Refer a client to MarGen and you earn 10% of what they pay us, every month, for as long as they stay a client. No cap, no tier ladder, and no cut-off at month six. This page has the full terms and the arithmetic on published prices, so you can work out what a referral is worth before you speak to anyone.
The terms, in four lines
| Commission | 10% of everything the client pays MarGen |
| Paid | Every month, once the client has paid us |
| For how long | For as long as they remain a client |
| Applies to | Retainers and the one-off Synaptic Audit |
That’s the whole offer. The rest of this page is what those four lines mean in money, and the conditions attached to them.
What lifetime actually means
Most referral programmes pay for a window. You introduce a client, you are paid for six months or twelve, and then the payments stop while the client carries on paying the agency for years.
We don’t do that. Your 10% runs while the client does.
A few specifics, because “lifetime” is a word that hides a lot of detail.
Commission is 10% of what the client actually pays in a given month, so it follows the money rather than the package they first signed. Move them from Foundation to Authority and your commission moves too, without you doing anything.
If a client pauses and comes back, it restarts. It doesn’t drop to a lower rate as you refer more, because there’s no sliding scale. The only thing that stops it is the client ending their engagement.
Is this actually unusual?
Partly, and it is worth being precise rather than claiming more than we can show.
We scanned published UK referral programmes in September 2026. Lifetime commission does exist in this market, mostly on link-building and lower-ticket SEO products where 10% of an order is a small number. On agency retainers, the common structures were these.
| Structure found | What it pays on a £5,950 retainer |
|---|---|
| 10%, capped at the first six months | £3,570, then nothing |
| 5% a month for twelve months | £3,570, then nothing |
| Commission on the first three months only | £1,785, then nothing |
| 6% for the lifetime of the client | £357 a month, ongoing |
| MarGen: 10%, no time limit | £595 a month, ongoing |
Other programmes do pay for the lifetime, so we won’t claim to be alone in that. What we couldn’t find was another one paying 10% with no time limit on retainers this size.
If you’re comparing programmes, ask both questions together. A high percentage for six months and a low percentage forever are very different propositions, and the first one sounds better in a headline.
What a referral is actually worth
All of the figures below are 10% of our published prices. They’re arithmetic, not forecasts. We aren’t claiming a typical client lifespan, because we’d be making that number up.
Per month
| Package | Client pays | You earn monthly |
|---|---|---|
| Synaptic Audit (one-off) | £2,950 | £295 |
| Foundation | £2,950/mo | £295 |
| Authority | £5,950/mo | £595 |
| Authority, regulated or multi-product | £6,500/mo | £650 |
| Dominance | From £12,950/mo | From £1,295 |
Across the contracted minimum
Every retainer has a minimum term, so this is the least a referral pays if the client completes it and then leaves immediately.
| Package | Minimum term | Commission over the minimum |
|---|---|---|
| Foundation | 3 months | £885 |
| Authority | 12 months | £7,140 |
| Authority, regulated | 12 months | £7,800 |
| Dominance | 12 months | From £15,540 |
If they stay
This is where lifetime commission separates from a six-month window. One Authority client, on published prices:
| They stay | You earn | Under a six-month cap you would earn |
|---|---|---|
| 12 months | £7,140 | £3,570 |
| 24 months | £14,280 | £3,570 |
| 36 months | £21,420 | £3,570 |
And it stacks. Three Authority clients who each stay two years is £42,840. One Dominance client who stays two years is £31,080 and up.
One introduction, made once, that keeps paying without you doing anything else. That only holds because there’s no cut-off.
How we try to be worth referring to
A referral fee is the easy part. Anyone can pay 10%. What makes an introduction safe to make is what happens afterwards, because your name is attached to it.
We tell you what is happening. You hear how the conversation went, whether they signed, and how the work is going. You shouldn’t have to ask your own contact how their agency is performing.
We will join the call if it helps. If you would rather introduce us live and stay in the room, we do the technical part and you keep the relationship. Some partners prefer this and it converts better.
We say no to bad fits. If someone you send isn’t right for us, you get told that day, with the reason. Taking money from a client who shouldn’t have signed is a slower and more expensive way to damage your reputation than declining.
We do not prospect your client list. Written into the agreement, not left as a handshake.
We publish our prices. Every figure is on the site before anyone speaks to us. You can work out what a referral is worth without a sales call, and the person you introduce cannot come back and tell you they were quoted something different.
We would rather be the partner you introduce for the second and third time than the one that paid most for the first.
Who this suits
- Accountants, solicitors, and consultants with B2B clients who keep asking about AI.
- Web designers and developers who build the site and then get asked what happens next.
- Freelance marketers and fractional CMOs who see the problem inside a client and have nobody to hand it to.
- Agencies that would rather not deliver this. If a client asks about AI search and you don’t want to build the capability, referring is the clean version of saying yes.
Who it does not suit
If you want to keep the client relationship, put the work into your own proposal, and bill it yourself, the referral programme is the wrong shape. You want white label, where you keep the contract and the invoice and we deliver underneath your brand.
If you’re looking for something to promote at volume to a list, this isn’t that either. We take on a small number of clients at these prices and every referral gets a real conversation, so there’s no bulk affiliate mechanic here.
Referral or white label
The two routes pay differently because the work is different.
| Referral | White label | |
|---|---|---|
| Who holds the client | MarGen | You |
| Who invoices | MarGen | You |
| Your effort | One introduction | Account management, reporting, and strategy |
| Your income | 10% for the life of the client | Your margin over our partner rate |
| Your brand on the work | No | Yes |
| Best when | You do not want a delivery obligation | You want an AI search service line |
Plenty of partners do both. A one-off contact gets referred. A client they want to keep gets white labelled.
What we will not do
Stated plainly, because a partner page that only lists upside isn’t much use for deciding.
- We will not pay commission on money we have not collected. If a client stops paying, commission stops with them.
- We will not backdate an introduction. If someone is already in our pipeline when you name them, we say so immediately. You will never find out six weeks later that a referral was quietly declined.
- We will not promise your contact a result to get them signed. Citation authority generally takes three to six months because it depends on third parties corroborating you. Anyone promising AI citations in thirty days is creating a problem that lands on your introduction.
- We will not publish your name as a partner without asking you first.
Starting
Book a call below. We will talk about who you work with, what they have been asking for, and whether referral or white label fits better. Then we put the terms in writing before you send anyone, so nothing about the commission is a surprise later.
There’s no obligation to refer anyone once you’re set up, and no minimum to stay in the programme.