A listing on their marketplace, or a site of your own
Udemy, Skillshare and their peers are marketplaces. They own the customer, set the discount calendar, and pay you a share. That model works for a few very large sellers. For most trainers it means low prices, low share, and learners who never learn your name.
Who owns the learner
On a marketplace, the learner is the marketplace’s customer. You cannot email them. You cannot see their progress across your courses. When they search for your next course, they see your competitors’ courses too, on the same page, with the same discount.
On RacingOwl, the learner signed up on your site. They see your catalogue, your announcements, your discussions. Your competitors are not on the page.
Who sets the price
Marketplaces run near-permanent sales. A course listed at ₹3,499 sells at ₹449 for most of the year, and the platform decides when. You keep a percentage of whatever it sold for — typically around 37% when the marketplace brought the buyer.
On RacingOwl you set the price and it stays there until you change it. Discounts are yours to create, name, time-limit and switch off.
What you keep
| Udemy (marketplace sale) | RacingOwl | |
|---|---|---|
| Course listed at | ₹3,499 | ₹3,499 |
| Typically sold at | ₹449 (during a sale) | ₹3,499, or whatever you set |
| Your share | ~37% | 100% less Razorpay's fee |
| You receive | ~₹166 | ₹3,499 less Razorpay's fee |
The marketplace brings volume you might not bring yourself. Whether that trade is worth it depends on whether you have any way to reach learners on your own. If you have a WhatsApp group, a class, a following or a neighbourhood, you do.
What the marketplace does not give you
- Live classes with a meeting link, one-off or repeating
- A membership for all your courses
- Site-wide announcements to your learners
- A drop-off chart showing where learners stop
- Your own address and branding
- Reviews that only completers can write
RacingOwl has a Marketplace too
Every course you publish and list on RacingOwl is on the RacingOwl Marketplace, where learners search by subject, level, language, city, price and rating. The difference is what happens when they click: they land on your site, not a marketplace page, and the price they see is the one you set.