40/50/10: Our Revenue Split, and the Math Behind It
People ask: why can't I keep 100%? Here's the arithmetic, laid out in full.
Rules first, reasoning second.
Every payment on paywall.tel falls into one of two cases, depending on who brought the buyer:
- The buyer came through your referral link → you (the channel owner) take 50%, the referrer takes 40%, the project fund takes 10%.
- Nobody referred them (they found you on their own, or came from your own links) → you take 100%, the platform takes 0.
The most common objection: "Why should I give away 40% on a sale someone else brought?"
Good question. Here's how to actually do the math.
That 40% isn't "taken from you." It's an ad budget you never had to spend.
What does it cost you to acquire a paying customer by yourself?
- Buying promo placements in other channels — cents to dollars per click, conversions a coin flip;
- Spamming groups — you get kicked, and it's humiliating;
- Asking friends to share — you now owe a favor, and favors are the most expensive currency there is.
The referrer model: commission only when a sale closes; zero spend when nothing sells. Zero risk, zero upfront, pure performance. You take the CAC you would have handed to an ad platform and pay it directly to real people who actually sell.
Put differently: the "lower" 50% payout on referred orders is the price of turning acquisition from "you, alone" into "a crowd, for you." Which is cheaper depends entirely on whether your content retains people — retain them, and referrers become a sales force that works for free until it delivers.
Why do referrers get 40% and not 50%?
Because the content is yours and the channel is yours to run. Referrers walk people to the door; the content decides whether they stay. The maker takes the larger share so that the people doing the hard, ongoing work keep doing it — that's the root the whole ecosystem grows from.
And the 10%?
The project fund, charged only on referred sales — the platform earns more only when it helps the ecosystem close more business. On non-referred orders, the platform takes nothing at all.
A concrete example
Your channel is priced at 22 USDT:
| Scenario | You receive | Referrer | Fund |
|---|---|---|---|
| Buyer found you on their own | 22 | — | 0 |
| Buyer came via a referral link | 11 | 8.8 | 2.2 |
In the first case, you keep everything. In the second, you spent 11 USDT to buy a paying customer who would never have found you otherwise — that trade only loses if your content isn't worth its own price.
Paid on the spot, not at the end of the month
Traditional billing platforms can hold your money for a month. On paywall.tel, the instant a member pays, the system computes the split and executes the on-chain transfers on the spot — your 50% and the referrer's 40% usually land in their wallets within a minute. Money never sleeps on our servers, is never held in custody, and can never run off.
Got a channel? Connect in three steps and start collecting. No channel but a good network? Grab a referral link and earn 40% on the spot.