How Much Do Course Creators Actually Make in 2026? (Real Data + Math)
Written by people who pay for this software · Pricing and offer terms checked August 2026 · Destination links auto-checked 21 August 2026
The honest headline is uncomfortable: most course creators make very little, and a meaningful minority make a great deal. Both halves of that sentence are supported by published data, and the interesting question is what separates them. Here are the numbers, with sources, and the arithmetic that produces them.
Two sets of figures circulate about creator earnings, and they appear to contradict each other. They do not — they measure different populations, and reading them together is the only way to get a useful picture.
The industry-wide picture
Figures from published creator-economy research covering the category as a whole. They count everyone who identifies as a creator, including the majority who have not yet sold anything — which is exactly why the platform figures below look so different.
From the same body of research: 89% of online courses are priced under $350, and the online learning market was worth more than $185 billion in 2024 — a large and growing category in which most individual participants earn very little. That combination is exactly what you would expect from any market with near-zero barriers to entry: enormous total demand, distributed extremely unevenly.
The platform picture
Now the other set of numbers. According to Kajabi's 2026 reporting, creators on its platform have earned more than $11.7 billion cumulatively since 2010, across 100,000-plus creators. Roughly 1,800 of them have passed $1 million in lifetime earnings and more than 70 have passed $10 million, and the company reports average creator earnings of about $190,000.
Read that $190,000 carefully. It is an average, which a small number of very large businesses can drag upward, and it counts people who are paying a monthly subscription to run a course business — a population that has already selected for commitment. It is a real number that tells you something true about what the category can support. It is not a forecast for a person starting this month, and we would not quote it without this paragraph attached.
The two pictures reconcile neatly: most people who call themselves creators earn very little, most people running an actual course business earn considerably more, and the transition between those two states is the thing worth studying.
The revenue math, at three realistic tiers
Course revenue is three numbers multiplied together: how many people you can email, what share of them buy, and what you charge. Everything else — the platform, the funnel, the launch strategy — is a way of moving one of those three.
| Stage | Email list | Buyers at 2% | Price | Revenue per launch |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Starting out | 500 | 10 | $197 | $1,970 |
| Established | 2,500 | 50 | $297 | $14,850 |
| Scaled | 10,000 | 200 | $497 | $99,400 |
Three things fall out of that table that are worth more than the numbers themselves. First, the jump from tier one to tier three is fifty-fold, but the list only grew twenty-fold — the price did the rest. Second, at the starting tier a single launch does not replace an income, which is why the sensible first year is about proving the mechanism rather than quitting anything. Third, and least comfortable: if you cannot get 500 people onto an email list, the course was never the constraint.
What separates the earners
Kajabi's own data points at one factor more than any other: multi-product creators earn roughly 4.5 times what single-product creators do (Kajabi, August 2025). That is a correlation reported by a platform with an interest in you building more products, and it should be read as such — but the mechanism behind it is not mysterious. A second product sells to the people who already bought the first, at a cost of acquisition close to zero. The list you spent a year building gets monetised twice, then three times.
All three reported by Kajabi in its August 2025 announcement, about its own paying customers. Not independently audited, and not a prediction for any individual creator.
The other consistent finding in Kajabi's data is the one that most contradicts intuition: six-figure earners on the platform typically have between 1,000 and 10,000 followers. Not a hundred thousand. The people making real money from courses are, overwhelmingly, people with modest audiences who sell something specific to them repeatedly.
The cost side nobody puts in the headline
Revenue is not take-home. Two things come out before you see any of it: card processing, which is unavoidable everywhere, and the platform's cut, which is not.
| Platform model | Platform takes | You keep |
|---|---|---|
| 0% revenue share, flat subscription (Kajabi, ClickFunnels, Membership.io) | $0 of the sale, plus the monthly fee | $10,000 less your subscription |
| ~10% marketplace fee (Gumroad-style) | ~$1,000 | ~$9,000 |
| Platform cut of 8–12% (Patreon-style tiers) | $800–$1,200 | $8,800–$9,200 |
At small volumes a percentage model wins, because a flat monthly fee against $200 of sales is a bad trade. The crossover arrives faster than people expect: once a 10% cut exceeds your monthly subscription, the flat-fee platform is cheaper every month thereafter, and the gap widens with every sale. We work that same comparison through in detail on the Patreon fee-maths page, where the arithmetic is identical.
The platform behind those earnings numbers
Kajabi is the platform the $11.7 billion figure comes from, and the offer worth knowing about is three months of the Basic plan for one $99 payment — Basic lists at $179 a month, so three months at list is $537, a $438 saving. Basic covers five products, 2,500 contacts, unlimited email and landing pages, with 0% revenue share on everything you sell. New customers only; renews at $179/month unless cancelled; cancel anytime. Terms verified August 2026 — confirm at checkout. Nothing on this page is an income guarantee: the figures above describe what other people have earned, not what you will.
What to do with all this
If the table above says your list is the constraint rather than your course, the highest-value next move is to sell before you build. Preselling gets you paid and validated in the same week, and it removes the risk of recording twelve hours nobody wanted. If you have never shipped a paid product at all, a mini course built over a weekend is the shortest honest path from nothing to a first sale — and, given the multi-product finding above, the first half of a product line rather than a one-off.
Frequently asked questions
Can you make money with a small audience?
Yes, and the platform data says it is the normal case rather than the exception. Kajabi’s August 2025 announcement reported that its six-figure earners typically have only 1,000 to 10,000 followers. The reason is arithmetic: a thousand people who chose to hear from you and trust you converts at a rate an audience of a hundred thousand passive followers does not. What actually limits earnings at small scale is not the number — it is whether you have permission to email those people and something specific enough to sell them.
What is a realistic first-year goal for a course creator?
Selling anything at all, then selling the same thing repeatedly. If you want a number to aim at, a few thousand dollars in the first year from a single well-defined course sold to a list you built yourself is a genuinely good outcome, and it puts you ahead of a lot of people who never launched. The published distribution is sobering — around half of creators earn under $15,000 a year — and the useful response is not despair but sequencing: validate small, sell early, and let the second product do the compounding.
Do course creators actually make passive income?
Not in the sense the phrase implies. Courses are front-loaded rather than passive: the recording is finished and stays finished, but the selling never is. Traffic, email, launches, updates, refunds and support all continue. The honest version of the claim is that a course decouples your income from your hours in a way one-to-one work does not — which is valuable, and is a completely different statement from money arriving while you sleep.
How much does it cost to start selling courses?
Far less than the equipment industry would like. A platform subscription, a microphone if you do not own one, and your time. Everything else — a videographer, a designer, ads, a custom website — is optional and usually premature. On the platform side you are choosing between roughly $50 and $200 a month depending on what you need bundled in; our Kajabi pricing page breaks down what each tier actually includes, and the three-months-for-$99 offer exists precisely so the first quarter is not the expensive part.
Why do the platform-reported averages look so much higher than the industry ones?
Because they measure different populations. An industry-wide figure counts everyone who calls themselves a creator, including the large majority who have never sold anything. A platform average counts people who are paying a monthly subscription to run a business — a group that has already self-selected for seriousness by the time they appear in the data. Both numbers are true; neither predicts your outcome, and you should be suspicious of anyone quoting only one of them.
Keep reading
- How to Presell a Course
Get paid before you record — and refund everyone if nobody buys.
- How to Create a Mini Course
One result, 60 to 120 minutes, built over a single weekend.
- Kajabi 3 Months for $99
The offer, the savings math and how to claim it.
- Kajabi Pricing
Every 2026 plan, contact caps and the cheapest legitimate route in.
- Membership vs Online Course
One-time revenue against recurring, worked through with real numbers.