Articles on: Payments, Wallet & Earnings

Referrals and promoter rewards: earn by sharing

Referrals and promoter rewards: earn by sharing


Creatures rewards you for sending buyers to good listings. Share a listing with your referral link, and if someone buys through it, you earn a reward. You do not have to be the seller; anyone can promote any listing and earn on the sales they bring in.


You manage all of this on the Referrals tab of your dashboard, at /dashboard/referrals.


Your referral earnings dashboard


Two rewards on one sale: the promoter and the buyer


A referred sale actually pays out twice, to two different people, and it is worth keeping them straight:


  • You (the promoter) earn 1% of the sale, paid into your Wallet. Because it lands in your Wallet, it is real, withdrawable cash, not Credit. On your wallet history it shows up as a "Referral bonus".
  • The buyer separately gets 1% back as Creatures Credit. That is their reward for using a referral link, and it has no effect on your 1%. The two are independent and do not come out of each other.


So a single referred purchase rewards both the person who shared the link and the person who bought. The base rate for each side is 1% of the sale price.



When someone opens a listing through your referral link, Creatures records a referral token tying that visitor to you. The rules that decide whether you get credited:


  • The link sets the token. Your referral link carries your reference, and visiting a listing (or genetics listing, or sale event) through it starts the attribution.
  • A 30-day window. The token is good for 30 days. If the buyer purchases within that window, the sale is attributed to you.
  • Last click wins. If a buyer clicks more than one person's link, the most recent link is the one that counts. Sharing closer to the purchase is what earns the reward.
  • Anonymous clicks bind at sign-in. If someone clicks your link before they are logged in, the token waits and attaches to their account when they sign in or sign up, so you do not lose a referral just because they were not logged in yet.
  • You cannot refer your own sale. If you are the seller (or you own or co-own the selling organization), your own link does not pay you a promoter reward on that listing.


When rewards appear, and when they pay out


Every qualifying purchase becomes a row on your Referrals tab, and it moves through clear states:


  • Shared links / "No sale yet": a listing you shared where no eligible sale has completed. Nothing is owed yet; it is just waiting.
  • Pending: a sale completed and your reward is earned, but not paid yet. A reward becomes payable about 7 days after the buyer confirms delivery of the animal. That window lines up with the protection on the sale itself.
  • Paid: the reward has been paid into your Wallet. These count toward your "Completed Payouts".


The tab also totals your Total Earned and your Pending amount at the top, and lets you filter by Pending, Paid, and Shared links. Each row shows the date, the listing, the status, and the amount (your base reward plus any seller boost, described next).


The seller-funded boost (a Sale Incentive) that pays promoters extra


A seller can choose to pay promoters more than the base 1% to get their listing shared, by adding a per-listing bonus. This is a seller-funded extra on top of your 1%, not a discount to the buyer.


  • What it is: an additional payout the seller attaches to their own listing for whoever refers the sale. It is set on the listing using the seller boost control (in code, \db\listing::set_bonus), as either a fixed dollar amount or a percentage of the sale price.
  • What it means for you as a promoter: when you refer a sale on a boosted listing, your reward is your base 1% plus that bonus. A boosted listing is simply worth more to share.
  • The seller-protection cap: the bonus is capped at the seller's net proceeds (the sale price after the seller fee, the buyer fee, and any event organizer fee). The seller can never be pushed below zero by their own boost, so a generous bonus is automatically trimmed to what the seller actually nets if it would otherwise exceed it.


For the seller's side of setting one up, see Promoting your listing and seller bonuses. For how a buyer experiences promo codes and Sale Incentives at checkout, see Promo codes and Sale Incentives at checkout.


Referrals turn a listing you like into a reward when you share it. The other common way to earn Credit is gift cards, covered next.



Updated on: 23/06/2026

Was this article helpful?

Share your feedback

Cancel

Thank you!