If you are interested in the e-learning space, Udemy provides an excellent opportunity to make additional income promoting courses created by experts in any niche.

For anyone just getting his feet wet in the affiliate program, this review will help you see the program’s opportunities and downsides.

Udemy Affiliate Program

Types of products: Training and Courseware Marketplace

Where to join: Udemy Affiliate Page

Commission structure: 15%

Cookie length:  7 Days

Payment Methods: Paypal, ACH

Come to think of it, one of the most important assets that any of us have is our knowledge. The knowledge industry is one of the oldest.

From the ancients coming up with philosophy, sociology, mathematics, and alchemy, the learning boat keeps sailing to modern-day institutional education.

In the digital world, learning has become so much easier. A simple Google search can be the beginning of a new career and a new life.

Udemy is a digital academy that allows thousands of people to share their skills and knowledge with others. It is an evergreen platform that has changed lives and continues to be of significant impact.

About Udemy

Eren Bali, Oktay Caglar, and Gagan Biyani founded the company in May 2010.  They knew the opportunities that learning brought and aimed to help people change their narrative; by offering a platform where anyone worldwide can access education at an affordable cost.

Eren, having never been fond of classrooms, knew that many others, like him, would find great value on the platform.

One powerful secret that he understood was that talented individuals are found everywhere in the world. Unfortunately, that is not true for opportunities. Geographical scope, language, and several other unavoidable barriers often limit us.

The internet serves as a tool to bypass some of these barriers. Udemy provides a platform that enables people to access courses and videos in over 65 different languages effortlessly. They have over 50,000 instructors and over 130,000 courses.

With over 400 million course enrollments, Udemy is the largest market for anyone looking to learn something new.

The instructors are not your typical teachers. They are masters of their craft and are looking to share what they have gained along the way with others looking to go through the same path.

It’s FREE for course creators

It is 100% free to sign up and create courses using Udemy. Now you are wondering how they earn money; simple, they take 50% of organic sales that your course makes.

If you market your courses using your channels, then Udemy lets you keep 94% of all the money your course earns. And if you use Udemy’s paid user acquisition channels, you keep 25% of all earnings.

Their pricing model makes it easier for creators to come up with courses. And if you have no marketing budget, they help you get sales and still earn from your course.

Go to our affiliate programs page for more program reviews.

Applying To Be A Udemy Affiliate

Udemy works with affiliates to help people gain access to the right courses. With many niches to choose from, affiliates have the option of selecting a niche that interests them and promoting these courses on their sites, earning them handsome commissions.

One significant positive aspect of their affiliate program is that it is evergreen. That means that people are always interested in gaining the right knowledge to catapult them to the next phase of life.

Here’s how to get started as an affiliate:

1. Sign up

To promote Udemy courses, you are first required to sign up for the program. Rakuten Advertising runs its affiliate program.

Hence, once you click the ‘join now’ button on their affiliate’s page, you will be redirected to Rakuten Linkshare sign-up page. You can also sign up on sites such as Flex Offers and Impact.   

It takes them 2-3 business days to review your application and get back to you. Once you are approved, you are free to promote any course in any field on your channels.

2. Get your unique affiliate link

They will provide you with custom affiliate links and preferred banners to add to your content and promote the courses.

They also give you tools that help you sell their lessons more efficiently and track your earnings as you go.

3. Promote and earn

You can earn a sustainable income as an affiliate. The more you promote, the more you are likely to make from Udemy.

What goes on your website is entirely up to you. If you like the gardening niche, then, by all means, you can promote gardening courses to your audience and earn from them.

They have deep-linking opportunities. That means you can promote a specific course and direct people to a particular page rather than their homepage.

Besides, they have a 7-day cookie duration, which is a significant drawback to the company since most affiliates’ networks allow up to a 30-day cookie period.

It was previously 30 days. But when the affiliate program moved to Rakuten Advertising, that was no longer the case.

Udemy Affiliate Commission Rates

The company is the most lucrative e-learning academy today. Most courses range between $19.99 and $199.99.

Affiliates earn up to 15% commission on all sales – they have since lowered it to that. Gone are the days when the rates were 50% per sale.

Let’s do the math and see the earning possibilities.

If you promote a single course worth $100 and get 20 signs up, you will make $300. If you want to make at least $1,000 per month from that particular course, you need to bring in at least 70 customers.   

However, the benefits are once you’re approved to be an affiliate, you gain access to exclusive content, coupon codes to purchase other courses, and discounts.

They pay via Visa, PayPal, direct bank transfer, and checks.

Affiliate Tools and Support

Tools and Creatives for affiliates

As mentioned earlier, Udemy gives its affiliates tools and creatives to help them in their promotions.

A simple and easy affiliate dashboard

You will not be starting and growing blindly. Rakuten Linkshare has a simple and easy-to-use affiliate dashboard that keeps track of your progress.

You will quickly know how many people bought courses using your links and see how much you have earned from your promotions in real-time.

Banners of varying sizes

As an affiliate, you have access to banners with an embedded affiliate link. You can use them on your site, blog, or send it to your subscribers. There are different categories of banners, such as promotional banners to promote specific courses with discounts.

Deep linking

If you want your referral to go to a specific page within the site, you just need a deep link. Such that someone can go directly to a landing page and not to a homepage where he can get confused and end up either buying other courses or not buying at all.

Dedicated affiliate manager

Udemy relies heavily on affiliates to make sales. That means they care about your well-being as an affiliate. They have an affiliate manager willing to point you in the right direction whenever you get stuck.

Udemy/Rakuten API

Udemy takes full advantage of the Rakuten api capabilities. Developers can access the following fields …

  • avg rating
  • category
  • courseid
  • course language
  • course title
  • course subtitle
  • course url
  • course image
  • course description
  • num of review
  • price
  • subcategory
  • topic

Here are some useful API links for more details …

Udemy/Rakuten API Details

Product Feed Implementation guide

How to Promote Udemy Online

The main keyword Udemy by itself is not a good one to target. It is very competitive and probably not the best search intent for your SEO content.

udemy-kw

How to Promote Udemy Online

Looking at the keywords below, the better keyword opportunities are for reviews, sales, specific courses or types of courses…

  • Udemy Reviews
  • Udemy for Business
  • Udemy Python
  • Udemy Sale
udemy-longtail-keywords

Should You Become a Udemy Affiliate?

All you need to make money with the Udemy affiliate program is a defined traffic source. Begin with free organic channels before moving to paid methods.

You can always get someone with a specific challenge such as Facebook advertising, mobile app development, or virtual assistant skills. Find a course on Udemy and share the link with them.

If you have a blog, there is always a course you can promote to your audience and make money. It should be a course you or your friend has taken. You don’t want to earn a bad reputation by promoting low-quality courses, do you?

Well, join Udemy today. It might just turn out to become another significant income stream for you.

Pros and Cons — Udemy Affiliate Program

Udemy has great brand awareness. Training and Udemy is a good section to include in many articles.

ADVANTAGES

An easy sell based on its global reputation

Access to exclusive content, coupon codes, and discounts

Access to affiliate links with deep-linking ability and banners

Over 65,000 courses to promote

Get a dedicated affiliate manager.

Low payout threshold of $50

DISADVANTAGES

Takes a while to be verified

Short cookie duration of 7 days

Low affiliate commission rates compared to sites such as Clickbank

FAQ

What is Udemy?

Udemy is the dominant courseware marketplace. They market thousands of training programs.

How much does the affiliate program pay?

Udemy pays a flat 15% commission.

Who is the Udemy affiliate program best suited for?

Websites that cover technology, small business and career changers would all be good fits for Udemy.