Creator terms

Once you're approved you get a discount code and a link that fills it in. A student who buys with either gets 10% off their first payment, as section 6 of our Terms of Service describes; during a sale with an end date, the sale price applies instead. The code and link are yours alone: don't sell, trade or use them yourself. We may switch a code off at any time, for example if it turns up somewhere these terms don't allow; if you're still a creator, we give you a new one.

You earn half of what a student actually pays for their first payment made with your code or link: half the yearly payment on a yearly plan, half the first month on a monthly plan. That's the amount after their discount and before any sales tax. It's earned once per student; later payments and renewals earn nothing.

A student counts for the last creator whose code they typed at checkout, or, if they typed none, the creator whose link first brought them. A student who never pays, or pays more than 90 days after signing up through your link without typing a code, doesn't count. Purchases by you, or by anyone who lives with you, don't count.

Some students can't be counted for anyone: under our reading of New York's Child Data Protection Act, we don't keep a creator's code on the account of anyone who lives in New York or hasn't told us which state they live in. They still get the discount.

We pay once a month for every first payment that is at least 30 days old and hasn't been refunded. If a payment is refunded after you've been paid for it, your share of the refund comes off what you earn next. Amounts under $25 roll over to the next month; when the program ends for you, we pay what you're owed, whatever the amount.

Payments go to your bank through Stripe. Before your first payment, Stripe asks for your payout details and tax information (a W-9 in the US) and checks your identity. Until you've done that, what you've earned waits for you and stays yours. If you're in the US and we pay you $2,000 or more in a calendar year (the IRS amount for 2026; it rises with inflation from 2027), you'll get a Form 1099-NEC. You're responsible for your own taxes.

Your creator page shows how many students your code has brought and what you've earned, any time. You'll see numbers, never who the students are.

Say it's an ad, every time. In every post about College Captain: start the caption with #ad, and turn on the platform's paid-partnership label. We also encourage you to say in a video that College Captain pays you, and to put “Ad” on the first slide of a slideshow. Don't post about College Captain in stories, live streams or anything else that disappears, unless we've approved that post in writing first.

Tell the truth. Use College Captain before you talk about it, and say only what's true for you. When you mention the trial, say all of it: “7-day free trial, card needed, then $20 or $30 a month unless you cancel.” Never say College Captain got you or anyone into a college, that any college works with or recommends it, or that it replaces a school counselor, a therapist or any mental-health help. Don't make up results, reviews, stories or screenshots, invent deadlines, or use an AI-made person who claims to have used it.

Protect students. Don't show anyone under 18 in a post about College Captain, including your own children, and never show a real student's name, school, grades or messages. Never message anyone you know or think is under 18 about College Captain; answering a public comment that asks for your code is fine. Don't send your code to anyone who didn't ask for it. Don't tell anyone to buy without a parent knowing, or to use someone else's card. Don't promote College Captain to students you teach, coach, tutor or counsel, or through a school. Don't aim posts at children under 13, and don't put College Captain in a YouTube video marked “made for kids”.

Where your code goes. Don't post your code on coupon or deal sites. Don't pay to boost or advertise a post about College Captain without asking us first. Don't run search ads on the name College Captain, or make accounts, pages or sites whose name or look could be mistaken for ours. If you live in New York, promote College Captain only through your public posts and links, not through flyers, emails, texts or events in New York.

If we ask. Send us links to your posts about College Captain when we ask. If we ask you to fix or take down a post, do it within 2 days.

Either of us can end this at any time by email. When it ends, we switch off your code and link and your free Max ends, and you're still paid for first payments made before then once they're old enough, as in section 4. A first payment made while a post of yours broke section 5, and stayed up more than 2 days after we asked you to fix it, doesn't earn.

You're an independent creator, not our employee or agent. You decide what, when and how often you post, and you're free to work with anyone else, including our competitors. We don't pay anything up front or for any number of posts. Your posts stay yours. You let us link to them or share them on our own accounts, with credit and with their ad label. We won't use them in paid ads, or use your name or face in our own posts, without your written yes. You may use the College Captain name to talk about College Captain in your posts, and for nothing else.

Our Privacy Policy (sections 2, 6 and 9) says what we keep about creators and for how long. In short: your name, email address, the accounts you post from and your two confirmations. An application we decline is deleted 90 days after we decide. Stripe holds your payout and tax details; our database never stores your bank or tax numbers.

You're responsible for your own posts. If a post of yours that breaks section 5 leads to a claim against us, you'll cover our reasonable costs of it. Our liability to you under these terms is limited to what we owe you under sections 3 and 4, except where the law doesn't allow a limit.

If we change these terms, we email you at least 14 days before the change applies. It applies to first payments made after the date in the email; if you don't agree, you can end it as in section 6. Sections 18 (Disputes) and 19 (General) of our Terms of Service apply to these terms too. For the creator program, these terms are the whole agreement between us, and where they differ from the Terms of Service, these terms apply.