Making sales through your Thinkific site is exciting, but it's important to understand how that revenue will be allocated among the relevant parties when you're using features like Affiliates and Revenue Partners. To help you out, here's a handy guide you can use to understand how your revenue will be split, making it easier for you to forecast your profits accurately.
Features That Affect Revenue Allocation
All of the following factors and features will affect the way your revenue is allocated when you make a sale:
- Coupon Codes
- Thinkific Transaction Fees (only applicable to Legacy Thinkific plans Starter and Essentials)
- Affiliates
- Revenue Partners
Note that outside of this calculation, you'll also want to consider processing fees, typically 2.9% + $.0.30 per successful transaction, but check out Thinkific Payment fees, PayPal fees or Stripe fees for the most up to date information.
How to Calculate Allocation
For each sale, the amount you keep can be thought of simply as:
Your Earnings = Price - Coupon Discount - Legacy Plan Transaction Fee - Affiliate Fee - Revenue Partner Fees
As a formula, it would look like this (order matters, work left to right!):
Your Earnings = (Price - Coupon Discount) x (1-Affiliate Fee %) x (1-Revenue Partner Fee %) - (Price - Coupon Discount) x (1-Legacy Plan Transaction Fee %)
Breaking that down, you can calculate how much each party is allocated like this:
Transaction Fee = (Price - Coupon Discount) x Legacy Plan Transaction Fee %
Affiliate Fee = (Price - Coupon Discount) x (Affiliate Fee %)
Revenue Partner Fee = (Price - Coupon Discount) x (1-Affiliate Fee %) x (Revenue Partner Fee %)
If a sale you make isn't affected by the features listed here, then the fee % for that feature will be 0% and the formulas still work. Ex: there is no Affiliate or Revenue Partners for a sale, then those fee percentages would be 0%.
Here's an Example
$10 Course Price
50% off Coupon
10% Legacy Plan Transaction Fee
25% Affiliate Fee
50% Revenue Partner Fee
Legacy Plan Transaction Fee = (Price - Coupon) x Legacy Plan Transaction Fee %
Legacy Plan Transaction Fee = ($10 - $5) x (0.1) = $0.50
Affiliate Fee = (Price - Coupon) x Affiliate Fee %
Affiliate Fee = ($10 - $5) x (0.25) = $1.25
Revenue Partner Fee = (Price - Coupon) x (1 - Affiliate Fee %) x Revenue Partner Fee %
Revenue Partner Fee = ($10 - $5) x (1-0.25) x (0.5) = $1.88
Your Earnings = Price - Coupon -Legacy Plan Transaction Fee - Affiliate Fee - Revenue Partner Fee
Your Earnings = $10 - $5 - $0.50 - $1.25 - $1.88 = $1.37
Now, you know exactly how your revenue will be split when you make a sale!