Today we shipped six things that help a store grow without buying more software: creators who sell for you, a link that pays you when you bring a business to PlatformDTC, creators paid for real views, a public page of real stores, an honest fee calculator, and a listing that lets AI apps find PlatformDTC by name.
Each one is off until you choose it, and each one shows only real numbers. Where we have no number, nothing is shown.
Creators can find you and sell for you
The affiliate marketplace is one place where creators find every PlatformDTC store with an open affiliate program. A creator signs in once with their email and a 4-digit code, joins the programs they like, and gets a link and a code for each store. One page, platformdtc.com/creator, shows every program they are in, with their clicks, orders, earnings and payouts. They set how they want to be paid once, for every store.
For a store it is one switch: Let creators sell for you, in Marketing → Affiliates → Settings. If you never set up an affiliate program, it starts with a 10% commission, 10% off for shoppers who use an affiliate's code, a 30-day link window and a 30-day hold for returns. If you already set your own terms, those are kept. Turn the switch off and new joins stop; affiliates you already have keep their link and keep earning.
Creators see only real numbers from your store: your commission, what shoppers get, how long a link counts, when commissions are paid, and your products that have a working photo. Active affiliates and orders they brought in appear only once each is more than zero. Nothing is estimated.
A program is listed only while it is safe to promote. Creators lose their commission on every refund, so a store whose chargebacks or card-network fraud warnings reach 0.5% of card orders over the last 30 days leaves the marketplace by itself (the check starts once a store has 100 card orders in those 30 days). It comes back by itself once the rate is down, and the settings card says in plain words what is missing. How the marketplace works.
Refer & earn: your link pays you
Everyone with a PlatformDTC account has a personal link under Refer & earn. When a business starts a store through it, you get 20% of what PlatformDTC makes from that business for its first 12 months. There is nothing to apply for and no limit on how many businesses you bring in.
To be clear about the size of it: this is a share of what PlatformDTC earns, not of the business's sales, and with pay-as-you-go pricing that is small per order. The 2.9% + 30¢ on a card sale, and the international and currency-conversion surcharges, are what card processing costs us, so they are not included. PlatformDTC's own part is the 0.5% on subscription sales: the first order of a subscription and every renewal. A $29.00 renewal earns PlatformDTC 15¢, and 3¢ of it is yours. For a business still on a monthly plan you also get 20% of each plan payment, and you get 20% of our share of app charges where we take one.
The "Made with PlatformDTC" badge at the bottom of your store already carries your link, so a shopper who clicks it and starts their own store counts for you. Someone who opens your link has 90 days to sign up. If they came through someone else's link first, the first link keeps the credit.
Earnings wait 60 days, the window in which refunds and chargebacks usually land, and are paid once the business has made real sales: at least 3 paid orders from at least 2 different buyers. We pay to your bank on the 1st and 16th of each month once you have $50 ready, or straight away with Get paid now. Your own accounts don't count, and neither do stores over the card networks' chargeback limit; the screen says in plain words when someone you referred doesn't count, and why. The full terms.
Content Rewards: pay creators for real views
Content Rewards gets people posting about your products. You say what to post about and what you pay for every 1,000 views. Your campaign goes on the public creator board, where anyone can join, with no follower minimum. Creators post on TikTok or YouTube and send you the link.
- You approve every post. A post earns nothing until you approve it, and you can't approve it until the caption has what you asked for and #ad.
- Real views only. We read each post's public view count every 6 hours for 14 days. Views that jump like bought views put the post on hold. Instagram and X aren't included, because neither shows an exact view count publicly and paying on an estimate wouldn't be fair to you or the creator.
- The post has to be theirs. We check it belongs to the creator's own account, was posted after they joined, and wasn't sent before.
- Your budget is a limit, not a deposit. PlatformDTC doesn't hold or charge this money. Posts stop earning when the budget is used up, and you pay creators yourself and record each payment.
Your first campaign is filled in from your store: your three best sellers of the last 30 days, what to post about written from their own descriptions, your store's hashtag, and $1.00 per 1,000 views up to $100.00 a post for 30 days. Check the budget and press Start campaign. How Content Rewards works.
Made with PlatformDTC: real stores, real results
Made with PlatformDTC is a public page of stores that run on PlatformDTC. Every store there chose to be shown, from Settings → Showcase, and every result on it was measured by PlatformDTC from the store's own paid online orders. Nobody can type a number in.
Results show as ranges, like "1,000+" orders or "$10K+" in sales over the last 30 days, unless the owner chooses exact numbers and confirms. A store is shown only while it is open to visitors, has at least 3 active products with a photo and a price and at least 5 paid online orders in the last 30 days, keeps chargebacks and fraud warnings low, sells no adult, prescription-drug, cannabis, nicotine or weapon products, and isn't a test store. We check every 6 hours, and a store that stops meeting a rule comes off the page at the next check. How the showcase works.
What would you save? A fee calculator that doesn't pretend
PlatformDTC has no monthly fee: you pay 2.9% + 30¢ per card sale, plus 0.5% on subscription orders. The fee calculator puts a normal month of your sales next to Shopify Basic, Grow or Advanced, with every Shopify number linked to Shopify's own pages and the date we checked them.
It doesn't always say we're cheaper. PlatformDTC always costs less than Shopify Basic, and less than every Shopify plan when you take cards through another payment provider there. On Grow or Advanced with Shopify Payments, Shopify's lower card rate outweighs its plan price once sales are high enough, and the calculator shows that case as it is. Shopify Plus isn't included, because Shopify doesn't publish its card rates. The link updates as you type, so you can share your result.
Your own AI can find us by name
PlatformDTC is now listed in the official MCP Registry as com.platformdtc/store. AI apps that look up MCP servers can find PlatformDTC by name, and the listing is published from our own domain, so they can tell it's really us. It points to the same address as always, https://api.platformdtc.com/mcp.
Your AI signs in with your PlatformDTC account, you choose the store and approve what it may do, and anything that spends money or reaches customers waits for your OK. It can run everything above too: dtc_set_affiliate_marketplace lists your program, dtc_create_content_campaign starts a campaign, dtc_update_showcase turns the showcase on and dtc_referral_status reads your link and earnings. Listing your program, starting a campaign and approving a post wait for your approval. Connect your own AI agent.
Where to start
- If you create content: browse programs on the affiliate marketplace and open campaigns on Content Rewards. One sign-in covers both.
- If you run a store: turn on Let creators sell for you in Marketing → Affiliates → Settings, start your first campaign in Marketing → Content Rewards, and, once you have orders, turn on Settings → Showcase.
- If you know someone who sells online: copy your link from Refer & earn.