The commission
Every sale attributed to your storefront pays you 25% at minimum — rising as high as 40% for featuring a work or championing a new creator still breaking in. Attribution is cryptographic, not cookie guesswork: every buyer your audience sends is provably yours. Rates are live-tuned from network results and feedback, 30 days' notice on any change — full schedule here.
You feature two different $9.99 titles this week. One is from a creator with under $1,000 in lifetime network sales — brand new. The other is from a creator with over $10,000 in lifetime sales — already established. Same effort, same feature slot, same $9.99 price: the new creator's sale pays you 40% ($4.00); the established creator's sale pays you 30% ($3.00).
That gap is deliberate. The network pays you more, specifically, for finding someone before anyone else does — not for re-promoting a name that's already selling itself. For a curator finding a creator fresh, the boost steps down as that creator's own lifetime sales grow: under $1,000, +10 points on top of the 25% floor; $1,000–$10,000, +5 points; above $10,000, no discovery boost (a featured placement still adds its own +5, on any creator, at any tier).
Here's the part that makes finding new creators worth real, permanent effort: once you earn a discovery boost on a specific creator, that boost is locked in on that creator's work forever — it never steps back down for you, even after they grow past the threshold that would lower it for a curator finding them fresh today. Champion someone before they're anyone, and you keep earning that elevated discovery rate on everything they publish afterward, for as long as you keep selling their work. Two curators promoting the exact same bestseller today can be earning different rates on it — the one who found them first keeps the rate they earned back when nobody else had.
To be precise about what locks in: it's the discovery/emerging boost (the +10 or +5 points tied to how new the creator was) — not the full 40% from the example above, since that also included a one-time +5 for featuring. Featuring always has to be earned sale by sale; the discovery boost is the part that's yours for good.
What that can look like
Illustrative math — assume ~60% of a following is active, a good campaign converts 2% of those into one $6.99 digital purchase a month, at the 25% base:
| Your following | Active (est.) | Buyers / month | Monthly commission | Per year |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 10,000 | 6,000 | 120 | $210 | $2,500 |
| 50,000 | 30,000 | 600 | $1,050 | $12,600 |
| 500,000 | 300,000 | 6,000 | $10,500 | $126,000 |
| 5,000,000 | 3,000,000 | 60,000 | $104,900 | $1,258,000 |
Estimates, not guarantees — results depend on your audience and what you feature. The math is linear: 1% conversion halves it; discovery boosts pay up to 60% more per sale.
Complementary to everything you already do
- Nothing is exclusive. A video about an indie album still earns its ad revenue — now plus a commission on every album it sells.
- No fulfillment, and no per-post grind. All digital — no inventory, shipping, or returns — and your storefront is a standing catalog that keeps converting between posts.
- Real rates. The dominant book affiliate program pays under 5%. Our floor is 25% — five times that, before any boost.
A new reason to follow you
Curation gives your audience something — early access to unheard artists, contests you're championing, exclusive co-promotion drops — a reason for new people to follow you, not just buy from you. And the network does the sourcing for you. Your following isn't just monetized; over time, it grows.
Referrals and contest prizes pay too
Refer a creator or a fan and you both get $5 in your IndieStarlight wallet the moment they make their first purchase — on top of your commission. And when you're judging or championing a discovery contest, the winner's prize is paid straight into their wallet from the same ecosystem fund your commission boosts already draw from.
We're contracting a small founding group now
Founding curators get matched first, judge the first discovery contests, and help tune the economics you just read.