Affiliate Links and Resources

This article reviews how to create and share affiliate links, manage affiliate link settings, and share resources with your school affiliates.

Overview

On the Pro plan and up, you can allow users to promote your product(s) as an affiliate. Affiliates receive a percentage of revenue generated from any sale that is a result of their promotion.

In order to promote your school, affiliates use affiliate links. Affiliate links are the links your affiliates can share with their audience—and when somebody purchases a product in your school from an affiliate link, the affiliate receives commission for the sale. Affiliate links look like regular URLs to your school pages, but they have a unique affiliate code attached to the URL. The affiliate code is what credits the affiliate for the sale.

Affiliates can also share resources with their audience (such as PDF’s, images, and other promotional materials) to help promote your school.

In this article, we’ll review:

Affiliate links - Learn how you and your affiliates can create links to other pages in your school or other external pages.
Link attribution settings - Set how long affiliate links are active for, and learn about other details that impact attribution.
Affiliate resources - Upload and share additional resources that your affiliates can share with their audience.

For more information on things like setting up affiliates, commission rates, affiliate payouts, creating affiliate application forms, and the affiliate experience, check out the Additional resources section at the bottom of this article.

Affiliate links

School admin can see an affiliate’s primary link (with their unique affiliate code attached) from the Affiliate tab of their individual user profile:

An admin view of a sample Teachable school, showing the Affiliate tab of an individual user profile. There is an arrow pointing to the Affiliate Link value.

This primary affiliate link goes to the school homepage URL.

In addition to this link, your affiliates can also share links to either other pages in your school (such as a specific product’s sales page) or external pages (such as landing pages created off of the Teachable platform).

If you want your affiliates to be able to use links for external pages but still receive commission for sales made by those users on the Teachable checkout, you will first need to enable this setting from your school admin. To turn on external affiliate link tracking:

Navigate to the Users > Affiliates tab of your school admin.
Select the Settings tab at the top of the page.
In the Preferences section, find the Allow affiliates to share links from external URLS setting.
Turn the toggle on.

An admin view of a sample Teachable school, showing the Settings tab of the Users > Affiliate page. There is an arrow pointing to the Allow Affiliates to Share Link from External URLs toggle.

There are a few ways to create and share affiliate links made in addition to the primary affiliate link:

School owners create links to be shared with all affiliates

As a school owner, you might want all of your affiliates to have access to an affiliate link for a specific page.

To create affiliate links as the school owner:

Navigate to the Users > Affiliates tab of your school admin.
Select the Affiliate Resources tab at the top of the page.
In the Custom Affiliate Links section, complete the following details:
1. Name - Enter in a name for the link.
2. URL - Enter in or paste the URL for the link (must include http:// or https://).
3. Hide from affiliates - Toggle on to hide the link so that it is not visible in your affiliates’ dashboards.
Click Create New Link.

An admin view of a sample Teachable school, showing the Affiliate Resources tab of the Users > Affiliate page. There is an arrow pointing to the Create New Link button.

Once you create the link and make it visible to your affiliates, they will be able to copy the link (with their unique affiliate code attached) from the Links & Resources tab of their affiliate dashboard.

An admin view of a sample affiliate dashboard, showing the Links and Resources tab. There is an arrow pointing to the Copy button next to one of the affiliate links.

You can delete or hide links at any time by clicking the Actions menu icon (i.e., the three dots) next to the affiliate link you created:

An admin view of a sample Teachable school, showing the Affiliate Resources tab of the Users > Affiliate page. There is an arrow pointing to Actions icon next to one of the affiliate links.

School owners create individual affiliate links per user

As a school owner, you might want to create an affiliate link for a specific page, but only have it available to certain affiliates in your school. In that case, you can create links for individual affiliates (with their unique affiliate codes already attached).

To create an individual affiliate link as a school owner:

Navigate to the Users > Affiliates tab of your school.
Click into a specific affiliate’s user profile.
Select the Affiliate tab of their user profile.
In the Affiliate Link Generator section, paste a URL to the page you want used as the affiliate link. Be sure to include “http://” or “https://”.
Click Enter.

An admin view of a sample Teachable school, showing the Affiliate tab of a specific user profile. There is an arrow pointing to the Generate button in the Affiliate Links section.

Once generated, you can copy the link and share it with that affiliate. (One way to share the link is via the email feature.) The generated link will already include the affiliate’s unique affiliate code.

Affiliates create their own links

Affiliates can also create their own links directly from their affiliate dashboard.

To do so, the affiliate can:

Log in to their affiliate dashboard and navigate to the Links & Resources tab.
In the Generate a link using a URL section, paste a URL to the page they want used as the affiliate link. Be sure to include “http://” or “https://”.
Click Enter.

The generated link will contain the affiliate’s unique affiliate code, which they can then share directly with their audience.

An admin view of a sample affiliate dashboard, showing the Links & Resources tab. There is an arrow pointing to the Enter button in the Affiliate Links section.

TIP: For affiliate links that navigate directly to a product checkout page, share the link to a specific pricing url.

CAUTION: If you create custom button blocks for your sales pages and select the "go to URL" option, use the URL found by going to Courses > Select Course > Pricing > Copy URL to ensure accurate attribution.

Affiliate coupon links

Affiliates can share coupons to incentivize their audience to purchase via their affiliate link. There are two ways to apply coupon codes to affiliate purchases.

Apply Coupon at Checkout

Have the affiliates provide a coupon code with their audience, and purchasers can enter in the coupon code directly at checkout via an Add Coupon Code link.

Learn more about Coupons.

Include Coupon in Affiliate Link

Create an affiliate link that includes both the affiliate code and the coupon code. When affiliates provide the link with their audience, the coupon code will automatically apply, and the affiliate will retrieve attribution for the sale. This option can only be configured with sales page URLs. See the steps below.

Copy the URL for the sales page you'd like to use. Navigate to the Product (Courses, etc.) Tab > select product > Sales Pages and copy the URL.
Create an affiliate link for the sales page you chose. Navigate to Users > Affiliates > select affiliate > scroll down to Affiliate Links.
Paste the URL into the Link Generator and select Generate.
Copy the generated affiliate link.
Add the coupon code snippet to the URL: &coupon_code=couponcode

For example, if your affiliate URL is https://sweetshop.teachable.com/a/aff_abc123/external?affcode=abc123 and the desired coupon code HALFOFF, the correct URL would be:

https://sweetshop.teachable.com/a/aff_abc123/external?affcode=abc123&coupon_code=HALFOFF

ATTENTION: You cannot add a coupon code to default affiliate link — in order for the coupon code to apply, the URL needs to be for the specific product sales page or purchase page.

Link attribution settings

"Cookies" are used to prepare customized web pages or save user information. On Teachable, a cookie is created whenever a user clicks an affiliate link, regardless of whether or not they purchase the product at that moment. This cookie is valid for the link attribution window (as determined by the school owner), or until the user's browser cache is cleared.

School owners can set the link attribution window for affiliate links. To do so:

Navigate to the Users > Affiliates tab of your school admin.
Select the Settings tab at the top of the page.
In the Preferences section, find the Link attribution window setting, and click the Edit button.
In the popup window, enter in a new number from 1 to 365.
Click Save.

An admin view of a sample Teachable school, showing the Settings tab of the Users > Affiliate page. There is an arrow pointing to the Link Attribution Window setting.

Affiliates that drive students towards a free product will still be credited for any future product purchases within the school if the purchase falls under the duration of the cookie period.

In practical terms, this means that even if someone clicks an affiliate’s link, leaves the site, and returns to purchase later—the sale will still be counted towards the affiliate (as long as the user is on the same device and browser, has not cleared their cache, and is within the cookie period).

If there are multiple affiliates that are marketing to the same student, the attribution will go to the affiliate that most recently marketed towards the student (i.e. last-touch attribution). This is because cookies can overwrite each other, and even if there is a pre-existing cookie that has not expired—a newly created cookie will take precedence.

If a transaction was not attributed to an affiliate, it is not possible to retroactively attribute the commission to the affiliate.

Affiliate resources

School owners can share resources with their affiliates to help them market the school.

Typically, resources consist of marketing materials such as flyers, images, or templated social media posts that can help your affiliates understand how to best share information about your school and products.

To upload a resource to share with your affiliates:

Navigate to the Users > Affiliates tab of your school admin.
Select the Affiliate Resources tab at the top of the page.
In the Promotional materials section, click the Upload button.
In the popup window, select a file to upload.

An admin view of a sample Teachable school, showing the Resources tab of the Users>Affiliate page. At the bottom of the page, there is an Upload button in the Promotional Materials section.

You can upload any of the following file types to be shared with your affiliates. There is not a limit to the number of files you can upload; however, you can only upload 5 at a time. All files have a maximum file size of 2GB:

.jpg
.png
.gif
.pdf
.mov
.mp4
.csv

Once you upload a file to the Promotional materials section, your affiliates can access that file from the Links & Resources tab of their affiliate dashboard.

An admin view of a sample affiliate dashboard, showing the Links and Resources tab. There is an arrow pointing to the Download button in the Promotional Materials section.

You can remove an upload resource at any time. To remove a resource:

Navigate to the Users > Affiliates tab of your school admin.
Select the Affiliate Resources tab at the top of the page.
In the Promotional materials section, find the resource you want to remove.
Click the Actions menu icon (i.e., the three dots), then click Delete.

An admin view of a sample Teachable school, showing the Resources tab of the Users>Affiliate page. At the bottom of the page, there is an arrown pointing the Actions menu next to an uploaded resource.

Additional resources

School Affiliate Overview - Learn how to create new affiliates in your school, designate existing students in your school as affiliates, limit affiliates to specific products, and remove or delete affiliates
Affiliate Application Forms - Learn how to create an affiliate application form to accept new affiliates into your school with or without approval
Affiliate Sales, Commission, and Payouts - Learn how to set affiliate commission rates, understand how your affiliates are performing, and review affiliate payout options.
Affiliate Dashboard - Learn about the affiliate experience and what is available on the affiliate dashboard.