How to Set up the LearnWorlds Affiliate Management Program

LearnWorlds Affiliate Management is a built-in tool that allows you to start an affiliate program from within your platform. LearnWorlds affiliate and commission tracking tools are very intuitive and easy to set up. 

With our integrated affiliate program, you can track and manage everything from an all-in-one dashboard, including revenue earned, sales, and referred customers.

In this article, you will find a guide that will help you set up your LearnWorlds affiliate program.

Basic Affiliate Settings

To enable and set up your affiliate program, navigate to Marketing → Affiliate Management → Setup. In this section, you can set up every detail of your affiliate program.

• Choose to enable or disable your affiliate program. 
• Edit the Affiliate Agreement page. Your affiliate program should be governed by a specific agreement between you and your affiliate partners. You can prepare a comprehensive understanding by clicking on the Edit page. When you click on the Edit page you will see that we have prepared a suggested template (does not constitute legal advice). Your terms page URL will be your school URL, followed by /affiliate-program-terms.

• You need to set up the commissions, and more specifically:

1. Commission rate: The commission rate is the percentage rate of your affiliate commissions, and it applies to all products added to the program. Commissions typically range from 10% to 50%. However, it is entirely your choice to make.

2. Cookie expiration: Any referral that will purchase signs up before the cookie expiration period will be associated with the respective affiliate. It is recommended that you set cookie expiration anywhere between 15 and 60 days.

3. Commission payable after: Α new customer might cancel their purchase after some time and ask for their money back. Therefore, you must ensure that your customer stays before you pay the commission to the affiliate. The "commission payable after” setting has entirely to do with your refund policy.

Affiliate payments are managed outside of the platform.

Affiliate Registration Page 

You can manually assign the role of the affiliate (if they have already created an account in your school):

Or allow them to register by themselves by turning on the Affiliate self-register setting (available on the Learning Center plan and above).

We have prepared a default template that you can use or customize to your liking.

The variable {{school.name}} is connected with your School's infounder School Name.

Once visitors have clicked on the "Become an Affiliate" button or have already signed up as users in your school, a simple user account will have been created. For them to start an affiliate partnership with you, they have to click on the "Join the affiliate program" button that appears after they register. 

As soon as they become affiliates, the "Affiliate dashboard" button will be visible on the Self Register page (they can also access their dashboard by clicking on the pencil icon on their After Login page). 

The self-registration and affiliate sign-in page URL is your school URL, followed by /affiliate-registration.

You have the option to deactivate the Affiliate feature while you are developing our program and re-enable it when you are ready for the launch.

What Affiliates See once they log in

When an affiliate registers for your program, they get immediate access to their Affiliate Dashboard. On the dashboard, they can see how their work is performing at any time. 

• You can set up what your affiliates can see in terms of commission status.
• You can choose if your affiliates can see people (referrals) who have registered in the school but have not purchased anything yet. When these people buy, they become Customers, and they are not considered Leads anymore. 
• You can choose where the affiliate will be redirected after logging in (Affiliate dashboard, After login page, Another page, Specific URL).

Set Payment Methods

You can determine the payment options from which your affiliates will choose the preferred one. You can select PayPal, Bank transfer, and Other (if you keep the "other" option enabled, then your affiliates can fill in a text field with their preferred way of receiving payouts). 

Select Affiliate Products

You can choose which courses and bundles you would like to be available for your affiliate program.

The new course won’t be available for affiliate marketing if you don’t manually add it to this list. Only paid courses can be linked with your affiliate program. Free or private courses are not eligible for this.

If you are not using our integrated payment gateways but an external one to receive payment for your products, then the affiliate system cannot track the referrals, commissions, and payments.

If a user visits two affiliate links from two different affiliates and buys a product, the affiliate whose link the user visited last will receive the commission.

The integrated Affiliate feature supports user registrations through the LearnWorlds sign-up system, Single Sign-On (SSO), and Social Logins (e.g., Google, Facebook). Commissions for Affiliates are calculated for users registering via any of these methods. However, registrations made through custom SSO implementations (i.e., outside the standard LearnWorlds-supported SSO integrations) are not tracked and therefore do not qualify for affiliate commissions.

Features per plan

Our built-in affiliate system is available on the Pro Trainer (core functionality) and Learning Center plan (advanced functionality). The differences between the Pro Trainer plan compared to the Learning Center plan are:

Frequently Asked Questions

Can affiliates self-register in my school?

In the Pro Trainer plan, affiliates cannot self-register; hence, you need to manually add the affiliate accounts in your school. In the Learning Center plan or higher, affiliates can self-registered via the Affiliate Registration Sections added to your school's pages or your school's Affiliate Registration Page.

Can I set up an individual commission rate for each affiliate separately?

In the Pro Trainer plan, you can set a default general commission rate for all affiliates; hence, you cannot set an individual commission rate per affiliate. Setting up the commission rate individually per affiliate is available in the Learning Center plan and above. 

Do Affiliates receive any Notification emails from my school?

When you manually add an affiliate to your school, when an affiliate is self-registered, or when an affiliate payout has been completed from the school admin, affiliates receive the relevant Notification emails (New sign up and Payout completed) from your school (if activated). You can find more information in this article.

Does LearnWorlds facilitate the payout to affiliates?

LearnWorlds calculates the commission that regards each affiliate however it will be required to pay them externally. You are responsible for determining the method of external commission payment, such as through bank transfer or PayPal.

Whilst you’re free to pay out your affiliates whenever you want, we recommend waiting at least 30 days following the sale in case the customer requests a refund.

Do the affiliate payment calculations take into account tax?

The affiliate commission calculation is done based on the original course price before taxes.

Can Affiliates generate links for specific/several pages?

All school affiliates have the capability to create their own links using the Affiliate Dashboard. To be more precise, affiliates can input a URL to generate an affiliate link for any page on your school's website. They need to paste the public URL of the desired page into the designated field.

Can Affiliates apply coupons to their affiliate links?

Affiliates can:

• Add a coupon to their affiliate link
  Affiliates can apply a coupon to their affiliate link if the school owner has supplied them with one.
• Create a link for any of your school's pages, with or without a coupon
• Create a link for any of your products (courses, bundles, subscriptions), with or without a coupon

Can Affiliates generate affiliate links to specific product pages?

The school owner chooses the courses, bundles, or subscriptions eligible for the affiliate program. Affiliates can then view these products in their Affiliate Dashboard and create affiliate links for the respective product pages.

Can Free courses be included in the Affiliate Program?

Free courses cannot be included in the Affiliate Program.

How does the user enrollment/purchase flow to a product associated with an Affiliate look like?

If a user uses the affiliate link, creates an account in your LearnWorlds school, and purchases a course that is part of the affiliate program within the cookie expiration period, the user will be counted as a Customer and a commission will be assigned to the affiliate who referred them. In more detail, this is how the system works:

• The affiliate creates and distributes an affiliate link.
• If a user uses this link and creates a new account in your LearnWorlds school, then this user is associated with the affiliate, and any purchase made gives a commission to the affiliate.

Note: The user needs to create a new account from the same browser that accessed the site the first time they used the affiliate link and before the expiration of the cookie (affiliate setting).

Do Affiliates get a commission when an existing customer purchases via their Affiliate link?

In the case where a user is already registered in your LearnWorlds school and uses an Affiliate link since they do not count as new customers, there will be no commission for the Affiliate. The only way is if the user will create a new account (via a different email) from the same browser that accessed the site via the affiliate link, and before the cookie expiration.

If a user visits my LearnWorlds school through an affiliate link but doesn't purchase a product that day, does the affiliate get credit for future purchases?

The user's actions are tracked according to the affiliate cookie expiration you will set up in your school:

Can the Affiliate earn a commission for multiple products via one affiliate link (if the user purchases multiple products)?

If the user creates an account in your LearnWorlds school from the same browser they used to access the school following the affiliate link and purchases multiple courses before the affiliate cookie expires (30 days), the affiliate will earn a commission for all purchases. 

What happens with Affiliate commissions for subscription products?

For subscriptions, the system calculates for an affiliate the recurring commissions. So with the renewal of a subscription plan, affiliates will get a commission for the whole life of a subscription.

In the case of a referred student who purchases e.g., a monthly subscription plan or payment plan, the affiliate will be getting a recurring commission for as long as the referred student maintains their paid subscription.

How long do commissions take to mature?

The Commission maturity period depends on the Commission payable after you have selected it. So, let's say that the user is still enrolled after 25 days in the course they bought via the affiliate link, then the commission amount will be eligible for payout.

What happens if the user cancels their course/subscription/bundle, etc, enrollment associated with an Affiliate link?

If the user doesn't want to be enrolled in a product associated with the Affiliate link anymore (and perhaps requests to be unenrolled and receive a refund) before the "Commission payable after" time period, then the affiliate commission won't be eligible for payout.

What happens if a user is manually enrolled in a product?

When manually enrolling a user in a product, if the user is already referred by an affiliate, you'll see a checkbox labeled "Affiliate commission." Based on the price you set, the affiliate will receive the corresponding commission. For instance, if the original price is $100 and the commission rate is 10%, the affiliate will earn $10. If you adjust the price to $200, the affiliate will then receive $20.

Please note that if the user is not referred by an affiliate, the respective option will not be visible, and the affiliate will not be eligible to receive the commission.

What happens if I use Shopify as the payment gateway?

To ensure that affiliate commissions are properly tracked when using Shopify as the payment gateway with LearnWorlds, users must register through LearnWorlds using the affiliate link before making a purchase. This is because purchases made directly through Shopify do not carry the affiliate tracking information back to LearnWorlds, resulting in untracked referrals. Therefore, the recommended process is:

1. Affiliate provides their unique link to a potential customer.
2. The potential customer uses this link to register on the LearnWorlds platform.
3. After registration, the customer proceeds to purchase the product, which can be facilitated via Shopify.
4. By following this sequence, the affiliate's referral is correctly attributed, and commissions are appropriately assigned.