/
Affiliate Commissions for Digital Products and Online Courses: Why the Economics Differ From Physical Goods
Guide
Pricing & Negotiation
Both
Digital products and online courses typically carry almost no cost of goods, so affiliate commission can be set far higher than on physical goods — some course platforms, like Teachable, let you set the rate anywhere from 1% to 100% of the sale. The trade-off: refund windows tend to run longer (14-30 days), raising the risk of having to claw back commission that's already been paid.
Digital products and online courses typically carry almost no cost of goods, so affiliate commission can be set far higher than on physical goods — some course platforms, like Teachable, let you set the rate anywhere from 1% to 100% of the sale. The trade-off: refund windows on digital products and courses tend to run longer (14-30 days), which raises the risk of having to claw back commission that's already been paid out. The underlying calculation is the same one the Academy already uses for physical goods in how much commission should influencers get — commission is the core mechanic behind affiliate influencer marketing. It's the inputs that change.
The formula behind a sustainable commission rate doesn't change by product type: contribution per sale = price − variable costs − commission. What changes is what belongs in "variable costs." For a physical product, cost of goods (commonly 30-60% of the gross price), shipping and packaging all count — see the physical-goods worked example in how much commission should influencers get. For a digital product or a pre-recorded course, there's no cost of goods to subtract: one additional sale costs almost nothing to "produce" beyond a payment-processing fee and, sometimes, a small hosting or streaming cost.
| Physical product | Digital product / course | |
|---|---|---|
| Cost of goods | Typically 30-60% of price | Close to 0% |
| Shipping and packaging | A real per-order cost | None |
| Marginal cost of one more sale | The full cost of goods, again | Payment fee + any hosting (commonly a few percent) |
| What actually caps the commission | Gross margin after cost of goods | How much of the revenue you're willing to give up — there's no cost of goods pushing back |
| Commonly observed commission range | Roughly 5-20% (see the physical-goods worked example) | Much wider — a course platform's own tooling allows up to 100% |
That doesn't mean 100% is ever a sensible rate — it means the ceiling is no longer cost of goods, it's your own judgement of what a new customer is worth, and how much of that value you're willing to share with whoever drove the sale.
Teachable's own Help Center tooling for affiliate commission lets a course creator set the rate anywhere from 1% to 100% of the sale, individually per affiliate. Teachable's own help page could not be fetched directly during research for this article (automated access was blocked), but the range is confirmed consistently across multiple independent sources quoting the platform's own page verbatim — treat it as Teachable's own documented range, not as a recommendation of what the rate should be.
Kajabi's own "Activate Affiliate commission" tooling gives the same freedom: you toggle commission on for a specific Offer and enter either a percentage or a fixed amount yourself — Kajabi doesn't suggest a default rate. The one thing that does default is the Referral Conversion Window, set to 30 days unless changed.
The same confusion came up repeatedly during research for this article and is worth naming directly: Teachable and Kajabi each run their own partner program, where someone earns commission for bringing new customers to the platform itself — a completely different thing from the affiliate feature you use, as a course creator, to pay your own affiliates for selling your own course. Teachable's own partner program, for example, pays 30% of the value of the Teachable subscription a referred customer signs up for, for up to a year — a figure that says nothing about what you should pay an affiliate for selling your course. Don't conflate the two when researching "what commission does the platform pay."
A high commission rate is harmless if the money is never paid out on a sale that later gets refunded. The problem is that digital products and courses commonly carry longer refund windows than an ordinary physical-goods return policy, and commission is often paid out well before that window closes.
Per sources quoting Teachable's own Terms of Use, standard course purchases carry a 14-day refund eligibility window by default, while the course creator can process a refund manually for up to 30 days at their own discretion — and digital downloads, bundles and coaching purchases follow the creator's own stated policy rather than one platform-wide rule. This page, too, could not be fetched directly during research; treat the figures as consistently reported across multiple independent sources, not as a direct quote of Teachable's own text.
Kajabi's own Help Center documents exactly what happens to an affiliate's commission on a refund: if the commission hasn't been paid out yet, it's zeroed to $0.00 in the affiliate's transaction record. If the commission was already marked Paid before the refund happened, it is not automatically clawed back — it stays "Paid" but gets tagged with a "Refunded" badge for record-keeping. That's the same principle the Academy already documents for physical goods, sourced to affiliate network Awin's own terms, in commission clawbacks: what happens when a customer returns the product: once a commission is actually paid, it's generally final, regardless of product type or platform. The difference for a digital product isn't the principle — it's that a longer refund window makes it far more likely the commission is already paid before a refund happens at all.
The figures below are made up for illustration only — not data from a Make Influence customer.
Assume an online course sells for DKK 1,997. Payment processing and hosting together cost 3% of the price, or DKK 60. The course creator sets an affiliate commission of 40% of the price.
Contribution remaining: DKK 1,138 per sale — even at a commission rate double the top end of the physical-goods range (5-20%), the course creator keeps more than half the price as contribution. Compare that to worked example A in how much commission should influencers get, where a DKK 1,000 physical product at 15% commission leaves DKK 332 — less than a third of the price, at a far lower rate. That's the point: the percentage doesn't compare across product types, only the contribution does.
If a refund lands on day 20 — after the course's 14-day refund window has technically closed, but after the commission has already been paid out on a fast payout cycle — the DKK 799 in commission described above may not be recoverable at all, depending on the specific platform's own terms.
IF your product genuinely carries no cost of goods (a course, a template, an ebook) → set commission based on what a new customer is worth to you, not the 5-20% physical-goods range.
IF your course or product has a refund window longer than about a week → hold commission payout until the window closes, or knowingly accept that you may not be able to claw it back.
IF you're using a platform like Teachable or Kajabi to run your own affiliate program → confirm the platform's own rules for what happens to an already-paid commission on a later refund before promising an affiliate anything.
IF you find yourself quoting the platform's own partner-program rate → stop and re-check you're looking at the right tool; the two have nothing to do with each other.
IF the product is a subscription (an ongoing membership to course content) rather than a one-time purchase → see recurring commission structures for subscription and DTC brands for the cap structures that apply to repeat payments instead.
Make Influence's own model is brand-paid collaborations with tracked sales and discount codes on physical and service products — we don't run affiliate programs for digital products or online courses ourselves, so what follows is our reading of the platforms' own documentation, not a description of our own experience. The general principle we'd still apply is the same one we recommend for physical goods: let contribution, not the industry's "normal" percentage, set the rate. For a digital product, that ceiling just sits in a very different place.
Because there's no cost of goods to protect. A physical product has to recover its production cost on every sale; a digital product costs almost nothing extra to "produce" again, beyond a payment fee and any hosting cost.
No. It's the technical range Teachable's own tooling lets you choose within — not a recommendation. The rate should still be set from your own contribution and customer-value math.
That's the safest practice, and the same one the Academy recommends for physical goods in commission clawbacks. The longer the refund window, the more it matters.
Not necessarily. Per Kajabi's own Help Center, an already-paid commission stays "Paid" with a "Refunded" badge — it isn't automatically clawed back from the affiliate. Always check the specific platform's own terms.
No. That's a separate program where someone else earns commission for bringing new customers to the platform itself — not to your course. See the mix-up section above.
Completely different questions. This article covers what you pay an affiliate to drive a sale; the VAT question is about when and where you have to account for VAT on the sale itself. See VAT One Stop Shop (OSS): when a creator selling digital products needs to register.
Make Influence
Find creators with real audience data, run collaborations in one place, and see clicks and sales per creator while the campaign is live.
Book a demoCreate accountMake Influence
Apply to campaigns from brands that are actively looking, follow your own clicks and sales, and get paid without chasing invoices.
Create creator profileMore creator guidesMake Influence
Briefs, agreed terms, tracking links and results sit together — so brands and creators see the same numbers.
See how it worksBrowse the Academy
