If you’ve ever been interested in learning anything new on the internet through a course, whether that be improving one of the skills you already have or studying something completely different, you’ve probably heard of Skillshare before.
Along with Coursera and other such brands, Skillshare is one of the largest platforms that people can use for self-development in a wide range of domains. But did you know that Skillshare actually has an affiliate program and that if your blog or website niche allows it, you can rely on it for increasing your side income?
That’s what we are addressing in today’s article — and also looking at everything you should know about the program, from how you can join it to what pros and cons it has.
Table of Contents
Skillshare Affiliate Program Review
What is Skillshare?
Skillshare has been around for several years now and during that time, it has become quite popular. Their marketing strategy largely involved reaching out to influencers and giving them the opportunity to offer codes for discounts and free trials lasting for a month or two for their audience.
What makes Skillshare quite unique when comparing it to some of its competitors is the way it charges its subscribers. You basically pay a fee every month (or every year) and gain access to all of the courses available on the platform.
And as you can expect, most of the courses are pretty great when it comes to teaching people various skills. Some, however, offer individuals the chance to get a certificate upon completing a specific course. By contrast, other platforms might not charge anything for basic educational materials, but if you want the certificate, you have to pay a hefty fee.
Another aspect that we have to highlight about the company is that the membership is very affordable. At the time we are writing this article, for example, an annual membership was billed at 27 euros.
How to join the Skillshare affiliate marketing program
We couldn’t help noticing that a good portion of the affiliate programs that we have reviewed in the past actually use their own websites to manage everything related to affiliate marketing, including the activity of their affiliates and reporting, but also payment.
Well, Skillshare is a little different in this respect because the brand does not use its own platform for all of this.
In fact, it now works with two separate networks — and you can choose the one that best suits your needs and preferences. Impact Radius and FlexOffers are those that we came across, but it is also likely that the affiliate program might show up on others in the future.
The reason we wanted to note this detail here is that seasoned affiliates tend to use affiliate networks rather than join various programs separately. This makes everything easy — you get all the stats in the same place and the network is in charge of paying you rather than involving each separate brand of which you might be the affiliate of.
Impact Radius is one of the largest platforms in this sense and it now works with a myriad of companies across the world. If you have some time on your hands, we suggest giving our review of it a read.
What services can you promote to your audience?
You can promote pretty much any course available on Skillshare, but the downside is that people are going to be directed to a page where they have to pay for their subscription (in most cases) rather than getting to the course curriculum and all the information related to it on the Skillshare website.
Once you get approved by any of the networks that we have previously mentioned, you will gain access to your Skillshare affiliate links, as well as a share of eye-catching marketing materials. Deep linking for your Skillshare affiliate link is also possible in case you’re interested in that.
Probably the best thing about the platform and the courses that you will need to recommend to your readership is that many of them are created by well-known influencers and professionals in various other fields.
That makes your task a lot easier in the long run, because unlike some of the advertisers that you might be able to find on platforms like ClickBank, for example, these people are fairly well-known and already have a following.
What are the affiliate commissions for Skillshare?
Here is perhaps the most important aspect that you should be aware of if you want to become an affiliate for Skillshare. Unfortunately, you’re not going to get rich by using affiliate marketing with Skillshare, and the reason we’re saying that is that the commission rate is quite low when compared to what other brands can offer.
There are different models that you can pick depending on whichever one you think would offer you better results. As such, on the Impact platform, you can earn $7 for each trial signup, which means that even if people do not decide to get a subscription after checking out Skillshare, you’ll still be paid a small commission.
The other model involves you getting a commission each time someone actually signs up to Skillshare. In this case and also depending on your performance, you can make either $8 or $18.
The commissions are different if you decide to use FlexOffers, though. Here, you get paid a $12 commission for each trial signup, which is a little better than what you can make with Impact.
For the second model, meaning the rate per sale, you can be paid anything between $20 and $30 depending on the specific promo code utilized and your performance as a past Skillshare affiliate.
The Skillshare site, though, has different information about this in the sense that the brand claims that the affiliate program offers a commission rate of 40% out of the value of each subscription bought by a new customer, which (they say) comes down to about $67 per referral.
Given that the info is a little confusing, we suggest doing a bit more research about this on your own.
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Payment options and thresholds
As a Skillshare affiliate, you should know that you can be paid differently depending on the affiliate network that you use for your purposes. For example, on Impact you can only withdraw your earnings using PayPal (at least that’s what we found out by this point).
On FlexOffers, you have several more options available, such as wire transfers, direct bank transfers, or PayPal.
The payment thresholds on both of these platforms are different. If you use Impact, you can basically withdraw your earnings when you’ve hit $10 in commissions by promoting Skillshare.
With FlexOffers, you’ll need to reach at least $25, but once again, that doesn’t seem like too much, especially if you manage to get five people to sign up per month, for example.
Pros and cons to being a Skillshare affiliate
When it comes to becoming the affiliate of any company out there, there are both advantages and disadvantages, so you need to analyze all of them carefully before deciding to join.
There are quite a bit of pros if you want to be an affiliate with Skillshare. First off, the company is fairly well-known, which means less hassle for you when recommending the courses to your audience.
You are also eligible to promote Skillshare courses pretty much anywhere, whether that be in your email newsletters, on Instagram or Facebook, on your blog or website, and even in parts of social media that might be frowned upon by other brands — such as groups and forums.
Read more: Squarespace affiliate program
The fact that you can use Impact Radius or FlexOffers to promote Skillshare educational materials is another advantage because it allows you to have everything in a single place. You wouldn’t believe the amount of time that you can waste having to go on dozens of separate websites each day to check on your commissions and conversions.
The 30-day cookie duration is not necessarily something worth writing home about, but it’s also pretty much the industry standard at this point, so something that you’ll encounter in many affiliate programs.
We didn’t really like the fact that we found conflicting information regarding the commission structure and rates, in the sense that the brand basically suggests you can make more money whereas the networks note lower rates.
On Impact, you have one payment method available and it consists of PayPal, at least for this affiliate program, and that can be another drawback for folks that for any reason might have had their account deleted.
Although we found some info according to which there are some restrictions about where you should be located to be able to apply to the program, the brand’s own website doesn’t note this anywhere.
Finally, perhaps the most important con is that the commission rate truly isn’t all that great. There are better ones, but there are also similar ones that you can encounter, as you will see in the following section.
In any case, even if you manage to make $20 per purchase and you refer 5 folks per month, that only means $100 in monthly earnings for you — which is rather low compared to what other companies are now offering.
You might also like: Teachery Affiliate Program
What if Skillshare isn’t the best choice for you? Skillshare affiliate program alternatives
If this Skillshare affiliate review didn’t manage to convince you to give it a try and you still think there might be better choices out there, here are a few other options that might be right up your alley.
Coursera
The maximum commission rate you can expect as a Coursera affiliate stands at 45%, which is better than Skillshare. To make things even more interesting, most of the educational materials that people can find on the Coursera website are completely free.
You actually have to pay something each time you want to get a certificate — so that gives people the opportunity to learn new things without paying a single cent. It also makes things a little more complicated for you. In any case, the lowest commission rate is 10% for the Coursera Plus.
As for the cookie duration, it lasts for the same 30 days that you can expect as a Skillshare affiliate.
Read more:
Udemy
While the 20% commission you get to enjoy when you start convincing people to get Udemy courses is more than decent (especially since the value of these courses can sometimes be upwards of hundreds of dollars), there is a significant drawback that we need to note.
The cookie is one of the lowest we came across even after reviewing so many other programs — just 7 days.
Also, at this point, it seems that Udemy uses its own platform to manage affiliate activity and payments, so you should take that into account as well.
You might also like: Kajabi affiliate program review
Teachable
This one is a little different in that even if it is in the same educational niche, it’s actually more geared toward individuals who want to create their own courses and market them to their audience.
So, if that all sounds like something you might be interested in, you should know that the typical commission is 30% (recurring) but that it can go up to 50% if your performance is great.
The tracking cookie lasts for 90 days in this case, which is better than what Skillshare can offer.
Read more: Top Fiverr Alternatives
MasterClass
The rate that you can expect as a MasterClass affiliate stands at 25% for all purchases made through your links. The cookie lasts for just one month, so there are no surprises there.
MasterClass is a tad different in that it offers a plethora of courses for people more interested in learning artistic skills rather than technical ones. They have courses made by singers, actors, directors, or writers, as well as other similar ones.
Udacity
The Udacity affiliate program is a really good alternative as it pays you a fixed $100 commission for every person that you send their way. And while their services are slightly more expensive compared to those of other educational platforms, it is truly worth looking into.
The cookie also lasts for a month, but once again, this is pretty much the industry standard at this point.
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