Case Study: Comic Coloring achieves 1,700+ students worldwide and control over pricing with Thinkific

How K. Michael Russell Built An Online Course Business Teaching Comic Coloring

K. Michael Russell, founder of Comic Coloring, is a professional comic-book colorist who built a large audience with free YouTube tutorials but struggled to monetize and organize his teaching. After first hosting a course on Udemy—where frequent discounts and platform pricing limited his revenue and control—he looked for a way to own his branding, pricing, and student communications and ultimately chose the Thinkific platform to host and sell his courses.

Using Thinkific, Russell moved his course off Udemy within a week, re-recorded and reorganized the curriculum into shorter lessons (expanding the course from about six to ten hours), and introduced tiered pricing and better student resources. The Thinkific-based course now has over 1,700 students across 70 countries, earns stronger student feedback, and delivered improved financial results and course control compared with his marketplace experience.

Comic Coloring

K. Michael Russell

Professional Comic Book Colorist and Founder