# Bitshares - The original DPOS blockchain powered DEX!

So, you want to learn how to earn some Bitshares without too much effort?

Willing to work from home, at your own leisurely pace, with your own dress code and without a boss of any kind?

If so, great! You sound like a perfect candidate for promoting the Bitshares DEX on the internet!

## Ok, how do I get started?

* Register your own Bitshares account for free
* Purchase enough Bitshares to cover purchasing a Life-time membership.
* Purchase a Life-time membership (LTM) for approx $100
  * Note: This enables referrals & reduces blockchain fees
  * This fee changes as the price of BTS changes, so check the membership stats page prior to buying BTS to avoid under/over purchasing.
* Once LTM is purchased, you'll now have a referral link on the LTM page.
  * Example referral link: https://wallet.bitshares.org/?r=nftprofessional1
  * Note the `?r=` then my username at the end? This is critical to enable the referral to succeed!

Now that you've got your referral link, this is all you need to proceed.

Now, before you just start spamming the referral link all across the internet, you've got to get your head around some general etiquette and the possible earning strategies regarding referral links.

Don't spam the link everywhere you can possibly find; there's well established rules regarding this behaviour in most corners of the internet. 

You should rather tastefully include the referral links in your original articles, or during sponsored segments in videos, or by interacting with those who are genuinely interested in using a decentralized exchange.

If you blindly spam the link everywhere, you'll likely find yourself banned on websites and you won't get the results for the effort expended, so just avoid low effort link spam entirely.

Spend time researching the latest affiliate marketing strategies recommended in 2022+ , Google it for a while until you've put together a general plan of action! The more time you spend doing this the better you'll probably do!

## How much can I earn?

OK, so you've registered an account, purchased life time membership for said account, have begun to understand the gist of affiliate marketing, just how much can you earn through this referral mechanism?

Below is the stats for my LTM account:

![image.png](https://images.hive.blog/DQmWYy67z1Lq6iULcWtRLPwdpR9tNXp4L2Ypj8bqWTCg3wh/image.png)

So 20% of the fees spent by my referrals will go to the network, and 80% of the remaining fees will go to me.

80% of fees is a fairly substantial payout compared to centralized exchanges offering a small percent.

How long does a referral last? Until the user purchases a life-time membership themselves. If they never do, you'll always earn a share of their spent fees.

Fees can be quite substantial if they are power users, or if they start registering assets. Not everyone takes steps to reduce their fees & there's no caps on affiliate earnings.

## What if I'm using a different wallet?

You should either use the reference web wallet, one of the several gateway hosted web wallets, or the light reference wallet UI.

This is so that you get the referral link, and so that the user you wish to refer has a referral landing page.

If you've already got an account on another wallet/website, you can easily import it or sign into it, they're not locked to the wallet you created it under.

## I'm reading this years later! Have I missed out?

Unless the Bitshares blockchain has gutted the referral system from its tech stack (highly unlikely), the above guide on Bitshares referrals will exist for the rest of the lifetime of the Bitshares blockchain, as too will your referrals last that long!

So what're you waiting for? Get referring!