Referral campaigns: creators earn from the creators they invite

For brands that want their creators to bring in more creators.

A Referral campaign pays creators for recruiting. Every creator who joins gets their own invite link. Creators who join through it become their level 1 referrals, and the creator earns a share of those creators' sales for you. You can pay up to three levels deep.

Example: "Earn 5% of the sales of every creator you invite, and 2% from the creators they invite."

The short version

• Choose Referral under Select Campaign Type.
• Set 1 to 3 levels. Each level has its own rates, content types, and duration.
• A referral only pays if the invited creator hasn't sold for you recently (30 days by default).
• The campaign has no end date. It pays every week or every month until you stop it.
• A creator's own sales never earn them a referral reward, and referral rewards never count as sales.

Set the levels

On Goals & rewards, the overview at the top shows the chain: Your creator, then Level 1 (people they invite), Level 2 (people those creators invite), and Level 3 (one step further). Click Add level to add one, up to three.

Each level has its own card:

Each level needs a % of GMV or a Per unit sold rate. Copy level 1 settings on level 2, and Copy level 2 settings on level 3, copy the level above. The example line at the bottom of each card shows what $1,000 in sales would earn the referrer.

Durations are counted in the campaign's payout cadence: weeks on a weekly campaign, months on a monthly one. Switching cadence during setup converts them (6 months becomes 26 weeks).

If the campaign is limited to specific products, only sales of those products count.

Who counts as a referral

Who counts as a referral decides which invited creators earn their referrer money:

• On (the default): only creators with no sales for your shop in the last 30 days. New creators and creators coming back count. Creators selling for you right now don't. You can change the number of days.
• Off: everyone who joins through a link counts, even creators already selling for you.

A creator who is already selling for you can still join the campaign through a link. They join directly, no referral is recorded, and they get their own link to invite others.

Creators who join from your own invite or the campaign page, without another creator's link, have no referrer. Nobody earns from their sales, and the rule doesn't apply to them.

Schedule and payouts

In Schedule & tracking, pick a Start date and a Payout cadence: Weekly or Monthly. There is no end date.

Each week or month is a payout period. When a period closes, each referrer is owed what their invited creators sold in it, at each level's rates.

• Auto pay: with auto pay on, Cruva charges your saved method for each closed period after your review window and pays the creators once the funds clear. See Creator payouts and adding funds.
• Paying yourself: pick the period at the top of the campaign page and pay from the payout panel, or pay one creator from the participants table.

Editing the rates changes the running amounts for periods that haven't been paid or charged yet. Periods already paid don't change.

Track the network

The campaign summary shows Referral rates: each level, its rate and duration, and what it has Earned so far.

The participants table shows every creator in the campaign:

• Referred by: the creator whose link they joined through, or Joined directly. Click the name to jump to that creator's row.
• Level 1, Level 2, Level 3: what the creator has earned from that level, how many creators they have there, and those creators' sales.
• Total earned: across all levels and periods.
• Period 1 payout (the number is the period picked at the top of the page): In progress while the period is open, a Pay button with the amount once it has closed, and Paid once sent.

What creators see

On the campaign page, creators see the rate for each level, how long sales count, and how often they're paid. Once they've joined, they get their invite link with Copy and Share invite, and two more cards:

• Your Earnings: the Next payout (what they've earned and haven't been paid yet), Total earned, how much has been paid out so far, and what each level has earned them.
• Creators You Invited: everyone below them, with the level (L1, L2, L3), whether the creator joined through Your link or via another creator, what that creator has earned them, and from how much in sales. Ended marks a creator whose duration has run out.

Creators see the same amounts you are asked to pay.

A creator who opens someone's invite link sees who invited them before joining, or that they're joining directly. If the link can't be used, for example because the creator who shared it isn't in the campaign, they're told why and can join without a referrer.

Common questions

Can a creator earn from their own sales? No. Referral rewards are paid only on the sales of the creators below them. Pair a Referral campaign with a Commission Boost if you also want to reward creators' own sales.

Is the same sale paid more than once? One sale can earn up to three referrers, one at each level, at that level's rate. Referral rewards never count as sales, so nobody earns a referral reward on a reward.

Can a creator change who referred them? No. The referrer is fixed when the creator first joins.

What happens when a duration runs out? That creator's sales stop earning at that level. Other levels with a longer duration, or Unlimited, keep earning.

Why does a level show 0 earned? No creators have joined at that level yet, their sales fall outside the level's content types or the campaign's products, or the sales data for the period hasn't arrived from TikTok yet.