LearnDash × Royalty program
Run a royalty program on LearnDash
Pay your course creators a royalty every time one of their LearnDash courses sells. Assign each course to its instructor once, and Siren credits the right person automatically on every purchase. <strong>No referral links, no coupon codes, no manual attribution.</strong> Here is how it works on LearnDash, and the recipe to install it.
Built for multi-instructor course sites. Installs from a recipe and runs on the WordPress plugin.
Can you run a royalty program on LearnDash?
Yes. Siren pays course creators a royalty every time one of their LearnDash courses sells, with no referral links or manual tracking. You assign each course to its instructor once using owned products, and Siren credits the owner automatically on every purchase. It runs on the same WordPress site as LearnDash, with course-ownership tracking on the Essentials tier.
“Robust, flexible, and built by someone who understands real-world affiliate program complexity.” Julian Foster · Digital Strategist
How royalty program runs on LearnDash
The same recipe everywhere. Here is the path a referral takes through LearnDash.
An instructor owns a course
You assign each LearnDash course to its creator once in Siren's owned products settings.
A student buys it
The purchase completes natively, whether through LearnDash checkout or WooCommerce on the same site.
Siren credits the owner
Siren reads the transaction, sees who owns the course, and applies your royalty rate to that line item.
The royalty is paid
As store credit, or as real money via Stripe Connect on the Plus tier.
What is specific to LearnDash
The LearnDash details that change how this program runs.
Attribution
By ownership, not by link
There are no tracking links or coupons. Each course has a clear owner, so the instructor who created it earns the moment it sells.
Events
Fires on the course sale
Siren reads LearnDash transactions natively, whether the student checks out through LearnDash or through WooCommerce on the same site.
Multiple owners
Each creator earns independently
Assign a course to more than one instructor and every owner earns their royalty separately on the same sale.
Payouts
Store credit or real money
Pay royalties as store credit on Essentials, or real money via Stripe Connect on Plus.
What you can reward, and what counts
The reward options and the LearnDash events that trigger them for this program.
Ways to reward
- Percentage royalty on each course sale
- Per-course rates aligned to each offer
- Independent royalties for co-created courses
- Royalty plus affiliate commission on the same sale
What counts on LearnDash
- Course purchase (LearnDash or WooCommerce)
- Owned-course sale credited to its instructor
- Refund reversal (WooCommerce-routed sales)
Real ways teams run it
Marketplace
A Udemy-style split on WordPress
Assign every course to its creator and pay each instructor a percentage of the sales their courses generate, the standard course-marketplace model rebuilt on your own site.
Co-creators
Two instructors, one course
When a course is built by a team, assign it to each creator. A single sale pays every owner their royalty independently.
Per-course rates
Higher royalty on the flagship
Set a different royalty on a premium certification than on an introductory course, so each creator's cut matches the value of their offer.
Affiliate plus royalty
Reward the referrer and the creator
Run a royalty program alongside an affiliate program. One sale pays the affiliate who referred the student and the instructor who built the course, because they reward different people.
Course Creator Royalty Program
Instructors earn a percentage every time one of their courses sells, tracked automatically by course ownership.
The exact configuration. Install it on your LearnDash site in one click.
What you need
To run this on LearnDash
- A WordPress site with LearnDash active.
- The Essentials tier, which provides course-ownership tracking and the owned-products engagement type.
- Selling through WooCommerce too? Siren tracks both checkouts on the same site.
- Plus for automatic real-money payouts via Stripe Connect.
Royalty program on LearnDash questions answered
How does Siren know which instructor to pay on LearnDash?
You assign each LearnDash course to its instructor once using Siren's owned products feature. When that course sells, Siren reads the transaction, matches the course to its owner, and credits that instructor with the royalty automatically. There are no referral links or coupon codes involved, because attribution is based on who owns the course, not who referred the sale.
What Siren tier does a LearnDash royalty program need?
The Essentials tier. Course-ownership tracking and the owned-products engagement type that powers instructor royalties are Essentials features. The free Lite tier covers link-based affiliate programs, but ownership-based royalties begin on Essentials.
What happens when a course has more than one instructor?
Assign the course to each instructor in Siren. When the course sells, every owner earns their royalty independently on the same sale. A course co-created by two instructors pays both of them, and each payout is calculated from that course's line item, not the order total.
Can I pay a different royalty rate on different courses?
Yes. You can set per-course royalty rules, so a premium certification can carry a higher rate than an introductory course. Each instructor's payout is based on the price of their specific course, which lets you match royalties to the value and margin of each offer.
Does the royalty program work with both LearnDash checkout and WooCommerce?
Yes. Siren listens to LearnDash transaction events natively, so a course sale is credited whether the student checks out through LearnDash's own payments or through WooCommerce on the same WordPress site. As long as the course is assigned to an instructor in Siren, the royalty is tracked automatically either way.
Can I run a royalty program and an affiliate program at the same time?
Yes. Siren evaluates each program independently against the same transaction. When a student buys a course, the affiliate who referred them can earn a commission and the instructor who created the course can earn a royalty on that one sale, because the two programs reward different people for different contributions.
What happens if a student gets a refund?
You control royalty approval timing. Royalties start in a pending state and can be held until your refund window closes. LearnDash does not expose a refund event to Siren, so those royalties are stopped through this manual review window before payout. If you sell the same courses through WooCommerce, refunds on those orders are reversed automatically, so creators are paid on sales that stick.
Other programs on LearnDash
Same platform, different reward shape. Each has its own page and recipe.