No caps, no expiry, and a leaderboard that's still wide open.
The part most referral programs quietly bury
Most referral programs expire. You get a bonus for 90 days, maybe 12 months, and then the clock resets to zero. You promoted something, someone bought it, and eventually your cut just... stops.
teum does the opposite. Your referral revenue runs as long as the people you bring in keep buying or selling. That's the thing worth sitting with before we get into the mechanics.
What teum referrals actually are
teum is an AI software assets marketplace â prompts, bots, plugins, workflows, agents, toolkits, the whole stack. Indie developers list things they've built; other developers (or teams, or solo founders) buy them to skip weeks of wheel-reinventing.
The referral program sits on top of that: you get a personal link, you share it, and you earn a cut of what the people you refer spend or make.
Two rates, depending on which side of the market you're sending people to:
- Refer a seller (someone who lists and sells on teum): you earn 5% of every sale they make, forever.
- Refer a buyer (someone who purchases assets): you earn 3% of every purchase they make, once they cross $30 in confirmed buys â forever.
No caps on total earnings. No expiry dates.
Why this matters right now
The leaderboard is still opening up. If you look at the leaderboard at teum.io/leaderboard, you'll see that total referral payouts for the last 30 days sit at $0.00. That's not a problem â it's a signal. The market is early, positions aren't locked, and whoever moves first gets to establish themselves before the crowd arrives.
This is relevant if you run a developer newsletter, manage a Discord or Slack community, work in devrel, or just regularly tell other developers about tools you find useful. You're already doing the work. This is a structure that pays you for doing it consistently.
For someone who refers a prolific seller â say, a developer who ships and sells multiple toolkits over the next couple of years â 5% forever compounds in a way that a one-time bounty never does.
A concrete example
Say you run a newsletter for indie developers. You mention teum in an issue, include your referral link, and three readers sign up:
- Reader A lists a prompt pack and sells $200 worth in the first month. You earn $10 that month.
- Reader B buys a workflow toolkit for $40 (crosses the $30 threshold). You earn $1.20 on that purchase.
- Reader C lists an agent template that turns into a steady seller at $80/month. You earn $4 every month, indefinitely.
None of these numbers are dramatic individually. But they're permanent â and the seller side compounds if the people you refer keep building and listing.
The $30 threshold on the buyer side is worth noting honestly: it's a small filter that means one-off tiny purchases don't count until someone's a real buyer. That's a fair design choice, and it keeps the math clean.
What to try next
If you're already in the habit of sharing developer tools with your audience, the low-friction move is to grab your referral link and swap it in wherever you'd naturally mention teum anyway.
If you want to see where things stand â who's leading, what the early landscape looks like â the leaderboard is worth a look. It's still sparse, which means there's room.
"Refer sellers: 5%. Refer buyers: 3%. Forever." That's the whole thing. See the leaderboard at teum.io/leaderboard.
The leaderboard is still opening up â positions aren't locked, and whoever moves first gets to establish themselves before the crowd arrives.