We grow by word of mouth. When you introduce a colleague to Blended and they go on to teach with us, you earn a referral fee.
Making an introduction
Your account includes a personal referral link. You will find it on the Referrals page, next to your referral earnings. Share it with a colleague who would enjoy teaching with Blended: by email, in a faculty group, or with someone you already know.
If your colleague uses your link, the introduction is recorded against you automatically. If they come to us another way, you are still credited: we ask every new instructor who told them about Blended, and their answer is what counts.
There is no limit to how many colleagues you can introduce.
What you earn
You earn 10% of what Blended receives from everything your colleague teaches with Blended, for 12 months from their first paid student access.
Three parts of that are worth spelling out.
What we receive. Students usually pay through a bookstore, a payment processor, or an inclusive access programme, and each of those takes a cut of between 2% and 30% before the rest reaches us. Your fee is 10% of what reaches us, not 10% of what the student is charged.
Everything they teach. The fee is not tied to one course. If your colleague teaches two courses with us, or adds another in the spring, all of it counts for as long as the twelve months run.
If you introduced someone before 14 September 2026. That introduction keeps the 15% rate for the rest of its twelve months, and each fee shows the rate it was paid at.
The 12 months. The clock starts the first time a student accesses your colleague's course having paid, either directly or with a voucher code. A student in a course priced at $0 never starts the clock. It runs for twelve months from that date, and it is one clock per colleague, not one per course.
When a fee is counted
A fee is counted once the money it is based on has reached us, and that money arrives steadily through the semester as students take up access. Your referral earnings for a semester keep rising while the semester runs.
Because the money travels through an intermediary first, some of it lands a few months after a student pays. A fee appears on the statement for the semester in which the money is recorded, not the semester in which your colleague adopted.
Three ways to get your first referral
These are the introductions that work most often, in the order they usually work.
Start with your own course. Whoever teaches the other sections of your course is the easiest introduction to make. They can see it working in yours, on the same syllabus, with the same students.
The people you trained. Former PhD students and recent hires are choosing their materials for the first time, with no textbook to switch away from.
Your field, not just your department. Your society listserv, a conference panel, or the group chat for your subject reaches the instructors teaching exactly what you teach, at every other university.
When you are paid
Referral fees are paid with the rest of your earnings, every September and every February.
Earnings are counted per semester. Summer is included in the spring semester and winter is included in the autumn semester, so there are two statements a year: the spring semester is paid in September, and the autumn semester is paid in February.
Where to see your referrals
Everything to do with referrals is on the Referrals page in your account:
your referral link, to copy and share
what you have earned this semester, and in total
Your referrals: each colleague you introduced, where they teach, and what each has earned you
Referral fees by semester, with the payment date for each
Your referral fees also appear beside your royalties on the Earnings page, and in your annual earnings and payments summary under Tax documents.
What qualifies
These all count as introductions:
a colleague who takes over a course you teach
a colleague given a new section of a course
a PhD student or colleague who moves to another university and teaches there
the instructor who replaces you when you move university
A few things to know:
Your own use does not earn a referral fee. Referral fees are for introducing other instructors. They exist instead of us employing salespeople.
A colleague can only be referred once. If someone introduced them before you did, the introduction stays with whoever got there first, and a second claim earns nothing.
A referral your colleague makes is theirs. If someone you introduced goes on to introduce a colleague of their own, that fee belongs to them.
Introductions inside your own department are welcome, and some universities treat a referral fee for a colleague in your own department as a conflict of interest. Please check your university's position and do what feels right for you.
If the terms change
These terms apply from 14 September 2026. The terms that applied when you made an introduction are the terms we pay on it. We may change how referral fees work for future introductions, and any change applies only from the day we publish it.
Questions
If a referral is missing, or a fee is not what you expected, contact us from the help centre and we will go through the record of the introduction with you.
Blended cannot give personal tax advice. Your annual documents are in your account under Tax documents.