5 ms·

How Much Do Udemy Instructors Make (2024)

56 points by belter 2y ago

robertlagrant 2y ago
It'd be good to know how this compares to just monetising a video series on YouTube.
- belter 2y ago
  Two data points: https://youtu.be/SpssEs22HGA https://youtu.be/SpssEs22HGA https://youtu.be/-mjk4QUkwSU https://youtu.be/-mjk4QUkwSU And: "The Price I Have To Pay (To Be A YouTuber)" - https://youtu.be/e2UbmAPYf1Q https://youtu.be/e2UbmAPYf1Q
  - mtmail 2y ago
    Data points extracted from 7 and 11 minutes of videos using its transcripts. 1. "How Much YouTube Paid Me For 4,700,000 Views" "For these 66 videos of my original music equating to 4.7 million views is roughly £4867 or just shy of $6000" "That carbon fiber guitar video I made four years ago is currently at an income of £739" "A few factors come into play there: it's a 13-minute video so it has plenty of time for ad breaks and YouTube likes it when you make people stick around which is much harder to do with a single song at just 3 and a half minutes" (The video about her revenue got 1.1 million views) 2. "How much I made on YouTube last year (2022) // Teacher YouTube Money Talk" "I've been putting out educational videos on YouTube for almost 10 years now. I've been monetized for two of those years and now I have just over 8000 subscribers [...] here it is 4101.22 okay so you can stay around for the rest of the video"
    - belter 2y ago
      The carbon fiber guitar review at 5.3 Million views had an estimated revenue of £7745.82
belter 2y ago
"...Our research found that only 1% of Udemy instructors earn a full-time income (>$50K/year), and only 4% would cross the US poverty line ($14.5K/year). The majority of instructors (75%) make less than $1,000 a year..."
- cushychicken 2y ago
  This, plus the stat about higher earnings going to people who started courses before 2020, is telling. Paraphrasing Jeremy Irons’s character from Margin Call: “It’s a hell of a lot easier to be first.”
  - belter 2y ago
    https://youtu.be/ag14Ao_xO4c?t=4 https://youtu.be/ag14Ao_xO4c?t=4
- ghaff 2y ago
  While there are rare exceptions, basically the only way to have a decent shot at making more than hobby loose change because you like doing it at creating content (writing, video, podcasts) etc. is to be paid a salary to do it. (Or do it on the side in support of your salary--which is what I did with books.)
- jrmg 2y ago
  Maybe I missed this in my skimming of the article, but; the obvious question is ‘what fraction of their time do these instructors spend on Udemy work’. I doubt most people teaching a course or two at a traditional learning institution get paid a full time salary either - even at institutions that pay well - because their work is not full time.
  - ghaff 2y ago
    Adjuncts apparently get paid pretty poorly. But the fact that it's hard to make a living as an adjunct professor/lecturer doesn't change the fact that it's at least as hard to make a living doing online courses.
tomw1808 2y ago
I am publishing my content on Udemy since 2016. I made about 200k since then, about 50% of that in the first 2 years. My courses were about Blockchain Development. We were the first ones there. It's a side hustle for me. Like so many other publishers, I have one course that sells really great. I got about 15 courses now published, one sells great, one sells meh, the other ones don't sell at all. I also have my courses on Packt. Interestingly, I have another course there that sells really great. It's a different one. No overlap. The one on udemy doesn't sell on Packt and vice versa. I think its pure luck. It's a perpetual motion machine: Once a course sells, it gets recognized and pushed by their marketing team/algo, it gets more visibility and it sells better, which means, it gets recognized and pushed by their marketing team/algo, and sells better ... you get the idea. Optimize for luck. Be first. Be in a niche. Or have an audience out of udemy you can drive there and drive sales, so it gets recognized by their marketing team/algo. Which brings me to the second part: I have tried (and failed) to build my own audience. I am a bad marketer. Really bad. Saying marketing and sales are my weak points doesn't do justice at how bad I am at this. I am a builder. I love teaching. I don't love bragging. And marketing/sales for me its a shitshow of shill and brag culture. I can't. And udemy does that for me. They get their cut, I get my cut and I am fine with that. What I don't like is how restrictive they got with analytics, I really can't even guesstimate what is my target audience and cater to them better. But that's a completely different topic. I got a family and a full time job now and only do this on the side. Thought you might like the additional info.
- belter 2y ago
  Interesting. What is your view on Piracy, Plagiarism, and the small effort Udemy seems to do, to limit the damage done to course authors?
  - tomw1808 2y ago
    sorry the late answer, got distracted yesterday... but here it is: Piracy is rampant, Udemy isn't doing anything against it (afaik). If someone needs to pirate a course and download it for free that's offered for 9.99 and not get the Q&A, the downloads, the additional stuff, the updates and all of that, so be it. Can't change that. Also, a lot of the folks who pirate a course will never pay for it. It's a loss on paper. Still a loss though. Here's the kicker: I'm thinking, if my courses teach someone the blockchain stuff and turn his life around to go from $3/h job to a $60/h job (happened), feel free to pirate. Actually, send me a message and I'll give you a free coupon if you really can't afford the whatever $10. I did this so many times, I'm happy to help, I do care more about other peoples success than about the little money udemy brings in. Plagiarism is another category. If I catch you taking my content and repurposing it to sell it under your name, I will come after you as hard as I can. I am not sure if udemy does something actively against plagiarism or not, but if I find a person who is bluntly reuploading my stuff verbatim to udemy (happened) or slightly editing my courses and repurposing them to make money (happened too), I will not only send a takedown notice, I will come after you and collect damages and ruin your life as much as I can, because I consider that the absolut scum of the internet and I wish everyone who does that has rashes on intimate body parts for the rest of their lives and can't sit straight. That's my take.
wewepozhan 2y ago
[dead]
bjourne 2y ago
Maybe I'm jaded, but it seems so much about the tech industry is just about getting around labour laws and making people work for orders of magnitudes less than their real worth (^). Uber, Lyft, AirBnb, Udemy, Stackoverflow, OnlyFans, YouTube, Reddit, Quora... It's all about getting you to give your best stuff for free or as cheap as possible. At best you get internet points. ^ - Worth in the Marxist sense, the intrinsic value of something, not the purchase price of the current highest bidder.
- quonn 2y ago
  Can an uber (eats) delivery really be an order of magnitude more expensive and still be viable? Same for Airbnbs, which already cost 30-50% of a hotel. However I agree that the gig economy artificially distorts the employment statistics by creating jobs that should, perhaps, not exist at all. A significantly increased unemployment rate might have a real impact on politics.
  - ghaff 2y ago
    The reality is that there are a lot of personal services that $JOE or $JANE would probably like that they're not willing to pay the "true cost" (whatever that means) for. Certainly if my housekeeper doubled her rates, I would just do without. As it is, it's a monthly luxury. >Same for Airbnbs, which already cost 30-50% of a hotel. Have rarely used them but it's probably more than that. For vacation houses, they're competing with other services like VRBO.
  - adamc 2y ago
    Food delivery, is, on the face of it, a service that makes little economic sense. It's expensive to do and faces big timeliness challenges given that cold food is less appealing. Trying to do it at an affordable price means exploiting people. Hustling people has become a big part of entrepreneurial "genius". Sure, it creates "jobs", but some jobs are awful and degrading. That's the sticking point.
    - richwater 2y ago
      > exploiting people Anyone on DoorDash can leave literally any time. There is no contract whatsoever . It's hard to argue in good faith that drivers are being exploited when they willingly, actively participate in the act.
graemep 2y ago
How does it compare with running face to face courses? I have been thinking of doing it (UK, smallish town) as I have some experience of training, like doing it, and there is not a lot of competition locally (a lot of publicly funded stuff for adults other than university has disappeared). No idea how to get started though.
- ghaff 2y ago
  I suspect if you can get a face to face gig, that's a more reliable income source--although the upside is limited. At least in the US though, community college or some sort of continuing education isn't going to be a very good gig financially. Maybe as an evening class sort of thing because you like doing it. I've done short YouTube video versions of conference presentations but never a full course. And I've never really promoted much. It doesn't really take a lot of gear (though it does take some). I'd probably start with doing some YouTube videos and branching out to Udemy or whatever if it clicks.
  - graemep 2y ago
    > I suspect if you can get a face to face gig, that's a more reliable income source--although the upside is limited. its a reasonable trade off for me, as a side gig > At least in the US though, community college or some sort of continuing education isn't going to be a very good gig financially. Nor here. They also want teaching qualifications. I would rather run something of my own. The problem is how to set it up and advertise.
- i_k_k 2y ago
  One data point: I’ve taught a few times at a community college here in the US. Obviously, that’s through an established institution. It paid about $7k for a ten-week course.
- michaelt 2y ago
  > No idea how to get started though. If you broaden your definition of self-paid adult education, you'll probably find ballroom dance classes, yoga classes, MMA classes, sculpture classes, and things like that. Perhaps looking at some of them could give you an idea of the economics. Assuming your class wouldn't compete with theirs, they might be happy to tell you how it's going for them :)
mindcrime 2y ago
Interesting. TBH, it never even occurred to me that anybody would make, or even attempt to make, their living as a full-time Udemy instructor. I always assumed that creating Udemy courses was a combination of "labor of love", "side hustle / extra income", or marketing for someone's consulting service or product(s). I know I've given some thought to creating a couple of Udemy courses myself, but haven't taken the plunge yet. And for me, it would mostly be "labor of love" and "marketing". Any extra income would be like "found money" to me. EDIT: @fiftyacorn said something interesting in another thread. but it did improve my understanding of the subject, and also made it easier to get work and consultancy opportunities That also reflects some of my thinking on this subject. I remember when I did my Qualification School as a Firefighter I/II instructor, our instructor said something that has stuck with me for 30 some odd years now. He said "you don't really understand something until you've taught it to somebody else." I wholeheartedly endorse that mindset, and that would be another reason I might make a Udemy course - as a forcing function to make me do a deep dive into something, and deepen my own understanding.
- adamc 2y ago
  Yeah, but if you look at the numbers, it isn't any good as a side-hustle, either. The vast majority of courses don't make enough money for the effort invested to even qualify as break-even. I think online courses are a challenge. I've taken a number of them, and for them to work you have to get many, many things right, because you don't have the opportunities for course-correction that exist in an in-person class.
  - ghaff 2y ago
    >I think online courses are a challenge. The professors who do EdX (or whatever) versions of their big lecture classes--which they've done a million times--can be pretty good and they don't get a lot of real-time feedback there either. But that is the exception, of course.
    - michaelt 2y ago
      I always assumed those classes don't need to make the professors any money, as the professors earn a salary, and they're more about broadening access and performing the school's charitable goal of educating lots of students, secure in the knowledge that even a thousand hours of free online Harvard lectures can't replace a Harvard degree, so the tuition money will keep pouring in.
suyash 2y ago
Curious question for those who pay for courses or paid in last year : What makes you pay for them when you can have any major LLM like ChatGPT teach you patiently?
- mindcrime 2y ago
  I've bought quite a few Udemy courses over the years. I only buy them when they are having one of their sales, of course. I've never paid "list price" for a Udemy course as far as I know. But that said, why would I buy a course over using an LLM? A couple of reasons come to mind: 1. I'm just more familiar/comfortable with the modality of listening to an instructor lecture and use visual aids, than chatting with an LLM when working on getting an understanding of a broad field. I see LLM's as more suited for more focused, "bite sized" interactions. For example, asking one how to solve a specific math problem that I am stuck on or something. 2. I also don't necessarily trust the LLM completely. And if I'm learning something that's very new to me, then by definition I won't be equipped to detect when the LLM is hallucinating. If I'm asking about something where it's easy to "check my answer" or confirm the information, then fine. But otherwise I still have a measure of skepticism (and I say this as somebody who is, in general, very "pro AI").
- belter 2y ago
  The LLM helps you with the Known Unknowns while the course with Unknown Unknowns...
- rvdginste 2y ago
  A good course will teach you everything on a topic in a structured way. Personally I believe there is a lot more value in well-structured material than in a bunch of responses on rather ad-hoc questions to ChatGPT. Also be aware that not everything ChatGPT answers, is correct. In the case of a decent course, one can assume that the information is correct. I feel this is similar to asking whether there would be value in paying for a well-written book on a topic, compared to just searching and reading information online on that topic, be it official documentation, or be it third-party information from blog posts, other articles. In my opinion, a well-written course or book will give you a much deeper knowledge in a much more efficient way than what you get from ChatGPT or from searching the internet.

56 points by belter 2y ago

robertlagrant 2y ago

It'd be good to know how this compares to just monetising a video series on YouTube.

belter 2y ago
Two data points: https://youtu.be/SpssEs22HGA https://youtu.be/SpssEs22HGA https://youtu.be/-mjk4QUkwSU https://youtu.be/-mjk4QUkwSU And: "The Price I Have To Pay (To Be A YouTuber)" - https://youtu.be/e2UbmAPYf1Q https://youtu.be/e2UbmAPYf1Q
- mtmail 2y ago
  Data points extracted from 7 and 11 minutes of videos using its transcripts. 1. "How Much YouTube Paid Me For 4,700,000 Views" "For these 66 videos of my original music equating to 4.7 million views is roughly £4867 or just shy of $6000" "That carbon fiber guitar video I made four years ago is currently at an income of £739" "A few factors come into play there: it's a 13-minute video so it has plenty of time for ad breaks and YouTube likes it when you make people stick around which is much harder to do with a single song at just 3 and a half minutes" (The video about her revenue got 1.1 million views) 2. "How much I made on YouTube last year (2022) // Teacher YouTube Money Talk" "I've been putting out educational videos on YouTube for almost 10 years now. I've been monetized for two of those years and now I have just over 8000 subscribers [...] here it is 4101.22 okay so you can stay around for the rest of the video"
  - belter 2y ago
    The carbon fiber guitar review at 5.3 Million views had an estimated revenue of £7745.82

belter 2y ago

"...Our research found that only 1% of Udemy instructors earn a full-time income (>$50K/year), and only 4% would cross the US poverty line ($14.5K/year). The majority of instructors (75%) make less than $1,000 a year..."

cushychicken 2y ago
This, plus the stat about higher earnings going to people who started courses before 2020, is telling. Paraphrasing Jeremy Irons’s character from Margin Call: “It’s a hell of a lot easier to be first.”
- belter 2y ago
  https://youtu.be/ag14Ao_xO4c?t=4 https://youtu.be/ag14Ao_xO4c?t=4
ghaff 2y ago
While there are rare exceptions, basically the only way to have a decent shot at making more than hobby loose change because you like doing it at creating content (writing, video, podcasts) etc. is to be paid a salary to do it. (Or do it on the side in support of your salary--which is what I did with books.)
jrmg 2y ago
Maybe I missed this in my skimming of the article, but; the obvious question is ‘what fraction of their time do these instructors spend on Udemy work’. I doubt most people teaching a course or two at a traditional learning institution get paid a full time salary either - even at institutions that pay well - because their work is not full time.
- ghaff 2y ago
  Adjuncts apparently get paid pretty poorly. But the fact that it's hard to make a living as an adjunct professor/lecturer doesn't change the fact that it's at least as hard to make a living doing online courses.

tomw1808 2y ago

I am publishing my content on Udemy since 2016. I made about 200k since then, about 50% of that in the first 2 years. My courses were about Blockchain Development. We were the first ones there. It's a side hustle for me. Like so many other publishers, I have one course that sells really great. I got about 15 courses now published, one sells great, one sells meh, the other ones don't sell at all. I also have my courses on Packt. Interestingly, I have another course there that sells really great. It's a different one. No overlap. The one on udemy doesn't sell on Packt and vice versa. I think its pure luck. It's a perpetual motion machine: Once a course sells, it gets recognized and pushed by their marketing team/algo, it gets more visibility and it sells better, which means, it gets recognized and pushed by their marketing team/algo, and sells better ... you get the idea. Optimize for luck. Be first. Be in a niche. Or have an audience out of udemy you can drive there and drive sales, so it gets recognized by their marketing team/algo. Which brings me to the second part: I have tried (and failed) to build my own audience. I am a bad marketer. Really bad. Saying marketing and sales are my weak points doesn't do justice at how bad I am at this. I am a builder. I love teaching. I don't love bragging. And marketing/sales for me its a shitshow of shill and brag culture. I can't. And udemy does that for me. They get their cut, I get my cut and I am fine with that. What I don't like is how restrictive they got with analytics, I really can't even guesstimate what is my target audience and cater to them better. But that's a completely different topic. I got a family and a full time job now and only do this on the side. Thought you might like the additional info.

belter 2y ago
Interesting. What is your view on Piracy, Plagiarism, and the small effort Udemy seems to do, to limit the damage done to course authors?
- tomw1808 2y ago
  sorry the late answer, got distracted yesterday... but here it is: Piracy is rampant, Udemy isn't doing anything against it (afaik). If someone needs to pirate a course and download it for free that's offered for 9.99 and not get the Q&A, the downloads, the additional stuff, the updates and all of that, so be it. Can't change that. Also, a lot of the folks who pirate a course will never pay for it. It's a loss on paper. Still a loss though. Here's the kicker: I'm thinking, if my courses teach someone the blockchain stuff and turn his life around to go from $3/h job to a $60/h job (happened), feel free to pirate. Actually, send me a message and I'll give you a free coupon if you really can't afford the whatever $10. I did this so many times, I'm happy to help, I do care more about other peoples success than about the little money udemy brings in. Plagiarism is another category. If I catch you taking my content and repurposing it to sell it under your name, I will come after you as hard as I can. I am not sure if udemy does something actively against plagiarism or not, but if I find a person who is bluntly reuploading my stuff verbatim to udemy (happened) or slightly editing my courses and repurposing them to make money (happened too), I will not only send a takedown notice, I will come after you and collect damages and ruin your life as much as I can, because I consider that the absolut scum of the internet and I wish everyone who does that has rashes on intimate body parts for the rest of their lives and can't sit straight. That's my take.

wewepozhan 2y ago

[dead]

bjourne 2y ago

Maybe I'm jaded, but it seems so much about the tech industry is just about getting around labour laws and making people work for orders of magnitudes less than their real worth (^). Uber, Lyft, AirBnb, Udemy, Stackoverflow, OnlyFans, YouTube, Reddit, Quora... It's all about getting you to give your best stuff for free or as cheap as possible. At best you get internet points. ^ - Worth in the Marxist sense, the intrinsic value of something, not the purchase price of the current highest bidder.

quonn 2y ago
Can an uber (eats) delivery really be an order of magnitude more expensive and still be viable? Same for Airbnbs, which already cost 30-50% of a hotel. However I agree that the gig economy artificially distorts the employment statistics by creating jobs that should, perhaps, not exist at all. A significantly increased unemployment rate might have a real impact on politics.
- ghaff 2y ago
  The reality is that there are a lot of personal services that $JOE or $JANE would probably like that they're not willing to pay the "true cost" (whatever that means) for. Certainly if my housekeeper doubled her rates, I would just do without. As it is, it's a monthly luxury. >Same for Airbnbs, which already cost 30-50% of a hotel. Have rarely used them but it's probably more than that. For vacation houses, they're competing with other services like VRBO.
- adamc 2y ago
  Food delivery, is, on the face of it, a service that makes little economic sense. It's expensive to do and faces big timeliness challenges given that cold food is less appealing. Trying to do it at an affordable price means exploiting people. Hustling people has become a big part of entrepreneurial "genius". Sure, it creates "jobs", but some jobs are awful and degrading. That's the sticking point.
  - richwater 2y ago
    > exploiting people Anyone on DoorDash can leave literally any time. There is no contract whatsoever . It's hard to argue in good faith that drivers are being exploited when they willingly, actively participate in the act.

graemep 2y ago

How does it compare with running face to face courses? I have been thinking of doing it (UK, smallish town) as I have some experience of training, like doing it, and there is not a lot of competition locally (a lot of publicly funded stuff for adults other than university has disappeared). No idea how to get started though.

ghaff 2y ago
I suspect if you can get a face to face gig, that's a more reliable income source--although the upside is limited. At least in the US though, community college or some sort of continuing education isn't going to be a very good gig financially. Maybe as an evening class sort of thing because you like doing it. I've done short YouTube video versions of conference presentations but never a full course. And I've never really promoted much. It doesn't really take a lot of gear (though it does take some). I'd probably start with doing some YouTube videos and branching out to Udemy or whatever if it clicks.
- graemep 2y ago
  > I suspect if you can get a face to face gig, that's a more reliable income source--although the upside is limited. its a reasonable trade off for me, as a side gig > At least in the US though, community college or some sort of continuing education isn't going to be a very good gig financially. Nor here. They also want teaching qualifications. I would rather run something of my own. The problem is how to set it up and advertise.
i_k_k 2y ago
One data point: I’ve taught a few times at a community college here in the US. Obviously, that’s through an established institution. It paid about $7k for a ten-week course.
michaelt 2y ago
> No idea how to get started though. If you broaden your definition of self-paid adult education, you'll probably find ballroom dance classes, yoga classes, MMA classes, sculpture classes, and things like that. Perhaps looking at some of them could give you an idea of the economics. Assuming your class wouldn't compete with theirs, they might be happy to tell you how it's going for them :)

mindcrime 2y ago

Interesting. TBH, it never even occurred to me that anybody would make, or even attempt to make, their living as a full-time Udemy instructor. I always assumed that creating Udemy courses was a combination of "labor of love", "side hustle / extra income", or marketing for someone's consulting service or product(s). I know I've given some thought to creating a couple of Udemy courses myself, but haven't taken the plunge yet. And for me, it would mostly be "labor of love" and "marketing". Any extra income would be like "found money" to me. EDIT: @fiftyacorn said something interesting in another thread. but it did improve my understanding of the subject, and also made it easier to get work and consultancy opportunities That also reflects some of my thinking on this subject. I remember when I did my Qualification School as a Firefighter I/II instructor, our instructor said something that has stuck with me for 30 some odd years now. He said "you don't really understand something until you've taught it to somebody else." I wholeheartedly endorse that mindset, and that would be another reason I might make a Udemy course - as a forcing function to make me do a deep dive into something, and deepen my own understanding.

adamc 2y ago
Yeah, but if you look at the numbers, it isn't any good as a side-hustle, either. The vast majority of courses don't make enough money for the effort invested to even qualify as break-even. I think online courses are a challenge. I've taken a number of them, and for them to work you have to get many, many things right, because you don't have the opportunities for course-correction that exist in an in-person class.
- ghaff 2y ago
  >I think online courses are a challenge. The professors who do EdX (or whatever) versions of their big lecture classes--which they've done a million times--can be pretty good and they don't get a lot of real-time feedback there either. But that is the exception, of course.
  - michaelt 2y ago
    I always assumed those classes don't need to make the professors any money, as the professors earn a salary, and they're more about broadening access and performing the school's charitable goal of educating lots of students, secure in the knowledge that even a thousand hours of free online Harvard lectures can't replace a Harvard degree, so the tuition money will keep pouring in.

suyash 2y ago

Curious question for those who pay for courses or paid in last year : What makes you pay for them when you can have any major LLM like ChatGPT teach you patiently?

mindcrime 2y ago
I've bought quite a few Udemy courses over the years. I only buy them when they are having one of their sales, of course. I've never paid "list price" for a Udemy course as far as I know. But that said, why would I buy a course over using an LLM? A couple of reasons come to mind: 1. I'm just more familiar/comfortable with the modality of listening to an instructor lecture and use visual aids, than chatting with an LLM when working on getting an understanding of a broad field. I see LLM's as more suited for more focused, "bite sized" interactions. For example, asking one how to solve a specific math problem that I am stuck on or something. 2. I also don't necessarily trust the LLM completely. And if I'm learning something that's very new to me, then by definition I won't be equipped to detect when the LLM is hallucinating. If I'm asking about something where it's easy to "check my answer" or confirm the information, then fine. But otherwise I still have a measure of skepticism (and I say this as somebody who is, in general, very "pro AI").
belter 2y ago
The LLM helps you with the Known Unknowns while the course with Unknown Unknowns...
rvdginste 2y ago
A good course will teach you everything on a topic in a structured way. Personally I believe there is a lot more value in well-structured material than in a bunch of responses on rather ad-hoc questions to ChatGPT. Also be aware that not everything ChatGPT answers, is correct. In the case of a decent course, one can assume that the information is correct. I feel this is similar to asking whether there would be value in paying for a well-written book on a topic, compared to just searching and reading information online on that topic, be it official documentation, or be it third-party information from blog posts, other articles. In my opinion, a well-written course or book will give you a much deeper knowledge in a much more efficient way than what you get from ChatGPT or from searching the internet.