How to Create a Course Creator Incentive Program with WordPress

If you own an e-learning website or academy with a collection of courses sold by creators, it’s probably a real hassle calculating everyone’s royalty payments. Keeping track of whose courses are sold, and entering the information into a sales program to determine royalties takes extra time you don’t have as a small business owner.

But you can automate this process on your WordPress site through the Siren plug-in!

Siren allows you to create a course creator incentive program that pays a royalty to your collaborators every time one of their courses sells through your site. Yes! Siren can handle royalty payments too!

Prerequisites for Setting up the Course Creator Program

Before setting up the Course Creator Incentive Program, you’ll want to make sure you have LifterLMS, and the Siren Plugin installed on your WordPress website. Hopefully, you also have a few creators on the team who have already created their courses and are selling them via your online academy or learning website.

Setting up the Course Creator Incentive Program

Under the Siren menu on your WordPress site, click on “Program.” At the top of the page next to “Programs,” click on “Add New.”

Create New Program

Getting started with your new royalty program is very quick and easy. First, Siren will need some basic information about the program.

1. Enter a “Name” for your Course Creator Incentive Program.
2. Fill in a brief “Description.” A simple, but to the point description could be, “Pays course creators when their course is sold.”
3. Set the “Status” to “Active.”
4. Select your preferred “Currency.”
5. Leave “Expiration Time” blank. This isn’t relevant when it comes to royalties for creators selling their own online courses.

Setting Up the Program Structure

Siren can award credit to program collaborators in a number of ways, from looking at which collaborators sent students to a specific course page last, to paying the creators for every course sale. Under this section of the new program page, you’ll also be able to tell Siren what students have to do on your site for your collaborator to earn their royalty.

1. Look at the “Program Structure.” Since you’re only paying the course creator their cut of every sale, you’ll want to choose, “Every Engagement Wins.” This makes sure that the creator always gets credit for every single sale that is made.
2. Click on “Collaborator Product Sold,” under “Engagement Tracking Events.” This tells Siren that credit will be awarded for sales on every product owned by the course creator, or your royalty program collaborator.

You’ll also see a section here for “Value” with a drop-down menu. Just leave it at zero, you don’t have to worry about it for this program.

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Incentive Structure

Now you’re into the deep waters of building a royalty program. The Incentive Structure section is where you tell Siren how much to pay collaborators for their course sales.

1. Click on “Percentage of Transaction.” This just tells Siren how to calculate the royalty paid to your course creator. Most publishers pay a percentage of every sale.
2. Enter the desired royalty “Percentage” that course creators will receive for every sale. Royalty programs usually pay a much larger amount per sale than affiliate programs. For example, Amazon KDP pays authors about 70% on the sales of certain ebooks.
3. Click on “Credit Conversions for Sales.”
4. Leave “Renewals,” unchecked. In this particular instance, you don’t have to worry about giving royalties for subscriptions or memberships. Since the program you’re creating is focused only on giving royalties for sales of online courses.
5. Select “Auto Approve Completed Transactions,” if you want to save yourself some time. Siren will automatically approve royalty payments for every sale of the creator’s course.

Things to Include in Commission Calculations

Siren can also calculate royalty payments or any kind of affiliate payment using just one or more parts of a sales transaction. Options for things to include in “Commission Calculations” are:

• Discounts
• Fees
• Line Items
• Shipping
• Taxes

Selecting only “Discounts” and “Line Items” when setting up a royalty program is recommended. You don’t want to give cash royalties for any fees, shipping, or taxes you’ll be charging the customer!

In the “Line Items” form that expands when you select it, you’ll see a number of options to choose from for your royalty program. You’ll only need to check the “Collaborator-Owned” box.

Click the “Create” button at the bottom of the page when you have made all of your selections. Siren will automatically create your Course Creative Incentive Program. You’ll be taken to the top level “Programs” page where you can see the active royalty program, the amount of engagement with it, and number of collaborators (participants) in the program at a glance.