There has been some real drama in the online course industry lately. People are making all sorts of claims and promises that maybe they shouldn’t be, and big names are quietly (or not so quietly) shutting down flagship programs while telling stories that don’t quite add up.

I talk a lot about online courses and digital products here on my channel and in my business as a whole, so I think it’s time we finally have an honest conversation about what’s really going on. Are online courses still selling? Is this still a viable business model? Or has the ship sailed?

The short answer: it’s complicated. The longer answer is what this article is all about.

Why This Conversation Matters

What inspired this piece was a video from my old friend Jessica Stansberry, where she came right out and said she doesn’t think digital products are really selling anymore. Based on that conclusion, she decided to stop teaching digital products and pulled most of hers off the market.

What’s interesting is that she still has a couple of digital products available, and she says they are selling. So the question isn’t really “are courses selling?” — it’s which courses, which strategies, and in which industries.

If you have an online course right now and you’re struggling to sell it, you might be wondering: is it me? Is it my marketing? Or is it just the market? And if you’re thinking about creating a course because you’ve heard about the passive income and scalability, you might now be having second thoughts.

There’s also the elephant in the room: why would anyone buy a $300 or $500 course when they can just ask ChatGPT? That’s a legitimate question, and we’ll get to it.

The Eras of the Online Course Industry

To understand where we are now, it helps to understand where we came from.

Pre-2010: The Wild West

Long before “online courses” were a thing, people were selling the equivalent through newspaper ads — courses on VHS and audio cassette that you’d order by check and wait for in the mail. That gradually morphed into selling courses online, but originally through those infamous long-form text sales letters with the red underlines, yellow highlights, and wild claims.

If you remember those pages, you’ve been around a while. I caught the tail end of this era — I graduated high school in 2010 and was already getting interested in online business.

2010–2019: The Online Gold Rush

This was the dot-com bubble of online courses. So many people jumped in, and people were legitimately having six-figure launches and making millions. A lot of big names rose to popularity in this period — and a lot of them also burned out, grew too quickly without knowing how to run a business, or got overwhelmed by the fame. I personally know several people this happened to.

Bottom line: it was easy to grow, so a lot of people grew really quickly — with mixed consequences.

2020: A Year Unto Itself

2020 was funky. We all know that. Everybody was at home looking for new ways to make a living, which meant they were watching webinars and buying courses about how to make courses or start an online business.

I personally had my biggest launches ever in 2020. In some ways, this might have been the very height of the online course industry — there was no ChatGPT yet, and demand was through the roof. More dollars were probably spent on digital products in 2020 than any year before, and possibly any year since.

2021–2026: Maturity and Contraction (Sort Of)

The industry kept growing, but it started to look different. More on that in a moment.

What the Data Actually Says

This industry is notoriously hard to measure because so many sales happen behind closed doors with very small businesses. So I asked ChatGPT for the actual numbers, and here’s roughly what came back:

Early 2000s: ~$2–5 billion/year
2005–2010: ~$20–50 billion
2015: ~$107 billion (per a Forbes piece from late 2014 and this Inc. article as well)
2019: ~$200 billion
2020: roughly the same as 2019 (which honestly surprised me, given what I saw on the ground)
2023: $260+ billion
2024: $300+ billion (source)
2025: well over $300 billion (source)
2026 (projected): possibly a slight decline
2030 (projected): $800+ billion

(Here’s a great summary piece that pulls together many of these numbers: The eLearning Market Size and Trends)

The 2026 dip is interesting, but I’d argue it probably says more about the broader economy than about online courses specifically. People are spending less on everything right now.

The big takeaway? The industry is bigger in terms of dollars than it has ever been. It’s not dying. It’s just changing.

What’s Actually Different Now

From my own experience working in this space, two things have shifted significantly since 2020.

1. There’s More Competition

There are more players in the online course space than ever before. A lot of people got their start in 2020, and the industry as a whole has matured. Standing out is harder — even for those of us who’ve been here a long time. I started my business in 2016 and started selling courses in 2017. Jessica started a couple of years before me. Amy Porterfield, who’s been under a lot of scrutiny lately, has been at it even longer.

2. Some Industries Are Saturated — But Not All

Most industries are actually just as easy, if not easier, to sell courses in than ever before. Truly.

But my industry — online marketing and digital business — is different. This is the industry that has been selling online courses the longest. The buyers here are the most sophisticated, the most skeptical, and frankly, the most desensitized.

I’ll raise my hand here: I’ve bought a lot of courses over the years. And I’ve learned two things. First, sometimes I buy courses I never use. Second, sometimes courses aren’t nearly as good as promised. That’s made me a much more discerning buyer — and I’m not alone. The marketing niche is the noisiest space to sell into, and you’re facing the savviest buyers.

My Honest Experience

When I first started, I had no audience. As my audience grew, it became easier and easier to sell my courses. 2020 was definitely a peak. Since then, things have been kind of flat in my main brand, and it has been more challenging to make sales in this specific industry.

I think this comes down to buyer sophistication, saturation, and desensitization to the most common marketing strategies — including the classic evergreen webinar funnel that I’ve used and loved for years.

Here’s the good news: that funnel still works really well in basically every other industry. With my YouTube strategy course, Creator Fast Track, we still get sales every week from an evergreen webinar I recorded a long time ago.

I recently interviewed my friend Jacques Hopkins, who started in 2013 with a course called Piano in 21 Days and now runs a brand called The Online Course Guy. He told me he experiences the exact same thing: his piano course consistently makes five figures a month from an evergreen webinar, but for his online course brand, he has to get creative — using a “choose your own adventure” style webinar and live launches to break through.

So yes, you have to work harder in the marketing niche than you did 10 years ago. No doubt about that. But online courses are still my bread and butter, and my business is doing just fine.

The Amy Porterfield Situation

This brings us back to what Jessica was talking about — and what Amy Porterfield did recently when she shut down her flagship program, Digital Course Academy.

She’d been running that program for years, reportedly making millions. Then a few months ago, she suddenly announced she was shutting it down completely because she “has a heart for entrepreneurs at a more advanced stage and wants to work with them more closely.”

A lot of people called BS on this. And here’s why: those of us in this industry know that if a course is genuinely making millions in profit, you don’t shut it down. Even if you want to work with a different audience, you’d just keep selling a self-study version on the side.

Now, this is purely my speculation, but here’s what I think was actually happening: Amy probably was generating millions in revenue. I don’t think she was lying about that. But to generate those numbers, she was almost certainly spending millions on ads to drive enough leads to fill those webinars, plus paying a huge team to run the high-production launches and support students.

I make videos, I run a podcast, I have an email list, I’ve run plenty of ads. To get the webinar numbers she was getting with the relatively modest organic presence I can publicly see, paid traffic had to be doing a lot of heavy lifting. She’s also now switching to a model with a much smaller team — something a lot of us in this industry have been quietly doing.

There’s nothing wrong with downsizing for higher profit margins. In fact, it’s smart. I’ve been slowly downsizing my own team for the last couple of years and returning to the solopreneur life I started with. What gave people the ick wasn’t the business decision — it was the lack of honesty about why the decision was being made.

So… Why Would Anyone Buy a Course Instead of Just Asking ChatGPT?

Let’s tackle the AI question head-on, because I have a really good recent example.

A few days ago, I was researching how to edit videos with AI. I did a quick YouTube search, watched a video, and immediately bought the $200 course from the YouTuber whose video I’d just watched. The information was good and I wanted the full system.

Here’s why courses still sell in the age of AI:

Video is powerful in ways text isn’t. Sometimes you need to see how to fix a problem, not just read instructions.

Most buyers aren’t on their first attempt. When someone is buying a course, they’ve often already tried and failed. Black-and-white instructions from ChatGPT aren’t going to change everything. They want real people’s experience, real nuance, real examples.

Take weight loss as a (slightly cliché) example. People can throw out advice like “just eat less and move more,” but anyone who’s actually tried knows it’s a lot easier said than done. That advice works for some people; most of us need more nuance, real examples, and real human support and connection. ChatGPT can help with parts of that, but it can’t replace the human element.

My Best Advice If You’re Selling (or Thinking About Selling) a Course

If you’re trying to sell a course right now, or you’re considering getting into this industry, here’s what I’d tell you:

Don’t try to cold-pitch your course or advertise your way straight to sales. Build an audience first.

When you build an audience, you’re not just connecting with potential buyers — you’re building deep connections. Not the kind you get from a paid ad, but the kind where someone has chosen to follow you because they’re interested in your topic, they like you, and they’re coming to trust you as an expert.

If they’re willing to invest their time in your free content, there’s a high chance they’ll be willing to invest money too — especially if you bring something unique to the table.

And don’t hear me wrong: that doesn’t mean you need to reinvent the wheel. There’s nothing new under the sun. The unique thing you bring is often just your unique perspective, your personality that people connect with, or your story that resonates because they see themselves in it and want your guidance overcoming what you’ve already overcome.

The Bottom Line

Online courses are still selling. In fact, the industry is bigger in dollar terms than it literally has ever been. There’s more competition (especially from AI), and a few industries — mine in particular — have gotten harder to sell into. But for most niches, this is still a fantastic opportunity.

If you’re considering creating a course, or you have one that’s struggling, prioritize building your audience. You need to do it anyway to connect with potential customers, and it’s far more effective than just running paid ads to your course. When you build an audience, you don’t just attract followers — you attract fans, people who love your work and want to learn more from you.

This is one of the biggest factors that separates successful course creators from those who really struggle. And it’s something I’ve been thinking about a lot lately — both backwards-engineering what’s worked for me over the past decade and paying close attention to what’s working for my clients in real time, right now in 2026.

Watch My New Video — Free Early Access

I’ve put together a brand-new video on the three biggest mistakes people are making as they’re working to build their audiences in 2026 — and how to avoid them.

The video won’t be released on my YouTube channel for about another month (we’ve got content lined up until then), but I’ve decided to give my readers and listeners free early access on my website right now.

👉 Watch it free at gillianperkins.com/early-access

If audience-building has been the missing piece in your course business, this is the one to watch first. I’ll see you over there.

Until next time — stay focused and take action.

Are Online Courses Still Selling in 2026? An Honest Look at the State of the Industry

Why This Conversation Matters