# Market size: how many potential customers Stapilo has

> Researched 2026-10-25 for Stapilo's investor case. Stapilo is an international platform
> priced in USD. Every number has a source and a date (see **Sources**). **⚠ = unverified**:
> a third-party estimate, a figure I could not trace to a primary source, a stale figure, or my
> own judgement. *Derived* numbers are my arithmetic on sourced inputs, and the formula is
> shown. Nothing is invented. If a number isn't here, I didn't find a source for it.
> ARPU figures come from the sister file `arpu-and-market-split.md`, same date.

---

## Summary

1. **There is no clean global count of people who sell knowledge or services online.** Every count measures something different. The defensible anchors:
   - **Coaches:** **122,974** ICF-counted coach practitioners worldwide (ICF/PwC, Sept 2025). That is a floor. A broader US-only study counts **232,000+** coaches in the US alone (Marketdata, Dec 2025 ⚠ vendor).
   - **Creators:** **~50M** creators worldwide, of whom **~4% (~2M, *derived*)** earn over $100k a year (Goldman Sachs, 2023). Broad definitions reach **200M** (Linktree 2022) or **303M** (Adobe 2022). Those count anyone earning anything and are useless for a SaaS TAM.
   - **Course and product sellers:** **200,000+** sellers on Hotmart + Teachable combined (Mar 2024). **300,000+** creators on Patreon. **100,000+** creators have used Kajabi over its lifetime (Aug 2025).
2. **People who already pay for a platform like this: about 0.4–0.6M unique businesses on the core creator/expert platforms** (*derived* ⚠ judgement on overlap). That rises to **~1.5–3M** if you add the adjacent tools: HighLevel's 1M businesses, Mailchimp's 800k paying customers (2021), and fee-based marketplaces.
   The core platforms' self-reported customer counts add up to **~0.65M accounts** before removing overlap.
3. **Revenue cross-check.** The known revenues of the core platforms add up to roughly **$0.4–0.6B/yr** (Kajabi $100M+ 2022, HighLevel >$80M 2024 ⚠, Thinkific $73M 2025, Kit ~$43–52M ⚠, Stan ~$35M ⚠, Circle and Skool ~$27M each ⚠). That matches **0.4–0.6M customers × $100–150/month**, so the customer-count estimate holds together.
4. **Growth is real, but the incumbents grow slowly.** Coaching revenue grew **+17%** in two years (ICF 2023 → 2025 studies) and practitioners **+15%**. Creator counts are expected to grow **10–20%/yr** (Goldman). Online education is forecast at **~8%/yr** (Statista via Baker Tilly).
   The listed incumbent grows slower: Thinkific revenue was **+9%** in 2025, ARR was $61.7M in Q2 2026, and ARPU **+5%**. Stan slowed to **~24%** growth (Sacra ⚠). The headline "creator economy $250B → $480B" (Goldman 2023) is mostly brand deals and ad payouts, not software spend, so it does **not** belong in a TAM.
5. **The market is about half English and half not.** English is **49.5%** of websites (W3Techs, Oct 2026). The US is **~49%** of online education revenue (Statista 2025 via Baker Tilly). ICF counted North America at **~33%** of coaches, Western Europe **~29%** and Latin America **~15%** (2019 data, *derived*). Mailchimp had **50%** of customers outside the US (2021).
   Hotmart (Brazil, 200k+ sellers with Teachable) and Systeme.io (French-founded, "500,000+ entrepreneurs") show that non-English creator markets are large. Brazil added **+73M** creators in 2020–22 per Adobe, the biggest jump of any country studied.
6. **TAM / SAM / SOM (ranges, logic below):**
   - **TAM:** **~3–10M** solo and small businesses worldwide that sell knowledge or services online (⚠ triangulated judgement). At $50–150/month that is **~$2–18B/yr** of potential software spend (*derived*).
   - **SAM:** **~0.4–0.6M** businesses already paying for creator/expert all-in-one or course/community tools, **≈ $0.5–1.1B/yr** (*derived*). Broadened to adjacent tools, it is **1.5–3M**.
   - **SOM (3–5 years):** **~2,000–10,000 paying customers ≈ $2–11M ARR** at a $95/month ARPU. That is **~0.5–2%** of the core SAM, and comparable to what Systeme.io reached bootstrapped in ~3 years (8,000 paying by 2021).

---

## 1. How many people sell knowledge or services online

Each row says what the number actually counts. These overlap heavily: a coach can also be a course creator and a "creator". **Do not add the rows together.**

### 1a. Coaches

| Figure | What it counts | Source / date | Quality |
|---|---|---|---|
| **122,974** coach practitioners worldwide, up 15% vs the 2023 study; industry revenue **$5.34B** | Practising coaches reached by ICF's survey (10,000+ respondents), conducted by PwC. Skews to credentialed, professional coaches. | ICF 2025 Global Coaching Study, exec summary, 2025-09-15 | Primary (survey). The full report is paid. |
| 109,200 practitioners (2022 base) | Same method, earlier study | ICF 2023 study (via ICF blog) | Primary |
| ~71,000 practitioners in 2019: North America ~23,300, Western Europe ~20,400, Latin America ~11,000 | Regional split. The latest regional figures I found. | ICF 2020 study exec summary (via search summary) ⚠ I didn't open the PDF | Primary, stale |
| **232,000+** coaches **in the US**; US coaching industry **$16B**, "more than doubled since 2016" | Life, health and executive coaches, credentialed or not | Marketdata via ResearchAndMarkets press release, 2025-12-04 ⚠ (headline only; the page refused my fetch) | ⚠ Vendor estimate. Marketdata is a small firm with long-running US service-industry series, and its method isn't public in the release. |
| ICF summary: 60% of coaches also provide training, 57% consulting, 55% facilitation | Coaches sell more than coaching. This is the overlap with "consultants" and "educators". | ICF 2025 (search summary of ICF pages) | Primary |

**Reading.** ICF's ~123k is the credible **floor**. The US-only 232k (Marketdata) is almost twice ICF's *global* count, which shows how much ICF misses: uncredentialed life, health, fitness and business coaches.
A global count that includes those coaches is plausibly **0.5–1M+** (⚠ my extrapolation, not a sourced number; no source gives it). Use it as a range with this caveat, never as a fact.

### 1b. Creators who earn money

| Figure | What it counts | Source / date | Quality |
|---|---|---|---|
| **~50M** creators worldwide, growing **10–20%/yr**. Only **~4%** are "professionals" earning >$100k/yr → **~2M** (*derived*: 50M × 4%). Brand deals ≈ 70% of creator revenue. | Social-media creators broadly | Goldman Sachs Research (Eric Sheridan), "The creator economy could approach half-a-trillion dollars by 2027", 2023 ⚠ (Goldman's page refused my fetch; figures confirmed through search snippets of the page) | Primary bank research, but it is a 2023 estimate |
| 67M creators in 2025 → 107M by 2030 (attributed to Goldman) | — | Secondary mention only ⚠ | Unverified. Don't use. |
| **70M** content creators worldwide, of whom **3–4%** make a living from it | Global estimate cited by Hotmart at its FIRE 2025 event | Canaltech, 2025-08-29 | Company-cited estimate ⚠ |
| **303M** creators (+165M since 2020) | "People earning money online from their content, goods or services", in 9 countries | Adobe Future of Creativity study, Sept 2022 | Primary survey, very broad definition |
| **200M+** people "could be classified as a creator". Among full-timers, **12%** earn >$50k and **46%** earn <$1k. | Anyone who monetizes an audience (~9,500 respondents) | Linktree 2022 Creator Report (via Tubefilter, 2022-04-20) | Primary survey, broad definition, stale |
| 17% of creators are business owners | — | Adobe 2022 (via coverage) | Primary survey |

**Reading.** The usable slice for Stapilo is creators who sell **their own** products or services, not brand deals. A reasonable proxy is Goldman's ~2M professionals plus part of the long tail that sells courses, coaching and memberships. Adobe's "17% are business owners" applied to Goldman's 50M gives **~8.5M** (*derived* ⚠, mixing two studies with different definitions).

### 1c. Course creators, community owners and digital-product sellers

| Figure | What it counts | Source / date |
|---|---|---|
| **200,000+** creators selling on Hotmart + Teachable; 21M buyers in the past year; $10B+ cumulative GMV | Active sellers on both platforms | Hotmart Company press release, 2024-03-21 |
| "Over **150,000** experts and businesses rely on Teachable"; $3.5B+ earned; 100M+ students; 180+ countries | Teachable alone. "Rely on" isn't defined, and may include free accounts. | teachable.com homepage, checked 2026-10-25 |
| **100,000+** creators and entrepreneurs have relied on Kajabi; $10B+ earned from 150M+ customers | **Lifetime** users, not current ones | Kajabi via Business Wire, 2025-08-06 |
| **300,000+** creators; 10M+ paying fans a month | Patreon creators (fee-based, no subscription) | patreon.com/about, checked 2026-10-25 (undated) |
| 1.2M sellers | Gumroad | profitable.app tracker ⚠ (June 2026) |
| 200,000+ registered sellers | Whop | insightraider.com ⚠ (mid-2025) |
| 48.1K Skool communities tracked, 15.9K of them charging members | Skool groups found by a third-party crawler | profitable.app, updated 2026-10-07 ⚠ (its own FAQ says 42,000+ and ~12,500, so the page is inconsistent) |

### 1d. Tutors, consultants and fitness or wellness coaches

| Figure | What it counts | Source / date | Quality |
|---|---|---|---|
| **100,000+** human tutors, 90+ languages (Preply) | One tutoring marketplace. Preply's own page says 32,000+ tutors, which suggests a different counting basis. | Wikipedia (2026) vs Preply company page ⚠ | Conflicting |
| **370,100** fitness trainer and instructor jobs **in the US**; +12% expected over 2024–34 | Employed and self-employed trainers (most don't sell online) | US BLS Occupational Outlook Handbook, 2024 data | Primary, official |
| Consultants: no usable count found | US Census Nonemployer Statistics (NAICS 5416) would give solo consultants, but its API needs a key and the release page refused my fetch. ⚠ open item. | census.gov | — |

**Webinar hosts:** I found no standalone count. They are a behaviour of the groups above, not a separate population.

---

## 2. How many already pay for a platform like this

Each figure is the company's own claim unless marked ⚠. "Accounts" can mean paying customers, all sign-ups or lifetime users. The **Counts** column says which.

### 2a. Core creator/expert platforms (the closest substitutes for Stapilo)

| Platform | Customers | Counts | Date | Source quality |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| **Kajabi** | **~56,000** customers, ARR "north of $100M" | Paying | 2022-05-31 | Primary (CEO). No later figure. Latka's "19K" (⚠) conflicts with it, so I don't use it. |
| **Thinkific** | **35,000+** customers; ARR $61.7M; ARPU $177/mo | Paying | Q4 2025 / Q2 2026 | Primary (TSX filings) |
| **Teachable** (Hotmart Co.) | 150,000+ "experts and businesses" | ⚠ undefined, likely includes free plan | 2026 (homepage) | Company claim |
| **Systeme.io** | **500,000+** "entrepreneurs" (has a free plan); ~8,000 paying | All users / paying | homepage 2026 / founder 2021 | Company claim / primary but stale. Current paying count unknown. At 3–5% free→paid it would be 15–25k (*derived* ⚠, Lenny's freemium benchmark). |
| **ClickFunnels** | **100K+** users | ⚠ "users" | homepage 2026 | Company claim. Latka's "150K customers" ⚠ |
| **Kartra** | **60K** customers | ⚠ likely cumulative | company page 2026 | Company claim |
| **Skool** | ~42–48K communities tracked. Every group owner pays Skool ($9 Hobby or $99 Pro; no free plan), so ≈ paying group owners. | Paying (*inferred* ⚠) | 2026-10-07 | ⚠ third-party crawler; no official figure |
| **Circle** | 4,000+ paying communities (Sacra); 12M end users (CEO, 2025); ARR est. ~$21M (May 2024) – ~$27M (2025) | Paying ⚠ | 2024–25 | ⚠ Sacra / secondary |
| **Mighty Networks** | 10,000+ paying hosts ⚠ (review blog, undated). Hosts earned $500M in 2025; average membership $48/mo. | Paying ⚠ | 2025–26 | Earnings: company homepage. Count ⚠ |
| **Podia** | 15,000+ creators; $900M+ earned | ⚠ likely cumulative | homepage 2026 | Company claim |
| **Stan** | 80,000+ active creators; ~$35M ARR (2025); 13% monthly churn (company-stated) | Paying ⚠ | 2025 | ⚠ Sacra estimate |
| **LearnWorlds** | 13,000+ "learning businesses" (homepage 2026); 11,000+ customers in 150 countries (Apr 2025) | Paying | 2025–26 | Company claim |
| **Kit** (ConvertKit) | 50,000+ creators paying; ARR ~$40M (founder) → $43M (2024, Sacra ⚠) | Paying | ~2024 | Primary (founder) + ⚠ |
| **Sum of core** | **≈ 0.65M accounts** (*derived*: 56k + 35k + 150k + ~20k + 100k + 60k + ~45k + 4k + 10k + 15k + 80k + 13k + 50k) | Mixed | — | See overlap note |

**Overlap.** Creators commonly stack tools: Kit plus a course platform, Stan plus Skool, ClickFunnels plus Kajabi. Some of these counts are cumulative (Kartra, Podia, Teachable), and Kajabi's is from 2022. Removing overlap and stale or cumulative inflation, **unique paying businesses on core platforms ≈ 0.4–0.6M** (⚠ judgement; no source measures cross-platform overlap).

### 2b. Adjacent tools (some customers are Stapilo's market, many aren't)

| Platform | Customers | Why only partly relevant |
|---|---|---|
| **HighLevel** | "**1M** businesses powered", 150 countries (2025 year in review, published 2026-01-15) | Mostly local businesses run through agencies (sub-accounts). Some are coaches and consultants. No agency or sub-account split is published; the "60,000 agencies" claim is ⚠ affiliate-sourced. |
| **Mailchimp** | **800,000** paid customers out of 13M users; 50% outside the US | General SMB email. Intuit hasn't updated the count since 2021-09-13 ⚠ stale. |
| **Patreon** | 300,000+ creators | Fee-based membership. Creators don't pay a subscription. |
| **Gumroad / Whop** | 1.2M / 200k+ sellers ⚠ | Fee-based marketplaces with a long tail of tiny sellers |
| **Hotmart** (Brazil) | Part of the 200k+ Hotmart+Teachable sellers | Fee-based. Its core is Portuguese and Spanish. |

**Broad serviceable pool ≈ 1.5–3M** (*derived* ⚠): the core 0.4–0.6M, plus a share of HighLevel's 1M, Mailchimp's 800k and the fee-based sellers who would move to a subscription.

### 2c. Revenue cross-check

| Company | Revenue / ARR | Source |
|---|---|---|
| Kajabi | $100M+ ARR (2022) | CEO, OCBJ |
| HighLevel | "well over $80M" revenue 2024 ⚠ | CEO interview recap (newsletter) |
| Thinkific | $73.2M revenue 2025; ARR $61.7M Q2 2026 | Filings |
| Kit | ~$43M (2024) – $52M (2025) ARR ⚠ | Sacra |
| Stan | ~$35M ARR 2025 ⚠ | Sacra |
| Circle | ~$21–27M ARR ⚠ | Sacra / secondary |
| Skool | ~$26.6M ARR ⚠ | Latka (Jul 2026) |
| Teachable/Hotmart, ClickFunnels, Systeme.io, Kartra, Podia, Mighty | No reliable figure | — |

The disclosed and estimated revenues sum to **~$0.4B**. With the undisclosed players added, the core category is plausibly **$0.5–1B/yr** (⚠ judgement). Independently, 0.4–0.6M customers × $100–150/month × 12 = **$0.5–1.1B** (*derived*). The two estimates agree.

---

## 3. Market growth

| Market | Size and growth | Source and method | Credibility |
|---|---|---|---|
| **Coaching (global)** | $5.34B revenue (2025 study) vs $4.564B (2023 study) → **+17% in two years**; practitioners +15% | ICF/PwC survey of 10,000+ coaches, extrapolated to a population estimate | **Good.** Repeated method since 2012. Caveat: ICF pages also cite a $2.849B baseline. The +17% is ICF's own blog statement. |
| **Coaching (US)** | $16B; 232,000+ coaches; "more than doubled since 2016" | Marketdata, Dec 2025 | ⚠ Medium. Long series, but the method isn't disclosed in the release. |
| **Creator economy** | **$250B (2023) → $480B (2027)**, ~18% CAGR (*derived*); creators +10–20%/yr | Goldman Sachs: bottom-up from brand deals, ad revenue share, subscriptions | **Good source, wrong metric for SaaS.** ~70% of it is brand deals. Don't present it as Stapilo's TAM. |
| Creator economy (vendors) | $252B (2025) → $1.35T (2033), 23.3% CAGR (Grand View); $191.6B (2025) → $528B (2030) (Coherent) | Paid market-research reports; method not public | ⚠ **Weak.** The vendors' 2025 bases differ by 30%. |
| **Online education** | **$203.8B (2025) → $279.3B (2029), 8.2% CAGR**; US $99.8B in 2025 | Statista Market Insights, via a Baker Tilly report (Jan 2026) | Medium. A modelled estimate with a consistent method across countries. |
| Education (all) | ~$10T by 2030, 4.4% CAGR; workforce training 6.5% CAGR | HolonIQ 2025 Global Education Outlook | Good for context, but far too broad |
| "Self-paced e-learning" | $7.8B (Intel MR) vs $148.7B (Grand View) for **the same label** in 2025 | Vendor reports | ⚠ **Weak.** A 19× gap shows how unreliable vendor category sizes are. Avoid them. |
| **Platform throughput (a real-money signal)** | Kajabi creators' cumulative earnings $9B (Apr 2025) → $10B (Aug 2025); Mighty hosts $500M in 2025; Hotmart+Teachable $10B+ GMV (2024); Podia $900M+ cumulative | Company statements | Medium. Self-reported, but it is money that actually moved. |
| **Incumbent growth** | Thinkific revenue +9% (2025), ARPU +5%; Stan +24% (2025, down from 93%) ⚠; Whop +~255% ⚠; HighLevel +781% over 2021–24 (Deloitte Fast 500) | Filings / Sacra / Deloitte | The old course-platform players are maturing. Growth is going to all-in-ones and AI- or marketplace-led players. |

**What to tell investors.** The demand side (coaches, experts and creators who sell their own products) grows **~7–15%/yr**. The software category is mature at the course-platform end and growing fast at the all-in-one, agency and AI end (HighLevel, Skool, Whop). Stapilo's pitch is to take share from the slow end, not to ride a "$480B" wave.

---

## 4. By language and region

No source splits this market by language directly. These proxies point the same way:

| Proxy | English / US | Other languages | Source / date |
|---|---|---|---|
| Website content language | English **49.5%** | Spanish 6.1%, German 5.9%, Japanese 4.9%, French 4.6%, Portuguese 4.1%, Russian 3.4% | W3Techs, 2026-10-25 |
| Online education revenue | US **$99.8B of $203.8B ≈ 49%** (*derived*) | Europe $27.7B by 2029 | Statista via Baker Tilly, 2025 |
| Coaches by region (2019) | North America **~33%** (*derived*: 23.3k/71k) | Western Europe ~29%, Latin America ~15%, rest ~23% | ICF 2020 study ⚠ stale; regional growth since then is fastest in Asia, the Middle East and Africa, and Eastern Europe (ICF 2023) |
| Mailchimp customers | 50% US | 50% outside the US | Intuit, 2021 |
| Thinkific web traffic | US 39.8%, then Canada, India, UK, Australia | — | Dealroom ⚠ third-party traffic estimate |
| Systeme.io visitors | US 16.2% | France 15.0%, India 12.7%; "most of our customers are from the French market" (founder, 2020) | Semrush ⚠ / Indie Hackers |
| Creator growth 2020–22 | US +34M | **Brazil +73M**, South Korea +11M, Spain +10M | Adobe, Sept 2022 |
| Hotmart | — | Brazil is the core market; LatAm GMV outside Brazil +50% (2022→23); 1/3 of Brazilian producers sell internationally; payments in 180+ countries; Hotmart says the LatAm creator economy grows ~9× by 2033 ⚠ | Forbes Brasil 2024 / Canaltech 2025 / DPL News 2026 ⚠ |

**Reading (⚠ judgement):**
- **English** is about **45–55% of software spend**, and the highest-ARPU part of the market.
- **Portuguese (Brazil) and Spanish (LatAm and Spain)** are very large by **number of creators**: Hotmart built a $10B+ GMV business there. ARPU is lower, and buyers prefer local payment methods.
- **German and French** are smaller in count, but European ARPU is near US levels. Systeme.io shows a French-first player can reach 500k+ users.

Stapilo is multilingual, which opens the non-English half that most US incumbents serve only in English.

---

## 5. TAM / SAM / SOM for Stapilo

### TAM: everyone who could use Stapilo
**~3–10M solo and small businesses worldwide that sell knowledge or services online** (⚠ triangulated judgement, not a sourced number):
- **Low end (~3M):** Goldman's ~2M professional creators, plus coaches beyond ICF's 123k (the US alone has 232k per Marketdata), plus tutors, consultants and trainers who sell online.
- **High end (~10M):** the order of Adobe's 17% "business owners" × Goldman's 50M creators (~8.5M, *derived* ⚠), plus non-creator experts.
- **In dollars:** 3–10M × $50–150/month × 12 ≈ **$1.8–18B/yr** (*derived*; ARPU range from `arpu-and-market-split.md`).

**Credibility note.** Present the TAM as a **count with its logic**, not as "$480B creator economy" or "$200B online education". Investors discount those immediately, because they are other people's revenue, not software spend.

### SAM: those who already pay for this kind of tool
**~0.4–0.6M businesses ≈ $0.5–1.1B/yr** (*derived*): unique paying customers of the core creator/expert platforms (section 2a, overlap removed), × $100–150/month (Thinkific $177 reported / ~$140 subscription-only; Kajabi ~$149 in 2022).
- **Cross-check:** disclosed and estimated revenues of the core players ≈ $0.4B+, with others undisclosed (section 2c).
- **Broad SAM (adjacent tools: HighLevel, Mailchimp, fee-based marketplaces): ~1.5–3M businesses.** Show it as upside, not as the base.

### SOM: realistically reachable in 3–5 years
**~2,000–10,000 paying customers ≈ $2.3–11.4M ARR** at the mid ARPU of ~$95/month (*derived*; ARPU from `arpu-and-market-split.md`). That is **~0.3–2.5% of the core SAM**.

| Scenario | Paying customers (yr 5) | ARR at $95/mo | Share of core SAM (0.4–0.6M) |
|---|---|---|---|
| Conservative | 2,000 | $2.3M | 0.3–0.5% |
| Base | 5,000 | $5.7M | 0.8–1.3% |
| Stretch | 10,000 | $11.4M | 1.7–2.5% |

Benchmarks that make these plausible:
- Systeme.io had ~8,000 paying customers about three years after launch, bootstrapped (founder, 2021).
- Stan reached ~80k active creators in ~4 years, with VC funding and a single $29 plan (Sacra ⚠).
- Skool has ~42–48k paying group owners ⚠.

Churn matters as much as acquisition. Stan states 13%/month, and the ChartMogul median is 6.1%/month for ARPA under $25 (see sister file). So reaching 5,000 *standing* customers means acquiring far more than 5,000.

### What investors find credible vs inflated

**Credible:**
- A bottom-up count of who pays today (SAM), built from named competitors' own customer numbers.
- Cross-checking that count against those competitors' revenues (section 2c).
- A SOM tied to the go-to-market plan and to comparable companies' real trajectories (Systeme.io, Stan, Skool).
- Saying plainly that the course-platform end is mature (Thinkific +9%), and that the opportunity is share-taking by an AI-run all-in-one.
- Treating non-English markets as an advantage: Hotmart and Systeme.io prove the size.

**Inflated (avoid):**
- "Creator economy $480B / $1.3T" (brand deals and ad revenue).
- "200M / 303M creators" (anyone earning a dollar).
- "Online education $200B+" (mostly institutions and enterprise).
- Vendor category sizes whose methods aren't public: the 19× spread on "self-paced e-learning" is the example.
- Adding the platforms' customer counts with no overlap discount.
- Using HighLevel's 1M "businesses" as if they were all experts and coaches.

---

## Open items (not resolved, flagged for the founder)
- **Current Kajabi paying-customer count.** The last primary figure is from 2022.
- **Systeme.io's current paying count.** Only "500,000+ entrepreneurs" (including free users) is public.
- **US Census nonemployer counts** for consulting (NAICS 5416) and other instruction (6116). The API needs a key.
- **The 2025 ICF regional split.** It is in the paid full report only.
- **Goldman's 2023 page** refused my fetch. Its figures are confirmed through multiple search snippets of the page itself, but not read directly.

---

## Sources (all checked 2026-10-25 unless noted)

**Coaches**
- ICF 2025 Global Coaching Study, executive summary (published 2025-09-15): https://coachingfederation.org/resource/2025-icf-global-coaching-study-executive-summary/
- ICF Global Coaching Study page (revenue baselines): https://coachingfederation.org/research/global-coaching-study
- ICF blog, 2025 study findings: https://coachingfederation.org/blog/coaching-as-a-strategic-advantage-what-the-2025-global-coaching-study-reveals/
- ICF 2023 study exec summary (109,200 practitioners): https://coachingfederation.org/app/uploads/2023/04/2023ICFGlobalCoachingStudy_ExecutiveSummary.pdf ⚠ figure via search summary
- ICF 2020 study exec summary (regional 2019 counts): https://coachingfederation.org/app/uploads/2020/09/FINAL_ICF_GCS2020_ExecutiveSummary.pdf ⚠ via search summary
- Marketdata / ResearchAndMarkets, US coaching 232,000 coaches, $16B (2025-12-04): https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20251204763253/en ⚠ headline only (fetch refused)

**Creators**
- Goldman Sachs, "The creator economy could approach half-a-trillion dollars by 2027" (2023): https://www.goldmansachs.com/insights/articles/the-creator-economy-could-approach-half-a-trillion-dollars-by-2027 ⚠ fetch refused; figures from search snippets
- Adobe Future of Creativity study (Sept 2022): https://news.adobe.com/news/news-details/2022/adobe-future-of-creativity-study-165m-creators-joined-creator-economy-since-2020
- Linktree 2022 Creator Report, via Tubefilter (2022-04-20): https://tubefilter.com/2022/04/20/linktree-2022-creator-report-economy-statistics-link-in-bio/
- Canaltech, Hotmart FIRE 2025, 70M creators (2025-08-29): https://canaltech.com.br/mercado/hotmart-aposta-em-ia-para-transformar-70-milhoes-de-criadores-em-empreendedores/
- Patreon about page: https://www.patreon.com/about
- Gumroad tracker: https://profitable.app/gumroad/stats ⚠
- Whop data: https://insightraider.com/en/answers/how-much-money-can-you-make-on-whop ⚠

**Tutors, trainers**
- Preply (Wikipedia): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Preply ⚠
- BLS, Fitness Trainers and Instructors: https://www.bls.gov/ooh/personal-care-and-service/fitness-trainers-and-instructors.htm
- Census Nonemployer Statistics methodology: https://census.gov/programs-surveys/nonemployer-statistics/technical-documentation/methodology.html

**Platforms**
- Hotmart Company $10B GMV, 200,000+ creators (2024-03-21): https://teachable.com/press/hotmart-company-announces-10-billion
- Teachable homepage: https://www.teachable.com
- Kajabi via Business Wire, $10B / 100,000+ creators (2025-08-06): https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20250806424975/en/
- Kajabi CEO, $100M ARR / 56,000 customers, OCBJ (2022-05-31): https://www.ocbj.com/technology/kajabi-revenue-tops-100m-knowledge-economy-expands/
- Thinkific Q4/FY2025 results (2026-03-05): https://www.newswire.ca/news-releases/thinkific-announces-fourth-quarter-and-full-year-2025-financial-results-827221860.html
- Thinkific Q2 2026 results (2026-08-05): https://newswire.ca/news-releases/thinkific-announces-second-quarter-2026-financial-results-802101214.html
- Systeme.io homepage ("500,000+ entrepreneurs"): https://systeme.io
- Systeme.io founder interview, Latka (2021-07): https://getlatka.com/companies/systemeio/interviews/systemeio-aurelien-amacker-2021
- Systeme.io 5,000 paying customers / French market (2020): https://www.indiehackers.com/product/systeme-io/5-000-paying-customers--MD55ZvMh-dOSSUYXFk2
- Systeme.io traffic by country: https://www.semrush.com/website/systeme.io/overview/ ⚠
- HighLevel 2025 year in review (2026-01-15): https://www.gohighlevel.com/post/highlevel-2025-a-year-in-review
- HighLevel Deloitte Fast 500 (2025-11-19): https://www.accessnewswire.com/newsroom/en/business-and-professional-services/highlevel-ranked-among-the-fastest-growing-companies-in-north-am-1104564
- HighLevel CEO interview recap ($80M+ 2024): https://otten.beehiiv.com/p/video-gohighlevel-ceo-how-to-sell-ai-grow-your-agency-in-2025-5960 ⚠
- ClickFunnels homepage (100K+ users): https://www.clickfunnels.com/
- Kartra plans page (60K customers): https://kartra.com/plans-and-pricing/
- Skool pricing: https://www.skool.com/pricing
- Skool community tracker (2026-10-07): https://profitable.app/skool/stats ⚠
- Skool trending sample (2026-09-05): https://revenuegeeks.com/software/skool/statistics ⚠
- Skool ARR estimate: https://getlatka.com/companies/skool ⚠ (via sister file)
- Circle, 12M users (2026-04-23): https://www.createwith.com/tool/circle/updates/circle-reaches-12-million-users-ships-ai-agents-and-custom-app-builder-in-2025
- Circle, Sacra: https://sacra.com/c/circle-so ⚠
- Mighty Networks homepage ($500M 2025): https://www.mightynetworks.com
- Podia homepage (15,000+ creators): https://www.podia.com
- Stan, Sacra ($35M ARR, 80,000+ creators): https://sacra.com/research/stan-from-15m-to-27m-three-months/ · https://sacra.com/c/stan ⚠
- LearnWorlds homepage (13,000+): https://www.learnworlds.com · press release, 11,000+ customers (2025-04-22): https://elearningindustry.com/press-releases/learnworlds-hits-500000-courses-milestone
- Kit / Nathan Barry, 50,000+ creators, ~$40M ARR: https://mywifequitherjob.com/episode545/ · Sacra: https://sacra.com/research/convertkit-at-43m-arr/ ⚠
- Intuit / Mailchimp, 800,000 paid, 13M users (2021-09-13): https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20210913005806/en · 8-K: https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/896878/000119312521271682/d226456dex991.htm

**Market growth**
- Statista online education, via Baker Tilly report (Jan 2026): https://techma.bakertilly.es/wp-content/uploads/2026/01/Market-Research-Online-Courses_compressed.pdf
- HolonIQ 2025 Global Education Outlook: https://holoniq.com/notes/2025-global-education-outlook
- Grand View Research creator economy: https://www.giiresearch.com/report/grvi2068128-creator-economy-market-size-share-trends-analysis.html ⚠ vendor
- Coherent Market Insights, via Exploding Topics: https://explodingtopics.com/blog/creator-economy-market-size ⚠ vendor
- Self-paced e-learning (Intel MR): https://www.intelmarketresearch.com/self-paced-e-learning-market-35635 ⚠ vendor · (Grand View): https://www.grandviewresearch.com/horizon/statistics/e-learning-services-market/courses/self-paced-courses/global ⚠ vendor

**Language / region**
- W3Techs content languages (2026-10-25): https://w3techs.com/technologies/overview/content_language
- Thinkific traffic by country, Dealroom: https://dealroom.co/companies/thinkific/ ⚠
- Forbes Brasil, Hotmart and the Brazilian creator economy (2024-02): https://forbes.com.br/forbes-tech/2024/02/5-numeros-que-mostram-a-relevancia-da-creator-economy-no-brasil/
- DPL News, Hotmart LatAm creator economy ×9 by 2033: https://dplnews.com/?p=321143 ⚠

**Sister files (same date, same rules):** `arpu-and-market-split.md` (ARPU, churn, freemium conversion) and `pricing-all-in-one.md` (plans and company data).