access. Teachable Payments, Teachable's built-in checkout, pays instructors directly, so Elizabeth doesn't have to run payouts by hand.

"What Teachable allowed me to do from a very early stage was realize I don't have to build this by myself. Teachable has the tooling for other people to come in and help me build it, without giving them access to delete users or destroy the school." – Elizabeth Ann West

Take action

• Give every collaborator a role with only the permissions they need.
• Use Teachable Payments to process your sales and pay co-instructors automatically as your catalog grows.

Strategy 3: Put live streaming at the center and make Teachable the front door

FFA's community lives on Discord, a Facebook group, YouTube, and a newsletter. Learning happens live on Zoom. Teachable connects all of it.

Members check a public Notion calendar that shows each session in their own time zone, and every session link points into Teachable. Logged-in members go straight to the right Zoom room, while visitors without access are invited to join. Afterward, recordings are uploaded back into Teachable, and members can download them.

Live sessions do something recorded lessons can't. They show every author that they aren't alone.

"When you do a live session inside of a Zoom room, they get to see there's 40 other people just like me, there's 50 other people just like me. If you can realize that your school is there for people's emotional needs, not just their educational needs, then you get those repeat buyers." – Elizabeth Ann West

The community has grown its own rituals. Elizabeth hosted a Friday Night Live on YouTube almost every week for close to two years. Instructor Lynn Jordan runs a weekly publishing party to celebrate new releases. Members now run their own small study groups, scheduled by a student volunteer.

Take action

• Keep live session links inside your Teachable school so access stays tied to enrollment.
• Add moments of celebration, like launch parties or member wins, to your live calendar.

Strategy 4: Teach the student's AI, too

FFA's core offer is Pro, a one-time purchase that members keep as it's updated. It launched in July 2026 and is already getting its first major update, for agentic workflows. Inside Pro is The Spark.

The Spark is a simple zipped folder of text files, indexes, Python scripts, and instructions. Students plug it into any AI that can read a folder, including ChatGPT, Claude, Google's models, or local models. From day one, their AI works with FFA's methods for writing, revising, and publishing.

"You have to not just think about how you are teaching the human. You also need to think about how you are teaching their AI. It's almost like a way that we can be there with them even though we can't." – Elizabeth Ann West

Take action

• Package your framework as a downloadable resource students can give to their own AI tools.
• Deliver it as a digital download inside your Teachable course so it updates with your curriculum.

Strategy 5: Let AI help run the school, safely

With 140 classes, keeping the curriculum current is a big job. FFA now uses AI assistants like Claude and ChatGPT to help reorganize its Teachable school, and Elizabeth is a fan of the Teachable MCP server, which lets AI tools connect to the school directly.

She also has a rule for doing it safely. AI gets its own Teachable role with no permission to delete users, and it never works under the owner account.

"People should not sleep on the MCP server. But just like hiring a very eager intern, AI can make changes you don't want. Make a role that doesn't have the ability to delete users and be signed in under that account, not your owner account." – Elizabeth Ann West

Take action

• Connect your AI assistant to your school through the Teachable MCP server.
• Create a dedicated, limited role for any AI tool that edits your school.

Why Elizabeth bets on human community in the age of AI

Many creators worry that AI will end teaching. Elizabeth sees it the other way. FFA teaches AI and uses AI, yet what keeps members coming back is live, human, emotionally supportive education.

That is where Teachable fits. It carries the operations, from checkout and instructor payouts to roles, permissions, and access to live sessions, so Elizabeth and her instructors can spend their time on the people in the room.

Why Future Fiction Academy stays on Teachable

FFA's entire education business runs on Teachable. The team tested selling software directly through Stripe and quickly moved back once tax thresholds and filings piled up.

"I very much like Teachable handling our checkout." – Elizabeth Ann West

About a year in, another platform pitched FFA on switching. Elizabeth looked closely at what a migration would cost the team and chose to stay.

"We did our due diligence, we heard other companies out, and I'm happy to say that Teachable won out." – Elizabeth Ann West

FFA has also grown alongside the platform. It started before Teachable had memberships, moved members into bundles, and is now consolidating everyone into a single membership structure.

What Elizabeth's students take away

For Elizabeth, the proudest results are her students' careers. Some arrived without a single book and have since published ten. Many are tech professionals who lost their jobs and found a new path in writing and publishing.

Accessibility matters just as much. FFA serves members who are blind, deaf, visually or hearing impaired, or neurodivergent. Elizabeth points to Teachable's accessibility tools, including dark mode, as part of what makes the school work for them.

Running the school has also made Elizabeth a recognized voice on AI in publishing. FFA and Future Fiction Press were featured in The New York Times, and she has spoken at conferences from Frankfurt to the U.S. Virgin Islands.

The community has a motto for days when technology breaks.

"We go fast, we break things, and we're all in this together." – Elizabeth Ann West

Elizabeth's advice for other author-educators

Elizabeth's advice for anyone starting a school is the same lesson that built FFA.

"Don't try to learn it all. Just get started. Start off with a course and the offer page and get it up. Small offer, small-scoped class, small-scoped customer. That way you can get it done, have that win, and then you can always make another class. Ask me, I've got 140 classes in my Teachable." – Elizabeth Ann West

Looking ahead

Future Fiction Academy now has a five-year plan. It sits alongside Future Fiction Press and a new AI movie studio, all working together under one roof. Closer to home, Pro is getting its first major update for agentic workflows, and the team is consolidating every member into a single membership structure.

Elizabeth sees Teachable as a partner in that future.

"Teachable is supporting us by leaning into AI. You're supporting future schools because you're not being complacent about the changes that are coming and that are affecting all of us. You are in this with us." – Elizabeth Ann West

What to do next

Explore Future Fiction Academy: Visit futurefictionacademy.com to join the free class and browse the catalog of 140 classes.

Watch FFA on YouTube: Future Fiction Academy on YouTube

Explore more creator stories: Read how other educators are winning on Teachable in our Success Stories collection.

Try Teachable yourself: Elizabeth reached a six-figure run rate in a single quarter by starting small, building a team, and putting live community at the center. Start your free Teachable trial and build the school your audience is waiting for.

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Stefan Kunz can fill a room. Before he recorded a single lesson, he was teaching hand lettering in person to sold-out workshops in New York, Los Angeles, London, and beyond.

Reaching the rest of his audience meant teaching online, and the first online setup he saw up close looked complicated. Stefan taught a guest course for a fellow lettering educator whose school ran on WordPress, Vimeo, and password protection, all wired together by hand. The arrangement delivered the course. Keeping it running took constant attention.

Stefan wanted the opposite of that. He went looking for one place to build, sell, and run his courses, even if a packaged platform meant giving up some custom control. A recommendation from his friend and podcast co-host Lauren Hom pointed him to Teachable, and he has stayed there ever since.

“It felt like a platform that would let me focus on creating and teaching rather than managing technology.” — Stefan Kunz, Founder of Stefan Kunz Studio

Related: How to make money selling courses right now

Stefan's Teachable story at a glance

The turning point

Stefan never set out to become a teacher. His path ran through filmmaking, then wedding photography, then hand lettering, each craft picked up on his own and turned into a living.

Lettering took off as a trend, and people kept asking him the same question about how he did it.

Answering that question in person became a business of its own. 

In 2019 he hired an assistant, cleaned out his studio, and ran his first lettering workshop off a big chalk wall in his own office, with pizza for about fourteen people. Demand kept showing up, so the rooms kept getting bigger.

By the time recording crossed his mind, he had taught hundreds of students face to face. He understood that whatever platform he picked would carry all of that online, which raised the stakes on choosing well.

How Stefan found Teachable

That first online teaching, the guest course for a fellow lettering educator, ran on a custom mix of WordPress, Vimeo, and password protection stitched together piece by piece. 

The setup delivered the lessons, and it also showed Stefan how much upkeep a hand-built system demands.

He wanted one place that handled the whole job, and he was willing to give up some custom control to get it. When Lauren Hom, his friend and Striving Artist podcast co-host, told him she was running her own courses on Teachable and loving it, the platform went straight to the top of his list.

A closer look confirmed the fit. The course builder, student management, comments, and online course tools all sat in one place, with a setup simple enough to learn in an afternoon. What stood out most was speed, since payments and delivery already worked together, so he could put his attention on the course instead of the connections between separate tools.

One detail settled it for him. Stefan could build his entire course before paying anything, which let him confirm everything worked before he committed. He created his first course, an online version of his lettering workshop, in a few days.

The feature he reaches for most today solves a problem that used to eat his evenings. Teaching a global audience, he once uploaded every video to separate services to make transcripts and subtitles by hand. Teachable now generates them for him, which feeds the kind of student experience that keeps international learners moving through a course.

“Being able to upload a video and have transcripts and translations generated automatically saves an incredible amount of time and helps me make my courses accessible to students around the world.” — Stefan Kunz, Founder of Stefan Kunz Studio

Stefan started with Teachable and has stayed. Switching platforms later, he points out, is no small task, which made getting the first choice right worth the care he gave it.

Payments and a global student base

When Stefan started, having payments built into the platform mattered. He could open enrollment without wiring up a separate processor, which kept his attention on the course itself.

His needs changed as the business grew, and the platform gave him room to adjust. Stefan now connects his own Stripe and PayPal accounts through Teachable while keeping the built-in option available for whenever he wants it.

“As my business expanded, I had more flexibility to customize parts of my setup, including connecting my own payment processors like Stripe and PayPal.” — Stefan Kunz, Founder of Stefan Kunz Studio

Those options matter more for someone teaching across borders. Stefan's students reach nearly every continent, and Teachable Payments, powered by Stripe, handles tax and local payment methods across dozens of countries. For a creator selling to that kind of audience, the platform manages each market so the creator does not have to.

What Stefan looks for in a platform

Stefan is the first to say there is no single right platform for everyone. Predicting how a business will grow is hard at the start, so he tells new creators to pick a tool that can grow with them.

“I would highly recommend choosing a platform that can grow with you.” — Stefan Kunz, Founder of Stefan Kunz Studio

The economics deserve early attention too. Giving up a small percentage feels minor in the beginning, and it adds up as the numbers get bigger.

“When you are just starting, giving up a small percentage may not seem significant. But as your business grows, every percentage point starts to matter.” — Stefan Kunz, Founder of Stefan Kunz Studio

The last thing he weighs is presentation. How a course looks and feels is part of a creator's brand, so Stefan wants a platform that lets him organize content, shape the student experience, and use tools like drip release to deliver a course the way he pictured it.

Take action

• Choose for where you are headed, not only where you are today. A platform that adds room as you grow saves you a painful move later.
• Read the fee and revenue-share terms before you commit. A percentage that feels small now grows with every sale you add.
• Treat the course experience as part of your brand. Pick tools that let you organize, customize, and pace the content the way you want students to see it.

Stefan's strategies for building a sold-out course business

Stefan has launched more than 25 courses since 2019, and along the way he built a way of working that any creator with an audience can follow. The core of it is simple. He proves that people want something before he spends weeks building it.

Strategy 1: Sell it before you build it

Stefan learned this the hard way. Early on he poured months into courses he felt sure would land, then watched some of them open to near silence.

“You should sell first and then build it later. If it sells really well, then you build it. If it does not sell, what is the point of building it?” — Stefan Kunz, Founder of Stefan Kunz Studio

His model came from outside the course world. A sportswear brand he follows released a limited shoe by inviting people to enter their payment details for a chance to buy a pair, which told the brand exactly how much demand existed before it produced anything.

Stefan runs his launches on the same logic. For his animation course, he set up a tool that sent a waitlist link to anyone who commented the word animate on his videos. Around 3,000 people signed up within a couple of weeks, and that list became his proof.

“I had to have around 3,000 people on the waitlist to get 250 students. That conversion is still really good.” — Stefan Kunz, Founder of Stefan Kunz Studio

Take action

• Build a waitlist before you build the course. A list of people asking for the thing is the clearest signal that making it is worth your time.
• Watch the ratio, not only the raw number. Stefan plans around roughly 3,000 sign-ups for 250 sales, and a higher price needs a longer list.

Strategy 2: Grow it in person before you take it online

Stefan began in the smallest way possible, with a chalk wall and a pizza order.

His first workshop ran in his own office, with room for about fourteen people, and he taught it across a weekend before running it again. From there he booked a thirty-seat space, then back-to-back weekends in New York and Los Angeles with 120 seats to fill, followed by London, the Philippines, and India.

By the time recording crossed his mind, he had taught more than 300 students in person. He knew the questions they asked, the parts that confused them, and the moments things clicked.

“Start small, understand how it works, build up, and you can grow it piece by piece.” — Stefan Kunz, Founder of Stefan Kunz Studio

Take action

• Test your material live before you film it. Each in-person round shows you what to cut, what to charge, and where students get stuck.
• Let real rooms refine the content. A version recorded after several live runs beats a first draft shot in isolation.

Strategy 3: Run the workshop, bootcamp, evergreen sequence

Stefan rarely changes his order of operations. He runs a live workshop first, turns it into a multi-week bootcamp next, and records the evergreen course last, once the material has proven itself several times.

The bootcamp stage is where Teachable's comment feature earns its place. In his weekly animation bootcamps, students post their homework and Stefan replies with video feedback, something a single-day workshop never had room for. The multi-week format makes space for that exchange, and the work students hand in gets noticeably better.

“Like a band performing the same show at different stadiums, I have refined it with every iteration.” — Stefan Kunz, Founder of Stefan Kunz Studio

By the time he records the evergreen version, real students have pressure-tested every lesson. The final course is the polished result of all those rounds.

Take action

• Treat your course as a live act before you treat it as a recording. Workshops and cohorts are rehearsals that make the evergreen version stronger.
• Use a comment or community feature to collect homework and reply with feedback. The back and forth turns a one-day lesson into real progress.

Strategy 4: Keep the launch simple enough to repeat

Stefan compares a good course to a football team with one play it runs perfectly. The other side knows exactly what is coming and still fails to stop it.

“They were so good at that one single play that nobody could beat them.” — Stefan Kunz, Founder of Stefan Kunz Studio

He has watched his own launches grow so elaborate that even his team lost track of the plan. The fix was always the same. He stripped the launch back until everyone understood it again.

Simple plans are the repeatable ones. A launch you can run cleanly the second and third time is worth more than a clever one you manage to pull off once.

Take action

• If your launch plan is too complicated for your team to follow, cut it back. The version you can repeat beats the version that works once.
• Write your launch sequence down in plain steps. Anything you struggle to explain quickly is a sign to simplify.

Strategy 5: Teach the method underneath

Plenty of creators teach students to copy one finished piece, step by step, which produces good imitations and little else. Stefan teaches the thinking underneath instead, the principles he uses to make any piece, and he gets students to a first win as fast as possible because an early result keeps them going.

He has a phrase for the balance.

“People want the quick win. So I try to hide the vegetables in the food.” — Stefan Kunz, Founder of Stefan Kunz Studio

The quick win is the food, and the principles are the vegetables. Students arrive for the result they saw on Instagram and leave able to make work of their own.

Take action

• Give students a fast, satisfying win, then teach the principles underneath it. They stay for the result and keep the method.
• Aim to make the first win quick. Stefan treats time to a student's first result as a number worth lowering with every version.

Expert corner: staying an artist while you teach

A common worry among creators is that teaching will pull them away from their craft. Stefan found the reverse to be true.

“You try to figure things out yourself, and then there comes the next level. Now you have to teach it to someone else, and that is when you learn whether you really understood it.” — Stefan Kunz, Founder of Stefan Kunz Studio

Explaining a technique forces him to understand why it works, which sharpens his own work. When he shares a method and watches other artists run with it, the pressure to find the next idea pushes him forward.

That loop is why he keeps taking client projects alongside teaching. His wife, a primary school teacher, pointed out that he learns the most when he solves real problems for paying clients. One recent brand project asked for a painterly texture effect he had never made before. He spent hours working it out, and now it is one more thing he can teach.

His path has run from lettering to Procreate to animation, and each new area started as a client challenge or a personal experiment. The teaching always follows the making.

What Stefan's reach says

Stefan prefers to let his reach tell the story rather than share revenue figures.

His brand animations have passed 400 million views, and his audience across social platforms sits above 2.1 million people. More than 8,000 students have come through his courses and workshops, with over 1,000 in his animation bootcamp alone. He has worked with brands including Coca-Cola, Apple, and Adobe, and he has taught students on nearly every continent.

For an artist who started by adding words to his Instagram photos, the pattern holds steady. He keeps making the work, and the teaching grows out of it.

Stefan is one of many creators using Teachable to reach students far beyond their home country. Elisa Azoum grew French Mornings to more than 2,850 language students across dozens of countries on the same platform, and Amie Tollefsrud built an eight-figure course business on it. The pattern repeats: real expertise, a clear program, and a platform that travels with the student.

Looking ahead

Stefan's focus right now is client work, which has kept him busier this year than ever. He treats every project as research.

The lessons stack up quietly. How to use AI as a real tool in animation rather than a shortcut, how to build a studio camera setup, how to edit a video that travels well. Each one is a future course waiting for the right moment.

When the season turns and he has room to teach again, the material will be ready. The order will stay the same as always. Prove the demand, run it live, then record it.

The wider market is moving in his direction. Goldman Sachs Research projects the creator economy could reach $480 billion by 2027, roughly double its 2023 size. Creators who prove demand before they build, the way Stefan does, are the ones ready to claim a share of it.

What to do next

See Stefan's work: Follow his animation on Instagram and YouTube, explore his Teachable school, or browse his full portfolio at stefankunz.com. You can also hear him on the Striving Artist podcast.

Read more creator stories: See how Youness School chose Teachable to train more than 2,000 engineering-prep students, and browse the full Success Stories collection.

Learn the sell-first approach: Stefan proves demand before he builds. For more on that, read how to make money selling courses right now.

Try Teachable yourself: Teachable gave Stefan one place to build, sell, and run his courses, with Teachable Payments handling tax and local methods for a global audience. Start your free Teachable trial and build the course your audience keeps asking you for.

Before Youness Es-Sebiy built Youness School into a course business that has trained more than 2,000 students, he did what most serious creators do first: he tried the other options. 

He taught on several platforms and compared what each one actually delivered for his school. 

The answer he reached was Teachable, and he is direct about the reasons.

"I have tested other platforms in the past, including Thinkific and Podia. While they are good platforms, I ultimately chose Teachable because of two factors that were very important for my business and my students … The first is security … The second is the mobile learning experience." — Youness Es-Sebiy, Founder of Youness School

That decision came from someone who knows the stakes from the inside. In Morocco, the road to a top engineering school runs through CPGE, the Classes Préparatoires aux Grandes Écoles: two intensive years after high school studying advanced math, physics, chemistry, and engineering sciences, then one national exam that decides which schools will take a student. Youness went through all of it. He reached the other side and graduated from École Hassania des Travaux Publics, one of the leading engineering schools in the country.

Then he started teaching the students coming up behind him. He launched Youness School in 2019 while he was still an engineering student himself, recording lessons for the exact exams he had just survived. By 2023 the school was his full-time work.

Today it has directly supported more than 2,000 students preparing for Morocco's national exam (the CNC) and the French Grandes Écoles exams, with more than 20,000 others reached through free lessons and his YouTube channels across Morocco, France, Tunisia, and Mauritania.

The two reasons he named for choosing Teachable, security and the mobile experience, run through every part of how that school works.

Youness's Teachable story at a glance

The turning point

Youness built Youness School around a problem he had felt directly. CPGE students carry an enormous load across many subjects, and a lot of them hit a wall in one or two of those subjects with little structured help to get past it. He wanted to give them that help in a format that fit how they actually live and study.

" I went through the same preparatory classes, and they were very difficult. My goal is to help students who are facing the same problems, to help them grow and reach the best engineering schools." — Youness Es-Sebiy, Founder of Youness School

He made one early decision that shaped everything after it. Youness School would be online only. He had looked at in-person tutoring and found it too limited for what he wanted to build.

"We chose e-learning because we find the platforms very efficient. Physical classes are limited, and for our students online learning is the best solution." — Youness Es-Sebiy, Founder of Youness School

That decision raised the stakes on the platform itself. If an entire school lives online, the platform has to protect the content, reach students on whatever device they own, and keep working when the connection drops. Those three requirements are what pointed Youness toward Teachable over the other tools he had tried.

Youness's strategies for running an online engineering-prep school

Youness runs the school with the same clarity he asks of his students. Five choices shape how Youness School finds, teaches, and keeps its students.

Strategy 1: Diagnose before you sell

Most enrollments at Youness School begin with a conversation, usually on WhatsApp, where his sales team finds out where a student is actually struggling before recommending anything.

"In the beginning, we try to understand the needs of the student. If a student has problems across many topics, we offer a bundle with the whole platform. If they only have difficulty in one subject, we give them one or two courses." — Youness Es-Sebiy, Founder of Youness School

The result is a recommendation matched to what the student actually needs. A student weak in one subject buys a single course. Someone starting the full two-year climb buys a bundle, which Teachable lets him package as one grouped program.

Take action

• Map your catalog to specific problems before you set pricing. When a buyer can see the one course that solves their exact issue, the decision gets easier for both of you.
• Use a short intake conversation or form to route students to the right product. Bundles let you group related courses into a single program for learners who need the full path.

Strategy 2: Blend recorded courses with live teaching and coaching

Youness School runs on three formats at once: recorded lessons students watch on their own time, live sessions with collaborating professors, and one-on-one coaching.

"We use both approaches. We have recorded classes on the platform with Teachable, and we have live courses with professors who teach in these preparatory classes. There is also coaching to answer questions and correct their work." — Youness Es-Sebiy, Founder of Youness School

The recorded library carries the core curriculum and reaches every enrolled student. Live sessions and coaching cover the moments where students need a person in the room with them: stuck on a problem set, preparing for a mock exam, or talking through method. Together they create the kind of student experience that keeps learners moving through the material.

Take action

• Treat recorded and live formats as partners. Recorded content delivers your teaching to every student who enrolls, and live sessions add the accountability and feedback that keep them on track.
• Decide which parts of your subject truly need real-time interaction, and reserve live time for those. Let the recorded library handle everything a student can absorb on their own.

Strategy 3: Protect the content so it stays worth paying for

For a school that sells exam-prep video, the content is the product. Youness named content protection as one of the two factors that decided his platform choice.

"As an online school, protecting our educational content is a top priority. I found Teachable's video hosting and content protection to be particularly strong, which gave me more confidence using the platform for premium courses." — Youness Es-Sebiy, Founder of Youness School

Secure video hosting keeps his lessons from leaking out, which matters when the same exam prep sells to a fresh cohort every year. Content that walks out the door loses the value he priced it on.

Take action

• If your courses are your main income, weigh content security when you choose a platform, not after you have already built on it.
• Price premium material with the assumption that it will keep selling for years. Protection is what keeps that assumption true.

Strategy 4: Make the school work on a phone, and offline

This is the choice most specific to where Youness teaches. His students are spread across Morocco and the wider Francophone world, and the connection they study on is uneven. The Teachable mobile app, and offline downloads in particular, became central to how the school reaches them.

"The mobile app lets students access their courses easily on their phones and tablets. The ability to download videos for offline viewing has been extremely valuable, especially for students who do not always have a stable internet connection." — Youness Es-Sebiy, Founder of Youness School

The context behind that quote is real. In 2025, about 36 percent of people in Africa used the internet, the lowest rate of any world region, according to the International Telecommunication Union. For a student living inside that gap, a course that only streams is a course that stalls every time the signal drops. An offline download turns a commute, a power cut, or a weak connection into study time.

Take action

• If any part of your audience studies on mobile or deals with patchy internet, test the offline experience yourself before you commit. Download a lesson, switch off your data, and watch what your student would see.
• Shoot and format your video for a phone screen. Most of these students learn on a device they hold in one hand.

Strategy 5: Keep the door open on price and access

Youness prices across a wide range, from single courses around $60 to full programs above $1,000, so a student pays only for what they need. He also gives free access to families facing financial hardship, and he has used free trial periods to let students try the school before paying.

"We give some courses for free to families facing financial difficulties. We want talented students to have access regardless of their financial situation." — Youness Es-Sebiy, Founder of Youness School

More than 5,000 students have come through Youness School's free-access and trial campaigns, which widened his reach and let prospective students experience the platform before buying. Payment access shapes the model too. In Morocco, many students and parents pay by bank or cash transfer, and a card is rarely the default, so a real conversation often comes before a sale.

Take action

• Build a price ladder. A range from one course to a full program lets students sort themselves by need and budget.
• Give people a low-cost way to try before they buy. A free lesson or trial period does the convincing a sales page cannot.

How Youness thinks about access

Youness built the school around one belief, and he states it plainly.

"We believe talented students should have access to elite-level education regardless of their city, country, or financial situation." — Youness Es-Sebiy, Founder of Youness School

That belief is why offline access matters so much to him, and why the price range stays wide. The students he most wants to reach are often the ones with the least reliable connection and the tightest budgets. Building for them first is what makes the school useful to everyone else.

What his students take away

The measure that matters to Youness is straightforward: whether his students get into the schools they are aiming for. Since 2019 he has worked directly with more than 2,000 of them, with another 20,000-plus reached through free lessons, webinars, and his YouTube channels. They sit the same national exam he once sat, and the strongest performers go on to the top engineering schools in Morocco and France.

"My advice would be to focus on the student experience and content protection. If security, accessibility, and mobile learning matter to you, I would recommend Teachable. Students can learn from any device and access content wherever they are, and that makes a real difference." — Youness Es-Sebiy, Founder of Youness School

Youness is one of a growing number of creators using Teachable to teach students far beyond their home country. Elisa Azoum grew French Mornings to more than 2,850 language students across dozens of countries on the same platform. The pattern is consistent: subject expertise, a clear program, and a platform that travels with the student.

Looking ahead

Youness has a wider plan for the school. CPGE is a small field by design, with roughly ten thousand students entering each year in Morocco. He wants to take the same model to high school students, a group he puts at around half a million in Morocco alone, and eventually to learners in other countries.

"I have a global strategy to develop Youness School and help more people. In Morocco there are about half a million high school students, and we want to give them similar platforms and solutions." — Youness Es-Sebiy, Founder of Youness School

The plan he describes brings together education, technology, and the careful use of AI, built for students who would otherwise sit outside the reach of this kind of coaching.

Youness's students pay differently than a US or European creator's audience does. Cards aren't the default in Morocco. Many families pay by bank transfer. And selling across Morocco, France, Tunisia, and Mauritania means four different markets, currencies, and different sets of tax rules.

But the best part is that, in the near future, Youness won't ave to manage payments manually.

That's exactly what Teachable Payments is built for. Local payment methods appear automatically at checkout based on where the student is. Tax is calculated, collected, and remitted across 45+ countries without the creator filing anything. Prices display in the student's local currency without manual configuration.

For a school built around the belief that talented students should have access regardless of where they live, the checkout experience should reflect that too, and now it does.

What to do next

Explore Youness School: Visit younesschool.com to see the courses and programs, and youness.online for more on Youness's work. Follow Youness Es-Sebiy on LinkedIn and YouTube, and follow the Youness School YouTube channel and company page on LinkedIn.

Try Teachable today: Youness built a school that protects its content, reaches students on any device, and keeps teaching when the internet drops. Teachable handles the video hosting, the mobile app, and the payments so creators can spend their time with students. With Teachable Payments, that now includes local payment methods for an international student base like his.

‍Start your free Teachable today.

TL;DR: A course hosting platform stores and streams your course content and controls who can access it, unlike a marketplace, which also hosts your course but sets prices and owns the student relationship. Judge a host on six factors: video delivery, uptime, security, custom domain, content types and access control. To host a course, choose a platform, set up your school and domain, upload content, set access rules, add pricing, then test and publish. With us, you get a 20GB upload limit, automatic SSL, SOC 2 Type II audited security, download controls and up to 10 domains.

You've built the knowledge. You've mapped out the curriculum. You've maybe even recorded a few lessons. Now comes the question no one told you would be this consequential: where does your course actually live?

The answer isn't just a technical detail. The platform you choose to host your course determines how reliably students can access it, how securely your content is protected, how your brand shows up in the world, and how much control you retain over everything you've built. Get it wrong, and you're dealing with slow video loads, content security risks, and a URL that ends in someone else's name. Get it right, and you spend your time teaching, not troubleshooting video, security or domain issues.

This guide breaks down exactly what a course hosting platform is, what separates a strong one from a weak one, and how to evaluate your options before you commit.

Here’s the short answer: to host an online course, you upload your videos, files and quizzes to a course hosting platform, which stores them, streams them to students and controls who can see them. You then connect your own domain, set prices and publish. The platform you choose decides your video quality, uptime, content security and how much of the business you own.

What does "course hosting" actually mean?

Before we get into features and comparisons, it's worth getting clear on what hosting means, because the word is often used loosely in ways that obscure the real decision you're making.

When you host a course, you're choosing a technical infrastructure to store and deliver your content: your videos, your PDFs, your quizzes, your lesson pages. That infrastructure determines load times, uptime, content security, and scalability. It's the foundation everything else is built on.

A course hosting platform is a service that manages this infrastructure on your behalf. You upload your content. The platform stores it, compresses it, distributes it through a delivery network, and makes it accessible to your students anywhere in the world. The best platforms also layer on the tools you need to actually run a course business: enrollment management, payment processing, custom branding, analytics, and student communication.

Hosting vs. marketplace: A distinction worth understanding

Here's a distinction that changes everything about your business model.

A course hosting platform gives you control. You set your own pricing, own your student list, and build under your brand. The platform provides the infrastructure. You run the business.

A course marketplace, such as Udemy or Skillshare, is different. The marketplace hosts your content, but they also control the pricing, take a large share of each sale and own the relationship with your audience. Your students are their students. Your traffic belongs to their platform.

Building under your own brand, on a platform you control, means you keep your pricing, your student list and your traffic as your business grows.

Why hosting infrastructure matters more than most creators realize

Infrastructure is invisible until it breaks. When it breaks, whether that is a video that will not load, a checkout page that is down during a launch, or a student who cannot access the course they just bought, you feel it directly in your revenue and reputation.

More creators are entering the space every year. That raises the bar. Students have options, and a technically unreliable experience sends them elsewhere.

The 6 hosting factors that define your course business

So what does strong hosting infrastructure actually look like? Six factors matter most.

1. Video hosting and delivery infrastructure

Video is the heart of most online courses, and it's the heaviest technical lift. A single HD lesson can run to hundreds of megabytes or more. Multiply that across a full curriculum, add students in multiple countries streaming simultaneously, and you understand why video delivery is where platforms either earn trust or lose it.

What you want in a video hosting setup:

• Dedicated video infrastructure, not just file storage but a purpose-built video delivery system
• Adaptive bitrate streaming, where the player adjusts quality in real time based on the student's connection speed
• A content delivery network (CDN), with servers distributed globally so the video loads quickly whether the student is in São Paulo, Seoul, or Seattle
• Large file support, since full-length courses require generous upload limits

Video delivery quality directly affects your completion rates. Students who experience buffering or failed loads do not persist through the course. They abandon it.

2. Uptime and reliability

Uptime is the percentage of time your course platform is up and available. It sounds abstract until you realize that a platform with 99% uptime is down for roughly 87 hours per year. For a creator running live cohorts or a course that is actively generating revenue, 87 hours of downtime is a serious problem.

Look for platforms with a public status page and a transparent incident history.

3. Security and data protection

Your course content has commercial value. It is your intellectual property and your revenue source. Your students' personal and payment information is also on the line. Security is not optional.

The markers to look for:

• SSL/HTTPS on all pages, automatic and not a manual add-on
• Content protection controls, including the ability to disable file downloads where you want to protect your intellectual property
• Compliance with major data regulations. GDPR compliance matters if you have any EU students, and most serious creators do
• Third-party security audits. Platforms that undergo independent auditing are much more trustworthy than those that only self-certify

4. Custom domain and brand ownership

Your course school lives at a URL. That URL tells your audience a lot about you. A school at yourname.teachable.comcommunicates something different from courses.yourname.com. Only one of those options is building long-term brand equity.

A strong course hosting platform lets you connect a custom domain so your URL doesn't have to include a subdomain with their brand name. The DNS setup should be well documented, and the platform should automatically provision SSL for custom domains so your students see the padlock, not a security warning.

5. Content types and file format support

Hosting video is table stakes. The best platforms also support a full range of educational content formats, because diverse content types are what a complete curriculum needs.

Mixing formats, such as video, text, audio, quizzes and downloadable resources, lets you match each lesson to what it needs to show and keeps students engaged across a long curriculum. Your hosting platform needs to support the full curriculum you want to build.

Look for support across:

• Video, including multiple formats and large file sizes
• PDF and document files, with in-browser viewing so students do not need to download
• Audio files for podcast-style lessons or supplementary listening
• Quizzes and assessments
• Downloadable resources such as worksheets, templates, and bonus materials
• Third-party embeds for live sessions, slide decks, and interactive tools

6. Access control and content protection

Hosting your content is only valuable if you can control who sees it and under what terms. Strong hosting platforms give you granular control over content access:

• Enrollment-based access, where content is only visible to enrolled and often paid students
• Drip scheduling, which releases lessons on a set schedule instead of all at once
• Download controls, including the ability to disable the download link on individual files
• Preview content, allowing you to designate specific lessons as free previews to attract new students without giving away your curriculum

The course hosting evaluation checklist

Before committing to a platform, run it through these questions:

• Does it use dedicated video infrastructure rather than generic file storage?
• What is the published uptime SLA? Is incident history transparent?
• Does it automatically provision SSL for your custom domain?
• Is it GDPR compliant? Has it passed any third-party security audits?
• Can I connect a custom domain on the plan I am considering?
• What is the maximum file size for uploads?
• Does it support the content types I need, including video, PDF, audio, and quizzes?
• Can I control which files students can download?
• Does it integrate with the business tools I already use?

If a platform cannot clearly answer any of those questions, that is your answer.

For a deeper look at how to evaluate your options overall, see our course platform guide, which walks through the full decision framework, from pricing to marketing tools to payment processing.

How to host an online course in 6 steps

1. Choose a hosting platform, not a marketplace, if you want to set your own prices and keep your student list. Run it through the checklist above.
2. Set up your school and connect a custom domain or subdomain, such as courses.yourname.com, so students see your brand.
3. Upload your content. Record video at 1080p and export as .mp4 or .mov, add PDFs, audio and quizzes, embed live sessions from a tool like Zoom, and organize it all into modules and lessons.
4. Set access rules: which lessons are free previews, whether lessons drip out on a schedule, and which files students can download.
5. Add pricing and checkout: a one-time price, a payment plan or a subscription.
6. Test the whole student path on desktop and mobile, from sales page to checkout to the first lesson, then publish.

How we handle course hosting

We built Teachable as a course hosting and selling platform, and the technical infrastructure behind it reflects that purpose. Here is what is running under the hood.

Hosting infrastructure

Our infrastructure runs on Amazon Web Services (AWS), listed as a monitored component on our status page. School domains are also proxied through Cloudflare’s network, which speeds up and protects requests to your school, per our custom domain guide.

Built-in video hosting via Hotmart Video Player

Video content in your school is hosted and delivered through the Hotmart Video Player, a purpose-built video delivery system that handles compression and adaptive delivery automatically. When you upload a video, the player generates multiple resolution versions so playback can adjust to each student's connection speed without any manual encoding on your end.

You can upload files up to 20GB. For video, our file guidelines recommend .mp4, .mov or .avi at 1080p and 24 to 30 fps, with files of 2GB or less. You can auto-generate subtitles for course videos recorded in 7 languages, auto-translate them, or upload your own .srt or .vtt files, as our subtitles guide explains. Free subtitles and translations are part of our Growth plan.

If you prefer to use external video sources, you can also embed Vimeo and YouTube videos via a custom code block, which is useful if you are hosting supplementary or preview content elsewhere.

Uptime and status

Your school runs around the clock, with no office-hours model. Students can access content at 2 a.m. in Berlin as reliably as noon in New York. We publish current status and incident history at our status page.

Automatic SSL for every school

Every school created since October 2017, including those using custom domains, gets an SSL certificate automatically, per our SSL guide. Your school is HTTPS by default. There is no manual setup, no third-party SSL service to purchase, and no renewal to remember.

This also matters for SEO. Google factors HTTPS into search rankings, and browsers warn visitors away from sites without it.

SOC 2 Type II certification

We hold a SOC 2 Type II certification and undergo an annual audit. It reviews the effectiveness of our security controls over time, not just at a single point, covering how customer data is stored, accessed, monitored and protected across our infrastructure, software, policies and operations. See our security overview for details.

GDPR compliance

We are committed to full compliance with the EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), which governs the rights of EU citizens over their personal data. If any of your students are based in Europe, and for most creators some will be, GDPR compliance is not optional. We handle the compliance framework so you do not have to build it yourself.

Content protection controls

Videos in your school include enhanced piracy protection: we block right-click downloads and popular third-party download plugins, and search engines can’t crawl the video files. You can also turn off the download link for any file in a lesson, so students view it inside your school only. Lessons are visible only to enrolled students unless you set them as a free preview. No platform can stop every copy, since anything visible online can be recorded, but these controls block the common ways content gets lifted.

Custom domains with up to 10 domain options

You can connect a custom domain or a custom subdomain to your school, depending on your plan, and list up to 10 domains with one set as primary. Our domain setup guide covers DNS setup, including guidance for domains managed in Cloudflare.

The result is simple. Your school lives at courses.yourname.com, not at a URL that promotes someone else's platform.

A full range of supported content types

Our hosting supports everything that goes into a complete course:

• Video, uploaded directly or via Google Drive and Dropbox integrations, with files up to 20GB
• Audio, using streamable audio blocks that can also be made downloadable
• PDF, with an in-browser PDF viewer and optional download toggle
• Images, including full support for .jpg and .png across all school pages
• Quizzes and assessments built into the lesson structure
• Subtitles and captions through uploaded .srt files
• Downloadable resources, where any file type can be attached as a downloadable even if it cannot be embedded
• Third-party embeds including YouTube, Vimeo, Zoom, and other services via custom HTML blocks

If you are ready to take the next step, see creating an online course, from curriculum design through uploading and launching. When you are ready to go live, see publishing your course for the final setup steps.

Common course hosting mistakes to avoid

Even with the right platform, a few hosting mistakes are common enough to flag upfront.

• Using a marketplace when you need a platform: If you want to build a real business instead of just earning supplemental income, you need ownership over your audience and brand. Marketplaces trade control for traffic, and it is usually a bad trade.
• Ignoring video file quality: Uploading compressed or low-resolution video to save upload time creates a permanently inferior experience for students. Record and upload at the highest quality your budget allows. Let the platform handle compression for delivery.
• Skipping the custom domain: Your default platform URL is fine for testing, but it is not fine for launch. A custom domain costs under $20 per year and dramatically improves how your school is perceived. Set it up before you go live.
• Forgetting about mobile: Most of your students will access your course on a phone or tablet at some point. A good course hosting platform delivers content responsively across screen sizes. Test on mobile before you launch.
• Not checking what happens to your content if you leave: Before you commit to a platform, understand the export and migration policy. You should own your content and be able to take it with you.

The bottom line

Your course is only as good as its delivery. The most thoughtfully designed curriculum in the world falls flat if students hit buffering video, get a browser security warning, or can't find your school because you're buried under someone else's branding.

Choosing the right course hosting platform isn't a technical decision you make once and forget. It's a foundational business decision that determines how reliably you can serve your students, how securely your content is protected, and how much of your business you actually own.

When the infrastructure is solid, you stop thinking about it and spend that time on your course content instead.

Over 150,000 creators have built their course businesses on Teachable, and together with Hotmart, our creators have earned more than $10 billion. Hosting, checkout, Teachable Payments and tax handling come together on our online course platform. Start a 7-day trial and build your first course before committing to a plan.

FAQs

What is the best way to host an online course?

Use a course hosting platform that streams video, controls access and handles checkout in one place, so you don’t have to connect a video host, a website and a payment processor yourself. Choose a marketplace only if you’re happy to trade pricing control and your student list for its built-in traffic.

Can I host an online course on my own website?

Yes. Most course platforms let you connect your own domain or a subdomain like courses.yourname.com, so your school sits on your website’s address while the platform handles video delivery, security and checkout.

What's the maximum file size for video uploads?

Most course hosting platforms cap video uploads by file size rather than course length. With us, you can upload files up to 20GB, with 1080p video in .mp4, .mov or .avi format and files of 2GB or less recommended per lesson.

How is my course content protected from piracy?

A strong course hosting platform blocks the common ways content gets lifted: right-click downloads, third-party download plugins and search engine crawling. You can also turn off the download link per lesson and restrict access to enrolled students only, though no platform can stop every copy since anything visible online can be recorded.

Key terms

Course hosting platform: A service that manages your content's technical infrastructure, storing, compressing and delivering it to students while you keep control of pricing, branding and your student list.

Course marketplace: A platform such as Udemy or Skillshare that also hosts your content, but sets pricing and owns the relationship with your audience instead of you.

Content delivery network (CDN): A network of servers distributed globally that delivers video quickly to students wherever they are.

Adaptive bitrate streaming: A video delivery method where playback quality adjusts in real time to match a student's connection speed.

Drip scheduling: Releasing course lessons to students on a set schedule instead of unlocking the entire curriculum at once.

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TL;DR: Comparing platforms on subscription price alone misses four fee layers: the transaction fee, card processing, international surcharges, and currency conversion charges. Our Builder plan at $69/month (annual) is the only one here that pairs 0% platform fees with automatic VAT/GST remittance. Thinkific Basic undercuts us on subscription price alone at $40/month, but leaves VAT filing to you on every international sale. Below $533/month in revenue, Starter's lower subscription still wins the math. Above it, Builder costs less than the 7.5% transaction fee, including the VAT and GST filing other 0%-fee platforms leave you to handle yourself.

Most course creators discover the real cost of their platform on the first payout statement, not the pricing page. The subscription fee is one line. The transaction percentage, card processing rate, international surcharge, and currency conversion fee are four more lines below it. Together they can reduce gross revenue by roughly 5% to 15% in the scenarios below, depending on plan, volume, and international mix.

This guide breaks down the complete fee stack across six major platforms, shows the arithmetic for three distinct creator scenarios, and gives you the break-even formula to decide which plan actually costs less at your current revenue level.

The 4 hidden fees eroding your course revenue

Every platform charges across four distinct layers. Most comparison guides only show you layer one.

1. Fixed monthly platform access costs

The subscription is what you see on the pricing page and what most creators use to compare platforms. It is the most visible cost and, in most cases, the smallest one relative to revenue at any meaningful volume. Our Builder plan starts at $69/month on annual billing, which saves 22% versus the $89/month monthly rate. Kajabi's entry plan sits at $143/month on annual billing. Annual billing locks in savings for 12 months, which creates a forced upgrade cost if you outgrow your plan’s product limit.

2. Hidden per-sale platform fees

Transaction fees are a percentage of every sale the platform charges on top of the subscription. Our Starter plan charges 7.5% per transaction. Our Builder and Growth plans charge 0% platform transaction fees. Other platforms vary in their transaction fee structures, with some charging 0% platform fees while others charge per-sale or per-enrollment fees.

3. Standard credit card processing rates

Payment processing fees apply on every plan across every platform, because the payment gateway charges them. Most Stripe-connected platforms charge a base rate starting around 2.9% + $0.30 per transaction for US cards, though rates vary by processor and country. Processing fees are not a meaningful differentiator between platforms, but they are consistently the largest single fee line at scale, which is why comparing only subscription prices misrepresents the real cost picture.

4. International sales and FX surcharges

This is where the fee stack diverges sharply between platforms and where most creators encounter the biggest surprise. Stripe charges an additional fee for international card transactions and a separate fee where currency conversion is required. International card processing typically runs higher than domestic rates, and currency conversion fees may apply where the payment processor performs a currency conversion. A UK creator processing $5,000 in mixed-currency sales faces a meaningfully different fee stack than a US creator selling domestically, and that difference compounds every month.

How our fee stack compares across platforms

Here is the complete fee stack across all six platforms.

Table 1: Subscription, transaction fees, and VAT remittance

Table 2: Processing and FX fees

*Podia doesn’t publish its international and FX rates, LearnWorlds doesn’t publish its processing rates, and Udemy doesn’t publish how its revenue share absorbs international/FX costs. Thinkific's international card fee is a fixed surcharge set by the creator's own country of business, from +1.5% for US creators to +1.55% for UK and EU creators, not a single flat rate across all creators. Check each platform's pricing page before you commit, since fees change without notice.

And Udemy's revenue share depends on how the student found the course: creators keep 97% on instructor-referred sales (via their own link or coupon) and 37% on organic marketplace sales.

What you actually keep: Teachable vs. alternatives across three creator scenarios

Calculating take-home for US creators

Scenario: $1,000/month in revenue, domestic US sales only, 10 sales at $100 per course.

*Fee calculations based on available data and standard processing assumptions. Actual fees may vary based on exact transaction structure and current platform pricing. Verify current rates on each platform's pricing page.

At $1,000/month in domestic US sales, Thinkific Basic's total fees ($72) and our Builder plan's ($101) both undercut Podia Mover (~$124), with Thinkific Basic's lower subscription giving it the edge on pure domestic fees at this volume. Our Starter plan's ~$136-146 is the outlier here, but we include automated VAT/GST remittance when using Teachable Payments, our Stripe-powered payments system, so the first sale to a student in Germany, Australia, or Canada can cancel out a lower-subscription platform’s fee advantage, because that platform’s creator then needs either a third-party compliance service (typically $29-99/month depending on the tool and transaction volume, based on entry-tier pricing from tools like Quaderno and TaxJar) or the time and risk of manual filing across multiple jurisdictions to their total.

Scaling to $5K with global sales

Scenario: $5,000/month in revenue, 40% international ($2,000), 60% domestic US ($3,000), 50 total sales at $100 per course.

Our Builder plan:

• Subscription: $69
• Transaction fee: $0
• Domestic processing (30 sales): 2.9% x $3,000 + $0.30 x 30 = $87 + $9 = $96
• International processing (20 sales): 3.9% x $2,000 + $0.30 x 20 = $78 + $6 = $84
• VAT remittance: included with Teachable Payments
• Total fees: approximately $249. Take-home: approximately $4,751 (95.0%)

Note: Fee calculations are estimates based on standard processing assumptions. Actual fees may vary. The $37/month VAT-compliance estimate below reflects entry-tier pricing from third-party tax tools such as Quaderno ($29-49/month tiers) and TaxJar ($39-59/month tiers).

Kajabi Basic:

• Subscription: ~$143-179
• Transaction fee: $0 (0.7% surcharge on payment plans may apply)
• Domestic processing: ~$96
• International processing (estimated 4.4% x $2,000 + $6): ~$94
• VAT compliance (third-party tool, estimate): ~$37/month
• Total fees: approximately $370-406. Take-home: approximately $4,594-4,630

Thinkific Basic ($40/month annual):

• Subscription: $40
• Transaction fee: $0
• Domestic processing: ~$96
• International processing (Thinkific’s published international card surcharge for US-based creators, +1.5% on top of base, estimated ~4.4% x $2,000 + $6): ~$94
• VAT compliance (third-party tool, estimate): ~$37/month
• Total fees: approximately $267. Take-home: approximately $4,733

Modeling payouts for UK-based creators

Scenario: UK creator, $5,000/month, all transactions treated as international from Stripe's perspective, 50 sales at $100.

Our Builder plan (UK creator):

• Subscription: $69
• Transaction fee: $0
• International card processing (estimated 3.9% x $5,000 + $0.30 x 50): ~$210
• FX conversion (estimated 0.95%, where conversion is required): ~$47.50
• VAT remittance: included with Teachable Payments
• Total fees: approximately $326.50. Take-home: approximately $4,673.50 (93.5%)

Kajabi Basic (UK creator):

• Subscription: ~$143-179
• International processing on Kajabi's Europe/UK schedule, non-EEA/UK cards (3.25% + €0.25 x 50 transactions): ~$176
• Currency conversion (2% on the Europe/UK schedule, not the 1% US rate): ~$100
• VAT compliance (third-party tool, estimate): ~$37
• Total fees: approximately $456-492. Take-home: approximately $4,508-4,544

Thinkific Basic (UK creator):

• Subscription: $40
• International processing (Thinkific’s published international card surcharge for UK-based creators, +1.55% on top of base, estimated ~4.4% x $5,000 + $15): ~$235
• FX conversion (estimated ~1%): ~$50
• VAT compliance (third-party tool, estimate): ~$37
• Total fees: approximately $362. Take-home: approximately $4,638

Our Builder plan comes out ahead in this scenario largely because of that built-in VAT remittance (via Teachable Payments), which removes the third-party compliance cost that both Kajabi and Thinkific creators have to add on top of their own totals.

When to upgrade from Teachable Starter to Builder

The Starter plan at $29/month annual is one of the lowest entry points among Kajabi, Thinkific, and Podia for a plan that includes checkout, payments, and automated tax remittance when using Teachable Payments. But the 7.5% transaction fee makes Starter the more expensive option once monthly revenue crosses a specific threshold.

The break-even formula

On annual billing, Builder costs $69/month versus Starter's $29/month, a gap of $40/month. The formula for finding the break-even point is:

• (Plan B monthly cost - Plan A monthly cost) / Plan A transaction fee % = Break-even monthly revenue

Applied to our annual billing:

• ($69 - $29) / 0.075 = $533/month

Applied to our monthly billing:

• ($89 - $39) / 0.075 = $667/month

Break-even thresholds

Annual billing break-even is $533/month. Monthly billing break-even is $667/month. Above either threshold, the 7.5% Starter fee costs more than upgrading to Builder. Run this formula against your own numbers before choosing a plan.

Think of it like rent versus ownership on your fee structure. The lower monthly cost on Starter makes sense early on, and once revenue passes the break-even point, every dollar above that threshold effectively pays the upgrade fee you chose not to make.

The break-even math settles which plan costs less at your current revenue level. At low volume, the $29 Starter subscription costs less than Builder. At $533/month on annual billing, the 7.5% transaction fee becomes the more expensive option, and the math favors upgrading.

Growing past your plan: Caps, integrations, and the upgrade path

Plan caps and tier-locked features

Our plan caps are on products, not students: Starter allows 5 products, Builder 10 and Growth 50, and every plan includes unlimited students. A creator who launches a sixth product on Starter has to upgrade first, so plan your product count before you choose a plan. Kajabi's Basic plan caps at 5 products and 2,500 contacts (which includes paid students, free leads, and one-time buyers). Podia Mover caps at 50 products and 100 email subscribers, with unlimited products available only on the Earthquaker plan at $150/month annual.

The trade-off is direct: Thinkific's 0% transaction fee on Thinkific Payments comes with manual VAT filing on international sales, while our Builder plan bundles Teachable Payments' automatic VAT and GST remittance with 0% platform fees. A Thinkific creator's first international sale can add $29-99/month in third-party compliance tools, a cost our Builder plan avoids entirely. Our third-party integrations, including Zapier, are available from Builder upward, which means a Starter creator connecting to an email platform via Zapier must upgrade first and add that plan-upgrade cost to the break-even calculation.

What annual billing locks in

Annual billing saves 22% on our plans. A creator who signs up for Starter annual billing, needs a sixth product at month four, and needs to upgrade should factor upgrade timing into their planning. Model the upgrade cost before committing to annual billing, not after the cap is hit. If you sell more than $12,000 a year, our pricing page invites you to talk to our sales team about the Custom plan.

Which plan puts more in your pocket: Choosing by revenue tier

Under $533/month in domestic US sales

Our Starter plan at $29/month includes automated VAT/GST remittance when using Teachable Payments, which removes the third-party compliance cost or manual filing exposure that other platforms with lower subscription fees may require. The first sale to an international student changes the total cost comparison by adding either a third-party compliance service (typically $29-99/month depending on the tool and transaction volume) or manual filing exposure across multiple tax jurisdictions. At lower revenue volumes, whether our Starter plan or a lower-subscription alternative costs less depends entirely on your international sales mix.

$3,000-$5,000/month with meaningful international sales

Our Builder plan at $69/month annual with 0% platform fees and automated VAT/GST remittance when using Teachable Payments delivers strong economics at this revenue level. Once third-party tax compliance costs are factored into competitor totals, typically $29-99/month depending on the tool and transaction volume, Builder's built-in tax automation removes a recurring expense that platforms without native VAT handling require you to absorb separately.

Above $5,000/month: Email and CRM needs

Our Builder plan at $69/month annual with 0% platform fees and built-in VAT remittance (when using Teachable Payments) remains the stronger economic case at this revenue level when compared to Kajabi's $143/month entry cost. We don't include a built-in email funnel or CRM. Creators who need those capabilities typically pair us with a dedicated email platform like Kit or ActiveCampaign, and for many creators at this revenue level the cost of our Builder plan plus a $30-50/month email tool still comes in below Kajabi's entry subscription, while preserving the course-delivery depth, gradebook, compliance settings, and watch-time enforcement that goes further than platforms built around email and funnels at the same price.

Run the fee math for your expected revenue volume before choosing a plan. Checkout, payments and tax handling come built into our online course platform, so there’s no separate payment gateway or tax tool to configure, and we back every plan with a 7-day trial and a 30-day money-back guarantee on the subscription (processing and platform fees aren't refunded). Start a 7-day trial and build your first course before committing to a plan.

FAQs

Does Teachable charge a transaction fee?

Only on our Starter plan, which charges 7.5% per sale. Builder, Growth and Custom charge 0%. Card processing fees from the payment processor apply on every plan, at 2.5%-2.9% + $0.30 for US cards and 3.9% + $0.30 for international cards on Teachable Payments.

Are 0% transaction fee platforms free of per-sale costs?

No. Every platform passes through payment gateway processing fees on every transaction, and the specific rate depends on the processor and buyer location. The "0% transaction fee" refers only to the platform's own cut, not to the underlying card processor's charge, which typically starts at 2.9% + $0.30 for US cards and increases for international transactions.

Which course platform has the lowest total fees?

It depends on your revenue level and international sales mix. At lower revenue levels with domestic US sales only, some platforms may show lower total fees than our Starter plan, but our Starter plan includes automated VAT/GST remittance when using Teachable Payments that protects you from compliance costs the moment your first international sale happens. Above $533/month with any meaningful international volume, our Builder plan at $69/month annual with 0% platform fees and built-in tax remittance may be more cost-effective once third-party tax compliance costs are added to competitor totals.

How do installment payment plans affect my take-home pay?

Installment plans incur processing fees on each individual payment rather than one combined charge, adding the per-transaction flat fee to each installment. Kajabi adds a 0.7% surcharge on every recurring payment plan installment via Kajabi Payments. For a $997 course sold in three installments on Kajabi, that surcharge would add approximately $7 across the three payments on top of standard processing.

What is a platform transaction fee, and how is it different from a processing fee?

A platform transaction fee is a percentage of each sale charged by the course platform itself, separate from and in addition to what the payment processor charges. Our Starter plan's 7.5% is a platform transaction fee. The 2.9% + $0.30 is the payment processing fee charged by the gateway. Both apply on the Starter plan. Builder removes the platform transaction fee, but the processing fee remains on every plan.

Should I choose annual or monthly billing on Teachable?

Annual billing on our platform saves 22% versus monthly billing and locks in the lower rate for 12 months. The trade-off is that annual billing also locks in your plan caps for the full billing cycle. If you expect to add products, model the upgrade cost of hitting those caps mid-year before committing to annual billing. Monthly billing costs 22% more per month but preserves the flexibility to upgrade without losing prepaid months.

Key terms

Platform transaction fee: The course platform itself charges this as a percentage of each sale, separate from and in addition to card processing fees. Our Starter plan charges 7.5%. Our Builder plan charges 0%.

Teachable Payments: Our native payment gateway that automatically calculates, collects, and remits sales tax, VAT, and GST when used as the payment processor. Creators using Teachable Payments are removed from the tax filing loop entirely for covered jurisdictions.

FX conversion fee: Payment processors charge this fee when a transaction requires currency conversion between currencies. This fee is typically shown separately on payout statements for visibility.

Break-even revenue: The monthly revenue level at which the cost of a transaction fee on a lower plan equals the cost of upgrading to a higher plan. For our Starter plan vs. Builder on annual billing, the break-even is $533/month.

VAT remittance: The process of collecting, filing, and paying value-added tax to foreign tax authorities on behalf of the creator. We handle this automatically across 45+ countries when using Teachable Payments. Other platforms may require manual filing or a third-party service.

TL;DR: A course outline maps your course’s end goal, modules, and learning objectives before you start creating content. This guide walks through six steps: define the end result, break it into modules, write measurable learning objectives, choose how to teach each one, build in reflection and assessment, then plan a pre and post check. It also includes a copyable template and a filled-in example, so you can map your own course module by module. A clear outline, built before you start recording or writing, keeps the rest of your course creation process organized and focused.

You have the idea and the skills, now you need a course outline. When it comes time to build your course, our AI curriculum generator can draft a first outline from a short course description, and you can edit it from there. But before you even jump into how to create an online course, we want to let you in on a powerful secret step that can save you a lot of time and help make your course creation process even better: outlining.

Learning how to outline your online course will help you stay organized and know exactly what you’ll need when it comes time to get those creative juices flowing. Whether your niche is reading tarot cards or you’re working on a management course, having a course outline will ensure the creation process is structured, smooth, and organized. Your students will thank you, too!

Here is the short answer: a course outline lists your course’s end goal, the modules that get students there, a learning objective for each module, and the lessons, practice and quizzes inside each one. But first, let’s take a step back to make sure you have all the information you need to outline your course like a pro.

What is a course outline?

A course outline contains the building blocks of your online course. It might also be called a class outline or training course outline. It breaks the topic and subject matter down into sections or modules, which can be determined by considering milestones, or learning objectives, you intend for students to have. Modules will be further broken down into specific lessons and learning activities.

Course outlines will include the overall learning objectives, so that the intended outcome is crystal clear for both you and your students. It’s essentially the roadmap for what you’re teaching and how you’re teaching it, as well as what practice/activities students will do in order to best learn what you’re sharing. It will also include any plans for “quizzes” with which students can self-assess where there might be learning gaps or to focus on material they might not have fully grasped the first time.

What should you include in a course outline?

In order for your students to gain the most value from taking your course, it’s imperative that your course outline covers the following:

• The overarching goal: This usually can be summarized in a sentence, and encapsulates the main goal of the course. What will students be able to do, perform, or have fully learned by the end of your course? For example: By the end of this course, students will be able to create their own watercolor painting that includes elements of depth, color psychology, shape, and perspective. You can also include a brief course description here, too!
• Breakdown of modules/sections: What subtopics are essential for students to know in order for them to achieve the overarching goal? Depending on the overarching or main goal of your course, each module can focus on a main component necessary to build towards mastering the skills needed.
• Learning objectives for each module: While it’s tempting to simply present the content of the lessons, including learning objectives really strengthens your lessons. Having these means that you and your students are on the same page about why this particular module is essential to the bigger picture. (And curbs the age-old learner question of “what’s the point of this?”) These are the skills that students will acquire from each lesson. For example, in a module focused on color psychology, the learning objectives could be along the lines of: Students will be able to explain the impact that colors have on the subconscious brain in eliciting specific emotions and feelings.
• The content for each module: How are you teaching it? Determine if video, visuals, or hands-on practice best aligns with the learning objective for each module. Ideally, there’s a mix, so each idea is shown in more than one way, since experts still debate how much matching content to a specific learning style actually helps, as our guide to learning styles explains.
• Homework/practice opportunities: It’s important to include opportunities for practice so that students have a chance to implement what they’re learning. Otherwise, you run the risk of the information going in one ear and out the other for students, which means the overall effectiveness of the course will be lessened.
• Quiz or self assessment: Ideally this is present within each module, and prompts the students to determine how well they grasp the material that you’ve taught. This is an empowering way for students to take more control of their own learning. Don’t worry, this doesn’t have to be a full blown test with multiple choice questions! It can be as simple as including a reflection question at the end of each module.
• Learning objectives that are skill centered: (Also known as learning outcomes!) How well the content is presented and taught can be impacted by the learning objectives that are set. Preferably, these are written in a way that allows for self assessment. For example, saying “students will be able to know why depth perception is important in watercolors” implies they just need the theoretical understanding of depth perception. If we edit this to say “students will be able to implement strategies for varying depth perception”, it’s more specific and translates to a deeper understanding of the content.We’ll dive more into learning objectives and a formula for writing them in the next section!
• Optional: pre and post assessment: While not strictly needed, this is a potent way for you and your students to measure (and marvel at) just how much they learned in your course. The great news is that the same assessment or questions is given both at the beginning or the end, so they are pretty simple to make. The differences between these two assessments are measured and then used as a way to gauge how effective your course was at teaching and what students achieve. These can also make for good testimonial material, and don’t worry, they’re way easier than final exams! We’ll get into how you can create these in a simple and effective way in the next section.
• Optional: learning resources: Providing a brief list of extra resources after each module or after the course as a whole is a supportive way to ensure that student needs are being met. Having these additional links enables students to dig a little deeper and to gain more clarity on certain areas of the material that may have been unclear or where they want to know more.

How to create a course outline step-by-step

Step 1: Begin with the end

Yep, that’s right. To make a great course, think of the end result of your course before anything else. What’s the overarching goal or transformation that your course provides? Then work backwards to determine, step by step, how your ideal student would get to that end goal you’re selling. It’s essential to get clear on this before designing any lesson plans!

Take a few minutes to actually write down the transformation students will experience in your course. Go on, finish this sentence: “By the end of this course, students will be able to do blank.”

If your transformation is either too vast or too vague (e.g. how to live your best life vs. how to feel confident when meeting new people at a conference) you will find your outline may be difficult to craft. Instead think smaller and more specific. In fact, the more specific your outcome is, the better.

It’s best to choose more actionable words than “understand” when you’re describing your transformation. Consider create, write, make, speak, design, etc. Outcome-based training is the most important thing for being able to outline your online course, and also for your students to comfortably progress through their learning. This will also help you identify if your course is best suited as a standalone course, a subscription, a mini course, or even a course with coaching options.

Step 2: The breakdown: modules & sections

Now that you have the umbrella of the overarching goal open, it’s time to get more specific by looking at the modules/sections that are underneath it. While you’re determining this, keep a time frame in mind. Many creators will split the modules within a certain number of weeks or days to help students pace their learning. If you want your course to be five weeks long, then determine the most important five subtopics that need to be covered, and each of these becomes a module.

Alternatively, you can also decide what the most important subtopics are and then base the time frame off of that.

Step 3: Writing powerful learning objectives

Once you’ve determined the modules, go ahead and decide what is most important for students to learn in each one. Learning objectives usually start with “Students will be able to…” and then include some kind of action word, followed by the task or skill. Remember to get specific with the action words, ideally avoiding the words “understand” and “know” for more concise words that are measurable, outcome based, and taught in the course material. (For example, how do you measure if someone understands something? That’s a lot more nuanced and subjective than measuring if someone is able to create a podcast or design a website.)

Use the formula below to quickly make learning objectives that are highly effective and measurable:

Students will be able to + [insert specific verb] + [description of end product or demonstration of knowledge]

Students will be able to produce a podcast episode.

Students will be able to write a completed screenplay.

Students will be able to author a book proposal with two sample chapters.

Students will be able to construct a gardening plan.

Examples of strong verbs to use: create, produce, write, design, develop, assemble, collaborate, invent, construct, build, blog, devise, podcast, manage, facilitate, generate

Step 4: Organize the material (including homework)

Now that you have the course broken down into modules, it’s time to sort through the material you want to include. Ideally, each module will include the learning objective, some type of content where the material is being taught (keep reading for the five basic content types!), and “homework” of some kind. This is really just a chance for students to practice and implement whatever skill is being taught in this module.

It doesn’t have to be very long, but rather to provide a chance for students to move from passively taking in information to actively getting involved with what you’re teaching. Invite them to try their hand at whatever it is being taught, because the more action and practice that they’re taking, the faster and more thoroughly they’ll learn!

Five basic content types

The style of your course is up to you, and the method of content delivery you think will make the most sense for your subject matter and students may differ from course to course, even section by section or lesson by lesson. There are five basic content types that our creators use most often: text and photo, PDFs and downloadables, slide decks, screen recordings, and video. Mixing content types keeps lessons varied and lets you match each format to what the lesson needs to show. We break them down to help you better understand which might be ideal for your course.

• Text and photos: easy and quick. Best used for simple concepts or lessons that can be demonstrated in a format that’s most similar to a blog post or article. If your lesson has multiple steps, pair it with a format like video or slides so the idea is shown in more than one way.
• PDFs and downloadables: include spreadsheets, workbooks, cheat sheets, resource material, checklists, etc. that can easily be referenced. Not ideal for complex subjects that require walkthroughs or explanations of why.
• Slides: visually emphasize your points. Walks students through material one step at a time.

• Screen recordings and videos: ideal for complex topics that need step-by-step attention as well as explanation and demonstration. Provides more interaction with students and gives a more personalized instructional experience. Screen recordings can be as simple as you talking through a slide presentation or a recording of your computer screen as you demonstrate your skill and provide commentary. They’re cheap to produce and provide a lot of value to students.

• Home videos are also another popular option for content delivery. Luckily, you don’t have to spend a lot to get quality video at home. For your course videos, you can speak directly to the camera, film your hands doing work, or even use a pre-recorded webinar or live event you’ve done.

Some lessons may need just one content type, like a screencast, but others may need two, like a video with a companion PDF workbook. It’s perfectly fine, and encouraged, to use a variety of methods within your course.

Step 5: A closer look at assessments & reflections

Including these elements in your course is a potent way to ensure that students are really getting the most from the material you’re providing. Keep in mind, the assessments can be simple, and you certainly don’t have to grade them! You can use questions that align with the learning objective to assess what they’ve learned.

For example, if the learning objective is “Students will be able to utilize Podcastle to edit a podcast”, then the assessment or homework would be to familiarize themselves with the platform and to edit a podcast episode! Pretty straightforward, right? Although uncomplicated, this is an effective way for students to implement and check their own learning.

Harvard Business School research found that employees who reflected on recent training performed 22.8% better on a follow-up test than those who didn’t. Building in reflection time can help your students retain what they just learned the same way. Some weeks the homework could simply be to reflect on what they learned or what areas they found challenging or the most interesting from that module.

Step 6: Decide on a pre & post assessment

Along the same lines as number five, having a pre and post assessment is a great way for students to track their learning, and it can also give you helpful feedback about your course. Including a few questions that align with the learning objectives in your course is a good measure of the learning that’s taken place. These can be collected on a survey (like Typeform or Google Forms) for ease of feedback and also a way to collect testimonials!

What do you know about producing a podcast?

How confident are you with editing and publishing individual podcast episodes?

The end result

We believe in the art of simplicity, so we’ll do anything we can to help make your road to course creation a simple one. In fact, we’ve built our entire online course platform to do just this.

So, once you’ve learned how to outline your online course and have pumped out some content, you can build it with us. Add your modules as sections and your lessons inside them, or use bulk upload, which turns each file you upload into its own lesson. From there you can customize your content, preview, and publish.

Course outline template and example

Copy this template into a doc and fill in one row per module:

• Course title:
• Who it’s for:
• End goal: By the end of this course, students will be able to…
• Pre-course check (optional): 2 or 3 questions to ask before and after the course

Here is the same template filled in for the watercolor course used as an example earlier in this post. End goal: by the end of this course, students will be able to create a watercolor painting that uses depth, color psychology, shape and perspective.

If you’d rather start from a draft, tick “Help me generate a course outline” when you name a new course. Our AI curriculum generator builds sections and lessons from your course description, which you can then rearrange and edit.

The example below shows how your course outline could look once it’s uploaded onto the platform. Splitting the modules into different categories is a helpful way to keep things organized for your students.

Outlining your course doesn’t have to be daunting. And, putting in just a little bit of elbow grease before you start creating will not only save you lots of time and energy later on, it will also enhance the learning experience of your students. Future you is already thanking past you.

Start a 7-day trial and build your first course before committing to a plan.

FAQs

Why create a course outline?

Creating a course outline is an essential part of producing your course. It provides you with structure and organization, which is very helpful as the process can feel overwhelming at times. More importantly, it means that the course material you’re curating is intentional and focused on providing students with the most value possible. Having course objectives that you’re building off of creates a solid foundation for learning. Having this outline also means you can share learning objectives with your students so that they feel empowered in their learning process. Overall, a course outline makes it more clear for you and your students, and provides a sense of ease for you during the creation process.

What is the difference between a course outline and a syllabus?

Generally speaking, a course outline is a tool for course creators to consider during the planning phase, while a course syllabus is intended for students to read ahead of starting the course. Once you’ve created a course outline, you can move on to creating the course syllabus, which includes more detailed information, including the course description, specific modules and assignments, dates, a grading rubric, rules of conduct, and other course requirements and expectations of the teacher.

What is another name for a course outline?

A course outline is also called a class outline, training outline, course plan or course structure. A lesson outline is smaller: it plans a single lesson inside one module of the course.

Can AI create a course outline?

Yes, as a starting point. When you create a course with us, our AI curriculum generator drafts sections and lessons from a short course description. Check each learning objective and lesson against your own expertise before you build on it.

Key terms

Course outline: A plan that lists your course’s end goal, modules, and the learning objectives and content inside each one.

Module: A section of your course that groups related lessons around one subtopic or milestone.

Lesson: A structured, informational unit within a module, made up of text, files, video, or images, that delivers one takeaway.

Learning objective: A specific, checkable statement of what students will be able to do by the end of a module, written with an action verb like create or build instead of understand.

Course syllabus: A student-facing document, created after the outline, with the course description, assignments, dates, and grading rubric.

Additional reporting by Nicole Quintana-Wolf

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