In the digital world, a high-quality website is the foundation of success for most business owners and thought leaders. Bookmark’s agency program serves as a business in a box for most agencies and freelancers who want to build future-proof websites for their clients. Although onboarding and serving every client who needs a website is far from feasible, you still have an opportunity to earn a commission by referring your leads to our, 'Hire an Expert' program.
You earn 20% of the website build cost as a referral commission when customers use your unique referral code while signing up to work with one of our expert web designers. Don’t lose another customer to your competitors, partner with us to unleash your earning potential!
Note: This guide is designed to help you effectively leverage the referral code feature in our Agency program. If you would like to learn more about how you can build or grow your own design agency using Bookmark, please consider visiting our help center.
In this article you will learn the following:
Using the Referral Code
Get started by creating an Agency Account with Bookmark. We encourage you to begin the journey by familiarizing yourself with your Profile page. On the Profile page, you will have the 'Agent Refers Client' card displayed under the 'Managing Your Agency' section. This card provides you with all the important links you will need to start using the referral code and collecting your commissions!
Below is a summary of the elements found on this card:
At the top of the card you can copy your unique referral code link and share it with leads you would like us to onboard into our 'Hire an Expert' program. When your leads click this link, they will first be prompted to create an account with Bookmark. You are eligible to earn a commission from successful leads who create an account using your unique link, sign-up to hire a Bookmark expert, and commit to a timely payment of all dues. Below your referral code there is some information to help you get started.
To learn more about how the 'Hire an Expert' program works you can click the 'Hire an Expert' link. You can also view a breakdown of your potential earnings based on the 'Hire an Expert' pricing tiers by clicking 'Pricing Here'.
Lastly, set up your agency payment details so that you can start collecting your 20% commission payments by clicking the 'Set Up Payment Details Here' link. Alternatively you can go into your 'Account Settings' to the 'Agency Billing Details' section where you can add your payment information there.
Setting up Agency Billing Details to Collect Payments
In order to start earning commission you will need to fill out all the fields in the 'Basic Info' section as well as select your 'Payment Method'.
There are three ways in which you can choose to redeem your commission;
Check - $100 minimum, no fee
PayPal - $100 minimum, PayPal fees
Wire Transfer - $500 minimum, no fee
Understanding My Earnings
On the 'My Earnings' page there is a section titled 'Clients' which lists accounts that you have created and currently manage within your agency, and a section titled 'Agent Referral' detailing leads who have used your referral code and signed up for our 'Hire an Expert' program.
To view a breakdown of payments pertaining to your leads, scroll down to the ‘Agent Referral’ section. Here you will get visibility into how many of your leads we’ve onboarded into our ‘Hire an Expert’ program. You can also view the dates on which they received their respective quotes, their project details and the value of their first payment.
When they complete their final payment the 'Final Payment' and 'Total' fields will be populated in the table. The value in the 'Total' column is what your 20% commission is based off of. When the website is fully built you can see the date that it was completed, and at that point you will be eligible to request a payout for that lead.
Once you request payment for your referral commission a green checkmark will appear in the 'Paid' column of the 'Agent Referral' table to show which commission payouts have been processed.
When you have reached the minimum payout of $100 you can click the 'Request Payment' button located at the top of the 'My Earnings' page. This $100 can be a combination of earnings from your agency clients and referral commission payouts. You can see the value of your current referral earnings under ‘Referral Pending Earnings’, and the value of the earnings of your agency clients under 'Active Client Monthly Revenue'. 'Total Revenue Share Available' is the value of any available payouts. Clicking the ‘Request Payment’ button initiates the payout process, and it takes our team approximately two working days to process your payment
Hold periods
To simplify the payment process in our 'Hire an Expert' program, we have divided the build cost into two easy simple payments - 50% of the build cost is due before the project begins, and 50% is due upon completion. Your hold time for each of these payments reduces as your number of successful referrals increase.
For the first successful referral the hold time is 45 days from their final payment
For the second and third referrals the hold time is 30 days from their final payment
For the fourth referral and onwards your hold time is 15 days from their final payment
Moving forward
If you want to learn more about creating and managing clients within your design agency you can read more in our help center by clicking here. We look forward to helping you grow your business!