Revenue Partners

Was your course creation process a joint effort? Or are you selling a product on behalf of another instructor? Our Revenue Partner feature makes it simple for you to share a percentage of sales made on your courses, communities and bundles, tracking for you the commission owed to your co-instructors and contributors.

Creating a Revenue Partner

To get started with Revenue Partners, you'll first need to set up your user up with an account. You can also assign them as a Revenue Partner while creating the user, but it is not necessary; these steps will automatically assign them that role, if they do not have it already.

Please note that only the sales made through Thinkific's Built in Checkout are tracked in Thinkific. If you are using an external payment solution, sales made through the external payment processor, and a Revenue Partner's percentage of those sales, will not be tracked in Thinkific.

Go to Sales
Select Revenue Partners
Click + Add Revenue Partner
Under User name, select or search for your desired user's name
Under Pay commissions out on... select a course, community, or bundle. Note that this will only assign the user to the primary price for your product. If you have additional pricing options, see how to add those here.
In the Commission percentage field, input your desired commission. The commission percentage is calculated based on your product price. Check out the Revenue Allocation Guide to forecast your profits.
Click Save

The user will now be a Revenue Partner for that product. For each sale, the percentage owed to them will be tracked by our system so you'll know exactly how much to pay them!

How to Add Products to a Revenue Partner

Once you have added a Revenue Partner, you can always add additional products as well as products with additional pricing options to their profile!

Go to Sales
Select Revenue Partners
Click View Profile on the Revenue Partner you want to edit
Click the Choose A Product dropdown
Select your desired product (course, community, or bundle) and pricing option from the dropdown menu. Note that you will see the product name with a pricing label if you have set an additional pricing option.
Under Set Payout, input your desired commission
Click Save

Additional Pricing Options

If you have set Additional Pricing Options for your product, you will need to attach each one pricing option to your Revenue Partner separately. Follow the steps How to Add Products to a Revenue Partner above and make sure to add each product and price separately. Additional pricing options will include the product name as well as the pricing label you have specified in your pricing settings.

If you're using subscription pricing or a payment plan, our Revenue Partner feature will calculate the percentage commission on all payments that the student makes.

How to Add Revenue Partners within your Course or Community Settings

For convenience, you also have the option to add Revenue Partners directly from within your Course Builder and Community Builder settings!

Note that adding a Revenue Partner from your Builder settings will only apply to the primary price of your product and a user must have already been assigned a Revenue Partner role. If they are not set up yet, or you need to add bundles, please follow the instructions above.

How to Add a Revenue Partner within the Course Builder

Go to Products
Select Courses
Click on the course you want to edit
Select the Settings tab
Select Admins, Revenue Partners, & Affiliates
Under Revenue Partners, select a user
Click Add
Under Payout percentage, input your desired percentage
Click Save. Note that this will only assign the user to the primary price for your product. If you have additional pricing options, see how to add those here.

How to Add a Revenue Parter within the Community Builder

Go to Products
Select Communities
Locate the community you want to edit, click the ellipses (3 dot icon) and select Edit
Under the Settings tab, select Revenue Partners & Affiliates on the left
Click Save
Under Revenue Partners, select a user
Click Add
Under Payout percentage, input your desired percentage
Click Save. Note that this will only assign the user to the primary price for your product. If you have additional pricing options, see how to add those here.

Managing Your Revenue Partners

The Revenue Partners page is where you can come to manage your revenue partners, as well as their commissions and payments.

You are able to change the time period of the commission information using the dropdown list (commission transaction dates) at the top of the page.

To access the specific information for a revenue partner, find them in your list of revenue partners and select the View button.

This will take you to their revenue partner profile, from which you can manage their commissions and payouts.

Recording a Payment to a Revenue Partner

All of the commissions owed to a Revenue Partner will be tracked; making it super easy for you to see what they're owed and make payments to them.

Payments are made manually by you, outside of Thinkific—so it's totally up to you how you want to manage that! One popular solution is to use PayPal, and create a schedule/reminder for yourself to send the funds owed to your revenue partners on a regular basis (e.g. once a month). You have the flexibility here to set up a process that works best for you and your business.

Once you've made a payment, you are able to make a record of this in Thinkific so that you know the revenue partner has received their commissions.

To do this, you'll need to approve any commissions that should be included in the payment.

Go to Sales
Select Revenue Partners
Click on the name of the Revenue Partner
Select Approve next to any correct commission(s) you would like to approve
For incorrect commissions, select the ellipses (3 dot menu) and click Deny
Then select the Approved tab at the top of the page
Click Record Payment

On the next page, you'll see the list of commissions to be included in the payment record - select Record Payment to continue. On the confirmation screen, hit Confirm. And that's it! Any commissions included in the payment will now show as paid.

Important Considerations

Revenue-sharing commissions are not retroactive — a revenue partner will only receive a share of purchases made after they have been set up with a particular product.
Only the sales made through Thinkific's Built in Checkout are tracked in Thinkific. If you are using an external payment solution, sales made through the external payment processor, and a Revenue Partner's percentage of those sales, will not be tracked in Thinkific.
Revenue partner commission is always calculated as a percentage of the payment amount, excluding any taxes that might have been added to it. This ensures that commission is not earned on the tax portion of the payment.

In this article: