The Marketplace Funnel: Their Students → Your List — Sell on Udemy, Skillshare & Marketplaces

Here’s the uncomfortable truth about marketplace students: they’re not your students. They’re Udemy’s students, or Skillshare’s students. You can’t email them. You can’t retarget them with ads. You can’t upsell them without going through the platform.

The marketplace brought you the enrollment. But if that’s where the relationship ends, you’re leaving the most valuable part on the table — a direct connection to someone who already paid for your teaching.

Here’s how to build a bridge from the marketplace to your own audience, within each platform’s rules.

The Bonus Resource Strategy

The most effective and rule-compliant method: offer a bonus resource that requires students to visit your website and give you their email.

How it works:

Create a valuable free resource related to your course. A cheat sheet, a template, a toolkit, a resource guide — something genuinely useful.
Host it on your own website behind an email opt-in form.
Mention the bonus resource inside your course. In the welcome video, in the course description, and in a dedicated bonus lecture at the end of the course.
Students who want the bonus visit your site and join your list.

What makes a good bonus resource:

It directly extends the course content. If your course is on email marketing, the bonus could be “50 Subject Line Templates You Can Use Today.”
It’s useful enough to want but short enough to deliver immediately. A one-page cheat sheet works better than a 50-page ebook.
It’s different from what’s already in the course. Don’t give away something students feel they already paid for.

Udemy’s Rules Around This

Udemy allows you to link to external resources from within your course, with some restrictions:

You can mention your website and offer free resources in your course lectures.
You can include a link to your website in a designated “Bonus Lecture” at the end of the course.
You cannot use Udemy’s messaging or promotional tools to send students to paid products on your website.
You cannot require students to leave a review in exchange for the bonus resource.

The Bonus Lecture is specifically designed for this purpose. It’s the last lecture in your course and it’s the one place where Udemy explicitly allows external links and self-promotion.

The Automated Welcome Sequence

When a marketplace student joins your email list through the bonus resource, they should enter a welcome sequence that:

Email 1: Deliver the bonus immediately. “Here’s the [resource] I promised. Let me know if you have any questions.”

Email 2: Ask about their progress (2 days later). “How’s the course going? Reply and let me know what you’re working on.” This opens a conversation.

Email 3: Share something extra (5 days later). A tip, a case study, or a resource that goes beyond what’s in the course. Show that subscribing was worth it.

Email 4: Introduce your other offerings (7-10 days later). “If you’re enjoying [topic], you might also be interested in [your paid product or service].” Low-pressure. Informational.

This sequence converts marketplace students from one-time enrollments into ongoing subscribers who know your name and visit your website.

Skillshare’s Rules

Skillshare is more permissive than Udemy about external links. You can include your website URL in:

Your teacher profile
Your class description
The “About” section of each class
The class project description

Skillshare doesn’t have a messaging system like Udemy, so you can’t reach students directly. The class project is your best tool — encourage students to share their project results and include a link to your website for additional resources.

What Percentage Convert?

Be realistic. Not every marketplace student will visit your website. Not every visitor will join your list.

Rough benchmarks:

10-20% of marketplace students visit your bonus resource page
30-50% of visitors give you their email
Overall: 3-10% of marketplace students become email subscribers

If you have 1,000 Udemy students, expect 30-100 email subscribers. Not massive, but these are warm leads — people who already consumed your content and liked it enough to want more.

Over time, as your marketplace courses accumulate more students, this becomes a steady stream of new subscribers at zero additional cost.

Your Task

Create one bonus resource for your course. Keep it to one page. Design it in Canva or Google Docs. Then create a simple landing page on your website where students can download it by entering their email.