If you teach languages 1:1, you can earn extra income by recommending self-study courses your students use between your lessons. The 17 Minute Languages affiliate program is free to join, with no obligation, and pays you up to 60% of the sale price as commission. It's open to teachers and tutors who live in the EU or EFTA, whether you teach on italki, Preply or Verbling, in a classroom, or privately. The courses don't replace you: they handle the vocabulary drilling and review your students should do alone, so they arrive at your lesson ready to speak.
Every tutor knows the frustration: a student books a weekly 45-minute session, then does almost nothing in between. They forget last week's words, you spend the first ten minutes re-warming them, and progress crawls. A self-study course fixes exactly that gap. It carries the repetition load, the flashcards, the spaced-repetition review, the listening practice, the things you do not want to spend live, paid lesson time on. You keep the part no course can replace: real conversation, correction, accent work, cultural nuance and accountability.
So recommending a course is not sending students away. It's the opposite. A student who drills 17 minutes a day arrives prepared, your lessons get more productive, results come faster, and satisfied students stay enrolled longer and refer friends. You earn commission once, and you keep a better-retained student on top. 17 Minute Languages has been selling these courses online since 1997 and offers them in 80+ languages, so whatever your student is learning, there is almost certainly a matching course.
You earn by sending a student to the course page with your affiliate ID in the link. 17 Minute Languages takes care of the order, the payment, the dispatch and all support. When the sale completes, your commission is credited automatically. Here are the practical ways teachers do it:
You don't handle money, you don't ship anything, and you don't do support. You make the recommendation; 17 Minute Languages does everything else. The internal affiliate area gives you ready-made banners, marketing texts, templates and live statistics so you can see which recommendations actually convert.
Affiliate disclosure: The links you share are affiliate links. When a student buys through your link, you earn a commission at no extra cost to them. Be upfront with your students about that, it's honest, it's required in most places, and students trust a teacher who is transparent.
Commission here goes up to 60% of the sale price. Many language-app affiliate programs pay considerably less, often in the 10-40% range, and those rates are subject to change. Because these are complete multimedia courses rather than a low-priced subscription, the sale value is meaningful, so a high commission percentage translates into a real amount per sale. And because you are a trusted teacher recommending the right course to the right student, your conversion rate is far higher than a cold banner on a random blog.
One honest note up front: to join, you must reside in the EU or EFTA (the EFTA countries are Iceland, Liechtenstein, Norway and Switzerland). Your students can be anywhere in the world, that doesn't matter, but for legal reasons your own country of residence has to be in that zone. If that's you, you're good to go. If you live outside the EU/EFTA, this particular program isn't open to you, and we'd rather tell you now than waste your time.
You already tell students what to practice between lessons. With the 17 Minute Languages affiliate program, that advice can also earn you up to 60% commission, for free, with no obligation, and you can stop any time. 17ML takes care of everything after the click: ordering, payment, dispatch and support.
Join the affiliate program for language teachers now »