Skillshare Help Center

Update & FAQ: Adapting the Teacher Referral Bonus (February 2022)

Earlier this year, we announced some updates to the way Skillshare teachers earn revenue and receive payments, including adaptations to referral earnings. As a refresher, we announced that we are changing the way teacher referral earnings are awarded and calculated. This change goes into effect April 1st, 2022. That means that May 16th will be the first teacher payment to reflect the new referral model. For more information on the original announcement, please visit Important Updates to Skillshare Teacher Payments (January 2022).

Our team is already hard at work preparing for this change to referral earnings, and as we approach April 1st, we wanted to provide teachers with an update and additional details on how this change will work.

How are teacher referral earnings changing?

Skillshare currently offers teachers a flat $10 bonus for every new student they refer to Skillshare, regardless of whether this student becomes a paying member once their free trial ends and regardless of the amount paid to Skillshare. To better encourage referrals that lead to increased subscriptions and more royalties in teachers’ pockets, we will be changing the way we calculate teacher referral earnings.

Effective April 1st, 2022, for every new student that a teacher refers to Skillshare, the teacher will earn equal to 60% of that student’s first subscription payment. For example, if a student pays the current U.S. rate of $167.88 for their first year of Skillshare membership, the teacher that referred them will receive a 60% share of that payment — that’s just over $100 earned by the teacher for their referral! Regardless of the mix of referral types and membership amounts paid, we are pleased to share that under this new model, Skillshare will be investing more money overall into teacher referrals.

Until April 1st, when this change goes into effect, teachers will continue to earn a $10 bonus for every new student they refer who begins a free trial. Note that under both the previous and new model, teacher referrals will continue to provide new students with a one month free trial.

How will referral earnings be calculated?

Starting April 1st, 2022, teacher referral earnings will be calculated based on the membership fees Skillshare receives from a user who becomes a paid subscriber, net of refunds, and will not include amounts collected from the user for taxes, if any. So how does this calculation work in practice? Each month, we aggregate payments received in that month from first-time memberships (not including sales taxes) paid by students you referred (Membership Payments) and then subtract any refunds processed in that month for any referred students (Refunds). Visit our Refund Policy for more info.

  • Membership Payments - Refunds = Net Membership Payments

Your referral earnings for each month will be equal to 60% of your Net Membership Payments for that month.

  • 60% of Net Membership Payments = Your monthly referral Earnings

Your monthly referral Earnings are sent on the 16th of the following month. That means that your April payment, which will be sent on May 16th, will be the first teacher payment reflecting these changes. For more on the timing of teacher payments, visit When and how do I receive payments from Skillshare?

Note that until April 1st, when this change goes into effect, teachers will continue to earn a $10 bonus for every new student they refer who begins a free trial.

Where can I track my referral earnings?

We will continue to provide a breakdown of your referral earnings every month on your Teacher Stats dashboard and your Referrals dashboard. When we announced these changes, we shared our plans to offer additional referral data on your Referrals dashboard.

Unfortunately, we’ve run into some technical delays as our team prepares for these changes, and will not be able to introduce the additional data when the changes go into effect on April 1st. Instead, we will display your referral earnings in aggregate, while we continue to work on those technical hurdles. We are excited to make additional data updates to the Referrals dashboard as soon as possible. In the meantime, we invite you to reach out directly to referral-team@skillshare.com to request that we manually send you a report of your referral data, including the origin and status of your referrals, so that you are empowered in your referring.

Thank you for your patience! If you have any questions about the above update, please get in touch with us at teach@skillshare.com.