ARE YOU INTERESTED IN BECOMING AN ACS AFFILIATE?
ACS is keen to find affiliates who are like minded and compatible. Are you:
- Passionate about QUALITY LEARNING and less focussed on ACCREDITATION and RECOGNITION?
- Prepared to work with our standard contract?
- Prepared to join IARC (International Accreditation & Recognition Council) AND maintain your membership?
- Willing and able to attend our Australian or UK staff for several days to fast track becoming familiar with operations, services and products?
If you answered "YES" to all of the above, please read on:
Benefits
- Run OUR courses through YOUR school
- Deliver courses by correspondence, online or on CD
- Set your own fees and adjust courses
- ACS provides marketing and IT support
- ACS provides assistance with tutoring
- Licensees market, teach and administrate
Who can be an affiliate?
- Established colleges or institutions
- Businesses involved in training who are ready to move into successful online training
- Anyone who's ready to run a school
- Any individual or company interested in selling quality educational products
Standard affiliation Contract
- The affiliate delivers the course.
- ACS provides electronic copies which the affiliate can brand & delivery as their own.
- ACS supplies additional support (eg. advice, procedures, student room resources etc).
- ACS is paid a royalty on courses sold; which is on the sliding scale, with the % being higher if only small
quantities of courses are sold.
- For details regarding costs & royalties, please see our "Sample Contract" below under "Want to know more".
Are We Compatible?
ACS is keen to find affiliates who are like minded and compatible. We expect:
You are prepared to work with our standard contract.
You join IARC (International Accreditation & Recognition Council)
You visit our Australian or UK staff for several days to fast track becoming familiar with operations, services and products
Not only are the courses of the highest standard and quality, the student feedback is great. We highly recommend any institution to deliver ACS courses.
- Shane Collison, Learning Cloud
"Partnering with ACS has given us the ability to greatly expand the range of course we offer our students. During our first year of partnership, the support and encouragement provided by the ACS team has been exceptional."
Matthew Smith, NSW School of Massage
“ Working with an ethical institution like ACS as an affiliate has been a very positive experience. I appreciate the fact that the affiliates are valued highly and any suggestions are taken seriously and acted upon.”
Dr Ramana Panda, Director, Health Academy Australia
"Warnborough is proud to be in partnership with a leading provider of distance learning programmes. ACS students obtain solid course guidance throughout their study programme. The bedrock of ACS, like Warnborough, is academic quality and attention to career needs."
- Dr. Brenden D. Tempest-Mogg, President, Warborough College
What do our affiliates think of us? Watch this video
This provides a virtual community online, giving students opportunities that mirror and exceed benefits previously seen as accessed in classroom education.
Branded to appear as the affiliate's own, and offering a range of automated support services unique to ACS affiliates, including:
Want to know more? Click on the following links for more info before registering your interest
1. Are there any specific criteria that you require from an Affiliate?
We look for people who are basically of like mind to ourselves and other affiliates; and who have the capacity to make a success of marketing and delivering our courses.
There is no point (for you or us) going into a deal if you are trying to do something with our courses which they are not designed for; or if you are heading in a totally different direction to where we are going.
2. Could I create a portal for online training and market your training programs alongside training programs from other suppliers?
Yes; but we do like to talk to affiliates about the options. We have a great deal of experience and have seen too many potential affiliates flounder because they make mistakes that we've already seen made before.
3. How do you track the sales that you generate through affiliate sites?
It is the affiliate's responsibility to track sales and report to us monthly. The contract allows us to send in auditors if we suspect foul play, but this is an unlikely scenario if we are working with people who are credible and ethical.
4. I intend on creating an online catalogue populated with training programs, could I use your affiliate program to promote your training programs in this way?
This is a complex question in some respects. We do provide a great deal of marketing support, and some affiliates do deals with other affiliates. We use our web sites and experience to help build affiliates' web sites too. We not only provide a product to sell (i.e. courses), but also help with formulating strategies for marketing, management, provision of student services and so on. It's a rather comprehensive support package, and we're geared to doing things a certain way. There's a lot of room for customisation & differentiation between affiliates, but there are also limitations to the direction which an affiliate can take (eg. we have seen affiliates wanting to repackage & sell courses as a mass market item, without tutor support at a budget price over the counter, and that concept simply does not work here).
5. Could I set up an online shopping catalogue promoting your training programs with a link through to your shopping cart for order processing?
We've had hundreds of approaches from companies wanting to sell courses on commission, leaving us to deliver them. We DO NOT operate this way. This simply does not fit our business model.
We've developed a system that allows & makes it easy for affiliates to set up and deliver the courses themselves - we can help you set up your own school with very little infastructure or cost. This gives you much more profit; and is the model we are seeking to build.
6. Would you have any issue with me using content/wording from your site to promote your products on my own site?
We do allow this in start up phase; but encourage affiliates to differentiate from each other over time by customising the wording they use to their own business.
7. How are commissions paid?
Bank to bank transfer, either in Australian dollars or pounds sterling; either to our Australian Westpac account or our UK HSBC account.
8. What support do you provide for affiliates?
Initially we insist on 2 or 3 days of induction to familiarize a new affiliate with the product, services, marketing, and support services. This can be conducted face to face in either Australia (Gold Coast) or the UK (Stourbridge near Birmingham); or over the internet using Skype.
After this we provide:
- Mentoring from the UK and Australia via skype, email or phone (certain limitations may be specified by the contract)
- Support via an online (password protected) affiliates' room (this provides advice, aricles, artwork, a directory of potential tutors - so you don't need to advertise to find tutors, and more)
-Access to course upgrades continuously via an online (password protected) repository of courses
-News bulletins and reports, emailed frequently to affiliates
9. Are there any issues with marketing your training programs in Australia?
Again, this can be discussed at length, but the programs are designed specifically to be relevant in any country, climate or culture. There are no particularly significant concerns; though there can sometimes be issues for the occasional student or with the occasional course.
10. What recognition do your programs have?
This is another issue that can be discussed at length. Informally, and generally, our recognition is extremely good. Once you get down to specifics though, the answer to this question is going to be different for every course, and different in different countries.
We find that many potential affiliates assume that this is a critical factor.
In reality, we have done studies over a long period of time to determine the significance of formal recognition and accreditation, and for our market/demographic, this issue is surprisingly unimportant compared with many other factors.
Many of our qualifications are recognised by IARC. Some are accredited or recognised by government or relevant industry bodies. Others hold no formal recognition. Often recognition does not flow automatically to the new affiliate. Most accreditation bodies will approve a "specified institution" to deliver a "specified course". If a new institution starts enroling students, normally that new institution will need to apply for "approval" in some way, shape or form before they can claim the recognition or accreditation This is the same in most colleges with most courses and in most countries... so even if you get your courses elsewhere, you still have that same problem to deal with!
