Maven Instructor Policy Guidebook

When you create a course on Maven, you retain complete ownership of all your intellectual property. This means your course content, materials, videos, worksheets, and any other original work remains entirely yours. Maven does not claim ownership of your content at any point.

When you publish a course, you grant Maven specific rights to use your content while your course is active on the platform. Here's exactly what Maven is allowed to do with your course materials:

Maven can showcase your course landing page on our marketplace, include it in our catalog, and process payments from students. This includes displaying your course on Maven.com and in our external marketing.

Maven can use your name, image, and course materials to market your course across various channels. This includes our email newsletters, social media posts, paid advertising campaigns, and any other promotional activities designed to drive enrollments. This never includes the use of course videos or in-cohort materials, unless you gave us prior permission.

Maven can share your course information with trusted partners when necessary for platform operations. This might include payment processors, analytics providers, or other service providers that help Maven deliver the best possible experience for instructors and students.

For the full list of terms, please see our terms of service here. Maven only has these rights while your course is actively listed on our platform. If you decide to remove your course or terminate your relationship with Maven, we will stop using your content. You can request removal of your course at any time by contacting [email protected].

As an instructor on Maven, you have autonomy over how much to charge for your courses. There are no minimum or maximum price requirements, and you can adjust your pricing at any time. This flexibility allows you to price your course based on the value you provide, your target audience, and market conditions. If you need help deciding on the right course price, check out our pricing guidance here.

As a marketplace, Maven operates on a straightforward revenue sharing model. When students pay for your course, Maven keeps 10% as a platform fee, and you receive 90% of the revenue. This split covers all of Maven's services including customer support, platform maintenance, and marketing infrastructure, and is significantly more instructor-friendly than other course platforms (for example, Reforge keeps 50%, Uplimit keeps 70%). Maven is built for entrepreneurial instructors who want to take ownership of their course and benefit from its success.

When a student enrolls, their payment is processed through Stripe, Maven's payment partner. Stripe charges their standard processing fees (typically 2.9% + $0.30 per transaction for US cards, though this varies by region and payment method). After Stripe's fees are deducted, Maven takes its 10% platform fee from the gross course revenue, and the remaining amount is transferred directly to your Stripe account. You can learn more about getting paid and setting up your Stripe account here.

You can set your payout schedule through your Stripe account. Payments are processed automatically through Stripe and deposited directly into your bank account.

If you haven't connected a Stripe account yet, you'll need to do this in your course settings before you can receive payments or open your course for enrollment.

All instructors are responsible for handling their own tax obligations on course income. Maven does not withhold taxes or provide tax advice. For US-based instructors, Stripe will issue a 1099-K tax form if you meet theie earnings thresholds ($5,000 or more in gross payments). Even if you don't receive a 1099-K, you're still responsible for reporting all course income. US-based instructors can learn more here.

International instructors should consult with local tax professionals to understand their obligations. Note that for EU-based students, Maven automatically collects and remits VAT on an instructor’s behalf (regardless of instructor location), but this doesn't affect your earnings calculation. You can learn more about VAT here.

Maven handles refund requests and decisions directly. Courses on Maven are covered by our Satisfaction Guarantee, which allows students to receive full refunds up until the halfway point of their course experience. For example, in a 4-week course, students can request refunds through the end of week 2. After this midpoint, refunds are considered on a case-by-case basis only for exceptional circumstances. You can read the full terms of our refund policy here.

Maven does not provide retroactive price adjustments or price matching. Students cannot automatically receive refunds because a course price decreased after enrollment, but an instructor is always welcome to match a lower price or issue a refund outside of policy at their discretion. Learn more about how to issue refunds here.

When Maven approves a student’s refund, we refund both an instructor’s revenue share and our Maven fee. Stripe fees are not able to be refunded. Refunds are processed through Stripe and can take up to 10 business days to reflect in students' accounts. Refunds can only be issued to the original payment method used for the course purchase. To ensure refunds process quickly, it’s important to make sure you have funds in your Stripe account.

If you believe a refund request is unfair or based on incorrect information, you can contact [email protected] to provide context, but the final refund decision remains with Maven.

Every instructor is automatically enrolled in Maven's Student Growth Program when they publish their first course. This program is designed to help drive more students to your courses through strategic promotions, partnerships, and marketing initiatives. These channels now make up 10% of total sales on Maven, and we're constantly using the Student Growth Program to test new marketing opportunities for instructors. Participation is optional - you can opt out at any time by emailing [email protected] - but most instructors love the additional enrollment boosts this program brings.

The Student Growth Program (SGP) includes several promotional strategies, all designed to increase your course enrollments. Through the SGP, we can offer up to 30% off your course price for strategic initiatives. This includes site-wide sales that happen twice per year with advance notice and peer referral incentives that encourage your current students to convert their colleagues. Instructors in the SGP also get access to streamlined bulk purchase tools for teams that make it simple for organizations to purchase multiple seats at once, turning a complex B2B sale into a straightforward transaction. We also invest in targeted advertising on LinkedIn and other platforms on your behalf. You only share revenue when we successfully drive new enrollments, so there's no upfront cost or risk to you.

For courses priced above $250, we connect you with our curated affiliate marketing partners. These are brand partners with relevant audiences who can offer up to $100 off your course and earn up to 30% commission on successful enrollments. You'll see exactly which channels drive enrollments in your dashboard, so you know what's working. Any discounts and affiliate fees offered through the SGP will never exceed 30% off your listed price. For all Student Growth Program activities, your revenue share is calculated based on the actual amount students pay after any discounts or affiliate fees are applied. For example, if your course is normally $1,000 but a student pays $700 after a promotional discount, your 90% share is calculated from the $700 payment, not the original $1,000 price.

You can learn more about SGP opportunities, including how to track promotional and affiliate performance, here.

When you teach on Maven, you're committing to provide a high-quality experience that meets the expectations you set in your course marketing and on your landing page. This commitment includes several responsibilities that ensure students receive the value they're paying for.

You should respond to student questions and concerns within a reasonable timeframe. Students expect timely communication, especially during active cohorts. This includes answering questions about course content, providing clarification on projects, and addressing any technical issues students encounter with cohort materials.

You should ensure that the content you have promised on your landing page and syllabus is successfully delivered during a cohort. Additionally, you should make sure that any testimonials are accurately reflecting the course content. Students may be entitled to a refund if the experience is not delivered as presented in your marketing materials.

Many instructors rely on pre-recorded videos to deliver some or most of their content asynchronously, but these videos should not exclusively be AI generated or use AI avatars and must contain authentic instruction by the course instructor. Similarly, Lightning Lessons are meant to be interactions with a live instructor. They can showcase an AI person as part of a demonstration of its capabilities, but that should only be part of the lesson, not the entire delivery.

While Maven provides significant marketing support through the marketplace, email distribution, and the Student Growth Program, you’re a key driver of enrollment growth and are primarily responsible for promoting your course and building your student base. This includes leveraging your existing audience, social media presence, email lists, and professional networks to drive awareness and enrollment. Building your audience through your existing channels is key to success since our algorithm rewards momentum. As you get more traction, Maven will surface your course in the marketplace and via email to our 500k+ registered users.

All course materials must be your original work or properly licensed content that you have the legal right to use. Plagiarizing content from other instructors, copying course structures from competitors, or using copyrighted materials without permission is strictly prohibited and may result in course removal, refunds to all enrolled students, and potential account termination.

Your course should not contain defamatory, obscene, or illegal material. Content should be appropriate for a professional educational environment and respectful of all students.

You must not infringe on copyrights, trademarks, or other intellectual property rights. This includes being careful about using images, video clips, or other media that you don't own or haven't properly licensed.

All course content must be accurate to the best of your knowledge. You're responsible for ensuring that any claims you make about outcomes, methods, or industry practices are truthful. If you discover errors in your course content, you should correct them promptly and notify affected students when necessary.

You're expected to participate on the platform in good faith, following both the letter and spirit of Maven's policies. This includes not attempting to circumvent Maven's systems, manipulate reviews or ratings, or engage in any behavior that undermines the integrity of the platform. We reserve the right to exercise our discretion when assessing violations related to attempts to circumvent the Maven system.

All courses on Maven go through an approval process before being listed publicly on the marketplace. Maven reserves the right to approve or decline course listings at our discretion. The review process evaluates course topic alignment with Maven's focus areas, quality of the landing page, instructor credentials and expertise in the subject matter, and compliance with all platform policies and content standards.

To be eligible for listing publicly, your course must meet specific threshold requirements. You need to demonstrate traction by achieving either 200 waitlist leads or 5 paid enrollments. You can build your waitlist through Maven's lead generation tools including course interest surveys, Lightning Lessons, or lead magnets.

Additionally, your course landing page must be complete with all required sections filled out, all necessary images uploaded (headshot, course image, social share image), and your cohort must be open for enrollment in your settings.

Once you meet these requirements, Maven automatically reviews your course within 2 business days. If any changes need to be made before listing, Maven will contact you directly with specific feedback. Learn more about getting listed here.

Maven reserves the right to remove or unlist courses from the platform at any time, particularly for policy violations, quality concerns, or other issues that impact the student experience. When a course is removed or when an instructor chooses to terminate their relationship with Maven, Maven stops using the instructor's content.

In specific cases, Maven may continue to use course content for limited operational purposes, such as completing transactions for students already enrolled, providing access to course materials for students who have paid, or fulfilling legal obligations.

Maven tracks how students discover your courses and categorizes this information to help you understand the effectiveness of your marketing efforts. This attribution data appears in your course earnings dashboard and is divided into several categories. You can learn more about how we track attribution for enrollments here.

When details about a sale are unavailable, we attribute it to the instructor by default. To gain deeper insights into the effectiveness of your marketing efforts, we recommend using UTM parameters whenever you share links to your course. The "Share" button on your course page makes this simple by automatically including the appropriate UTM tracking. Using this link ensures greater accuracy in your attribution data.

All enrollments for a Maven course must be processed through Maven's payment system whenever possible. Instructors cannot accept direct payments outside of Maven's platform for students they intend to include in Maven-hosted courses unless a prior exception has been made with the Maven team. This policy ensures proper revenue sharing, maintains platform security, and provides protections for both instructors and students.

Exceptions are typical for B2B and bulk purchases, but these require pre-approval from Maven. Contact [email protected] to discuss large bulk enrollments that might need special enrollment support and off-platform invoicing.

Maven's review system helps students make informed purchase decisions and provides valuable feedback to help instructors improve. All reviews should reflect genuine, uninfluenced student experiences.

You cannot offer monetary compensation, gifts, prizes, or any form of payment in exchange for positive reviews. You cannot request specific star ratings, ask for positive reviews only, or discourage negative feedback. Learn more about appropriate ways to request reviews and prohibited review practices here.

As long as a student genuinely participated in your course and isn’t posting anything offensive or untrue, our policy is to keep all reviews live. You cannot issue a refund in order to remove a legitimate review.

In rare cases, we may determine that a review is not an authentic representation of a course experience and is eligible for removal. If you believe a review is based on incorrect information, you can contact [email protected] to provide additional context, but the final review removal decision remains at Maven’s discretion.

Maven takes policy violations seriously and has implemented a structured approach to addressing issues when they arise. The enforcement process is designed to be fair while protecting the integrity of the platform for all users.

For most first-time policy violations, Maven issues a written warning that requires corrective action within a specified timeframe. There's typically a monitoring period to ensure compliance going forward, which may include but is not limited to adding a Maven staff member to any off-platform course communities.

For second violations or more serious first-time issues, consequences may include suppression of your course from Maven's marketing channels, temporary suspension of your ability to create new courses, and a mandatory policy review and acknowledgment process.

For the most serious policy violations, particularly those involving fraud, harassment, or harm to students or the platform, consequences can include complete removal of your courses from the platform, account termination, and permanent ban from Maven.

Students can report issues including attempts at review manipulation, inappropriate instructor behavior, false advertising or misleading course information, and technical issues that aren't being addressed by instructors.

Instructors can also report student misconduct or harassment, payment processing issues, platform technical problems, and request clarification on policy questions.

All reports should be directed to [email protected], where Maven's team will investigate and respond appropriately.

Maven reserves the right to update these policies at any time to reflect changes in the platform, legal requirements, or business needs. When material changes are made to policies, Maven will notify all instructors through email to school owners and via the #announcements channel of the instructor Slack community.

Continued use of the Maven platform after policy updates constitutes acceptance of any new terms. Maven reserves the right to create exceptions to these policies at our discretion.

For any questions about these policies, course issues, payment problems, or general support, the Maven team is available at [email protected]. Most inquiries receive responses within 24-48 hours during business hours (9am - 5pm est, Monday-Friday).

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