Reward members who invite friends

Your members know the people most likely to join your marketplace. With referrals, every member gets their own invite link. When a friend signs up through it and then pays for something or publishes a listing (you choose which), the member who invited them gets a reward: credit in their wallet, or a one-time coupon.

Switch on referrals

Referrals are off until you switch them on.

In the admin panel, go to Referrals (in the sidebar, below Subscribers).
Tick Turn on referrals.
Choose the reward settings (below).
Click Save.

Only administrators see the Referrals page. If the switch is greyed out with Set by Yclas support for this site, ask us through Support to change it.

Choose the reward

Setting	What it does
Reward when the friend	makes their first payment (the default) or publishes their first listing.
Coupon value or Wallet credit	How much the reward is worth. 5 by default.
The coupon takes off	an amount in your currency, or a percentage. Not shown when the reward is wallet credit.
Coupon valid for (days)	How long the coupon can be used, from 1 to 365 days. 30 by default.
Rewards per user per month, at most	A cap per member, 10 by default. Friends beyond it are recorded but not rewarded.

What the reward is depends on how your site takes payments; the page tells you which applies:

With the eWallet on, the reward is credit in the inviter’s wallet.
With coupons on sales on, it is a coupon for the shopping cart, which comes off your site’s fee on their next purchase.
Otherwise it is a coupon for your own paid extras: a featured listing, a bump to the top, posting in a paid category or a membership plan.

Reward coupons are made automatically, with codes starting with REF, and appear in your list of coupons.

If your site doesn’t charge for anything a coupon could pay for, the page warns you: the reward would be worth nothing. Switch on paid extras in Make money, or the eWallet, first.

What members see

Every member gets an Invite friends page with their link and a Copy link button. In the Nova theme it is in the account menu; in other themes, send members to /oc-panel/referral on your site.

The page says what the reward is, and lists the friends who joined with the status of each. When a reward is earned, the inviter gets an email (You earned a reward for inviting a friend), with the coupon code if there is one, and a button back to their invite page.

The invite link takes the friend to your sign-up page and remembers who invited them for 30 days, so they can sign up later.

What counts

For the first payment trigger, the friend’s payment counts when it is something they bought on your site: a featured listing, a bump, a posting fee, a boost, a plan or an item bought from a seller. It doesn’t count when:

it was paid with the wallet;
it is worth less than the reward (for an amount reward);
the friend bought their own listing, or bought from the member who invited them.

A bank transfer or cash sale counts once you mark it as paid.

Protection against abuse

A sign-up isn’t counted (Not counted (same person)) when it looks like the member inviting themselves: the same browser that opened their own invite page, the same internet address they last signed in from, the same email, or a second friend of the same member signing up from the same address.

If the payment that earned a reward is refunded or cancelled, or the listing that earned it is deleted, the reward is taken back while it hasn’t been used: the wallet credit is removed, or the coupon is switched off.

Follow your referrals

Under the settings, the Referrals page counts referrals by status and lists them, with who invited whom, when they joined, the status and the reward:

Status	Meaning
Signed up, no reward yet	The friend joined but hasn’t paid or published yet.
Rewarded	The inviter got their reward.
Not counted (same person)	The sign-up looked like the inviter themselves.
Not rewarded (monthly limit)	The inviter had already reached the monthly cap.
Reward taken back (refunded, cancelled or deleted)	What earned the reward was undone.

Coupons — the coupons rewards are made from.
eWallet — credit members can spend on your site.
Make money — the paid extras a coupon can pay for.
Promote your marketplace for free — more ways to grow.
Marketplace sales report — see what your members sell to each other.