Popularity for homeschooling has grown steadily for the past decade. Today, the industry is valued in the billions. In terms of numbers, it’s estimated that 3% to 4% of school-aged kids are homeschooled by their parents.
That’s an audience size of at least 2.5 million.
Parents don’t need a teaching certification to homeschool their children. What they need is access to educational curriculum, supplies and to know the State’s legal requirements for their child’s curriculum.
As with most industries this large, you’ll have easier success by narrowing your audience. That’s easy to do with homeschooling when you understand the reasons parents choose to teach their kid(s) themselves.
Top Reasons Parents Choose to Homeschool
- For a higher quality education (stats show that homeschooled students perform better at tests, especially college admissions tests – SAT and ACT tests are typically 15% higher than public school students)
- To include family values, religion, and morals in a child’s education.
- Improved socialization: This can be a niche in itself as homeschool groups can be niche specific to include sports clubs, music groups, book review clubs, writing clubs, and competitions. The negative side of a child’s socialization is drugs, including alcohol and tobacco, exposure to guns and knife crime, for which, some parents may be choosing to homeschool to avoid exposure to negative socialization.
- Faith-based education such as Catholic or Christian homeschooling, Jewish homeschooling, and Muslim homeschooling or even secular education for parents who want to leave it up to their child to follow a religion or not.
Target your content and marketing towards the reasons a parent chooses to homeschool and you’ll be able to build an angled resource website focused specifically on what parents and their kids need.
Homeschool Website Ideas
- Build a buyer’s community (co-op) for parents to buy discounted educational supplies.
- Promote extracurricular activities for homeschooling families. This could include local events, sports clubs and merchandise, summer camps, and educational days like zoo tickets and museum entry tickets. Local field trip ideas by State would be one way to go.
- Keep things simple with a homeschooling tips blog.
- Build a support group for parents homeschooling their kids.
- Provide free educational printables for lead generation then use email marketing to run various campaigns.
- Narrow your resources and guides to age groups such as homeschool resources for pre-schoolers, ages 5 to 8, k-12 learning, or admissions prep for homeschooled students preparing to apply to colleges.
- Specialize in one topic, such as gardening (or another science topic), cooking for kids with a healthy eating slant, or blend cooking and gardening with something like grow your own dinner.
12 Homeschool Affiliate Programs
- Maestro Classics
- Kirkwood Education Online
- SEA Homeshoolers
- The Old School House & Schoolhouse Teachers
- Global Student Network
- Apologia
- Kids Cook Real Food
- Our Journey Westward
- Pandia Press
- Unit Study
- Write Shop
- Hooked on Phonics
1. Maestro Classics
Maestro Classics is a handy resource for parents to introduce a classical music curriculum into their teachings.
Tracks here teach music theory and the history of music rather than focusing on playing instruments.
Each program can be bought individually as an MP3 or CD and includes educational activities, narration, composer information, and an overview of the instruments used in the composition.
The main theme of each track is to teach children the story of each piece of music.
In total, there are 12 albums and each can be purchased separately or as a set. The affiliate program uses the Tapfiliate.com network and pays a 20% commission on each sale.
To help you drive traffic, they also have various free educational resources for parents too.
2. Kirkwood Education Online
KirkwoodEducationOnline.com is a Christian Homeschool program for elementary education through to 5th Grade.
The curriculum includes Math, Vocabulary and Spelling, Language Arts, American History, Pre-school Phonics, Science, Writing, Science, and Bible Lessons.
The program is subscription-based and provides weekly awards to help children progress through 7 stages of character building. Each part of the curriculum is self-paced so parents can control the assignments and the days their kid(s) spend in the course.
The affiliate program is privately run using the iDevAffiliate tracking software, pays 20% and cookies last for 365-days.
The same study units used in the Kirkwood Education Online homeschool program are also sold separately at HomeschoolGoodies.com, which has the same 20% commission structure using a 365-day tracking cookie.
3. SEA Homeschoolers
SEA Homeschoolers is a resource for secular homeschooling resources. A key part of using secular curricula is not presenting any religious education as factual.
Some secular curricula will discuss religion but it won’t present teachings as being factual. As an example, the Paradise Lost poem by John Milton would be included in the teachings but only from an academic standpoint.
Secular homeschoolers shouldn’t be confused with atheists – those who don’t believe in any God. Some families may choose to leave religion out of their child’s education, others may prefer to teach it separately.
There are also families who homeschool because they do not want to actively influence their child’s religious beliefs.
Whatever the reason parents have for secular teaching, the SEA Homeschoolers could be a good resource for both educational resources and support from their community.
The SEAHomeschoolers.com affiliate program is privately managed and pays out quarterly. Commissions are 20% per sale and the cookies last for 40-days.
4. The Old Schoolhouse & Schoolhouse Teachers
The Old School House is part of a family of homeschool websites, two of which have affiliate programs.
- Theoldschoolhouse.com is a trade magazine that sells for a monthly subscription. Affiliates promoting the magazine earn 20% commissions and the tracking cookies last for 1-year.
- SchoolhouseTeachers.com pays a 25% commission and there are over 400 courses available.
Anyone who has ordered through the website is automatically assigned an affiliate ID, but if you haven’t ordered here before, you can sign up for an affiliate-only membership.
Sign up to promote the courses here and to the Schoolhouse Trade magazine, sign up here.
5. Global Student Network
The Global Student Network is the parent company of the International Virtual Learning Academy. Their curriculum spans over 2,000 courses and they cater to homeschooling families, private, public, and charter schools too.
Among the courses available are:
- Honors
- World Languages
- Career
- Technical Education
- AP®, GED® (Test Prep only), and Adult Education
For families new to homeschooling, they also provide a premium academic advisor service to help parents choose the right curriculum.
The affiliate program pays a 7.5% commission on course sales and the cookies are set to 30-days. They also offer a free demo account, which should help your conversion rates.
6. Apologia
Apologia.com is a resource for Christian homeschooling material. They are a family-run business owned by Davis and Rachael Carman, who are parents to seven kids, each homeschooled and to date, five have graduated.
They are based in North Carolina and have planning kits for homeschool field trips in NC.
The majority of the products sold are on the topics of science, biblical worldview, history, and Math for grades k-12.
The affiliate program pays 10% on tangible product sales but excludes the online classes. There are plans to include sales of those in the future, but currently, it’s only tangible products that are eligible for commissions.
7. Kids Cook Real Food
Kids Cook Real Foods is a healthy cooking membership for families to teach kids life skills, in the kitchen, from the age of two.
The website is part of the Kitchen Stewardship network but this one is all video-training and focuses on teaching kids about healthy eating habits.
For families homeschooling, this is something parents can work into their routine for fun and education.
They have partnerships in place with a number of Charter Schools in various States and can provide discounted pricing for homeschooling co-ops or parenting groups.
The affiliate program uses infusionsoft tracking software with the cookies lasting for 1-year and they have a two-tier affiliate program. The first tier pays up to 50% commission and 2nd tier affiliates can earn up to 10% referral fees of sub-affiliates.
8. Our Journey Westward
Our Journey Westward is a homeschooling blog published by Cindy West. Cindy has a Master’s in elementary education, homeschools her three kids, and creates her own curriculum.
The style of homeschooling is inspired by Charlotte Mason taking a hands-on, project-based approach.
Topics covered include Nature Study, Living Study, Arts, Music (composer) and there’s even some stuff for parents to learn about brain training for all ages.
The affiliate program is privately managed, uses a 90-day cookie and pays a 25% recurring commission for the life of your referrals subscriptions.
9. Pandia Press
Pandia Press is a publisher of history and science curriculum from grades K-12. Each of their units is written by academic historians and scientists.
The science curriculum is also factual, so free from religious bias making it ideal for secular homeschooling.
The materials are suitable for parents homeschooling one or more kids, and there is group licensing available for co-op groups and classes.
The affiliate program is privately run and pays a 10% commission using a 30-day cookie.
10. Unit Study
Unit Study is where you’ll find interactive lessons on a range of topics. All the courses are authored by Amanda Bennett who has 18-years of experience in homeschooling and holds a degree in mechanical engineering.
In total, Unit Studies has over 100 titles published by Paradigm Press, and each is designed to be interactive and compatible with Kindle Fires, which is what most of their students learn with.
They are not a fan of textbook learning and believe that by taking a more fun, interesting, and engaging approach to learning, children can better expand their critical thinking skills, encouraging a lifelong learning approach.
The affiliate program uses affliatly.com for tracking, uses a 90-day cookie, and pays a 25% commission. They have options to earn gift cards or to be paid via PayPal once you have reached the $25 minimum payout threshold.
11. Write Shop
Write Shop was founded in 2001 after seeing initial success running small writing groups for homeschooling families.
The materials are teacher-directed and include games, videos, visuals, activities, and crafts in the curriculum to make it easier to teach writing to those who struggle to learn the how-to from traditional textbooks.
The store sells lesson plans, but the flagship products are WriteShop I for Junior High and WriteShop II for High School.
In addition to those age groups, they have also commissioned a Children’s Author (Nancy Sanders) who is the publisher of the K-3rd grade writing books, which are designed to gently ease kids into learning about writing.
The affiliate program is privately managed, uses a 180-day tracking cookie, and pays a 15% commission on everything but the videos, which pays a 10% commission per sale.
12. Hooked on Phonics
Hooked on Phonics is an education app that’s designed for parents of preschoolers.
Each of the lessons has videos, games, and activities. The app mostly uses music videos to teach kids the sounds of letters, then progresses to introduce short words and finally, sentences.
Currently, the music library has over 250 phonic songs that all use the Learn-Practice-Play approach to build on phonemic awareness, word association, and to learn letter recognition.
The app can be used by all parents of preschool-aged children, whether they intend to homeschool or not, so even if your site is parenting related but not devoted to homeschooling, there’s still potential with this affiliate program.
Hooked on Phonics is part of the Sandsvik network of children’s education sites. They use Shareasale.com for the affiliate program and pay a flat $10 fee for each new sign up with cookies set to track for 15-days.
