How to Sell Online Courses From Your Own Website (WordPress Guide)

You’ve got knowledge that people might pay for, and perhaps your course is even pre-recorded. Now comes a crucial decision that can significantly influence your earnings: where to sell it.

Listing your course on a platform like Udemy could see you handing over up to 63% of each sale. Conversely, if you host it on your personal WordPress site, your expenses would only amount to a few dollars for hosting plus standard card processing fees. For a course priced at $100, that equates to retaining $37 versus nearly $97.

This guide details how to market and sell your online courses via your own website. We’ll crunch the numbers regarding fees, choose a suitable pricing model, link payment options, streamline checkout processes, and strategise a straightforward launch with discounts. However, this won’t touch on course creation; we already provide a comprehensive guide for developing an online course using WordPress. This article is focused on the financial aspect.

Let’s dive right in!

Step 1: Choose Your Selling Platform

You have three viable options for selling a course:

• A marketplace like Udemy. They attract the audience, you provide the content, and they take a sizeable commission.
• A hosted course platform such as Teachable. They take care of the technical side for a monthly fee, along with transaction costs on basic plans.
• Your own WordPress website using a Learning Management System (LMS) plugin. You maintain complete ownership and profits, but gaining customers is entirely your responsibility.

None of these are inherently wrong, yet the costs vary immensely, so let’s input some concrete figures. Suppose you sell a $100 course 20 times in a month, leading to $2,000 in gross revenue. Here’s an approximate breakdown of what you keep in each situation:

The details matter, so let’s clarify:

• Udemy’s fee structure means you get 97% if the student purchases via your coupon or referral link, and only 37% otherwise. This is based on the “net amount”: Udemy deducts taxes and app-store fees from the amount before your share, with card processing costs covered by them. Be mindful: if Udemy runs a promotional campaign, your share diminishes proportionally to the sale price.
• Teachable’s Starter plan is $29 per month when billed annually ($39 per month on a month-to-month basis), with an additional 7.5% transaction fee. Plans with zero transaction fees begin at $69 per month (Builder, billed annually).
• With your own site (and with Teachable, for that matter), card processing still applies: Stripe’s typical rate is 2.9% + 30¢ per successful transaction. So on twenty $100 sales, this approximates to about $64, leading your actual take-home on your site to closer to $1,926. Still the most lucrative option by far.

Another aspect not outlined in the table: ownership. When you choose to sell through your own platform, you set the price, manage sales, and, crucially, own each customer’s email. In contrast, on a marketplace, your customers are tied to them: you can only interact with your students based on the platform’s messaging system and rules. This dependency is their method of retaining control over your traffic.

When a marketplace may be a superior choice

One might expect a WordPress product company to advocate solely for “own-site,” but that isn’t always the case.

• If you lack an audience and marketing skills. Udemy’s marketplace brings shoppers directly to your course. Conversely, your own site requires heavy lifting, as each visitor is your responsibility. If the thought of creating blog posts and composing emails drains you, a marketplace could be worth the commission.
• If you want to swiftly validate a topic. Publishing on a marketplace is quick and inexpensive upfront. If you make sales there, that serves as valuable data before committing weeks to your own platform.
• If you’d rather not handle tech, refunds, or taxes. On your own site, you’re both the store owner and customer support. Many would consider trading margin for the peace of mind from avoiding chargeback emails.

A common strategy is to begin on a marketplace with a basic course as a way to attract interest, while placing your premium offerings on your own website to retain a greater portion of revenue. If you already have an audience (such as an email list, YouTube channel, or a well-trafficked blog), the choice to sell from your own site will consistently yield better financial results. Let’s proceed to the setup process.

Step 2: Configure WordPress and Your LMS

To sell courses via your own website, you’ll need three essentials: hosting, WordPress, and an LMS plugin. LMS refers to Learning Management System, the tool that manages your courses, students, and payments. Though it may sound tedious, it’s beneficial to understand the term.

For hosting, a decent shared plan typically costs around $5–10 a month. Ensure it includes SSL, which gives your site the padlock icon for https, as you cannot securely process card payments without it. Most hosts provide this for free nowadays.

For the LMS, this guide focuses on our very own Masteriyo.

Install it similarly to any plugin: Plugins → Add New, search for “Masteriyo,” install, and activate it. The installation wizard operates independently and offers starter templates, complete demo course sites that you can import and personalise with your own content:

Choose one that suits you (or skip and design later), and you’ll be set up.

From this point, the actual course development (curriculum, lessons, videos, quizzes) is a separate topic, and as promised, we will not revisit it here. Complete the course creation guide, and our WordPress LMS guide will cover the wider picture. Return once your course is prepared for sale.

Step 3: Choose a Pricing Model

Before adjusting any settings, determine how you wish to charge. Your primary options include:

• Free course. This might seem counterintuitive in a “money-making” guide, but it’s not. Offering a free introductory course is the quickest path to build an email list of individuals likely to buy the paid version.
• One-time fee. The traditional model. Students pay once for lifetime access (or as long as you allow). It’s easy to understand, straightforward to purchase, and an ideal starting point.
• Recurring subscription. Learners pay monthly or yearly for ongoing access. This model works well for courses you continuously update, or a comprehensive catalogue under one membership.

In Masteriyo, pricing can be managed in the course settings under Masteriyo → Courses → Edit course → Settings → Pricing. Free and one-time pricing options are readily available. Here’s how a paid course page appears to your visitors, complete with pricing, curriculum, and a Buy Now button:

And here’s the course archive, displaying your course offerings with prices prominently featured:

Recurring pricing is an exclusive Pro feature; Masteriyo’s paid plans begin at $99 per year for Basic, while Pro is available for $149 annually, including subscriptions, coupons, sale pricing, course bundles, and advanced quiz features. Remember: those are promotional rates, and renewals occur at the higher “normal” rates of $199 and $299 per year, respectively.

If you opt for the subscription model, the settings will appear like this, exhibiting pricing, billing cycles, and any optional expiration:

And the actual price tag? The key takeaway: value the outcome rather than the video length. A two-hour course leading to a promotion is worth more than a twenty-hour course that doesn’t deliver.

Practical Tip: Launch with a one-time price as your opening strategy. Subscriptions are beneficial once you have enough content that “paying to retain access” feels justified, and they also complicate your life with churn rates, failed payments, and renewal queries. Focus on earning the trust to introduce complexity later. If recurring revenue is your immediate goal, check out our guide on starting a membership site.

Step 4: Link Your Payment Methods

It’s time to start earning! Navigate to Masteriyo → Settings → Payments → Payment Methods:

Here’s what you can enable:

• Offline payments: Useful for bank transfers and corporate clients. Since money moves online, you’ll manually mark the order as paid once the funds arrive. This feature is integrated.
• PayPal: This is also built into the free plugin. Connect your PayPal account, and you are good to go.
• Stripe: This is the preferred choice for card transactions. It’s an add-on free of charge: head to Masteriyo → Addons, enable Stripe, then connect your Stripe account back on this screen.

(Mollie and Lemon Squeezy are free add-ons as well, if those are your preferred payment gateways.)

How much does it cost? Stripe’s standard rate is 2.9% + 30¢ for each domestic successful card charge. International cards incur an extra 1.5%, and currency conversion adds another 1%. That’s the entire cost associated with selling on the free Masteriyo plan, as there’s no platform fee on top. PayPal also has its own processing fees, so refer to their site for the latest rates.

PRO TIP: If you use a caching plugin, be sure to exclude your checkout, account, and learning pages from being cached. Cached checkout pages can lead to unusual, hard-to-solve issues like prices not updating and orders disappearing. A quick five minutes of configuration can save you a lot of support headaches later.

Step 5: Configure Checkout and Start Earning

Here’s the best part of using your own site: Masteriyo automatically creates your checkout page. You don’t need WooCommerce, a cart plugin, or additional extensions. When a student clicks the Buy Now button, they are directed to a checkout page summarising their order, complete with a field for coupons and any enabled payment methods:

Once they pay, an account is created for them, and they’re enrolled automatically. Simple and efficient.

Before you make any announcements, purchase your own course. Conduct a real $1 test transaction (or use your payment gateway’s sandbox mode) and walk through the entire student experience: checkout, confirmation email, login, course access. In about ten minutes, you can identify any embarrassing glitches, such as broken emails or incorrect pricing, before your customers do.

Now for the cash flow! Because the payment gateways are yours, all revenue generated goes directly to you from the very first sale. Stripe manages payment collection and disburses your funds to your bank on a rolling schedule. You won’t find yourself waiting for a marketplace’s monthly payout cycle or reaching minimum thresholds for releases.

Two additional administrative points worth noting:

• Taxes: There’s a Taxes section under the Payments settings if you need to levy sales tax or VAT. Whether this applies to you is a query for an accountant, so do consult one.
• Refunds: You determine the policies and process refunds through Stripe or PayPal. A typical 14 to 30-day refund period is standard in the course industry, significantly reducing consumer risk.

Indeed, as the business owner, the occasional “I can’t log in” email will land in your inbox instead of someone else’s support line. However, for many course sellers, this trade-off is worth it, considering the benefits of a 0% platform fee. Just be prepared for this reality.

An additional scenario: if you are already using WooCommerce, Masteriyo can integrate with it for free, allowing courses to coexist alongside your other products. However, for a courses-only store, the built-in checkout method above is simpler, so only integrate WooCommerce if you require its specific features.

Step 6: Launch with Special Offers and Discounts

Don’t merely publish your course and wait for results. Instead, orchestrate a launch: a dedicated timeframe where something special occurs. Coupons are the traditional tool for this, and they’re a Pro feature in Masteriyo: $149/year at the introductory price, with renewals at the $299 “normal” rate. Factor this into your initial year’s budget.

Creating a coupon only takes a minute. Navigate to Masteriyo → Coupons → Add New, then set the discount code, type, amount, applicable courses, whether it can be combined with other offers, and usage limitations:

Here’s a proven launch strategy:

1. First, build a small waiting list. Even 50 emails suffice. A free mini-course or a simple “notify me” signup form can help you reach this goal.
2. Offer early-bird pricing for 72 hours. Give an authentic discount of 20 to 30%, along with a real deadline. A “20% off until Friday” offer is far more compelling than simply stating, “please buy my course.”
3. Limit the coupon to create urgency. Setting a maximum of 25 usages cultivates genuine demand without needing fake countdown timers.
4. Then stop offering the discount. Endless discounts can train your audience to expect reduced prices. Once the promotional period concludes, so should the discount.

If you’re on the free plan and lack coupon options, you can still run a launch: set a lower one-time price for launch week, promote it to your list, and then elevate it to the regular price afterwards. It’s slightly more manual, but has the same effect.

Conclusion

Let’s summarise:

• Marketplaces provide exposure but retain up to 63% of sales; your own site only incurs hosting plus around 2.9% + 30¢ in card processing fees.
• The combination of WordPress, a free LMS like Masteriyo, and Stripe is the most economical setup and remains cost-effective as your sales increase.
• Begin with a one-time pricing model, and consider subscriptions (Pro) once your course offerings justify them.
• Launch with a distinct early-bird discount period before reverting to regular pricing.

In summary, if you possess any audience, or are prepared to cultivate one, selling via your personal website is the ideal approach. The financial outcomes are significantly improved, plus you maintain ownership of customer relations, which is far more valuable than any individual sale. If you start with no audience and have no interest in marketing, beginning on a marketplace for topic validation can be worthwhile before shifting over.

Either way, the setup outlined here will take only a few hours. The next steps depend on you!

Do you have any questions about selling courses on your own site? Or perhaps a tale to share about marketplace fees? Let us know in the comments section below!

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