Referral & Partner Programme Terms

Mastheads runs two separate programmes, and you may take part in both. Sections 2 to 13 govern the referral programme only. The partner programme is dealt with separately in section 14.

• Referrals are for Mastheads account holders and pay in article credits. They are live, and the conditions below apply in full.
• The partner programme is open to anyone promoting Mastheads to an audience, whether or not you are a customer. You join it by accepting these terms in the partner portal, using a Mastheads account - see section 14 for how, and for the terms.

• You share your referral link. Someone who signs up through it gets 10% off their first payment.
• When that person pays for a subscription, you are granted 30% of their plan's monthly article-credit allowance, in credits, each month for up to 12 months.
• The reward is article credits. This programme creates no entitlement to a cash payment. If you would rather be paid in money, section 14 is the way to do it, and it replaces these credits rather than adding to them.
• Nothing is granted until money moves. Several conditions below describe circumstances in which you earn nothing at all.

Any Mastheads account may take part. A referral code belongs to the team, not to an individual member of it. Taking part does not make you an employee, agent, partner or joint venturer of Mastheads, and you may not represent yourself as any of those.

Only a subscription payment by the person you referred starts the 12-month term. Until that payment is taken, no reward exists and nothing is owed.

A credit-pack purchase does not vest a referral, and it burns term.Once the term has started, months in which the referred account's subscription is not active still count against it. A referred customer who only ever buys credit packs can therefore earn you nothing for the entire term. This is the condition people are most often surprised by, and it is stated here and on the referral programme page for that reason.

Each month the grant is computed against the referred account's current plan, not the plan they joined on. An upgrade during the term increases the grant from that point; a downgrade reduces it. The grant is 30% of that plan's monthly article-credit allowance, issued to you as credits.

A referred account that is cancelled, paused or past due stops producing monthly grants for as long as that is the case. There is no separate expiry process: each month is computed from the vesting date, and a month in which the subscription is not active is simply not granted.

You may not refer yourself. Self-referral is refused on the basis of the mailbox used to sign up, with plus-tags and dot variants collapsed first, so addresses that resolve to the same inbox are treated as the same person. Attempting to work around this may end your participation.

Participation is limited to 50 paid referrals per team, counted as distinct referred accounts. This is a limit and an anti-fraud control. It is not a statement about the value of the programme, and we may change it.

If a payment you earned on is subsequently refunded, credits already granted to you are not clawed back. The referral limit and our audit records are the control instead.

Separately from refunds, we reserve the right to reverse a grant by hand where a referral is fraudulent, and to withhold or cancel rewards obtained through misrepresentation, spam, or any breach of these terms or of the Terms of Service.

Referred accounts whose first payment landed before the monthly programme launched retain the earlier one-off reward and were not migrated into it. Those referrals are not re-granted under these terms, because doing so would pay the same conversion twice.

Your referral link records a count of clicks and nothing else. It does not record the visitor's IP address, user agent or referring page. A click that never becomes a signup is still counted. See the Privacy Policy for how we handle personal data generally.

You must not send unsolicited bulk email, post your link where it breaks a platform's rules, impersonate Mastheads or its staff, or describe the product in a way that contradicts our own documentation. Where a jurisdiction requires you to disclose that a link is an affiliate link, or that coverage is incentivised, you are responsible for making that disclosure.

We may change or end the programme, and may change these terms. A change does not retroactively cancel credits already granted to you. Either of us may end your participation at any time; grants stop from that point.

The partner programme is a separate programmefrom referrals above. Sections 2 to 13 do not apply to it.

How you join. Join at the partner portal, which requires a Mastheads account. Accepting these terms is what makes you a partner. Your acceptance is recorded at that moment and against your own account, and your enrolment takes effect from it. There is no separate decision by us in between: nobody has to agree to you first, and there is nothing to wait for.

Leaving, and coming back. You may stop being a partner at any time from the portal. Commission already earned is unaffected and is still subject to the hold and the minimum below; what stops is any further commission. Referrals you have made go back to earning article credits under sections 2 to 13. If you join again later, we record a fresh acceptance of these terms as they stand on that day, and it is that version you are bound by.

What we ask for, and when. We do not ask for payment details in order to let you join. Before any payout is made you must record, in the portal, the legal name a payment would be made to, your country, your entity type, and the address we are to pay it to. We cannot make a payout until we have all four, and a partial set is no use to us. Providing them is not an approval step and does not change when these terms began to bind you.

What you earn. As an enrolled partner, you earn 20% of what a customer you referred actually paid, computed the same way on every payment they make. Subscription payments only: a credit-pack purchase does not count. If they pay annually, your commission is spread across 12 monthly payments rather than paid as one lump sum. Earnings from a given month are held and paid on the run 2 months later (month M pays in month M+2), and accumulate until they reach a $50 minimum, which rolls over from month to month until met.

Everything in this section is in US dollars. Plans are priced and charged in USD in every country, so your commission accrues in USD and the $50 minimum is a USD minimum. Any payout we make is in USD.

Commission replaces referral credits, it does not stack with them. A referred account earns you one thing in a given month, never both. While you are a partner, an account you referred earns you commission under this section instead of the article credits described in sections 2 to 13; if you leave the partner programme, it earns credits again. Sections 2 to 13 do not otherwise apply to this section.

Refunds and chargebacks. If a payment you earned commission on is later refunded or charged back, that commission is reversed. If it had not been paid out yet, it is simply never paid. If it had already been paid out, it is deducted from the next payout you actually receive, once and only once. If your reversals come to more than you are owed, the difference carries forward and reduces later payouts until it is absorbed. We never create a negative payout.

No partner has been paid yet. We have not chosen a payout provider, so we have no payment method or payout date to promise you beyond the hold and the minimum above. We will confirm those, in writing, before the first payout is due.

How you may promote us. You may say that you are a Mastheads partner and that your link earns you a commission. Where your jurisdiction or the platform you are posting on requires you to disclose that relationship, you must do so, and that duty is yours.

You must not present yourself as Mastheads, hold yourself out as speaking for us, or use our name or marks in a way that suggests your account, site or communication is ours.

You must not state a commission rate, a payout threshold, a payment method or a payment date other than the ones published in this document. While no payout provider has been chosen, you must not promise any payment method or date at all.

You must not describe the product in a way that contradicts our own documentation, send unsolicited bulk email, or post your link where it breaks a platform's rules.

Suspension and ending your participation. We may suspend or end your enrolment for a breach of this section. Either one stops further commission accruing from that point. Commission you had already accrued remains subject to everything above: the hold, the $50 minimum, and reversal if a payment it was earned on is refunded or charged back.

These terms are governed by the laws of India, without regard to conflict-of-law rules, and sit alongside the Terms of Service, which continue to apply.

Questions about the programme: hello@mastheads.app