Everything you use to find partners, equip them and keep them, and what your partners get to share well: a listing in the partner directory, messages to your promoters, a partner list brought across from another tool, a file library, links to any page with campaign tags, and the disclosure line that keeps both of you inside the FTC's and the ASA's rules.
The partner directory
BoltClaw has a directory where people who promote products find programs to join. It is deliberately small and private:
- Only signed-in BoltClaw accounts can open it. It lives inside the dashboard, it is in no sitemap, search engines are told not to index it, and there is no API for it: an API would be a way to copy it out.
- It lists only programs whose business switched listing on. Listing is off for every program until you turn it on, and a program that is not listed is never found, not even by its exact name.
- It never shows who promotes a program, or how many do. No partner names, no partner counts, no revenue, and no id of yours: a listing is known only by a random id of its own.
- Each account may load a limited number of pages (60 a minute and 1,000 a day by default).
What a card shows: your program's name and logo, a category, your pitch (up to 280 characters), the rewards in plain sentences generated from your own reward rules (never typed, so they cannot promise more than you pay), the cookie window, the payout schedule and minimum, the payout providers you connected, the countries and languages you welcome, and when you were listed.
Who may list. Every one of these must hold, or listing is refused with a sentence for each that does not:
| Condition | Why |
|---|---|
| The program is active and anybody may apply (not invite-only) | A partner who finds it must be able to join |
| It has terms, and a reward for partners | They must know what they agree to and what they earn |
| Your organisation is at least 7 days old and not suspended | Cuts throwaway accounts |
| One real sale came in through your connected billing system, or your setup checklist is complete | Cuts "programs" that recruit promoters and never pay |
Reports. Any signed-in account may report a program ("it looks like a scam", "what it says about rewards is not true", spam, offensive, something else). Reports from three different accounts hide the listing until BoltClaw reviews it; a rule only ever hides a listing, and a person decides. Partners apply from the directory exactly as through your signup link: your terms, your questions, your approval.
Set it up on Referrals, your program, Directory, or with
PATCH /v1/referrals/programs/{id}/listing. An AI assistant asks you before it changes your
listing, unless your organisation lets assistants do it without asking.
Messages to your promoters
Write to the approved promoters of one program: everyone, one group or level, or a list you
pick. The message is plain text with a little formatting: paragraphs, bold, italic,
[links](https://example.com) and lists. HTML and images are not accepted, links must be
https://, and every link is shown with its domain beside it, so "Click here" can never hide
where it goes. {name}, {link} and {code} are filled with each promoter's own display
name, referral link and discount code.
| Who | What they get |
|---|---|
| Partners (BoltClaw accounts) | An email from BoltClaw in your brand, with a one-click unsubscribe from your messages (it never stops payout or commission emails), and the message on their program page |
| Your own users in the in-app panel | Never an email from BoltClaw. The message appears in the panel's News, and your webhook receives referral.broadcast.sent so you can send your own: GET /v1/referrals/broadcasts/{id}/referrers lists them by your own ids |
Send yourself a test first: the dashboard sends a broadcast only after a test of its current text. Emails go out a few at a time, so a large program takes a few minutes. A program may send 2 broadcasts in any 24 hours and 10 in any 30 days. Every send is recorded in your activity log, and an AI assistant always asks you before it sends one.
Bring a partner list across
Moving from another tool? Upload a CSV of up to 10,000 people with a header row:
| Column | Required | What it does |
|---|---|---|
name |
yes | What you call them; shown only to you |
email |
yes | Tells your rows apart. Kept only as a fingerprint, never as the address, and never emailed |
code |
no | A vanity code held for them: nobody else can take it meanwhile |
group |
no | A group or level of the program, by name |
rate |
no | A custom rate for them alone, as a percentage (25 or 25%) |
balance and currency |
no | An opening balance you owe them, in the program's currency |
The preview checks every row before anything is written (a code already taken, somebody already invited or promoting, a group that does not exist) and the import is all or nothing. Each row becomes an invite reserved for that person. BoltClaw sends no invitation email: download the names with their personal links and send them from your own email. When a person signs in through their link, they join approved (if your plan has room) with their code, group and rate, and an opening balance becomes a bonus paid by hand, "Balance brought over", only at that moment, so money is never owed to nobody. A file with balances needs the "Adjust commissions and pay partners" permission.
Over the API: POST /v1/referrals/programs/{id}/imports/preview, then
POST /v1/referrals/programs/{id}/imports, 500 rows a call (import_id joins the parts of one
file), and GET /v1/referrals/imports/{id}/invites for the links.
The file library
Give partners what they need to share well, per program:
- Images: banners and logos, PNG, JPEG or WebP up to 2 MiB, checked by their bytes. SVG, HTML and PDF are not accepted: each can carry active content.
- Text snippets: a post, an email, a pitch, up to 2,000 characters, with
{link}and{code}filled with each partner's own. When a partner copies one, your disclosure line comes with it. - Links: your brand guidelines or press kit, with their domain shown.
Each item may be shown to one group only. A snippet may also be shown to your own users in the in-app panel.
Links to any page, and campaign tags
A partner's link can open any page of your site, not only your product URL:
https://boltclaw.ai/r/jane?to=/pricing
https://boltclaw.ai/r/jane?to=/guide&host=docs.example.com
to is a path on your product URL's host. host picks another of your hosts, but only one you
listed as an allowed host AND proved with a TXT record (_boltclaw.<host> with the value shown
on Settings or by GET /v1/referrals/programs/{id}/link-hosts). Anything else (a path that is
not one, a host you have not proved) lands on your product URL: a referral link is never an open
redirect.
Add sub to tag a placement: ?sub=youtube. The tag (lower-case letters, digits, _ and -,
up to 80) is recorded on the click and passed to your site as bc_sub, which the version 2
website tag keeps beside the code (BoltClawReferral.sub()). Send it back with a conversion as
referral.sub, or in Stripe metadata as boltclaw_sub; otherwise the tag of the click that
brought the customer is used. Partners see their clicks, signups, sales and earnings by tag.
A link's own utm_* parameters are passed on unchanged.
The disclosure line
Partners must tell people they earn from their link: the FTC expects you to train and watch your affiliates, and "affiliate link" alone is not a disclosure; the UK's ASA asks for "Ad". Every program has a disclosure sentence, filled in for your currency's region:
| Region | Default |
|---|---|
| United States and elsewhere | I earn a commission if you buy through my link. |
| United Kingdom | Ad · I earn a commission from this link. |
| European Union | Advertising: I earn a commission if you buy through this link. |
You can change the words; you cannot empty them. BoltClaw shows the sentence to a partner the first time they copy a link or a code in your program and then monthly, every time they put a link in a post, a bio page or an automation, after every library snippet they copy, and under the share buttons in the in-app panel. It never stops anybody sharing. When a partner acknowledges it, the date is shown on your Partners tab: evidence of the training the FTC expects of you.