Introducing the CodeFund Referral Program
How we choose to grow our double-sided market
tl;dr: Publishers can now earn by referring their friends to CodeFund
Advertising typically has two sides: the advertiser and the publisher. An advertiser is a person that spends money in order to market their product, service, or company. A publisher is a person willing to place ads on their web properties in exchange for money.
CodeFund facilitates a two-sided market. One one side, we have advertisers that sell products and services that are of interest to the developer community. On the other side, we have publishers (mostly software engineers) that build websites for other software developers. CodeFund connects the two by collecting money from advertisers and giving it to publishers for ad space on their websites. Both sides provide value to each other.
Challenges of building a double-sided market
I’ve always considered my job as founder of CodeFund to maintain a balance between the demands of advertisers and the supply of publishers. I’ve even blogged about it in the past.
Lately, I’ve found myself turning down advertisers. Here’s a conversation I had a few weeks back:
Here’s another one that happened only a few days ago:
And here’s one that I see all the time (replace “blockchain” with anything non-JavaScript):
With our small team, it’s been challenging to reach out to potential new publishers directly. Long story short… we need help to grow our publisher network.
Where do publishers come from?
Last week we decided to start recording who refers our new publisher applicants. We accomplish this by creating a short-lived session variable whenever someone clicks on the “ethical ad by CodeFund” link in our ads. If the visitor fills out the publisher applicant form, we give credit to the referring publisher.
We’ve learned that a large percentage of new applicants are referred by our own publisher network.
CodeFund Referral Program
Today, we are excited to announce a new referral program!
Here’s how it works.
- You refer someone to CodeFund either through the referral link or from your embedded ad on your website.
- The referred publisher signs up with CodeFund.
- You earn 5% of the gross revenue generated by the referred publisher… for 3 months!
Here’s an example:
Let’s say you invite a friend to join CodeFund as a publisher. Throughout the first 3 months, the total revenue brought in from your friend’s website totals $1,000. You would receive an additional $50 to your earnings.
I hope you’re as excited about this opportunity as I am. I’m looking forward to your help in growing the CodeFund network of open source creators and maintainers.
Help Us Help You
Saying no to funding is not what we like to do. There’s plenty of money out there to help fund open source projects and developers. We just need help finding them.
If you would like to find out if you qualify to be part of the CodeFund platform, visit https://codefund.app/invite/ClLt3Pt_Pek (yes, that is my referral link).
If you are already a publisher with CodeFund, go to https://codefund.app/referrals.
This article was originally posted at https://blog.codefund.app/introducing-the-codefund-referral-program/
