You spent four months building a course on Udemy. Twelve hours of video. Workbooks, quizzes, assignments. You priced it at $199.99 because the value justifies it and that is what comparable courses on the platform list at. Udemy ran one of its sitewide promotions and sold your course at $9.99. Your share — through the Udemy organic-traffic revenue split — was approximately $4.50.
This is not a Udemy bug. It is the explicit business model. Udemy aggressively discounts courses to drive volume; the creator's share is calculated against the discounted price, not the list price. The platform's argument is that you reach more students that way. The math from the creator's perspective is that a course they spent months on earns them less per sale than a single coffee.
Online course creators have built one of the most frustrated subcultures of the creator economy. Here is what each major platform actually pays, what the structural issues are, and what direct support through an Shandle changes.
What course creators actually complain about, by platform
Udemy. 37% revenue share when a student finds the course through Udemy's marketplace and the standard $9.99-$19.99 promotional pricing applies. 97% revenue share when the creator brings their own student through their own coupon link — but that requires the creator to do their own marketing, which most chose Udemy specifically to avoid. The effective per-course earnings for a Udemy-marketplace creator are routinely $1-$5 per sale on courses originally priced at $200.
Skillshare. Pay-per-minute-watched model. Royalties are pooled monthly and distributed based on share of total minutes watched across the platform. Rates have ranged from approximately $0.05 to $0.10 per minute over recent years and have trended downward. A teacher whose students collectively watch 10,000 minutes of their classes in a month might earn $500-$1,000. Most teachers earn far less. The platform does not publish rate cards because the rate fluctuates with the royalty pool size.
Teachable, Thinkific, Kajabi, Podia. Self-hosted course platforms. Creators set their own prices and keep most of the revenue, but pay a monthly subscription ($39-$199/month depending on plan and platform) plus payment processing (Stripe ~2.9% + $0.30) plus, on lower tiers, a percentage transaction fee. Creators with low course-sale volume can spend more on the platform subscription than they earn from sales.
Coursera, edX. Higher-education-adjacent platforms. Revenue shares vary widely by partnership but creators (typically institutions, not individuals) often see 30-50% of net after the platform's marketing and infrastructure costs are deducted.
Gumroad (digital products including courses). 10% platform fee plus payment processing. Better for creators selling self-marketed digital products than for courses that need a structured learning experience.
Udemy's promotional pricing model means a course originally listed at $199 routinely sells for $9.99-$19.99. The creator's share is calculated against the discounted price. A creator with 1,000 sales over a year may earn $5,000-$15,000 on courses they spent hundreds of hours building.
— Udemy Instructor Revenue Share documentation; Skillshare Royalty Pool documentation; 2025
Where the structural problem sits
Two underlying issues drive the per-course earnings problem on the major platforms.
The first is pricing control. Udemy uses heavy discounting as a customer-acquisition strategy. The creator does not control list pricing of their own course on the marketplace once Udemy's promotional engine takes over. Skillshare bypasses pricing entirely with the per-minute model — the creator has no leverage over what their content is worth, only how much of it gets watched.
The second is marketing dependency. The platforms argue (correctly) that they bring students to creators who would not otherwise have an audience. This is real. The cost is that the platform owns the student-creator relationship. A creator on Udemy with 10,000 students has 10,000 students who belong to Udemy. They cannot be marketed to outside the platform without Udemy's permission. Skillshare members similarly belong to Skillshare.
The result is that course creators with no audience of their own are entirely dependent on the platform's discounting and marketing decisions, while creators who do have an audience often earn dramatically less per student through the platform than they would by selling directly.
How an S-handle works for course creators
An Shandle is a single payment identifier on the Spondula network — the creator shares it directly with students rather than routing them through a marketplace. Use cases for course creators:
Direct course sales. A creator with their own audience (newsletter, social following, podcast listeners) can sell access to their course directly via the handle, without paying 37-63% to Udemy or paying a monthly Teachable subscription. The course can be hosted anywhere — Google Drive, Dropbox, a self-hosted page, even a private YouTube playlist — with the handle as the payment endpoint.
"Pay what you can" pricing. A creator who wants to make their material accessible can run a "pay what you can" model where students send any amount to the handle in exchange for course access. The platform-pricing constraint disappears.
Tip jar for free courses. Many course creators offer free content as marketing for their paid offerings. The handle in the course description provides a tip surface for students who got value from the free content and want to send appreciation.
Continuing direct support. Students who completed a course and want to support the creator's continued work can send recurring or one-off support without joining a separate Patreon-style platform.
What it costs: nothing on same-currency transactions. A small, transparent exchange spread — shown before each conversion confirms — applies only when a currency conversion is involved. There is no platform fee, no monthly subscription, no per-transaction processing charge.
Course creators with their own audiences are the ones losing the most to platform pricing models. The S-handle gives those creators a direct path that returns the course economics to what they always should have been.
Spondula is pre-launch. If you teach online and have spent more time worrying about Udemy's next promotion than about the next module of your course, the waitlist is where pricing control returns to the creator.
Frequently asked questions
Why does Udemy discount my course so heavily?
Udemy's customer-acquisition strategy relies on aggressive promotional pricing to drive volume. Courses listed at $199 routinely sell at $9.99-$19.99 during sitewide promotions. The creator's revenue share applies to the discounted price, which is why Udemy creators routinely earn $1-$5 per marketplace sale on courses they priced much higher.
Can I sell my course directly through my S-handle without a course platform?
Yes. The handle is a payment endpoint — it does not require a hosting platform. Many course creators host the course content on simpler infrastructure (Google Drive, Dropbox, a private page, a Notion link) and use the Shandle as the sole payment endpoint. Students send to the handle, the creator manually or automatically grants access.
What about the marketing — won't I lose the students Udemy brings?
Most creators run both — they keep the platform listings for marketplace traffic and add the Shandle for direct sales to their own audience. The two coexist; the platform brings discovery, the handle gives the creator a direct path for the audience they have built.
How does Skillshare's per-minute model compare to direct support?
Skillshare's per-minute royalty pool means earnings depend on what share of total platform watch time a creator's content receives. The rate is opaque and has trended downward. Direct support through an Shandle is independent of platform watch time — students who valued the content can send a tip or one-off payment that reaches the creator in full on same-currency transactions.
I'm an instructor outside the US/UK/EU — can I receive direct course payments?
Yes. The Spondula network is being built as a globally inclusive infrastructure. Instructors in countries where Udemy, Skillshare, Teachable, or other platforms restrict creator payouts can receive direct student payments through their handle without geographic restrictions.
Spondula is a global payments network. It is not a bank, exchange, investment platform, or broker. Availability, pricing, and Operator coverage vary by country. Bitcoin rewards depend on real network activity and are not guaranteed. See our terms and conditions for full details.
