Kajabi, Teachable and Podia: How Course Creators Run Their Own Affiliate Programs

What does it mean for a creator to "run their own affiliate program" on Kajabi, Teachable or Podia?

Kajabi, Teachable and Podia are all platforms where a creator builds and sells their own online courses. On top of the course-building tools themselves, all three have a built-in feature that lets the course creator let other people — students, colleagues, or entirely outside promoters — resell the course for a commission the creator sets, without bolting on a separate tracking system. That's a structural flip from most of the rest of the Academy's affiliate coverage, which usually assumes a brand recruiting creators — here, the creator is the brand, and has to recruit their own promoters.

The feature only exists on one of each platform's pricier plans, the commission rate is set by the course creator, not the platform, and the three differ mainly in how affiliates get recruited and approved, and whether payout happens automatically or is the creator's own responsibility.

The three platforms, briefly

Kajabi is an all-in-one platform for building, marketing and selling online courses, memberships and coaching. Teachable is built specifically around hosting and selling courses through a "school." Podia covers courses, digital downloads, community and webinars on one platform. All three are US-based SaaS platforms, billed in USD, and target course creators broadly and internationally — none of the three platforms' own documentation reviewed for this article names a specific Danish or Nordic adaptation.

How the built-in affiliate feature actually works on each platform

Two things this gets confused with

All three platforms also run their own "become an affiliate" partner program, where you earn a commission for referring new, paying customers to Kajabi, Teachable or Podia itself — that's a completely different thing from what this article covers. This article is about the built-in feature that lets you, as the course creator, recruit affiliates to sell your own course. The commission rates on each platform's own partner program change often and should be checked directly with each platform if that's what's actually relevant to you.

Comparison: a built-in affiliate feature vs. a dedicated tracking network vs. Whop

Kajabi's, Teachable's and Podia's built-in affiliate feature only covers sales of one creator's own course on that platform — structurally, that's closest to Whop's own built-in affiliate marketplace, covered in Whop and the rise of creator-owned digital commerce — both are built into the sales platform itself, with no separate tracking app. The difference: Whop's affiliate feature is automatically attached to every product on the platform, with a default commission level, while Kajabi, Teachable and Podia all require the course creator to actively set the feature up and choose the commission rate from scratch. If you'd rather have an affiliate system that works independently of which sales platform you use, Awin, Impact.com, Everflow and Refersion covers that category of dedicated tracking network instead.

Decision framework

IF you already pay for Kajabi Growth or Pro (or are close to needing it regardless of the affiliate feature) → the affiliate feature costs nothing extra on top of the plan, and you get an automatic PayPal payout option built in.

IF budget is tight and a built-in affiliate feature is a real factor in choosing a course platform → Teachable's Builder plan ($89/mo) is the cheapest entry point of the three to unlock a built-in affiliate feature.

IF you want to set different commission rates for different products without upgrading to the platform's most expensive tier → Podia's Shaker plan ($84/mo) supports both a default rate and a per-product rate.

IF you don't want to administer affiliate payouts manually yourself → Kajabi is the only one of the three where the documentation reviewed confirms a fully automatic payout option.

IF you'd rather have an affiliate system that works independently of which course platform you use, or that you can carry with you if you switch platforms → see Awin, Impact.com, Everflow and Refersion compared instead.

Worked example (hypothetical)

The figures below are hypothetical and illustrate only how the commission math works mechanically — they are not a documented creator income figure and not a real Make Influence customer case.

A Danish course creator sells a course for DKK 1,500 via Teachable's Builder plan ($89/mo) and sets an affiliate commission of 20% = DKK 300 per sale. Over one month, 3 affiliates together generate 40 sales.

• Gross revenue from the 40 sales: 40 × 1,500 = DKK 60,000
• Commission paid out to affiliates: 40 × 300 = DKK 12,000
• Net revenue before the platform subscription: 60,000 − 12,000 = DKK 48,000
• Platform subscription (Teachable Builder, billed separately in USD): $89/mo

The course creator's 3 affiliates drove 40 of the total sales in this example — how many of those 40 are genuinely new sales the affiliate feature caused, versus sales that would have happened anyway, is something neither Teachable nor this article can document; that's the same uncertainty that applies to any affiliate program, regardless of platform.

Make Influence's operational perspective

Make Influence doesn't sell its own courses, but we regularly come across creators who've built an independent course business alongside the brand deals we broker. Our experience is the same one described in the Whop article: a creator actively running their own affiliate program on Kajabi, Teachable or Podia has shown they can run an independent business — but that's a signal of business maturity, not a signal that their audience fits your brand. Treat it as one data point among several, not a shortcut.

It's also not a way for a brand to "piggyback" onto a creator's own course affiliate program to reach their audience around a completely different product — the feature is built to sell that specific course it's set up on, not as a general promotion channel for a third party.

Common mistakes

• Confusing the platform's own partner program with the built-in affiliate feature for your course. One pays you commission for referring new customers to Kajabi, Teachable or Podia itself; the other lets other people sell your course for commission — see the section above.
• Assuming the feature is included on the cheapest plan. All three platforms require one of the pricier tiers — see the comparison table.
• Setting the commission without first knowing your own margin. The commission rate should start from what the course can actually bear, the same as with any other affiliate program.
• Assuming the platform automatically catches an affiliate buying their own course through their own link. None of the three platforms' documentation reviewed describes a dedicated detection mechanism for that — see the FAQ below.

FAQ

Is this the same as "becoming an affiliate for Kajabi/Teachable/Podia"?

No. Becoming an affiliate for the platform itself means you earn a commission for referring new, paying customers to Kajabi, Teachable or Podia. This article is about the opposite feature: you, as the course creator, letting other people sell your own course for commission. See the "Two things this gets confused with" section above.

Which plan does the feature require on each platform?

Kajabi requires Growth ($249/mo) or Pro ($499/mo); Teachable requires Builder ($89/mo) and up; Podia requires Shaker ($84/mo) or Earthquaker ($150/mo). None of the platforms' cheapest plan includes the feature — see the comparison table above.

Is this the same as Whop's built-in affiliate feature?

Structurally related, but not identical. Whop's affiliate feature is automatically attached to every product on the platform with a default rate; on Kajabi, Teachable and Podia, the course creator has to actively set the feature up from scratch. See Whop and the rise of creator-owned digital commerce for the full comparison.

Do affiliates have to apply, or can they just sign themselves up?

It varies. Kajabi offers self-registration via a custom page; Teachable offers manual addition, converting students, and an application form; Podia's documentation reviewed points mainly to manual addition. See open vs application-only affiliate programs for the general trade-off between the two models.

What's the risk of letting students or followers become affiliates for your own course?

The same risk as any affiliate program: an affiliate can in principle use their own link to buy the course themselves and trigger a commission on their own purchase. See self-referral affiliate fraud for how other platforms and networks handle exactly that problem — none of the three course platforms' documentation reviewed for this article describes a dedicated, documented detection mechanism for it.

Can you set different commission rates for different affiliates?

Kajabi directly confirms you can set individual rates and organize affiliates into groups, so top affiliates can get a higher rate without changing the rate for the whole program. That resembles the principle behind tiered and escalating commission structures, with the difference that Kajabi's grouping is a fixed, manually set category rather than an automatic increase at a sales threshold.

Is this the same as Notion's or Canva's own template-economy affiliate layer?

Related, but not identical — see Notion, Canva and the template economy for how a similar two-layer split works for design and productivity templates. The key difference: unlike Kajabi, Teachable and Podia, Notion's own template marketplace has no built-in affiliate feature at all — a seller has to add one manually via a third-party tool like Gumroad.

Does a brand ever recruit affiliates directly, the way HelloFresh does, instead of the creator running their own program?

Yes — that's the more common direction, and it's structurally the opposite of what this article covers. See HelloFresh and meal-kit subscriptions for an example of a brand running an open, self-serve affiliate/discount-code program itself, alongside a separate paid influencer-campaign track.