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Instructors

Instructor Earnings & Payouts

The publishing fee, minimum prices, how every sale is split, when earnings clear, and how and when you are paid.

Last updated on October 25, 2026.

Publishing a course costs $3.00 plus $0.10 per gigabyte, once. You keep 70% of what students pay and we keep 30%. If you switch on an affiliate programme for a course, the commission you set comes out of your 70%, never ours. Every sale clears 14 days after the charge, and you withdraw from $20, on a schedule you choose or whenever you ask. Refunds and chargebacks come back out, and a chargeback the bank decides in our favour goes back in.

This summary is for orientation only. The sections below are the operative terms.

1. What this covers

This policy states every figure an instructor on acada.ac is charged or paid: the publishing fee, the minimum prices, how a sale is split, when earnings clear, and how and when they are paid out. The terms behind those figures are in the Instructor Agreement; that agreement is the contract, and this policy is its numbers. ACADA L.L.C., a Tennessee limited liability company (ACADA, we), takes every payment from students and pays you your share. All amounts are in US dollars.

2. The publishing fee

  • Amount. $3.00 plus $0.10 for every gigabyte of images, audio and files uploaded to the course's lessons, rounded to the cent. A course with 2 GB of lesson files costs $3.20 to publish. The landing page's media does not count.
  • When. Charged to the card on file in the Instructor Dashboard the first time the course is published. Files you add later cost nothing more, and unpublishing and publishing it again is free. The one exception is a fee we have refunded: if that course is later restored, publishing it again charges the fee again.
  • Every course. The fee applies to free courses too. It is the one gate every course goes through.
  • Refunds. The fee is not refunded when you retire a course, however soon. We refund it only when we remove the course for a reason that is not your fault, such as a third party's legal demand about material you had the right to use. A course removed for breaking our policies keeps its fee.

3. Minimum prices

You set the price of each access tier, or make it free. A paid tier cannot go below a floor that rises with the size of the course, so that the price covers what it costs to deliver:

  • Base figure. $9.99 plus $0.35 per gigabyte, counted as in section 2.
  • Monthly Access. At least the base figure × 1.25 ÷ 3. With nothing uploaded, $4.17 a month, and about 15 cents more per gigabyte.
  • Lifetime Access. At least the base figure × 3.5. With nothing uploaded, $34.97, and about $1.23 more per gigabyte.
  • Rounding. Floors round up to the next cent. The Editor shows you the floor for the course's current size while you price it.
  • When it is checked. When you change a price, and again when you publish the course. A price that was fine when set stays in force if the course grows, and the course's other settings still save; but a course priced under its new floor cannot be published again until you raise the price.
  • Free. A course can be free: it then has Lifetime Access at $0 and no Monthly Access. Monthly Access is always paid, and a course cannot be free on one tier and paid on the other.
  • Bundles. A bundle of your own courses sells at a discount you choose, up to 50% off the courses bought separately.

4. How a sale is split

  • Standard sale. You receive 70% of what the student pays and we keep 30%. Our share covers payment processing, hosting and the platform.
  • Sale through an affiliate. We keep the same 30%. The affiliate receives the rate you set for that course, out of your share, for that sale and every renewal of it. You keep the rest, which on a course with no collaborators is at least 20% of the sale, because a commission can never exceed 50%.
  • One allowance for both. A commission and your collaborators' shares come out of the same 70%, so they share one ceiling: together they can never exceed 65% of a sale, and you always keep at least 5% of it. Whichever you set second is refused if it would break that, and it tells you how much is left.
  • Every charge. The split applies to each payment separately: a first purchase, each monthly renewal, the charge at the end of a trial, an upgrade from monthly to lifetime (on the amount actually charged, after the credit for unused days), and a repurchase by a returning student. A bundle is split the same way, course by course, on each course's part of the bundle price; it never pays an affiliate commission and takes no discount code.
  • Example. A $100 lifetime purchase pays you $70 and us $30. Through an affiliate at 20%, the same purchase pays you $50, the affiliate $20 and us $30. At 40% it pays you $30, the affiliate $40 and us $30.

5. Discounts and who pays for them

  • Our discount codes come out of our share. When a student uses a code we issued, including the code every student earns by completing a course, your 70% is calculated on the price before the code (the student's regional price, where one applies), not the discounted one, until the discount is more than 20% of that price. Past that point we keep 10% of that price and the rest of the discount comes out of your share. A $100 course sold with a 20% code pays the student's $80 as $70 to you and $10 to us. With a 50% code, the $50 paid is $40 to you and $10 to us.
  • Codes on affiliate sales. Our code still comes out of our share, and the affiliate's commission is a percentage of what the student actually pays. A $100 course offering 20% commission, sold with a 20% ACADA code, pays the student's $80 as $54 to you, $16 to the affiliate and $10 to us.
  • Your bundle discount is shared. A bundle's discount is taken off before the split, so you receive 70% of what the bundle sells for and we keep 30%: the discount comes out of both shares in the same proportion.
  • An affiliate's buyer discount is shared too. If your programme gives referred students a discount, it is taken off before the split, so your share, the affiliate's commission and ours are all of the discounted price. On Monthly Access it applies to the first payment only.
  • Collaborators come out of your share. Whatever you agreed to pay a collaborator under the Collaborator Terms is deducted from your 70%, out of the same 65% a commission draws on.

6. When a sale clears

  • The hold. A sale clears 14 days after the charge, the same period a student has to ask for a refund under the Purchases, Refunds & Subscriptions policy. Until then it shows in the Instructor Dashboard as clearing. A trial's sale clears 14 days after the trial is charged, not after it starts.
  • Refunds. A refund, whether a student asked for it or we made it under that policy, takes the sale back out of your earnings at once, along with your collaborators' shares. An affiliate commission is taken back too while it is still in its 14-day hold; one that has already cleared stays with the affiliate, and is not taken from you. A partial refund takes back the same part of every share.
  • Chargebacks. A chargeback takes the sale out the day the bank opens it. We answer the bank with our records and absorb the fee it charges. If the bank decides in our favour, the sale goes back into your earnings and clears from its original date; if the bank decides against us, it stays out.
  • Sales already paid out. If a reversed sale had already been paid to you, the amount comes off what you earn next. If nothing comes in to cover it and more than $20 is still uncovered after 90 days, we may ask you to repay it.

7. Withdrawing your earnings

  • Minimum. $20 of cleared earnings. You can set a higher minimum for yourself in the Instructor Dashboard; you cannot set a lower one.
  • Amount. A payout is always your full cleared balance.
  • On a schedule. In the Instructor Dashboard you choose weekly, twice a month or monthly. On each payout day, if your cleared balance is at least your minimum and your payout method is ready, the payout is created for you. Weekly pays on Mondays, twice a month on the 1st and the 15th, monthly on the 1st, all in UTC. You can also choose to be paid only when you ask.
  • On request. Whenever your cleared balance meets your minimum, you can withdraw from the Instructor Dashboard without waiting for the schedule.
  • When it is sent. We send a payout within 1 day of it being created. Stripe or PayPal then pay you on their own timeline, usually 1 to 3 business days.
  • If it fails. We email you the same day with the reason. The amount returns to your balance, and once you have fixed the method you can withdraw again, or the next scheduled payout takes it.
  • If Stripe needs more from you. When Stripe asks for more information or pauses an account, we tell you by email and in the app. Payouts to Stripe stop only if Stripe pauses the account, and start again once it is resolved. While it is paused you can still publish a free course, or a paid one if another payout method is ready.

8. Payout methods

  • In the United States. Stripe Connect, which collects the tax details your payouts need. PayPal is not available to US instructors.
  • Outside the United States. Stripe Connect where Stripe can pay your country, chosen when you connect, or PayPal once you have confirmed in the Instructor Dashboard that you are not a US person and do not live in the United States. A PayPal payout to someone who is in fact a US person is a misrepresentation under the Instructor Agreement.
  • Stripe's terms. A Stripe Connect account is your account with Stripe, under Stripe's Connected Account Agreement, and Stripe decides what it needs from you to open and keep it.
  • Currency and fees. We pay in US dollars and cover what it costs us to send the payout. Any fee your bank or PayPal charges to receive it, and any currency conversion, is yours.

9. Taxes

What we pay you is yours to declare, and every tax on it, wherever you are, is yours to pay. We do not withhold tax from a payout unless the law obliges us to. Where US law requires us to report what we paid you, we do it through Stripe, and your copy is available in your Stripe account. Nothing in this policy is tax advice.

10. Records

The Instructor Dashboard shows every charge on your courses, the split of each one, whether it is clearing or cleared, and every payout with its reference. Those records stay available for as long as your account does. If a figure looks wrong, write to support@acada.ac and we answer within 5 business days.

11. When your instructor role ends

Retiring a course does not change how you are paid for it. When you close your account, the Account & Identity policy sets out how you are paid first. When we close your instructor role, section 11 of the Instructor Agreement applies: earnings from genuine sales are paid every day as they clear, with no minimum, and reversals on sales made before the end are still deducted. While a closure for fraud stands, nothing is paid out automatically, as the Fraud & Scams policy sets out.

12. Timelines

  • Publishing fee. Charged when you first publish.
  • A sale clears. 14 days after the charge.
  • Scheduled payouts. Mondays; the 1st and 15th; or the 1st, in UTC.
  • A payout is sent. Within 1 day of being created.
  • It reaches you. Usually 1 to 3 business days after that.
  • A failed payout. An email the same day.
  • A reversal. At once, on the day of the refund or chargeback.
  • An uncovered reversal. We may ask for repayment after 90 days.
  • A question about a figure. Answered within 5 business days.

13. Changes to this policy

When we change this policy, we change the date shown at the top. If a change adds a rule or a consequence, we post a notice in the app at least 14 days before it takes effect. A change to what you are paid is also emailed to every instructor, as the Instructor Agreement provides.

14. Related policies