BorderFolio/Affiliate program/Documentation
Affiliate documentation
Everything behind the link: how your tag travels from a post to a paid subscription, what is stored at each step, and exactly when a referral does and does not count. The offer itself — 30% of a customer’s payments for their first 365 days — is on the affiliate program page.
01Building your link
Your link is any BorderFolio URL with ?partner= and your tag on the end. The tag is issued
when you are approved — normally your site or channel name in lowercase.
https://borderfolio.app/?partner=quantroutine
This is our parameter, not a Freemius one. You do not need a Freemius account to use it, and you never paste a Freemius link anywhere.
Point it at the page your post is about
The tag works on every page of the site, so a review of the IBKR workflow should land on the IBKR page rather than the front page:
https://borderfolio.app/interactive-brokers-portfolio-tracker.html?partner=quantroutine
https://borderfolio.app/withholding/portugal.html?partner=quantroutine
https://borderfolio.app/us-etf-vs-ucits-etf-calculator.html?partner=quantroutine
Rules for the tag
- Case does not matter.
?partner=QuantRoutineand?partner=quantroutineare the same partner — tags get retyped in show notes and video descriptions, and that should not cost you a referral. - Letters, digits, dash and underscore only, up to 64 characters. Anything else is discarded as junk before it reaches us.
- It combines with other parameters:
?utm_source=newsletter&partner=quantroutineworks, both are read independently. - An unknown tag is ignored silently. A typo does not break the page or show an error — the visit simply arrives unattributed, which is why it is worth opening your own link once after you publish.
02After the click
The landing page stores two things in a first-party cookie: your tag and the
moment of the click. It lasts 60 days and is scoped to
.borderfolio.app, so it is readable both on the marketing site and on the app at
app.borderfolio.app. The reader can browse for weeks, leave, come back and sign up, and the tag
is still there.
Nothing else is stored and nothing identifies the visitor. This cookie is separate from the analytics consent banner: attribution is bookkeeping between you and us, not behavioural tracking of the reader.
It is also separate from Freemius’ own referral cookie, which lives on their domain. We cannot read that one, and it says nothing about the two steps that happen entirely on our side — the visit and the signup, which can be weeks before any purchase. That gap is the reason our tag exists.
03Attribution at signup
When the reader creates an account, the app hands the tag and the click time to our backend, which checks that the partner exists and is active, then freezes three things against that account:
- the internal partner id — who you are on our side;
- the date of the click — what the 60-day window is measured from;
- your Freemius user id — a snapshot, taken at that moment.
The Freemius id is frozen deliberately: a later edit to your partner record cannot silently re-point commission on accounts already attributed to you.
Signing up with Google works too. That path posts no registration form, so the app submits the tag after the first sign-in instead. You do not have to tell readers to use email.
If the click is older than 60 days the account is not attributed. The signup still succeeds; it simply carries no partner.
04Commission at checkout
Subscriptions are billed by Freemius. When the customer opens checkout, the app passes the Freemius user
id stored against their account as affiliate_user_id — a parameter Freemius officially
supports for exactly this.
// checkout opened for an attributed account
{ plan_id: …, user_email: …, affiliate_user_id: 1029384 }
This step is what makes the arrangement robust. A purchase often happens days or weeks after the click, on another device or after a browser clean-up. Because the id travels with the account rather than with a cookie, the sale is still credited to you when the Freemius referral cookie has expired, been cleared, or was blocked from the start.
If you are approved on our side but not yet set up in Freemius, attribution still runs and is recorded, but the checkout has no id to send. Finish the Freemius step before you publish.
05Reporting
| What you see | The Freemius affiliate dashboard: clicks, referrals and commissions on your own account, without asking us for numbers. |
| What we see | Your tag attached as a property on the account in our product analytics, so one filter spans visit, signup and purchase per partner. It hangs on the person rather than a single event because those moments are days apart. |
| What you never receive | Names, email addresses, or anything about an individual customer’s portfolio. Referrals are counts and commissions, never people. |
06Rules, stated exactly
| Commission | 30% of each payment a referred customer makes |
| Commission window | 365 days from their first payment |
| Cookie | 60 days, first-party, shared across borderfolio.app and app.borderfolio.app |
| Window measured from | The click, not the signup |
| Before signup | Last click wins — a later partner link overwrites the cookie |
| After signup | First attribution wins — an attributed account does not change hands |
| Tag matching | Case-insensitive |
| Checkout parameter | affiliate_user_id, sent from the account, not from a cookie |
The two lines about winning describe different moments, and they are the ones worth reading twice. While the reader is still anonymous, the most recent partner link they clicked is the one held. Once they have an account, that attribution is settled and a later link does not move them to another partner.
07Edge cases
| Cookies cleared before signup | Attribution is lost. There is no fingerprinting fallback, deliberately. |
| Two partner links clicked | The later click is held — until an account exists, after which the attribution is fixed. |
| Signed up first, read your post later | Not creditable. Accounts are attributed at creation and are never re-attributed. |
| Upgrade 90 days after the click | Not creditable; the 60-day window runs from the click. A fresh click can still refer them if they have not registered yet. |
| They stay on the free plan | Nothing is charged, so nothing is owed. The referral is recorded and pays if they upgrade inside the window. |
| They refund | The commission is reversed with the payment. |
| You use your own link | Self-referral is not eligible. |
08Setup checklist
- Email admin@borderfolio.app with where you publish. You get a tag and, once you are in Freemius, dashboard access.
- Finish the Freemius affiliate set-up before publishing, so
affiliate_user_idhas something to send. - Build links to the pages your posts are actually about, not only to the front page.
- Open one of your own links in a private window and confirm the page loads with the tag in the URL.
- Disclose that the link is an affiliate link, and keep tax claims inside what the methodology actually supports.
09FAQ
Do I need a Freemius account to use the link?
The ?partner= tag is ours and works without one, so clicks and signups are attributed either way. But commission is paid through Freemius, and the checkout can only send your affiliate_user_id once your Freemius affiliate account exists — so complete that step before you publish.
Can I link to a page other than the homepage?
Yes. The tag works on every page of the site; append ?partner=
What happens if someone clicks my link and signs up two weeks later?
They are still your referral. The tag is kept in a first-party cookie for 60 days and the window is measured from the click, not from the signup.
What if a reader clicks two different partner links?
Before they have an account, the most recent click is the one held. Once an account exists the attribution is settled and does not move to another partner.
Does it work if they sign up with Google?
Yes. That path posts no registration form, so the app submits the tag after the first sign-in instead.
Do I see who my referrals are?
No. You see counts and commissions in the Freemius affiliate dashboard. Names, email addresses and anything about a customer's portfolio are never shared with partners.