If you launch a course on Udemy and a student buys it through their organic search or affiliate network, Udemy takes roughly 63% of the revenue.
When creators see this, they usually get furious. "I did 100% of the work creating the course! Why are they taking most of the money?"
This frustration comes from a fundamental misunderstanding of how the internet works. On the internet, creation is a commodity. Discoverability is a monopoly.
Let's break down the "Discoverability Tax."
The Myth of "Build It and They Will Come"
In the physical world, real estate matters. If you open a coffee shop on the busiest intersection in New York City, people will walk in simply because you exist in their line of sight.
The internet does not have physical foot traffic. The internet is an infinitely vast, pitch-black void. If you build a website, a course, or an app, and put it on your own server, absolutely zero people will find it unless you actively drag them there.
Creating the product is only 20% of the battle. Getting people to look at it is the other 80%.
What Are You Actually Paying For?
When you put a course on Udemy, or an app on the Apple App Store, or a video on YouTube, you are not paying them for hosting. Hosting is virtually free.
You are paying for Distribution and Trust.
Udemy spends millions of dollars on Google Ads, SEO, and brand awareness so that when someone searches "Learn Python," Udemy is the first thing they see. They have aggregated the demand.
When Udemy takes 63% of your course sale, they are essentially charging you a finder's fee for a customer you would have never reached on your own.
The Math of the Discoverability Tax
Imagine you refuse to pay the Discoverability Tax. You decide to host the course on your own website using Stripe, where you keep 97% of the revenue.
Now, you have to run your own Facebook ads. You spend $1,000 on ads to generate $1,200 in sales. Your profit is $200. You spent days tweaking ad creatives, managing campaigns, and dealing with customer support.
If you put that same course on Udemy, and their algorithm pushes it to their existing user base generating $1,200 in sales, they take $756. You keep $444.
You actually made more profit ($444 vs $200), with zero marketing effort, by happily paying the Discoverability Tax.
The Polymath Strategy
If you have no audience, you must pay the Discoverability Tax. Rent the audience from Udemy, YouTube, or Amazon.
But the ultimate goal of a creator should be to use those platforms to slowly build your own audience (an email list). Once you own the distribution, you no longer have to pay the tax.
Stop getting mad at the platform. Understand the math of attention, use their distribution to your advantage, and eventually, build your own.