Teachable allows you to give users access to your school as affiliates or authors, each earning a share of revenue from sales they contribute to. This article covers how commission is set and calculated, how to track affiliate and author performance, and how payouts and tax forms are handled.

Coming soon: Automated affiliate and author payouts and tax form collection are soon coming to Teachable Payments. Until this is available, school owners are responsible for paying out affiliates and authors manually.

Affiliate commission rate is the percentage of each sale that an affiliate receives for sales made through their affiliate link. Commission rates can be set individually per affiliate.

You can set commission rates:

To update a commission rate for an existing affiliate:

Affiliate commission is calculated as a percentage of the transaction amount after taxes. The commission is deducted from the school's earnings on that transaction.

Subscriptions and payment plans — affiliates earn commission on each recurring payment, not just the first. The rate applied is the rate set at the time of each transaction.

Rate changes — if you change a commission rate, future transactions apply the new rate. Previous transactions are unaffected.

Go to Users > Affiliates to view performance metrics across your affiliate program:

Use the Add Filter option to view sales by specific affiliate, user, or product. You can also filter transaction history from Sales > Transactions by affiliate to see individual transaction-level detail.

Automated affiliate payouts will be available to schools on Teachable Payments. When available, Teachable will automatically calculate and distribute affiliate earnings on a monthly basis. We'll update this article when automated payouts are live.

Until automated payouts are available, school owners are responsible for paying affiliates directly. Use your affiliate transaction reporting in Users > Affiliates and Sales > Transactions to calculate how much each affiliate is owed, then pay them via your preferred method (PayPal, bank transfer, etc.).

Authors can be assigned a revenue share on products they contribute to. Like affiliate commission, author earnings are deducted from the school's transaction earnings and tracked in your reporting.

Automated author payouts will be available as part of the Go Global and A&A Operator bundles. Until then, school owners are responsible for paying authors manually using the reporting available in your admin.

Automated W-9, W-8BEN, and 1099 collection for affiliates and authors is coming soon as a part of Teachable Payments. When available, Teachable will automatically collect tax forms from affiliates and authors who earn over $600 in a calendar year and issue 1099 forms by January 31st of the following year. We'll update this article when this is live.

Until automated tax form collection is available, school owners are responsible for collecting and issuing tax forms for their affiliates and authors. Teachable's transaction reporting can help you identify who has earned above the $600 threshold.

If your school uses a Custom Payment Gateway, Teachable does not collect or issue tax forms for affiliates or authors. You are fully responsible for all tax form obligations for your affiliate and author payees.

Affiliate and author commissions apply to all products selected on an individual checkout, including upsells.

If a refund is issued, the affiliate commission associated with that transaction is reversed. The affiliate does not earn commission on refunded sales.

Commission rates are set per affiliate/author as a default, not per product. However, you can specify which products an affiliate or author commission applies to.