Since 2015, the bulk of my company's revenue has come from consulting services and fees earned as a software partner. One of the great things about being a software partner is that you can earn an income from multiple revenue streams so you’re not reliant on just one source of income. In this post, I’d like to explain how a software partner like me makes money.
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What is a software partner?
A software partner is basically an individual or company that has partnered with a software product to provide support services for that tool. Usually, you have to be approved by the software provider before you can call yourself an official partner.
In my case, I am a Pipedrive Premier Partner, an Asana Solutions Partner and a Zapier Certified Expert (to name a few). Each of these companies recognises us as a verified and trusted expert for their tool.
How can a software partner make money?
Each partner program is a bit different but usually, you can earn money as a partner in one of three ways:
- Affiliate – As an affiliate, you can earn a commission or referral fee for referring a customer to a product. This is usually a one-time fee but in some cases, you can earn a recurring commission for a year or two.
- Support Services – Each program has a different name for this, but essentially this is where you can earn a commission for supporting customers. Whereas an affiliate is only referring a customer and support is provided by the software company itself. A support partner will often provide support services in addition to making the referral. Some partner programs will pay a recurring commission to the partner for supporting the customer. They do this to help reduce the cost of running their own internal support team.
- Reseller – Some software programs allow you to resell their software. By purchasing licenses at a discount, you can mark this up and sell the software to your clients directly so they pay you instead of paying the software company. This allows you to provide discounts to customers and is a nice value-add on top of your services. The margins are usually similar to earning a commission, but as a reseller, you can decide how much margin to make and what kind of discount to provide to the customer.
Besides the revenue that you can generate from referring customers to a piece of software, you can also earn an income by selling your own paid support services.
For instance, customers can sign up for my Master Asana and Master Pipedrive programs if they’d like to get one-on-one help with account set-up and onboarding. We also provide customer proposals for more bespoke engagements if needed.
These ‘professional services’ form the majority of our overall revenue and the commission or referral fees we earn are a nice bonus on top of this.
How I make money as a software partner
Because each partner program I’m part of is different, I earn money in a few different ways.
Pipedrive – With Pipedrive I earn a recurring commission as a support partner for the accounts I sign up or customers I work with. This is a nice model as I don’t have to worry about billing, that’s all handled directly by Pipedrive. Because I earn a commission on each customer I work with and this means I can offer some complimentary support when customers get stuck or need help. Of course, we have some paid services available if they require more in-depth support.
Asana – Now Asana used to pay commissions for referrals but they recently discontinued this program. And unlike Pipedrive, I don't get a commission for supporting their customers either. So even though Asana recognises me as one of their approved experts, the only way I can earn a fee for recommending Asana is if I resell licenses (which I recently started to do).
Zapier – Zapier don't pay affiliate referral fees or support fees and there’s no option to resell the tool either. So even though I’m a Certified Zapier Expert, the only way we can generate an income as a partner is via our own paid services. We get nothing from Zapier which is unfortunate as we’ve referred a lot of customers to their tool.
Other Services – I am an affiliate for Formstack Documents, Calendly, Kixie, Jotform, ConvertKit, Outfunnel, Bridge24, Setapp, SyncPenguin (and a few other tools). For most of these services, we get a one-time fee for referring customers. Some products like Formstack Documents pay a recurring commission. While these services aren’t a core part of my offering, they are tools we get asked about from time to time so it’s nice to be able to earn a commission if the tool is a good fit for the client.
The way I see it, the fees we get from these tools are a nice bonus on top of the professional services we offer. And at the end of the day, the most important thing is helping our clients and recommending the right tool that fits their needs. This is why we continue to use and recommend Zapier, even though we get nothing from them when we make a referral.
I hope this post provided useful insight into how software partner programs work. If you’d like to become a virtual consultant and provide support on the software that you know how to use, check out my How to become a Virtual Consultant program.