Teach a skill you really have through paid courses, coaching or digital products. Selling it is the hard part.
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Pay, the path, pros and cons and the facts on one printable page. Good for a wall or a guidance counsellor.
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What you earn and what it costs to get there.
Typical
$0
Most new courses
$0
Top few percent
$100,000
No platform publishes what its typical creator earns. What the evidence shows: most first courses sell a handful of copies or none, and platform fees and ads eat what they do sell. The top figure is a creator with a real audience and a course people recommend. The screenshots of $100,000 months are usually from people selling courses about selling courses.
37% on Udemy
what you keep when a student finds your course through the Udemy marketplace
You keep 97% when the student uses your own coupon or link. Other platforms charge a monthly fee instead, or both: Gumroad takes 10% plus 50 cents a sale, and 30% when its marketplace finds the buyer.
Price times buyers, minus costs
A $200 course sold to 50 people is $10,000 before fees, ads and refunds
Getting 50 strangers to pay is the whole job. Most buyers come from an audience you built first: a channel, a newsletter, a following in your field or past clients.
Tuition, fees, exams and kit. Not rent, food or travel
The low end is a phone, free screen-recording software and a platform that only takes a cut when you sell, such as Udemy or Gumroad. The high end is a year on a paid course platform, a microphone, a camera and lights, and a first round of paid ads. The real entry cost is skill: you need years of real experience in the thing you teach, and no course about selling courses replaces that. Programs that charge thousands to teach you this business are the most common way people lose money here.
Card processing fees of about 3% come on top of most of these. Test whether people will pay with a cheap version before spending on production.
A self-paced course
Recorded once, sold many times. Needs constant marketing and updates.
Coaching or a cohort
Live calls with a small group. Pays more per student, but it is your time, not passive.
A paid community
A monthly membership on a platform like Skool or Whop. Members leave when you stop showing up.
Digital products
Templates, guides, presets and files sold on Gumroad or similar. Cheap to make, hard to stand out.
The exact path from high school to qualified.
The skill comes first. A course is a way to package expertise, not a way to get it.
Get really good at something people pay to learn
Years
A trade, software, a language, fitness, design, cooking. Years of doing it, with results you can show.
Teach it for free, in public
6 months to 2 years
Videos, posts, a newsletter or answering questions in forums. You learn what people struggle with and who trusts you.
Sell something small first
1 to 3 months
A live workshop, a guide or a cheap first version. Proof people pay before you film 40 lessons.
Build the full course from what students asked
2 to 6 months
Clear outcome, short lessons, exercises, and a way to ask questions.
Keep marketing and updating
Ongoing
Sales stop when posting stops. Old material and broken links drive refunds.
English and writing
Sales pages, emails and scripts are most of the work.
Media and video production
Recording, editing and sound.
Business and marketing
Pricing, audiences and why people buy.
Whatever you want to teach
The subject itself is what students are paying for.
Anyone can sell a course. The FTC (Federal Trade Commission) bans earnings claims you cannot back up, such as promising students they will make $10,000 a month, and requires clear disclosure of paid testimonials and affiliate links. The IRS (Internal Revenue Service) treats course sales as self-employment income. Some states require digital products to charge sales tax, which most platforms collect. A few subjects need a license to teach or give advice, such as financial advice, driving or health care.
Use this as a buyer, and build to it as a seller.
The teacher has done the thing
Results outside of selling courses, that you can check.
A specific outcome
"Pass the exam" or "build a working website", not "financial freedom".
A clear refund policy, in writing
Before you pay. No refund and a countdown timer is a warning sign.
Free material that is already useful
Good teachers give a lot away. Hype with no substance is the tell.
No income promises
Real teachers do not guarantee you money. The FTC (Federal Trade Commission) has sued sellers who did.
Things you don't need, but that help.
Building an audience
A channel, newsletter or community. The best predictor of course sales.
Copywriting
A clear sales page sells more than a pretty video.
Email marketing
Your list is the audience no platform can take away.
Instructional design
Courses that get students results get recommended.
A credential in your field
Trust matters when strangers are paying.
Past students or clients
Real testimonials, collected honestly.
A niche
Excel for accountants beats Excel for everyone.
Patience
Most successful creators taught for free for years first.
A large share of what you see on TikTok and YouTube is people selling courses on how to sell courses, run ads or start an online business. The FTC (Federal Trade Commission) says the Growth Cave operation took about $50 million partly by promising $20,000 to $50,000 in passive income from making online courses, then charged $30,000 to $50,000 more for a done-for-you upgrade. Most buyers never made a sale. In January 2026 its owners were banned from selling business opportunities.
Day to day, pros and cons, where you'd work.
Most of the week is not teaching. You post free content three or four times, answer comments and student questions, and write an email to your list. One day goes to recording or updating a lesson. Another goes to a live call with students or coaching clients. Then sales: tweaking the sales page, checking which posts brought buyers, handling a refund request. The courses that sell for years are the ones the creator keeps showing up for.
The good
The hard parts
Things people don't tell you.
The FTC (Federal Trade Commission) says Automators AI, which also sold coaching as Ecom Skool, took about $22 million promising passive income from AI-run online stores. Its owners got a lifetime ban in 2024.
On Udemy you keep 97% of a sale made through your own coupon, but 37% when Udemy's marketplace brings the student. Building your own audience pays.
To repay buyers, the FTC (Federal Trade Commission) settlement required Growth Cave's co-CEOs (co-chief executive officers) to sell assets including a multimillion-dollar house, a Rolls-Royce and a Ferrari.
Every list is built from the same numbers shown above, so you can see where this career sits next to the others.
Online business first, then the rest of the field. See all online and self-made careers.
Last checked October 2026. This is self-employment, so there is no government wage data for it. The income figures come from the studies and platform data listed above.