Partner program FAQ

You earn 50% of the subscription money a referred reader actually pays us, excluding sales tax, for the first 12 months per reader. A reader on the $9 monthly plan earns you $4.50 on every monthly payment; a $90 annual payment earns you $45. Payment processing fees are our cost and are never deducted from your share.

The 12 months are counted from the reader's first successful paid transaction — not from when they clicked your link, signed up, or started the 7-day free trial. Every payment that reader makes during those 12 months earns you 50%. After the window ends, further payments from that reader earn nothing, and the window never restarts if they cancel and come back.

Every commission is held for 30 days from the date of the payment it comes from. During those 30 days it shows as Pending in your partner dashboard; once the hold passes it becomes Available (cleared) and counts towards your payout minimum. The hold protects both sides against refunds, card disputes and failed payments — if a payment is reversed inside that window, the matching commission is never paid out.

Clicks, sign-ups and free trials earn nothing — only confirmed payments do. Failed, zero-value or refunded payments never earn a commission. Readers who were already paying customers before their first click on your link don't qualify, and you cannot earn commissions on your own subscription.

No. Referral codes identify partners only — they give the reader no discount or special price. The reader pays the normal subscription price.

Yes. The site owner can change the commission rate, the hold period, the payout minimum or these terms, and will announce it. Changes apply to payments made after they take effect — commissions already earned keep the rate they were created at. Your dashboard always shows the rate, hold period and minimum currently in force.

Applying is free. Sign in with Google at the partner application page, tell us who you are, how you plan to promote Cambodia Monitor and how we should pay you, then accept the partner terms. Applications are approved as soon as you submit, so your referral link starts earning right away. You'll get an approval email containing your personal link. The site owner can suspend or reject a partner who breaks the terms.

So we know money is going to a real, verified person. On the onboarding page you upload a clear photo or PDF of your passport or national ID card (JPG, PNG, WEBP or PDF, up to 10 MB). The file is stored in a private bucket that is not published and not shared — only the site owner can open it, and only to check the identity of the person receiving payouts.

On the same onboarding page you enter the PayPal or Wise email address you want to be paid at, and we email a confirmation link to it. You click the link to prove you control that inbox. Both steps — ID document and confirmed payout email — must be finished and then approved by the site owner before any payout can leave your account.

The onboarding page shows the status: Incomplete, Waiting for owner review, Approved (payouts unlocked), or Needs changes with a note from the owner telling you what to fix. It is a one-time check — once it is approved, your later payout requests go out without any further review. Any note the owner leaves appears on the page.

Uploading a new ID file replaces the old one and sends your onboarding back for review, and changing the payout email requires a fresh confirmation link and another owner check. This is deliberate: it stops a verified payout account being quietly redirected to someone else. Until the new file or address is approved again, payout requests stay blocked.

You ask for the money yourself — no need to write to anyone. On your partner dashboard, once your cleared balance reaches the $25 minimum, the Request payout button becomes active. PayPal and Wise payouts are sent automatically and instantly to your confirmed payout email; ABA / local bank transfers are prepared and sent by the site owner. Every payout is recorded in your dashboard with the amount, the method and the actual transfer reference.

When all four of these are true: you are an approved partner, your onboarding (ID plus confirmed payout email) is approved, your cleared balance — commissions whose 30-day hold has passed — is at least $25, and you have no other open payout request. Balances below $25 are not lost; they carry forward until you reach the minimum.

The agreement runs payouts on a monthly cycle with a $25 minimum and balances carrying forward. In practice you do not wait for a date: as soon as your cleared balance reaches $25 you click Request payout, and a PayPal or Wise payout leaves straight away. ABA transfers are batched by the owner.

The request stays open and the reason is recorded on it, so nothing is lost and nothing is paid twice — a request can only be sent once. The owner sees the error, fixes it or transfers the money by hand, and records the transfer reference in your dashboard. If you see a request that has been open for a while, write to admin@cambodia-monitor.com.

Payouts are made in US dollars. You are responsible for your own taxes on commission income and for any fees your bank, Wise or PayPal charges on the way in.

The matching commission is reversed. If it was still pending, it is withheld before payout; if it was already paid out, it is offset against your future earnings. A reader who cancels without a refund does not reverse your commission — you keep the share of the period they validly paid for.

You get a personal referral link such as https://www.cambodia-monitor.com/?ref=yourcode. When a reader opens Cambodia Monitor through it, the visit is counted and the code is remembered for 30 days. The first approved partner whose link the reader used is credited, and that attribution is locked when the reader makes their first payment — it survives Google sign-up and the free trial. Your dashboard shows link visits, signups, each commission and every payout, and refreshes itself every 30 seconds.

The first approved partner whose link the reader used gets credited. If the reader deliberately enters a valid partner code before subscribing, that code takes precedence. Either way only one partner is credited per reader — the person who referred them first.

You see their number, when they were referred, whether the link is active, how many payments they have made and what you have earned from them. Names and email addresses are never shown to partners — reader privacy is kept even from us.

No. Self-referrals are blocked: you cannot be credited for your own account, and your own payments never generate commission for you.

Yes. Because you earn from referrals, you must clearly disclose the relationship — for example, "I earn a commission if you subscribe through my link". You must also promote Cambodia Monitor accurately: no promised earnings, no spam, no fake accounts, and no unauthorised use of our brand in ads.

The site owner can suspend or reject a partner who breaks the terms — undisclosed paid promotion, spam, fake accounts, misleading claims about earnings, or attempting to earn from their own subscription. A suspended partner stops earning on new payments; commissions already cleared and unpaid stay owed to them.

The complete partner program terms — the same text you accept when applying — are published on the partner program terms page. Payout requests and any other questions: admin@cambodia-monitor.com.