but I think it would be hard to argue that 50% of costs in running a online training course are administrative... Udemy needs to either offer more value to earn

but I think it would be hard to argue that 50% of costs in running a online training course are administrative... Udemy needs to either offer more value to earn their cut, or optimize so they can afford to take less. Your comment might be even remotely true if udemy was a not-for-profit company but that's not the case. The goal of a company isn't to have a net-zero sum at the end of the year (no profit). How much did udemy spend on advertising in the past years? Because the result of that advertising is what the OP is going to "cash in" on with his unbelievably high 50% revenue cut. How many conferences did udemy go to as a sponsor/have-a-booth? How many training sessions did they send their employees to so that their website + backend would be amazing fast and available? Go to Microsoft Virtual Academy, or to Cisco, or to Oracle/etc, and ask them how much you will get paid if they do the same thing as udemy is doing. Go to O'Reilly and ask them, or Lynda.com, etc. How much will Packt pay you to write a book? Complaining about a 50% revenue share is like complaining about a $49 airplane ticket from NY to Paris. First, you're talking about a small group who need to or have ever flown from NY to Paris, and second your price point is likely 100% lower than the lowest fare anyone else has ever paid. So that leaves one solution: start your own airline and DIY (which is, in effect, what it appears the OP did).