Teachable Affiliate Program Review
If your blog or website is in the education niche and you also have a B2B audience consisting of young entrepreneurs who are also looking to teach people various skills, the Teachable affiliate program might be right up your alley.
But since becoming an affiliate of any program out there needs some time and consideration, we thought we’d put together a detailed review, where you can find absolutely everything you should know — from how difficult it is to become a Teachable affiliate to what earnings you can expect.
Teachable Affiliate Program Review
What is Teachable?
Teachable is a company that was founded nearly ten years ago by two individuals who graduated from the University of Pennsylvania. Even though the entrepreneurs initially funded the brand with their own money, they later on received investments from famous capital firms and famous people, including Tim Ferris.
But moving on to what Teachable has to offer to prospective customers, it can be described as a course creator software option in a nutshell. People can host their courses on the platform and recommend them to their audience.
There’s also the option of you, as an affiliate marketer, to create a course and market it to your audience while also receiving a commission for each purchase made through your affiliate link.
As for the pricing of these services, they vary a lot from the Basic plan, which costs $348 to the Business one, billed at $2,988 per year. There is also the option of the user opting for the monthly plans, in which case the Basic plan will set them back $39 per month, the Pro will be charged at $119 per month and the Business one will cost $299 per month. As you can see, there is a discount for the yearly plans — but anyone can start with a monthly one and then get the yearly one if they feel that Teachable is the right choice for them.
Additionally, anyone can create an account for free and try out some of the features, although the more complex and generous ones can only be found in the paid plans.
To date, there are more than 100,000 instructors that have used Teachable to create and host their courses, so that should give you a clue as to whether or not becoming a Teachable affiliate might be a good idea.
Teachable affiliate login & signup
First of all, we have to note that this affiliate program cannot be found on any of the networks we have reviewed in the past. So, if you have several different websites in various niches and you’re trying to monetize them using the easiest method you may have available, that is not something to consider with Teachable.
You will have to utilize the company’s own website to sign up to the affiliate program. The first step will be creating an account, then signing up per se by filling out a short form complete wit your name, email, as well as the website URL that you have.
Another aspect that we have to note is that you will be prompted with a list of terms and conditions that we suggest you take the time and read. Many of the programs that we have reviewed in the past have somewhat strict rules, and if you somehow break them by accident, without even knowing that they exist, you risk being booted out of the Teachable affiliate program forever.
After you’ve filled out the form, you will get a confirmation email, but there will apparently be someone reviewing your application, as well, which means that you may have to wait for anything ranging from 2 to 5 working days to get your reply. Once that’s all done, you’ll gain access to the Teachable affiliate dashboard.
How much can you make with the Teachable affiliate program?
The commissions can actually vary depending on the type of course you decide to recommend to your audience or you intend to promote your own. In general, the maximum you can make by being a Teachable affiliate would be 50% out of a purchase made through your affiliate link.
The standard commission per sale is 30%, though, so you’ll have to find out how you can increase your rate. But probably the best thing that we have to note here is the fact that you benefit from a 30% recurring commission each time someone renews their subscription.
Furthermore, you get the benefit of a 90-day cookie, which means that your audience has up to three whole months at their disposal to make up their mind whether they want to buy a specific course you’ve recommended and that’s hosted on Teachable or they want to build their own using this platform.
So, while it is impossible for us to predict just how much you can make with your Teachable affiliate links, we can at least note that this program is among the highest earning ones that we have come across — and the best recurring ones, too.
Should you become a Teachable affiliate?
This is yet another question that’s pretty difficult to answer as your decision will depend on several different factors. For example, your audience and the exact niche of your blog or website can largely influence your earnings, because they can influence how convincing you can be with people — whether they actually purchase courses or decide to make their own or not.
While the commission rate is a fairly good one, especially when comparing it to similar services, one of the main drawbacks is that even if you promote your own courses, you’ll still earn just 30% in commissions.
The fact of the matter is that it will take some amount of time and effort for you to see some money hitting your bank account, especially if your audience is not generally inclined to educate other people and might only want to educate themselves.
However, if you are in the right niche and addressing the right type of audience, we’d say that there’s good money to be made with this affiliate program.
Pros and cons to being a Teachable affiliate
The first and perhaps most obvious benefit that you are likely to enjoy if you do decide to join this program is that the earnings are quite decent. Even if you get just 30% out of every purchase made through your links, that’s usually enough for you to be satisfied.
For example, if a person opts for the Business plan and pays approximately $3,000 per year for the entire subscription, your commission will be $900. Naturally, that rate is lower for the lower plans, but it’s still something that not a lot of affiliate marketers have bad things to say about,
The 90-day tracking cookie is another good reason for becoming a Teachable affiliate, given that the majority of the other programs that we have looked at in the past offer the industry standard, meaning just 30 days. In other words, your readers have a little more time at their disposal to make up their minds.
On top of everything, the earnings are recurring, which means that each time someone decides to renew their plan, you’ll still get a share of whatever they are paying for their subscription.
But as is the case with any other program you may have ever been interested in checking out, there are some drawbacks that need to be mentioned in this review. Apparently, if someone decides to unsubscribe within the first month or two of their subscription, as an affiliate, you are not going to get any commission.
Read more: MasterClass Affiliate Program – A Guide
We actually came across some reviews from affiliate marketers according to which if someone cancels their subscription within the first 120 days, you’re not going to make any earnings. Whether that is true or not is something that you will have to find out on your own while doing a bit more research before joining the program.
It also appears that even as the course creator, you will still be paid a 30% share of whatever sales you make. Of course, this can be a significant con for most people in the education domain since if they were to host their course on their own website, they’d basically get all the money from all the sales they make.
In terms of Teachable affiliate training, there really aren’t a lot of resources that you can benefit from. Compared to some of the other programs in the same niche, you are not going to find a separate part of the company’s site devoted to educating affiliate marketers on how they can make the most of their work, improve their links, and take their conversions to a whole new level.
To end this section on a more positive note, though, the dashboard that you gain access to after becoming an affiliate is quite detailed. The tracking is robust and offers you enough information to understand where your conversions are coming from and from which social media environments, so that you can focus on the ones that are getting the most amount of traction.
Finally, you do not have to create your own course and then market it to your audience – once you join the platform, you’ll find a wide range of courses in multiple fields, which means that the sky’s the limit as to what you can recommend to your audience.
You might also like: Udacity Affiliate Program Review
Alternatives to the Teachable affiliate program
If you aren’t feeling like being a Teachable affiliate makes sense for you right now, perhaps you’d like to check out some of the options that we have listed below. We’d like to note that for the majority of them, we have already created separate reviews, so be sure to check out our website for more information.
Kajabi
This one is relatively similar to what you can expect from Teachable in the sense that the standard commission rate for all affiliates and all plans stands at 30% out of every sale made through your links. This is also a recurring rate, so there’s really not much of a difference.
However, the area where Kajabi truly shines is its reward system. If your performance as a Kajabi affiliate improves with each month that goes by, you’ll be able to reap the benefits of that.
All of the commissions are paid after a period of 60 months just to make sure that no one cancels their subscription and asks for their money back. Otherwise, the payments are sent to you on the 25th of every month.
Podia
Podia’s system can also easily be compared to that of Teachable and the reason we’re saying that is the 30% recurring commission rate. Although Podia is arguably less well-known compared to Teachable, it does have a pretty nifty affiliate program where you get plenty of support from managers in case you run into any issue.
All of the payouts are made through PayPal, which can be a benefit and a drawback depending on the status of your account. In any case, the company prides itself with sending out the payments on the 5th of every month.
Thinkific
We have recently reviewed this program, so you might want to check out that article if you have some time on your hands. There’s not too much to say about it, though, because you can expect the same exact commission that Teachable is offering along with an identical tracking cookie duration.
Something that is a little different is the fact that you can be paid through PayPal or Stripe — depending on whichever of these methods you prefer.
Teachery
As a lesser known platform, you may want to consider becoming a Teachery affiliate simply because they’ve made a reputation out of paying their affiliates on time every month. Payouts are processed 30 days after your referrals get a subscription, though, just to be on the safe side of things.
Unfortunately, the rate that you can expect with this one is lower (25%) but it’s still a recurring commission. To make matters slightly worse, the cookie lasts for just 30 days.
LearnDash
This one is quite unique in the sense that it’s not a separate platform for courses but rather a learning management system plugin designed specifically for WordPress websites. So, for example, if you want to build your course on your own website and you’re also looking to make some money recommending LearnDash to your audience, their program is a good choice.
Even better, the commission rate that the brand is offering stands at 35%, not 30%.
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Craig Campbell
I am a Glasgow based SEO expert who has been doing SEO for 22 years.
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