If you send people to a prediction market, you've probably been offered a percentage of the fees they generate. It's a fair offer. It's also structured in a way that most people don't read closely — and the clause that matters isn't the percentage.
Below are the published terms, quoted rather than paraphrased, and an honest account of when a referral commission is the right deal for you and when you've outgrown it.
Polymarket runs the largest referral program in the category, and publishes its terms openly — which is more than most. These figures are from those terms, effective 28 May 2026.
Under the published terms, rewards on a referral end at whichever comes first: the referral reaching the Platinum tier, or 30 days from their sign-up.
Read that twice, because it inverts the usual logic of audience work. You are not building an annuity on the users you introduce. You are earning a month of fees, once, per person — and the better a trader they turn out to be, the sooner they hit the tier that ends your payments early.
A time-boxed reward pays best when you can keep introducing new people indefinitely. It suits a large, refreshing audience — and it treats the loyal community you spent years building exactly the same as a stranger who clicked once.
If your members are still trading in year two because of your calls, your community and your reputation — the programme has nothing to pay you for that. The value you created keeps accruing to someone else.
There is a second way to be paid by a prediction market, and it's the one the exchanges themselves built for applications rather than for individuals: you route the trades, and you charge on them.
This is not a loophole we invented. Polymarket's Builder Program exists precisely so that applications routing orders to the book can charge a builder fee on that flow, additive to the platform's own fees, with no expiry attached to it. Predicted is one of those applications — and a franchise makes you one too, under your own brand, without writing any of the software.
A referral link costs you nothing and answers the only question that matters: will your people actually trade? Run that experiment first. If nobody clicks, a branded platform of your own would have been an expensive way to learn the same thing.
Operating means your name is on it. Some people reasonably don't want that association, or don't want the responsibility of being the face when a market resolves badly. A link keeps you at arm's length. That's a legitimate choice.
This is the clearest signal there is. If the people you send are still active months later, you are producing durable value and collecting one month of it. That gap is the entire argument for owning the platform instead.
Picks, a paid channel, a newsletter, a community. You give the call; they back it on a platform carrying your name; you earn on both. One audience, two revenue lines, no extra acquisition cost.
Owning the fee doesn't mean owning a bookmaker. You take on a brand and an audience. You do not take on market risk, custody of anyone's money, or the job of deciding what happened.
This is the whole job, and nobody can do it for you. No platform in this category manufactures demand for its operators — anyone who tells you otherwise is selling.
Typically 1% to 5%, chosen during onboarding, charged on every prediction placed on your platform and settled to your wallet automatically.
Predicted does not issue you a licence and does not pretend to. Where you operate and what that requires of you is yours to take advice on, before you launch.
Members trade against other members on Polymarket's book. When one of them wins big, it doesn't come out of your pocket — your fee is the same either way.
Funds stay in members' own wallets and winnings go straight to the winner. You are never a custodian, and there is nothing for you to reconcile.
The platform, the wallets, the market data, the settlement and the payouts are ours to operate. You get a branded front door to it.
The structural fork that decides everything, and six questions worth asking any provider — including us.
What your branded platform is, how you earn, and what your members need to place a first trade.
Why this is structurally different from a bookmaker — five differences, side by side.