E-learning is a multibillion industry and it’s growing at a 5% rate each year. The convenience and affordability has allowed many people to learn new things online and that means, more creators (educators, instructors and etc.) can leverage from this channel to create additional income or start a teaching business within a certain niche.
If you are a blogger that writes about education and skill-teaching for creators and learners, I am pretty sure that one of these online courses affiliate programs will be suitable for your audience.
1) Udemy
Udemy is probably one of the most popular learning platforms out there. People can use it for creating courses as well as picking new topics to learn about. With over 65 thousand courses, it covers a myriad of subjects from web development to pet care training. Such diversity drives about 75 million visitors to the site every month so that’s a lot of traffic to leverage from.
Most courses sell between $20 to slightly more than $100, but when they are on promotion, the price can dramatically reduce and it’s often cheaper when signing up to learn from a mobile device. There are also a lot of student ratings so this will give some ideas about the quality of a course before you promote it.
The platform partners with Rakuten Linkshare network and offers a 20% commission for every sales referral.
2) Teachable
Purely a course creating platform, Teachable provides a software system that builds a standalone course page as well as integration with one’s existing website. It’s highly endorsed by Pat Flynn from Smart Passive Income and suitable for a variety of niche subjects. Some that I’ve seen are Facebook ads tutorial and even cake decorating tips.
They offer a free membership as well as 3 different types of pricing for monthly and annual plans. The commission rate is 30% and it comes with a 90 day cookie period. Applying for the program is via direct sign up on the site.
3) Skillshare
Skillshare is a subscription based site that allows students to access over 20,000 classes that are available on the marketplace. Relatively, it offers more value for the money than Udemy’s pricing. Within the same plan, members can also create their own courses and monetize from their skills.
Many renowned entrepreneurs use this platform to market their brands and as an affiliate, you’ll earn $10 for every new customers that sign up for their membership plan. The program application is via direct sign up from site.
4) Podia
Podia is a comprehensive software that helps creators build their teaching business through membership sites, online courses, selling digital downloads online and even running their own affiliate programs. It also comes with an in-house email marketing feature that allows building a customer list more efficiently. All this for the price of one, so it’s a pretty attractive platform for those with big ambitions.
They offer a free trial for 30 days and two types of pricing plans. The affiliate commission is a recurring 30% for every month, for as long as the member is using the software. Applying for the program is via direct sign up on the site.
5) Thinkific
This next platform is reputable for their extensive online tools, knowledge base and customer support. They service anything from brand customization to student management system, hence the features are far more comprehensive than other companies.
Thinkific is widely used by many online entrepreneurs and businesses for creating niche specific courses and they are one of the top 100 merchants on the ShareASale affiliate network. That means, they perform very well in terms of fundings and affiliate conversion.
The site offers three types of paid membership plans, plus a free starter program. The affiliate program has a 90 days cookie and for every sales referral, you’ll get 20% per sale.
6) Course Craft
As a course creating platform, Course Craft is catered mainly for teachers and instructors. Their software is easy to integrate with pre existing website and their lesson editor is quite simple to use too.
The company seems like a fairly new place and there’s not much review to be read online just yet. I am not sure if it’s a popular tool, but you can definitely check it out. Their affiliate program offers 30 days cookie and you’ll receive 30% commission each month.
7) Academy Of Mine
Another robust software like Thinkific, Academy of Mine is a great tool for creators who want to build an audience through selling courses and membership. Their platform covers a lot of stuff from having its own dedicated website builder and supporting course creation in multiple languages.
Their subscription is more on the higher price range, but they do offer a 30 day trial before one commits to any of the 3 membership plans. Affiliates can expect to earn between 10% to 20% recurring monthly commission, but they do have some requirements.
Your website needs to receive no less than 500 unique visitors/month or has a social media site (like Facebook or YouTube) with no less than 500 friends, followers or subscribers. They will manually survey these sites before approving any applications. If you think you meet the standards, go for it.
8) Wealthy Affiliate
Wealthy Affiliate is purely a learning site for anyone who wants to start an online business, whether it’s in the affiliate marketing industry or selling their own products.
Their courses are self-paced and cover many marketing topics that are important such as niche marketing, search engine optimization (SEO) and paid search. Besides that, they also provide an in-house WordPress hosting and a powerful keyword tool so members are basically getting a lot of features for the price of one.
The platform is newbie friendly with a lot of community interaction and whatever you learn can be easily adapted to any niche that you want to pursue. Users can sign up for free and remain so forever, or upgrade to Premium for full access of the membership features.
As an affiliate, the cookie duration is for life and you could potentially earn up to 48% in recurring sales commissions.
Which Is Your Pick?
So, after going through these 8 online courses affiliate programs, did you find anything interesting? I hope you did because the purpose of this article is really to show how much you can leverage from various successful eLearning platforms that are out there.
Making a profit is one thing, but empowering people with new knowledge and showing them how to use specific tools to create an online teaching business is far more rewarding. It benefits us all, doesn’t it?
Hey, I hope you’ve gained something useful from all this information and if you are looking for more tools and support to grow as an affiliate marketer, feel free to check out my recommended training platform over here.
Questions – Did I miss out anything or do you have some experience to share in relation to this topic? We would love to hear your comments below.
Hi Cathy,
I’m familiar with Udemy and Wealthy Affiliate. As for the rest, they look new to me. It may seem a bit biased here, but when it comes to online marketing courses, my preferred choice would be Wealthy Affiliate without a doubt. They have good hosting facilities and a free keyword tool that you can use from the get go. These are essential tools for anyone who wish to start a business in the affiliate marketing industry.
I didn’t know that all of those platforms had affiliate programs. That’s awesome. I love learning online and have taken many courses from Coursera just for personal knowledge. I think a great way to help monetize your site would be to create a course from one of those sites and promote it on your website (rather than an eBook). That way, you’ll make money from the course and commissions from the online marketplace.
Hey Cathy, I am actually interested to create my own online course. Between Teachable and Thinkific, which do you think is more suitable for a beginner like me with a limited budget? Thanks.
Hi Shui,
It really depends on what kind of features you want. Are you starting out with something basic or do you want to design a course that is more advanced? Check each of the platform’s pricing to get an idea. If they have a free trial, use it to test out their program. Having said that, Teachable seems to have more review. It’s even recommended by Pat Flynn from Smart Passive Income.
Hope this helps.
What does it mean by recurring commission?
It refers to payouts that are made to affiliates every month. This happens with subscription-based products (both physical and digital) and you’ll get paid as long as the customer’s membership with the site continues. Hope this helps.
Hi Cathy,
What an interesting concept to monetize from! After reading about these affiliate programs, it kind of feel like I am in the wrong niche 🙂 I like the idea of helping people to learn and earn some commissions along the way. Thanks for the ideas – my next niche will surely be about eLearning.
Hi Cathy.
I created some courses on Teachable and am very happy with it. In the beginning, I thought Udemy might be the better choice, but since I had already my own website and was not relying on Udemy’s marketing, which will eat into my profit, I decided to go for Teachable instead.
There seems to be other course platforms that I’ve not heard of before so I’ll definitely check them out in the future. Thanks for sharing.
I have tried Udemy, but I find that although they provide courses to start affiliate marketing, it can be hard to get up-to-date information. Honestly, I have never heard of all the other programs that are mentioned in this post. Will certainly be checking to see what kind of value they can offer for my niche. Thanks for coming up with the list.
Great to hear that you benefited from this article, Reyhana 🙂
There’s another training platform I came across that you might like to add to your list – Coursera. I kinda think of them as an upmarket Udemy. Lots of courses on various topics, so great for anyone who wants to expand their knowledge through learning online. They also have an affiliate program.
Thanks for the suggestion Gary. I checked and their commissions range between 20% to 45% with 30 days referral. You can sign up via Rakuten Linkshare.