We are continuing our series of reviews on some of the most popular and highest earning affiliate programs with a presentation of what Thinkific has to offer in this sense. Does Thinkific have an affiliate program? There’s only one short answer to that question and it is yes — and a very good one, too. 

Read on to find out more information on how you can become a Thinkific affiliate, what Thinkific’s business actually is, if it matches your niche, and how much money you can earn with this program. 

Thinkific Affiliate Program Review

What is Thinkific?

Thinkific is one of the most popular choices of online teachers, whether that be for actual lessons or tips and tricks. The site can be used for subscriptions and other sorts of plans, as well as creating everything regarding the course per se. 

There are also some options when it comes to marketing a user’s course once it’s all done. Probably the nicest thing about the service is that it comes with a wide range of ready-to-use templates that make the task of creating a course a breeze. 

Users can also organize the content based on chapters and preview the end result as many times as they want before they feel that it is up to their standards. 

What’s important to note is that Thinkific is a winner in terms of integrations. For example, it works with widely popular services such as Google Analytics, Mailchimp, Shopify, ConvertKit, or ActiveCampaign, as well as Constant Contact (and many more). 

Becoming a Thinkific affiliate

Unfortunately, when it comes to this affiliate program, you do not have the option of joining it through a separate network. As such, you are not going to come across the Thinkific program on sites like ShareASale, Awin, AvantLink, ClickBank, JVZoo, or any other networks you may have used in the past. 

On the one hand, this means that you will need to check your Thinkific affiliate dashboard to see how well you’re performing and what earnings you might have made. If you have several dozens of websites with good organic traffic and you’re an affiliate of several programs out there, this can be a significant drawback. 

On the other hand, having you join on the brand’s official website allows the company to better separate the wheat from the chaff. For safety purposes, someone can look at your account if they notice that the traffic is coming from shady sources such as adult or gambling sites. 

When it comes to payments, everything is handled by the brand itself, so you do not have anything to worry about in this sense. 

What we do have to note about the application is that the approval process does tend to take anything between two and four days. Prepare yourself for a week of waiting, then, since there will be an affiliate manager checking your application and looking at whether it makes sense for you to become a partner. 

The registration process is swift, however, and it will take you less than thirty minutes to fill out the form provided by the brand. 

Ease of use

Perhaps what makes Thinkific stand out from the crowd when it comes to affiliate marketing is the simplicity of its dashboard. On the left hand side of the page you log into using your personal information, you will find some basic things such as your reports, your affiliate links, and your referrals. 

There’s a message inbox that you are mostly going to use for communicating with an affiliate manager, especially if you run into any issue whatsoever. Announcements regarding promotions or special discounts might also be found there. 

You also get a section where you can find a bit of resources with the assistance of which you can improve your performance as a Thinkific affiliate. Lots of educational materials are to be found there, so we suggest you have a look at it. 

The Rewards & Withdrawals section deals with what its title suggests. You can check out your bonuses over there and look at the history of your withdrawals and even select different schedules if you need to raise some money for a higher expense, for example, and you do not want a lump sum ending up in your bank account. 

Finally, the Marketplace section is always there for you to also consider becoming a Thinkific client in case you want to build your own online courses and market them to your audience, too. If you have a decent amount of experience in terms of online marketing, especially affiliate, we suggest you give it a try. 

How much money can you make with the Thinkific affiliate program?

While we can’t give you a straightforward answer to this question since your earnings largely depend on factors that might be outside of your control, such as your organic traffic, whether there was an algorithm update by Google recently, the amount of money you’re investing in PPC and social media marketing, and more, we can tell you what commission rate you can expect. 

So, with this affiliate program, you can make 30% out of the value of every order placed through your referral link. On the upside, this is a recurring commission from what we have gathered, which means that each time someone renews their subscription, whether that be an annual or a monthly one, you will get 30% out of whatever amount of money they spend. 

On the downside, a tracking cookie does exist and unlike some of the better earning programs we have looked at in the past, such as BeRush by SEMrush, for example (although it’s not in the same niche, it’s comparable in terms of commissions and cookies), it lasts for just 90 days. 

Still, that is considerably better than what other affiliate programs have to offer — the industry standard at this point is around 30 days, although there are some that go beyond that and offer cookies of 45 days, 60 days, or more. In other words, Thinkific is an example of one of those companies. 

All rewards are processed after the 13th of every month, once the brand has gone through your reports and looked at your clicks and conversions and also where your traffic is coming from. 

As for how you can get paid, you can connect either your PayPal or your Stripe account to your Thinkific affiliate dashboard so that you can cash out your payments as easily as possible. 

Pros and cons to using Thinkific for affiliate marketing

When it comes to the benefits that you can enjoy as a Thinkific affiliate, there are plenty to consider before joining the program. One of the first you ought to mull over is the 30% commission (recurring) that allows you to make consistent money throughout the year each time someone renews their subscription. 

The 90-day cookie duration is another advantage as it makes it possible for you to make a commission even if someone from your audience takes a long time to decide.

The company estimates that most affiliates can make $1,700 per year with its affiliate program. Unfortunately, that might not sound like a lot to those marketers who are cashing out the big checks from other companies — so it all boils down to what you feel most comfortable with and what makes sense for you in terms of your niche. 

Marketing materials aren’t sparse, so Thinkific will try their best to get you to promote their services by providing you with banners and other eye-catching visuals that may more or less convince your audience to give Thinkific a shot.

But as is the case with any of the other programs that we might have reviewed in the past, there are drawbacks to be considered alongside any benefits you might enjoy. 

And the most significant one that we have found is the niche of Thinkific itself. As creative as Internet users have gotten in the past years, not everyone’s an expert at anything. This means that a good portion of your blog’s readers are simply not going to want to try to create their course, and more importantly, pay for a service that enables them to. 

Thinkific services largely speak to online entrepreneurs and although their number might have increased in the past years, there still aren’t enough of them in the world to satisfy all Thinkific affiliates. 

Although the 90-day tracking cookie is worth writing home about, especially when comparing it to that of other programs, it might still not be enough time for someone to decide and build a course through Thinkific. 

Should you become a Thinkific affiliate?

It really boils down to your niche and how well you tend to engage with your audience. If your readership is composed of business owners or startup entrepreneurs or just people looking to make a switch from working for the man to freelancing and who may want to guide other people with starting their own thing, the Thinkific affiliate program might make a great choice for you. 

If regular consumers are the biggest part of your website’s or blog’s audience, then you virtually have no chance of making a lot of money with this program. The $1,700/year estimate is done by the brand, so you should take it with a grain of salt. 

Alternatives to the Thinkific affiliate program

Kajabi

We recently put together a review of this affiliate program. Kajabi is a somewhat similar service when compared to Thinkific, so you do not have to worry about anything in this sense. 

As a Kajabi affiliate, you can make 30% out of the value of each order placed through your affiliate links. The neatest thing about the program is that the commission is a recurring one, which means that even when someone renews their subscription, you still get a 30% rate. 

Read more: Singapore affiliate programs

Teachable

Since we just described the Kajabi affiliate opportunity, you should know that Teachable is very similar to it. You get a 30% commission rate (which are also recurring) with a 90-day tracking cookie. 

To give you a clue as to how much you might be able to earn with Teachable, the plans vary from the Basic, priced at $29 per month to Business, priced at $249 per month (at least that’s what the cost was at the time of this article being written). 

LearnDash

If you’re interested in making a bit more compared to the programs that we have previously mentioned, then becoming a LearnDash affiliate should be right up your alley. This is another fairly well-known company in the niche of designing and hosting online courses. 

Every order placed through your affiliate links can make you a 35% commission rate on the initial purchase. The brand is keen on claiming that your commission can get as high as $115 per sale, but that of course depends on which plans your audience chooses. 

As is the case with many of the other programs we have looked at in the same field, you are not going to find this one on any affiliate marketing network website — it is self-managed, so you need to submit your application on the brand’s own site. 

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LearnWorlds

We thought we’d add this one to the list just for the sake of diversity in the sense that the affiliate program doesn’t really offer anything groundbreaking. 

As is the case with the Thinkific affiliate percentage or the commission rates you can expect from other companies, LearnWorlds gives you 30% out of every order placed through your affiliate links. 

The good thing about LearnWorlds and something that does set it aside from the rest is the fact that the brand pays its affiliates on a monthly basis through PayPal or Stripe. 

The dashboard also seems to be quite clear in terms of stats and performance reports — at least based on what affiliate marketers have to say about it. If you do not want to put all of your eggs in one basket, considering this program might be a good idea. 

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