22 Udemy Courses, 8 Bestsellers, $2,124 a Month on Average: Building a "Shelf of Courses" on an Overseas Platform
A Udemy instructor teaching coaching and video production publishes a sales report covering 22 courses (8 of them bestsellers). Instructor income averages $2,124 a month (about ¥319,000), of which roughly ¥150,000 comes via Udemy. The report even discloses per-course profitability: non-selling courses bring in about ¥1,000 a month, while bestsellers earn tens of thousands of yen monthly.
This is a translation of the Japanese original. The Japanese version and cited primary sources are authoritative for all figures.
The published numbers
| Item | Figure |
|---|---|
| Average monthly income | $2,124 (about ¥319,000) (the entire instructor business; roughly ¥150,000/month of it via Udemy) |
| Number of courses | 22 courses (8 bestsellers, 4 highest-rated) |
| Monthly income per course | ~¥1,000 for non-selling courses / tens of thousands of yen for bestsellers |
| Revenue share | 97% via instructor coupons / 37% via Udemy-driven sales (¥481–666 per student on courses priced ¥1,300–1,800) |
What the breakdown of a 22-course portfolio tells us
The value of this case lies in its unvarnished disclosure of the gap between courses. Of the 22, the revenue pillars are the 8 bestsellers; the rest earn around ¥1,000 a month — a hit rate of just under 40%, meaning you can’t know which course will land until you ship it. In Takizawa’s 9-course record, the first course likewise ended at $165. The Udemy instructor business is not a “pour everything into one course” game but a statistical one: publish multiple courses and let the hits reinforce each other.
The disclosure of ¥481–666 per student is also practically useful. On sale-driven Udemy, business math has to run on this “effective unit price” rather than list price. To build ¥150,000 a month, you need 250–300 new students every month — a number that serves as the starting point for working backwards.
Where the ¥150,000 fits, and the overall design of an instructor business
In the author’s income mix, Udemy is the base revenue accounting for a bit under half of the total (about ¥319,000); the rest comes from his own coaching and related businesses. Here you can see the right way to use a course platform. Udemy students are learners hunting for the lowest price, so the price ceiling is low. But they are also the best prospects imaginable — “people who have listened to your lectures for hours.” Using Udemy as both a revenue source and an acquisition engine, then connecting it to a higher-priced core business (coaching, consulting, production work) is the rational two-tier design for an instructor business — the same structure as JUN connecting Coconala to client acquisition for his tax accounting office.
Related reading
Sources
This article summarizes and analyzes the public sources above. Please refer to the primary sources for details.