YB.DigitalCreate your online academy
You already know enough
to teach it — and get paid for it
I turned SAP consulting experience into online courses with 130,000+ students. The biggest lesson from 7 years of selling courses: the marketplaces got me started, but my own academy is where the real business lives. Here's the platform I recommend to build yours.
Affiliate disclosure: the link above is an affiliate link. If you sign up through it, I earn a commission at no extra cost to you.
The marketplace trap
On someone else's platform, you're a tenant
I know marketplaces well — I built my student base on them, and they're a great start. But the trade-offs are real: the platform owns the customer relationship, takes a large cut of every sale, sets the pricing rules, and can change the algorithm that feeds you students overnight. Your own academy flips all of that: your prices, your brand, your student emails, your recurring revenue.
The courses that changed my business are not the ones with the most students — they're the ones where I own the relationship with every single buyer.
From knowledge to academy
Three steps, no tech skills required
Outline what you know
Your professional experience is the curriculum. If people ask you questions at work, that's a course topic — I started with nothing more than SAP transactions I used every day.
Build on a done-for-you platform
The platform I recommend handles the hard parts: hosting, video delivery, payments, certificates, student accounts. You focus on the content, it runs the school.
Sell under your own brand
Your domain, your prices, your email list. Every free video you publish becomes a funnel into an academy you actually own.
What your own academy gives you
Everything the marketplaces keep for themselves
- Keep the revenue instead of a marketplace cut
- Set your own prices — no forced discounts
- Own your students' emails and relationships
- Sell bundles, subscriptions, and coaching
- Your brand on every page and certificate
- No algorithm deciding your visibility
Questions
Before you start
Do I need an audience first?
It helps, but it's not a requirement. I recommend building both in parallel: publish free content on YouTube or LinkedIn about your expertise, and let it feed your academy. My own free tutorials are what fill my paid courses.
Do I need to be a world-class expert?
No — you need to be a few steps ahead of your student. A practitioner who explains clearly beats a distant guru every time. I teach SAP transactions, not theory, and that practicality is exactly why the courses sell.
What about tech setup, video hosting, payments?
All handled by the platform: it hosts the videos, processes payments in your currency, delivers certificates, and manages student logins. If you can fill in a form, you can launch an academy.
Marketplace or my own academy — which first?
Honestly? Both have a role. Marketplaces bring discovery, your academy brings ownership and margin. But if I were starting today, I'd build my own academy from day one and treat marketplaces as a marketing channel, not the business.
Your expertise is the product. Build the store.
Take the free trial, outline your first course this week, and see how it feels to have a school with your name on the door.
Start your academyAffiliate link — I earn a commission if you sign up, at no extra cost to you.