Marketplace vs. Hosted: The Fundamental Trade-Off — Sell on Udemy, Skillshare & Marketplaces

Before we get into specific platforms, you need to understand the two paths available to you: sell on someone else’s platform or sell on your own.

Most successful course creators end up doing both. But which one you lead with — and which one you treat as primary — makes all the difference.

Marketplace Selling

You upload your course to a platform that already has students. The platform handles payment processing, hosting, and some discovery. Students find your course through the platform’s search and recommendations.

What you get:

Instant access to millions of students. Udemy has 60+ million registered students. Skillshare has millions more. These are people already looking for courses.
Zero marketing required. You don’t need an email list, social media presence, or ad budget to make your first sale.
Built-in infrastructure. Payment processing, video hosting, student management, certificates. All handled for you.
Social proof machine. Reviews and ratings from real students build credibility that transfers everywhere.

What you give up:

Revenue share. Udemy keeps 37-75% of each sale depending on how the student found you. Skillshare pays you per minute watched, which often works out to less per student than you’d earn selling directly.
Pricing control. Udemy runs constant sales. Your $99 course will sell for $12 most of the time. You can’t opt out.
Customer relationship. You can’t export your student list from most marketplaces. The platform owns the relationship.
Branding control. Your course lives inside their template, their navigation, their branding. Students remember the platform, not you.

Hosted Selling

You sell your course on your own website using a platform like GoHighLevel, Teachable, Kajabi, or Thinkific. You drive your own traffic through marketing.

What you get:

Full revenue. You keep 90-100% of each sale (minus payment processing fees, typically 2.9% + $0.30).
Pricing control. You set the price. You decide when to discount. No surprise sales.
Customer relationship. You own the email list. You can email students anytime. You can upsell, cross-sell, and build lifetime value.
Branding control. Your course lives on your website with your branding, your navigation, your experience.

What you give up:

Built-in traffic. You have to bring your own students. Email marketing, SEO, social media, ads, partnerships. All on you.
Infrastructure overhead. You set up the platform, payment processing, email sequences, support systems.
Slower start. Your first sale takes longer because you’re building from scratch.

Your Own Platform First

Here’s the approach we recommend: start with your own platform.

Use a tool like GoHighLevel, Teachable, or Kajabi to sell your course directly. Set up your own website, your own payment processing, your own email list. You drive traffic through content, SEO, social media, and eventually ads.

Yes, this is more work upfront. But from day one, you own the student relationship. You keep 95%+ of every sale. You set your own prices. You can offer bundles, memberships, coaching packages, and upsells — things marketplaces don’t allow.

Every student who buys from your site joins your email list. Every email subscriber is a future customer for your next course, your coaching, or your premium offering.

Then Add Marketplaces

Once your own platform is running, publish your course on marketplaces too. Not as your primary channel, but as additional reach.

Here’s what marketplaces are good for:

Passive discovery. Students find you through search without you doing anything.
Volume. Udemy has 60+ million students. Even a small slice of that is real people.
List building. Marketplace students can be funneled to your email list (lesson 09).
Social proof. Hundreds of reviews on Udemy build credibility that transfers everywhere.

But marketplace revenue should be supplementary. If your own platform is earning $2,000/month and Udemy adds $300/month, that’s a nice bonus. If Udemy IS your business at $300/month, you don’t have a business — you have a side project.

Why the Order Matters

If you start on marketplaces, you build a dependency. You learn to think in terms of $4 per sale. You never build your email list. You never learn to drive your own traffic. You never create a premium offering. You stay trapped at marketplace scale.

If you start on your own platform, you build the skills and infrastructure that matter: list building, funnel design, email marketing, content strategy. Then when you add marketplaces, they multiply what you already have instead of becoming a crutch.

Your Task

Where are you right now? Write it down:

Not published anywhere: Your first move is setting up your own platform (see Pick Your Platform). Then come back here to add marketplaces.
Already on a marketplace, earning under $500/month: You’re hitting the ceiling. Start building your own platform now. This course will show you how to improve what you have AND plan your exit strategy.
Already on a marketplace, earning over $500/month: You’ve proven your content works. The question is how much more you’d earn on your own platform. Keep reading — the math might surprise you.