How Expath’s Affiliate System Works

(Last Update: Nov 13th 2016)125

Expath’s Affiliate System is our way of rewarding bloggers and website owners for spreading the word about Expath with up to 50% commission for sales generated. Visitors and readers of our affiliates’ sites, newsletters and blogs are expats in Germany, people who are interested in relocating to Germany, or people who are interested in learning German – attributes that reflect Expath’s core products. Affiliates benefit from high payouts and real-time, live access to commission reports. Affiliates must agree to the terms stated on this page to participate.

Being a successful affiliate is incredibly easy. In a nutshell, all an affiliate has to do is

  • Put a (special) link directing people to any page on www.expath.de on their site or newsletter.
  • Check in on their live stats on how much money they earned and write us a quarterly invoice.

That’s it. Here’s how it works:

  • Affiliates who meet our criteria (because we want to partner with people who are familiar with what we do and avoid working with spammers) are sent login details via email for their personal affiliate menu on our site.
  • In the affiliate menu, they can find the unique URL assigned to them for their links to Expath’s site, as well as real-time information on sales generated and money earned.
    affiliate link

    Your affiliate link looks something like this (click to enlarge)

  • Affiliates install the links on their site or in their newsletter. The point is to send people who might be likely to purchase one of our services to our site. Multiple links, specialized pages or ads describing what we do, or individual pages for each product we offer may help direct traffic to our site, but because we want to benefit from our affiliate’s unique style, voice and SEO, we leave it entirely up to them where and how the links are displayed, as long as it’s on their site or newsletter (i.e. no spamming third-party pages with the link). For ethical and legal reasons (Truth in Advertising), it should be clear to the visitor/customer that Expath and the affiliate are partners and/or that commissions are involved. This is especially pertinent for blogs endorsing our services (i.e. a “recommendation” or “endorsement” for Expath must be transparent about the affiliate partnership). For links that clearly look like or identify as ads or include the word “sponsored” or “affiliate”, there should be no problem. For more general information on truth in advertising, and good guidelines to follow, please see here. Of course, there should be no testimonials unless the affiliate has actually experienced Expath’s service. On our end, we have installed an appropriate opt-out cookie notice, a privacy policy, a cookie policy and updated terms of service which inform our visitors of this system.
  • When people click on the link, it drops a cookie on their device, which is unique to the affiliate and recognized by our payment processor. This cookie is active for a year – and unless it’s deleted or they click on another affiliate’s link (thus replacing the cookie), the original affiliate earns commission on everything this visitor books on www.expath.de.
  • Currently, as of Nov 13th 2016, we have configured 17 different “products” on our site and in our automatic emails on which commission can be earned. Our payment processor, which tracks the commissions, is represented by “Pay Now” or “Buy Now” buttons on our site, which send users to a secure PayPal page, where they have the choice of paying with PayPal, credit card or bank transfer. Once the transaction is completed, the commission is instantly recorded and visible in the affiliates menu.
    payment button

    What our payment buttons look like (click to enlarge)

  • If no refund has been issued to the customer up to 60 days after the initial transaction, the commission is “unlocked” and set to be paid to the affiliate. At this stage, we anticipate payouts to happen quarterly for all such “unlocked” money earned after the affiliate has issued us an invoice.

Because we are extremely interested in this program succeeding (Expath obviously benefits from lots of visitors and having third-party websites promoting us, thus helping us with our marketing and increasing brand awareness) we have made the commissions very generous (between at least 5 Euros to at most 216 Euros commission per purchase!), and heavily promote customers’ use of the payment buttons on our page rather than any other payment method. We have created checkout pages, upsells, automated response emails with product links and special offers (usually involving bundled online workshops) to motivate people to use them.

However, Expath’s customers do have a choice in how to pay for their products, and no commission is earned on cash transaction, bank transfers and manual PayPal transactions – which are all not recorded by the payment processor. In addition, though it is not common, people are able to get refunds. In any conceivable case, this would be done within 60 days of the initial transaction (specifically 60 days because that is also a limit imposed by credit card companies), thus commission is “frozen” for that period. There are also services for which we currently do not offer commissions, such as coachings and corporate services – the reason for this is that coachings are highly variable and corporate sales take place outside of the website. Repeat German students are usually given a special discount, which currently requires payment outside of the payment buttons and there is no commission.

Lastly, we reserve the right to change the prices of our products at any time (for example, if we have special sales) as well as commission percentages or fixed amounts. This does not affect commissions earned in the past, and generally the percentage should remain the same – we do not intend to remove the commission system from any products. If there are major changes, our partners are notified and can decide whether to continue promoting our services. We also reserve the right to cancel anyone’s affiliate status at any time – this is especially the case if the affiliate is dishonest, misleading in representing Expath, Expath’s services, or the nature of the partnership (see above section on truth in advertising).

In order to be accepted (and paid) as an affiliate, you must:

  • Have a website or newsletter that’s relevant to our potential customers with sufficient reach for this to make sense. Relevant social media pages (e.g. Facebook) or groups may be possible, but it’s important to keep in mind that, unless it can be simplified, the unique link is quite clunky and may be unsuitable for this medium.
  • Be able and legally allowed to write us invoices. International invoices are fine. VAT is included in the overall commission (i.e. the commission amount is always the gross amount) and, if applicable, must be present in the invoice and reflect your country’s VAT laws.
  • Have a PayPal account. Commissions are only paid via PayPal.

Current payout for purchases on our page (subject to change, though we will make an effort to keep affiliates informed of major changes). You are welcome to direct people to specific product-pages as well (if you want to promote a certain product), using your affiliate URL:

  1. Online Workshops (6 Products): 50% Commission, current payout 5 EUR per purchase (link)
  2. 30-Unit Group German Course (with Grammar Workshop): 10%, currently 15 EUR per purchase (link)
  3. 48-Unit Group German Course (with Grammar Workshop): 10%, currently 24 EUR per purchase (link)
  4. 4 Lesson One-To-One German (with Grammar Workshop): 5%, currently 14 EUR per purchase (link)
  5. 8 Lesson One-To-One German (with Grammar Workshop): 5%, currently 26 EUR per purchase (link)
  6. 16 Lesson One-To-One German (with Grammar Workshop): 5%, currently 48 EUR per purchase (link)
  7. 32 Lesson One-To-One German (with Grammar Workshop): 5%, currently 88 EUR per purchase (link)
  8. 64 Lesson One-To-One German (with Grammar Workshop): 5%, currently 160 EUR per purchase (link)
  9. 96 Lesson One-To-One German (with Grammar Workshop): 5%, currently 216 EUR per purchase (link)
  10. NOT ACTIVE – 2 Week Intensive German Course (with Grammar Workshop): 5%, currently 10 EUR per purchase (link)
  11. NOT ACTIVE – 4 Week Intensive German Course (with Grammar Workshop): 5%, currently 20 EUR per purchase (link)
  12. Live Workshop + Online Workshop (2 Products): 20%, currently 6 EUR per purchase (link or link)
  13. Live Freelancing Workshop + Online Workshop: 20%, currently 8 EUR per purchase (link)

Please contact us at info@expath.de if you have any questions or would like to join our affiliate program. We’re looking forward to hearing from you!

Update (Nov 13th): Starting today, affiliates also get a 1EUR commission on every transaction the system designates as a “lead”.

All the best,

Your Expath Team