Affiliate program

Affiliate program

The Telenow Affiliate Program lets anyone earn recurring commission and one-time bonuses for referring new customers to the platform. This page is for affiliates — covering how you earn, sign up, share your link, track performance, and get paid — and includes a short section for platform admins who configure the program.

What the program is

The affiliate program is an open, self-serve referral program. Anyone can become an affiliate — there is no quota, no application review, and no cap on referrals. Sign-up is self-serve and approved instantly: the moment you verify your email and phone, your dashboard and referral link are live.

Every account you refer is bound to you for the life of that account (lifetime attribution — one affiliate per account, never expires, and not cookie-dependent). You earn a recurring share of platform usage on those accounts, plus one-time onboarding bonuses.

The program must be turned on by the platform before sign-ups are accepted. If sign-up returns "The affiliate program is not currently open," the program has not yet been enabled by an admin.

How you earn

You earn in two ways: a recurring lifetime commission on usage, and up to three one-time onboarding bonuses per referred account. Commissions accrue in USD and post to your dashboard balance automatically after each usage settlement — no manual approval is required.

The recurring commission is a percentage of the platform usage fee — the margin the platform keeps from each settled session — not a percentage of what the customer pays. So your commission is a share of that fee, not of the customer's full bill.

Only the 15% usage commission is active by default. The three one-time bonuses are off ($0 / 0%) until the platform configures them, and the platform can set any amount. Your dashboard always shows your effective rates, which resolve to your per-affiliate override if one is set, otherwise the platform default.

Lifetime attribution

When someone signs up through your referral link or code, that account is permanently bound to you at signup. There is exactly one affiliate per referred organization, and all of that org's commissions accrue to you for the life of the account.

Refunds and clawback

If a referred customer's first purchase is refunded, the related first-purchase bonus is reversed (booked as a negative commission against your balance). The reversal nets the bonus to zero even if it was already paid out — in that case your balance can go negative and is offset by future earnings. Recurring usage commission supports the same mechanism: if a settlement is adjusted downward on re-settle, a negative commission claws back the affected earnings.

Your ongoing usage commission is unaffected by a one-time bonus clawback — only the reversed bonus is netted out.

Becoming an affiliate

Start from the public landing page at /affiliates, or go straight to sign-up.

1. Open /affiliate/login?mode=signup (the Become an affiliate call to action on /affiliates links here).
2. On the details step, enter your email, WhatsApp mobile number, a password (8+ characters), and an optional name.
3. Check I agree to the Affiliate Program Terms (read them at /affiliate/terms). The Continue button stays disabled until your email is valid, your phone has at least 8 digits, your password is 8+ characters, and the terms box is checked.
4. On the verify step, enter the two 6-digit codes — one sent to your email and one sent via WhatsApp. Each code can be resent individually, with a 60-second cooldown per channel.
5. On success you're signed in and dropped straight onto your dashboard at /affiliate. There is no approval delay — your account is active immediately.

To sign back in later, use /affiliate/login with your email and password.

The affiliate portal uses its own login, separate from the main app. Your affiliate session is independent of any organization account you may also hold.

Your referral link

Your referral link carries your code as a ?ref=CODE query parameter on any page — for example https://app.telenow.ai/?ref=YOURCODE. When a visitor lands with that parameter, your code is captured and persisted through to signup, and the new account binds to you.

To track different channels, append a sub-id, e.g. ?ref=YOURCODE&sid=newsletter. Build these ready-made in the dashboard's campaign link builder (see below).

Vanity code

Your code is auto-generated when you sign up, and you can customize it to a vanity code in Settings — 3 to 32 characters, using letters, numbers, dashes, or underscores. Codes are unique across the platform; if a code is taken you'll get a conflict and need to choose another.

Changing your referral code breaks any links or QR codes you've already shared. Update your shared materials after changing it.

QR code and campaign links

Your dashboard shows a QR code of your referral link for in-person sharing or on-screen display, and a campaign link builder where you pick a destination page and add a sub-id to generate a tagged link to copy and share. A promo kit of ready-made copy is also provided so you can post without writing anything.

Your dashboard

The dashboard at /affiliate is your real-time home base.

• Headline stats — Referrals, Active accounts, Recurring (30d) run rate, Bonuses (one-time), Accrued, and Paid out.
• Conversion — clicks vs. referrals, shown as a conversion rate (referrals ÷ clicks).
• Earnings over time — a bar chart of monthly earnings for the last 12 months, with a dropdown to filter by a specific referred account.
• Milestones — progress markers driven by your referral count, active accounts, and lifetime earnings.
• Referrals table — each referred account with its stage (Signed up → Verified → Active & earning), campaign (sub-id), amount earned, and join date.
• Campaign link builder and QR code — described above.
• Payout controls — depending on your state, the dashboard shows Add payout details, a Payout requested [date] status, or a Request payout button.

Getting paid

Payouts are reviewed and recorded by the Telenow team against your accrued balance, subject to the published minimum and cadence.

1. Set your payout details

In Settings (/affiliate/settings):

Commissions accrue in USD. Your chosen payout currency is converted at payout time, and the per-payout statement records the FX rate applied.

2. Request a payout

1. Make sure your payout details are saved and your accrued balance is at or above the platform minimum.
2. From the dashboard, click Request payout.
3. Your request is flagged for the team. A request is only accepted when there's no review hold on your account, your payout details are set, your balance is positive, and your balance meets the minimum.

The dashboard then shows Payout requested [date] until the team records the payout.

3. How the team records your payout

When the team processes a payout, it covers your full accrued balance (partial payouts are not supported). A payout is recorded as either:

• Wallet credit — credited to a Telenow organization where you are a member, or
• External transfer — paid out via your chosen method and currency.

Payouts may be subject to applicable taxes/withholding.

Statements and tax records

On the Earnings page (/affiliate/earnings):

• Commissions ledger — paginated 50 per page, filterable by status (All / Accrued / Paid / Reversed) and a From / To date range. Event types shown: Signup bonus, Credits consumed, First purchase, Usage commission, and Reversal. Export the filtered view to CSV (affiliate-commissions.csv; columns: Date, Event, Org, Basis USD, Rate %, Amount USD, Status).
• Payouts — a table of Date, Method, Amount USD, Currency, and Status. Expand any row for an itemized statement showing the native amount, FX rate, tax withheld, external reference, and the individual commissions bundled into that payout. Export to affiliate-payouts.csv.
• Year-end statements — a per-year breakdown of Recurring, Bonuses, Reversals, and Total, downloadable per year as affiliate-statement-YEAR.csv for tax filing.

For platform admins

Admins configure and manage the program from the Affiliates admin page. All controls map to admin endpoints under /api/admin.

Enable the program and set defaults

The program is off by default and must be explicitly enabled. In the Settings card (saved via PUT /api/admin/affiliate-settings), set:

Until enabled is set to true, POST /api/affiliate/auth/signup/start returns "The affiliate program is not currently open." The three bounties stay at 0 (paying nothing) until you configure them — only the 15% recurring commission applies automatically once enabled.

Per-affiliate overrides

In the manage panel for an affiliate, set per-affiliate overrides (leave a field blank to clear it and revert to the platform default), persisted via PUT /api/admin/affiliates/:id/commission:

• commissionPctOverride
• bountySignupUsdOverride
• bountyCreditsConsumedUsdOverride
• bountyFirstPurchasePctOverride

The effective rate for an affiliate is the override if set, otherwise the platform default.

Suspend, hold, and record payouts

Recording a payout always settles the full accrued balance — partial payouts are not supported in this version. The Record payout action is disabled when the balance is zero or negative.

Admins can also review an affiliate's referrals, commission ledger, and payout history via the corresponding GET /api/admin/affiliates/:id/... endpoints.