Partner program

The full terms.

The short version is on the affiliate page. This is everything else: the rate ladder, what else you get, and the rules we hold both sides to. Nothing here changes without telling you first, and if we ever adjust rates, existing referrals keep the rate they were signed at for six months.

Commission

Recurring, and it goes up.

You earn on every payment your referral makes, not just the first one — for as long as they stay. Rates rise with the number of referrals still actively subscribed, so the ladder rewards people who send users that stick rather than users that sign up.

Commission rates by affiliate level, with the referral count each level requires.
LevelRequirementRatePer Starter / moPer Premium / mo
PartnerEveryone starts here30%$4.50$15.00
Advocate10+ active referrals35%$5.25$17.50
Archivist50+ active referrals40%$6.00$20.00

Rates apply to the subscription price before payment-processing fees. What you earn in total depends on how long your referrals stay subscribed — we are not going to quote you a monthly income figure, because that number depends on retention we cannot promise on your behalf.

Beyond the cut

What else you get.

Premium, on usEvery active affiliate gets a Premium account free for as long as they are referring. You should be using the thing you are recommending.
A vote on the archiveAffiliates pick what we ingest next. Iran-Contra, the Pentagon Papers, RFK and MLK records, the Twitter Files — the queue is real and your vote moves it.
First read on new collectionsYou get access to a corpus while it is still being indexed, before it is announced, so you have something to say that nobody else has.
A direct lineNot a support queue. You tell us what your audience keeps asking for and we build against it.
The fine print

Stated up front.

Programme terms: attribution, payouts, clawbacks and eligibility.
Attribution window60 days from first click, last-touch
Payout threshold$50, rolls over until reached
Holding period30 days from the payment, to cover refunds and chargebacks
Payout scheduleMonthly, after the holding period clears
Commission lifeEvery month the referral keeps paying — no 12-month cap
ClawbackVoided on refund or chargeback inside the holding period
Self-referralNot eligible — your own account does not count
Paid searchNo bidding on "Infinet" or misspellings of it
DisclosureRequired. Say plainly that you earn from the link.

We would rather have fifty people who mean it than five hundred who don’t.

Applications are read by a person. We are looking for people whose audience actually wants this — researchers, journalists, podcasters, anyone who has spent time reading primary documents and knows how hard they are to search. We are not looking for coupon sites, and we do not accept referrals driven by paid ads on our own brand name.

Tell us who you reach and why they would want it. That is the whole application.

One condition we will not bend on: disclose it. Tell your audience you earn from the link. A product built on “check it yourself” cannot be promoted by people quietly being paid to recommend it, and your audience will find out anyway. Say it up front and the recommendation still carries.