As I mentioned in my previous Udemy post Why the Udemy Affiliate Program is so rewarding, I started my Udemy Affiliate journey in September 2011. Udemy’s Affiliate Program pays the affiliate a very competitive commission. You can simultaneously promote education and make some income for you and your family.

In 2012, I received a call from Danielle from Udemy and she asked me about my goals with the Udemy Affiliate Program. At the time I made around $150/month. She asked me how I would feel if I made $1000 per month. I said that I wish to get there one day! And that day came in September 2013 when I made $1660.60!
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If you want to find a great affiliate program, with a good payout & many other rewards, take a look at the Udemy Affiliate Program! Find important Udemy Affiliate Resources at the end of this article.

My Udemy Story

I have been involved in affiliate marketing since 2008. I like being an affiliate because it allows me to share great resources with my website & social media contacts. Also, as an affiliate you are an intermediary between the seller and the customer, and you don’t have to deal with distribution, customer service and so on.

I tried different programs like Google Adsense, Chitika, Scour Search Engine, Wealthy Affiliate, OIO Publisher, Lunarpages, Kontera, Sponsored Tweets, Softlayer, etc. With some of them I made under a hundred, but with most of these programs I made a few hundred dollars in total over a period of a few months to a year. Not enough to make a living from it, but anything extra helps, right?

For my non-profit websites, where we don’t sell any products and a big part of the traffic comes from Romania, the best fit is Google Adsense. For my English audience websites, the best fit is the Udemy Affiliate Program

Why Udemy and how I got started with the Affiliate Program

I learned a lot about how affiliate programs work in the past few years. Why is Udemy such a good fit for me and my websites? My background in education probably has a role in it. You want to be involved in an affiliate program that you like, but you also want to make some money from your effort. Everyone likes a reward! Udemy rewards you with very competitive commissions for each course sale made with your Udemy affiliate tracking links.

I found out about Udemy courses from a Groupon email in September 2011. I bought Learn to Develop an iPhone or iPad App in 4 Weeks at a great price.

After I signed up for the course, I learned about the Udemy Affiliate Program and I started right away. Again, I started from zero; I did not have to invest any money as it’s free to sign up. I learned and applied new methods. Some methods were obvious, others I read about. I also created my own methods.

My wife, Rozalia, is my business partner. She creates Udemy articles and new offers and she manages the social media campaigns. I take care of the technical stuff. I communicate with the Udemy team, instructors, and prospects, and I do some social media campaigns myself. I also manage some of our other advertising channels.

We made money the first month: we sold two courses valued at $99. The next month we sold another course. It was great to see money coming in already!

After that, we put some serious work into this program, and the results continued to increase.

Benefits of the Udemy Affiliate Program

1. It’s Easy to Start!

After I signed-up as a user at Udemy.com, I went to Udemy.com/affiliate to sign-up as an affiliate.

The affiliate sign-up request was reviewed soon after and accepted by the Udemy Team.

After I was approved, I accessed my Affiliate Dashboard, and I started to share the courses included in the Udemy Affiliate Program. Every link I share includes my unique affiliate ID so all the referred sales can be tracked back to my account.

Read more on how to become a Udemy affiliate on the Udemy affiliate home page.

I started to share these great course offers with my family, friends, colleagues, and other contacts. I also shared Udemy offers with my social media contacts and I posted information on my website about it.

Udemy graciously lets you use the course texts, images and reviews to promote the affiliate courses on social media, your own website, etc.  The Udemy Blog & Udemy Newsletters from the Affiliate team will guide your first steps.

Later on I created a special section on my website just for Udemy courses and I bought the domain ContinuingEducation.Me to have my Udemy promotion be easily accessed.

2. You get a competitive commission!

You get commission (on the double digits) for any Udemy paid course you sell, as well as being rewarded for new & returning customer sales!

When we started, Udemy affiliates were credited just for the specific sale they referred to their users. Later on, the Udemy Affiliate team gave affiliates more options for revenue and opportunities to earn more commission for promoting big seasonal campaigns or specific products.

Another advantage is that you can recommend them to your family, friends and colleagues. When you know you have a great product, you will want to share it with your close ones.

On the other hand, if you are an instructor and you choose to include your course in the Udemy Affiliate Program, then you can collaborate with affiliates or other media partners to promote your courses.

Udemy sends the commission payments to their affiliates at the beginning of each month for the approved sales (all sales that were not refunded after 30 days under the customer 30-day guarantee). Payments are always on time and they include a nice “thank you”. Sometimes, when the last day of the month is a Saturday or Sunday, they even send the payment on Friday, so you don’t have to wait!

3. Udemy has many promotional campaigns

Udemy statistics show that more sales are made during a course promotion. Udemy has great discount campaigns throughout the year. Udemy has course specific sales, contest sales, holiday promotions, etc.

Instructors have promotional campaigns, where the discount can range from 25% to 80%. Some paid courses are offered for free for a limited time, when the course has just launched.

I try to be active during these promotions and share most of those great deals. In the November 2012 sale, Udemy had a contest for its affiliates and I made it to the Top 10 Affiliates, being #9! It was a nice accomplishment, only a year after joining the affiliate program. I will get my prize soon: a Udemy T-Shirt!

You can find out about Udemy promotions on Udemy’s website, Facebook or Twitter Pages, or in their newsletter.

4. Udemy has a great responsive team

In the past year, I communicated with the Udemy Team quite a lot, and I can truly say, it is a delight to work with them.

The Udemy Team is always ready for new ideas & improvement. You can share your ideas as a user or an instructor in the Udemy Support Forum. All Udemy affiliates are welcome to send over their questions or ideas to affiliates@udemy.com

When I had a question, either as a user or as an affiliate, I received excellent customer support. I got a fast response, either the same day or the following business day.

Recently Udemy team members, Joanne, Danielle & Cuneyt helped me figure out my sale numbers for the past months. They showed interest in and patience with my request.

5. You can easily expand your sales

While you can make sales by promoting courses to your close contacts, you can increase your sales by collaborating with other users, instructors & affiliates.

I learn very useful tips for my affiliate work from reading Udemy’s newsletters.

At one point, I realized that I could go ahead and contact instructors to see if they want me to promote their courses, and to let me know when they have promotions. I got positive feedback and now I’m able to promote more courses and make more sales.

I am in contact with Danielle Leslie (my Udemy Affiliate Coach!), as I’m preparing my first Udemy course (yes, you guessed it, it will be about the Udemy Affiliate Program!).

I try to help the Udemy community with better interaction between Instructors and Affiliates, and by sharing Udemy deals with more users. I share the Affiliate ideas that come up with the Udemy team.

With this goal in mind, last December I started a Google+ Continuing Education Community. Sign-up to get more Udemy deals and to have an opportunity to communicate with other instructors & affiliates.

6. You Get to Promote Continuing Education

Being a Udemy Affiliate allows me to learn, but also to promote Continuing Education to others. As a member of the Udemy community, you are motivated to learn more about your area of interest and to discover other domains and skills.

Learning doesn’t have to end when you graduate. I discovered that if you stay open-minded, you can continue learning new skills your whole life.

The world around you is changing rapidly, and Udemy allows you to stay on the cutting edge.

Be a Udemy Affiliate and share great education resources with the world, while you’re rewarded for it!

7. You can have fun!

Mr. Tom, our cat, helps me with my Udemy Affiliate campaigns! Being a cat and trying to promote Continuing Education is not easy, I can tell you! He mostly likes to sit on books or bookshelves, but he also likes being photographed! He is our mascot! I shared these pics with the Udemy team and they liked them. They said: “Cat pics are always welcome into Udemy promotions!”

See more pictures of Tom on our Instagram account.

Conclusion

If you are interested in a well-paying affiliate program, you should sign up for Udemy’s Affiliate Program! It’s easy, rewarding, great to work with & fun! If you put serious work into this program, you’ll see rewards, and I’m not just talking about a great commission, but also being involved in a Continuing Education system that will enrich your life.

Start your Udemy Affiliate journey today:

Sign up here to be part of the Udemy affiliate family!

About Lucian Mihailescu

Lucian is a Computer Programmer with 20+ years of experience. He has a Bachelor of Science in Computer Science from University of Bucharest and a background in High School Computer Science Education.

For the past five years, Lucian worked as an Affiliate & Social Media Manager for LucianWebService.com. Lucian is an expert in PHP & Internet related workshops. He presented many live seminars on location and over the internet, in Romania, Germany and Canada. His preferred subjects: “Working with PHP & MySQL” and “How to use a CMS” (Content Management System). He volunteered for other classes, such as: “Internet basics for Seniors” held in his hometown of Maple Ridge, BC, Canada (Vancouver Area).

Lucian is preparing his soon to be released “How to become a successful Udemy affiliate” course. This course will teach you how to start from zero and earn money as a Udemy Affiliate. The course targets beginners and intermediate affiliates, and includes sections for advanced affiliates.