Create an Instructor Revenue Share Program With Engagement-Weighted Payouts
“Can I share monthly subscription revenue with instructors based on how engaged their students are?”
Siren turns instructor revenue share into a monthly routine: a pool of subscription revenue, divided among your LifterLMS or LearnDash instructors in proportion to the student engagement their courses earn.
What's Included
Siren EssentialsInstructor Revenue Share
Optional add-ons
Turn these on in the setup. Each installs with the recipe and can raise the plan it needs.
- Reusable collaborator group Siren Plus
Reviews
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Siren is extremely flexible, and it opens up a whole world of possibilities in WordPress based collaboration. I recommend you try it out for yourself, and if you have any questions, the support is excellent.
Armando J.
Principal Software Engineer, PerezCarreno & Coindreau
Siren is so much more than an affiliate plugin with its multiple rewards structures. There's nothing like it on the market. Period.
Justin Ferriman
Founder, BrightGrowth
Finally, a WordPress solution that allows you to turn your learning site into a Netflix, or Udemy clone. Siren is the future of affiliate marketing and partnerships for the eLearning and WordPress industries.
Chris Badgett
CEO, LifterLMS
Siren Affiliates plugin has all the features I need, and the ones that I didn't know I needed!
It lets me track traditional affiliate referrals, but also, allows me to track revenue shares with my course co-creators.
And, one of the most important things I like most about Siren isn't a feature, but it's the top notch support provided by the development team!
I highly recommend Siren from the support to the plugin features.
Thank you for creating this, and at an affordable price.
Darren Mullen
Smart Workflow Guru
I feel support actually reads and understands what is being asked, which is one of my biggest frustrations with most support teams in the plugin's business. Most support replies are scripted and not relevant to what's being asked. This is not what happens with Siren.
Marco Almeida
Founder, PT Woo Plugins
These guys are the best. The program is simple and easy to use and their support is very quick to answer questions.
Adam McGee
Founder, Lemon Head Design
Siren is fantastic. Intuitive, powerful, well-supported. I'm thrilled I switched from AffiliateWP.
Corey Maass
Creator, Developer
I am thrilled to be a new Siren customer. Today, I created the first Affiliate Program for my LifterLMS site. This is an excellent solution for compensating content creators, and I can think of a couple of other use cases that I can't wait to try out! I highly recommend this product.
Robert Mascatello
Founder
I purchased Siren Affiliates and had a one-on-one with Alex. I was really impressed with the product and all the features it has. He was really thorough. I'd definitely recommend this plugin to anyone who needs to launch an affiliate program.
Anita
Web Designer
Siren Affiliate Manager is an exceptionally well-designed and thoughtfully built WordPress plugin. If you're running an affiliate program with multiple affiliates, different transaction types, or custom engagement triggers that need to generate commissions, this tool gives you serious power and flexibility. What really sets it apart, though, is the developer. Alex has been incredibly helpful and willing to customize the plugin for my specific use case. More importantly, he was focused on creating real value for my business - not just billing hours. That kind of mindset is rare. The plugin is robust, flexible, and clearly built by someone who understands real-world affiliate program complexity. I can't recommend Siren highly enough.
Julian Foster
Digital Strategist
Instructor Revenue Share Snapshot
A quick overview of who this program is for, what it tracks, which partners it rewards, and how Siren helps you manage it.
| Best for | Multi-instructor course platforms on LifterLMS or LearnDash |
|---|---|
| Main goal | Pay instructors from a monthly pool tied to student engagement |
| Partners involved | Course instructors bound to the courses they teach |
| Actions tracked | Course completions and lesson completions, scored as points |
| Rewards supported | A cut of the month's pooled revenue, weighted by score |
| Starting point | Start free with Siren Lite. This program runs on Siren Essentials ($229/yr). |
What This Recipe Does
This recipe creates a monthly performance-weighted distributor designed for LMS course platforms like LifterLMS and LearnDash. It splits a portion of your subscription revenue among instructors based on how much student engagement their courses generate. Instructors whose courses see more lesson and course completions earn a larger share of the monthly pool.
The model rewards instructors who create compelling, completable content. Rather than paying a flat rate or splitting revenue equally, this distributor ties compensation directly to student outcomes. Instructors have a clear incentive to produce courses that students actually finish.
Who It’s For
- LifterLMS and LearnDash site owners running a multi-instructor platform who want to automate revenue sharing based on student engagement
- Online course marketplace operators building a Udemy-style or Teachable-style experience on WordPress where instructor pay reflects course quality
- Membership site owners who feature courses from multiple educators and need a fair, performance-based compensation model
How It Works
When you apply this recipe, Siren creates a working monthly, performance-weighted distributor. The distributor uses the performanceSharedPool resolver, meaning each instructor’s share is proportional to their engagement score relative to all other instructors.
The recipe ships with a sensible default scoring setup so it runs the moment you apply it. It scores two metrics, courseCompleted at 10 points and lessonCompleted at 1 point, a ten-to-one weighting that counts a full course completion far more than a single lesson and rewards instructors whose students see courses through to the end, and it sizes the pool at 10% of qualifying revenue. You can adjust this in your Siren admin. Instructor-driven platforms often raise the pool to 25-50% of qualifying revenue, and you can reweight the point values or set commission pool filters to include only subscription revenue, keeping one-time product sales or other income streams separate from the instructor pool.
Once everything is configured, the system operates on autopilot. Siren tracks lesson and course completions throughout the month, builds each instructor’s score, and distributes the accumulated pool on the first of the following month. An instructor whose courses generated 40% of all tracked completions receives 40% of the pool.
How the Instructor Revenue Share Works in Siren
- 1
Start with a ready-made program
The recipe builds a monthly distributor around a pooled split: a percentage of subscription revenue goes into one pot, and each instructor draws a share proportional to the engagement their courses earned. That's the same economics Udemy runs, except the platform is yours.
- 2
Define partners and eligibility
Bring instructors in as collaborators, binding each one to the courses they teach. Every completion in a bound course then counts toward that instructor's score automatically, including courses published mid-month.
- 3
Scoring works on apply
The recipe ships a courseCompleted metric worth 10 points and a lessonCompleted metric worth 1, so engagement is scored from day one. The ten-to-one weighting favors instructors whose students finish entire courses rather than sampling a few lessons, and you can reweight it in the Siren admin.
- 4
Adjust the rewards
The pool ships at 10% of qualifying revenue. Instructor-driven platforms often raise it to 25 to 50% of qualifying income, and pool filters let you exclude one-time sales so only subscription revenue is shared.
- 5
Manage approvals and payouts
On the first of each month, Siren divides the accumulated pool by score: an instructor whose courses generated 40% of tracked completions collects 40% of the pot. Each instructor's share lands in the admin for your review, and payment goes out only after you approve it.
Everything You Need to Build and Manage a Instructor Revenue Share
Siren gives you the tools to create the program structure, track the right actions, and reward the right partners, all from one flexible incentive program system.
Create
- Prebuilt Instructor Revenue Share recipe
- Custom program builder
- Program-specific rules
- Partner eligibility rules
- Product and category filters
- Multiple program support
Track and Manage
- Referral link tracking
- Coupon tracking
- Product or category tracking
- Lead, form, or signup tracking
- Partner dashboard
- Payout management
Reward
- Percentage commissions
- Flat-rate rewards
- Recurring commissions
- Royalties or revenue share
- Tiered rewards
- Performance bonuses
Why Use Siren for a Instructor Revenue Share?
| Traditional revenue sharing software tools | Siren |
|---|---|
| Built for one program type | Built for multiple incentive programs |
| Often limited to one reward model | Supports commissions, bounties, royalties, revenue share, and bonuses |
| Rewards usually tied to one action | Rewards can be tied to different measurable actions |
| Harder to manage overlapping programs | Program groups and rules control how programs interact |
| May require multiple tools as you grow | Supports different partner programs from one system |
Hosted marketplaces dominate revenue sharing software, and they own your catalog and your instructor relationships in the bargain. Siren keeps the same pooled economics on a WordPress site you control, with room on the same install to add affiliate or referral programs later.
Similar Programs, and When to Use Each
Recipes that share machinery with this one, the rule that actually separates them, and the situation where the other recipe is the better pick.
| Program | How it differs | Use it instead when |
|---|---|---|
| Content Creator Profit Share | In the Content Creator Profit Share, the metric is a reader opening a bound blog post, so traffic alone determines each author's cut of the monthly pool. The Instructor Revenue Share weights completions instead, awarding 10 points per finished course and 1 per lesson. | Use the Content Creator Profit Share when your collaborators write blog posts rather than teach courses and readership is the fairest measure of their contribution. |
| Management Incentive Plan | Where the Instructor Revenue Share pays monthly from course and lesson completions, the Management Incentive Plan accumulates its pool for a full quarter and lets every collaborator carry a different metric, so a sales lead can be scored on coupon redemptions while a marketing lead is scored on referred visits. | Go with the Management Incentive Plan when you are compensating a leadership team across mixed channels on a quarterly bonus cycle. |
Connect Your Instructor Revenue Share to the Tools You Already Use
Siren works as the incentive layer behind the systems where partner-driven actions happen: your website, checkout, ecommerce store, forms, LMS platform, subscription flow, or custom workflow.
Start Your Instructor Revenue Share for Free
Start with Siren Lite for free to learn the basics, then run this instructor revenue share on Siren Essentials ($229/yr) when you are ready for the full structure. No upfront commitment.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is instructor revenue share?
Instructor revenue share is a compensation model where a course platform sets aside a percentage of its revenue and splits it among instructors instead of paying flat fees. In this recipe the split is weighted by student engagement, so instructors whose courses actually get finished earn a larger cut of the monthly pool. It's how marketplace platforms like Udemy pay their teachers, rebuilt on your own WordPress site.
How does instructor revenue share work?
Each month, a defined slice of subscription revenue accumulates in a shared pool while student activity gets scored. Finishing a course earns an instructor 10 points and each completed lesson earns 1, so completions carry far more weight than casual browsing. When the month rolls over, Siren divides the pool by those scores. An instructor who earned 30% of the points receives 30% of the money, and the cycle starts fresh.
Why use both courseCompleted and lessonCompleted as metrics?
Tracking both gives you a balanced scoring model. Lesson completions reward steady engagement throughout a course, while course completions reward instructors whose content students finish entirely. The recommended point values (10 for course, 1 for lesson) weight full completions more heavily.
Can I limit the revenue pool to subscription income only?
Yes. After applying the recipe, configure the commission pool filters to include only subscription-based transactions. This ensures one-time product sales or other revenue streams stay outside the instructor pool.
How are instructors connected to their courses in Siren?
Each instructor is added as a collaborator and bound to the courses they teach. When a student completes a lesson or course, Siren attributes the engagement to the bound instructor automatically.
What if an instructor publishes a new course mid-month?
The new course starts generating engagement points as soon as it is bound to the instructor. Their share of the pool adjusts naturally based on total accumulated points at distribution time.
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Learn More About Revenue Sharing Software
Related Documentation
Build Your Instructor Revenue Share With Siren
Start with a prebuilt recipe, customize the rules around your business, and manage partners, tracking, rewards, and payouts from one place.