Affiliate Program Guide: Your Link, Code and Payouts

How the Serpverse Affiliate Program Works

The Serpverse Affiliate Program pays you a commission for introducing new buyers to the marketplace. You share a link and a code. Every order a buyer credited to you completes, for 12 months from their first, earns you a share of our service fee. A buyer who comes through your link or your code gets a saving on their first order.

This guide covers the whole program: joining, your link and code, how buyers are credited to you, what you earn, how you're paid, and the rules for promoting us. The Affiliate Agreement sets out the full terms, including suspension, ending your participation and changes to the program. If this guide and the Agreement differ, the Agreement applies.

The Program at a Glance

These are today's figures, and the sections below explain each one. Your Affiliate tab shows the commission rate, the window, the hold and the buyer's saving that apply to you.

Joining Is by Invitation

The program is invite-only, and places are limited. To ask for an invitation, use the form on the Affiliate Program page: tell us where you'd share Serpverse and who your audience is, and we reply by email. You don't need a Serpverse account to ask.

If we invite you, joining takes a few minutes:

1. Open your invitation link. It shows the terms you're invited on.
2. Sign in, if you aren't already. If you're new to Serpverse, signing in creates your free account. You choose a role and a display name, then come back to the invitation.
3. Choose your code. It becomes your link, and it's the word your audience types.
4. Accept the Affiliate Agreement by ticking its box, then click Join the Affiliate Program.

Your link works as soon as you join, and Affiliate appears in your dashboard's sidebar.

To join, you need a Serpverse account in good standing, and you have to meet the conditions in section 3 of the Affiliate Agreement. Each person or business joins once, through one account, and an account can join only once. Joining doesn't change how you use your account: you stay a buyer or a publisher.

Your Link and Your Code

You share two things:

• Your link is serpverse.io/r/ followed by your code, for example serpverse.io/r/seo-with-sam. It brings a visitor to Serpverse with your offer.
• Your code is what a buyer types to be credited to you. Buyers see it in capitals, as SEO-WITH-SAM, and capitals, spaces and hyphens don't matter when they type it.

A code is 3 to 32 characters: lowercase letters and numbers, with single hyphens between them. Codes that contain "serpverse", a few reserved words, and codes another affiliate holds or has held are refused.

Send readers to a specific page. Your link opens the homepage. To open another page, add ?to= and the page's path, for example serpverse.io/r/seo-with-sam?to=/marketplace. This works for the marketplace, publishers, blog, knowledge base, tools and about pages. Any other destination opens the homepage.

Your name shows with your offer. A visitor who opens your link or enters your code sees your display name, for example "Sam's offer".

Your link is enough on its own. Its cookie is set the moment a visitor opens it, and most people only ever use one browser. Adding your code is still worth it: it covers a buyer who signs up on another device or in a different browser, one who clears their cookies, and anywhere a link can't go — a video, a podcast, or print. It's a recommendation, not a requirement.

How Buyers Are Credited to You

A buyer can be credited to you in three ways:

The rules behind them:

• Each buyer is credited once, to one affiliate or to one publisher's share link, never both.
• A browser remembers one referral at a time. Opening another affiliate's link, or a publisher's share link, replaces the one it held — so the last referral link a buyer opens before signing up is the one that counts.
• At sign-up, the first of these decides it: a code entered during sign-up, then a link the browser remembers, then the answer to the question.
• It doesn't change afterwards, with one exception: a code entered before the buyer's first order replaces a credit that came only from their answer.
• Only accounts with no orders yet can be credited. Once a buyer has placed their first order, it's too late.
• Your own account is never credited to you.

We can't guarantee that every visitor you send is credited to you. A visitor can clear their cookies, use a browser that keeps them for less time, open someone else's referral link afterwards, or sign up on another device — which is why your code belongs everywhere your link goes.

What Your Audience Gets

A buyer credited through your link or your code gets a saving on their first order: currently 25% off the percentage part of our service fee, up to $10 per order. It never reduces the $5 per placement or the publisher's price, and the buyer sees the exact amount before they order.

The saving is for accounts with no orders yet, and a payment card can get it only once. A buyer credited only through their answer to the sign-up question doesn't get it.

Describe the saving in the words your Affiliate tab shows, for example: "Use code SEO-WITH-SAM to save up to $10 off the service fee on your first Serpverse order." The referral discount guide explains the buyer's side.

What You Earn

You earn your commission rate, currently 40%, on the service fee we actually charge on each order a buyer you referred completes, whichever publisher it's with. Commission is never a share of the publisher's price, and it's rounded down to the cent.

Three things shape what a buyer earns you:

• Your rate is fixed for each buyer when they're credited to you. A later change to the rate applies only to buyers credited after it. Your Affiliate tab shows your rate.
• Each buyer earns for 12 months, starting when their first order completes. We never shorten a buyer's 12 months. If we lengthen it, buyers you've already referred get the longer window too.
• One placement earns at most $74. The fee counted on a single placement stops at $185, the fee on a $1,000 placement.

Commission is recorded automatically, normally within a day of the order completing. Only completed orders earn it: an order that's declined or cancelled earns nothing. Some completed orders earn nothing either:

• orders for your own listings;
• orders from a buyer whose payment card has also funded another Serpverse account, such as your own account or a client account whose deposits you pay;
• orders completed while the program is paused, or while your participation is suspended or your account is suspended or banned. If the program resumes or you're reinstated, the ones inside the buyer's 12 months earn commission then;
• orders completed after your participation ends.

The 45-Day Hold, Refunds and Chargebacks

Each commission is held for 45 days after its order completes, so a refund or chargeback can settle first. After the hold it's ready to pay, as long as the order is still completed, it has no open dispute or content review, and your participation and your account are active. We may also keep a commission on hold while we review it, for example when we can't confirm how a buyer funded their account.

If an order is refunded in full or charged back:

• before its commission is paid, the commission is cancelled;
• after its commission is paid, the same amount comes off a later payout.

A refund made through a dispute after completion leaves the order completed, so it doesn't change your commission.

How You're Paid

By the last day of each month, we pay all your commission that's ready. You can't request a payout at other times. Choose how you're paid in the Payouts section of your Affiliate tab:

Payouts are in US dollars. The main conditions for a payout:

• at least $20 is ready to pay. A smaller amount carries over to a later month;
• at least two different buyers you referred have commission that still stands;
• you've chosen a payout method, with its address set;
• the checks before your first payout are done.

Before your first payout, we search the UK Sanctions List for you and record whether you're a US person for tax purposes. If you are, we need a completed IRS Form W-9 from you before we can pay you. You're responsible for the taxes on your commission.

While a payout to you is being sent, you can't change how you're paid. Every change to your payout details sends an alert to your account's email address.

Following It on Your Affiliate Tab

Open Affiliate in your dashboard's sidebar. Four figures sit above its sections: total earned, on hold, ready to pay, and your commission rate.

Referrals are numbered, never named: you don't see who your buyers are or what they bought. Signups can outnumber clicks, because a buyer who types your code never clicks your link. After a month with activity, we email you a summary on the first of the next one.

The Rules for Promoting Serpverse

We pay for buyers you introduce, not for buyers already on their way to us, and your audience should hear the truth about us. Section 11 of the Affiliate Agreement has the full rules. These are the main ones:

• Disclose that you earn a commission. Label the promotion as an ad at its start, before your first link, for example: "Ad: I earn a commission if you sign up through my link or use my code." In a video, say it in the first 30 seconds and put it at the start of the description. "Affiliate" or "#affiliate" on its own isn't enough.
• Follow the disclosure rules where you and your audience are, such as the UK's CAP Code, which the regulator explains in its affiliate marketing advice(opens in new tab), and the FTC's Endorsement Guides(opens in new tab) in the United States.
• Send people through your link. Any other link to Serpverse must carry rel="sponsored" or rel="nofollow". We recommend marking your link the same way, as Google asks of affiliate links(opens in new tab).
• Say only what's true. Describe us with the facts we publish. Don't promise rankings or traffic, don't call placements "Google-safe", and don't say we have no fees or are the cheapest.

What isn't allowed:

• bidding on "Serpverse" or its misspellings in ads, or running ads that link straight to us;
• coupon, deal, voucher or cashback sites, or calling your code a "promo code", "coupon" or "voucher";
• paying or rewarding anyone for signing up or ordering;
• spam, fake reviews, and sitewide, footer or blogroll links;
• referring yourself, an account you control, or an account you fund, such as a client account whose deposits you pay.

If You're a Buyer with a Code

If someone gave you a Serpverse link or code, it's worth up to $10 off the service fee on your first order. Enter the code when you sign up, or click Have a referral code? on the order form before you place your first order. The referral discount guide covers how much you save and when it applies.

Frequently Asked Questions

Does it cost anything to join? No. Joining is free, and there's no minimum you have to refer.

Can I change my link or code later? Your link is permanent. We can replace the code buyers type if it's been leaked or misused: your link keeps working, and the buyers already credited to you stay credited.

Do I need to be a buyer or a publisher? Either works, and if you're new to Serpverse you choose one when you create your account. Publishers earn on what the buyers they refer order from other publishers, but not on orders for their own listings.

Can I refer my own clients? Yes, if they buy from their own accounts with their own payment cards. We don't pay commission on your own account, on accounts you control, or on accounts you fund.