How PostAi Affiliate / Opportunity Links Work

A plain-English guide to how idea-starter hooks and opportunity cards turn into earnings. Useful for onboarding partners, briefing Doug, and keeping the outreach pipeline honest about what's live vs. placeholder.

The idea in one line

Every PostAi surface that says "list your car / room / tools / driveway" or "get a free quote" is an opportunity hook. Each hook points at a destination — today a placeholder, soon a real, tagged link — and PostAi earns when that click turns into a listing, a booking, or an affiliate purchase.

The three link types

PostAi outreach uses three categories of outbound link. Keep them straight, because they pay out differently and carry different disclosure rules.

1. First-party opportunity links — postai.llc/list/..., postai.llc/quote/..., postai.llc/contractors. These keep the user inside PostAi. No affiliate disclosure needed; the "commission" is PostAi's own marketplace take. This is the preferred destination for every idea-starter hook.

2. Affiliate links — outbound links to a partner (a tool retailer, an insurance quote, a rental marketplace) that pay PostAi a referral commission. These require an FTC affiliate disclosure near the link, and the slug should carry the affiliate tag.

3. Tracked redirects — postai.llc/go/[slug] (proposed in KB_Outreach_5.b). A durable slug that 302-redirects to whatever the current destination is, appends UTM + affiliate tags, and logs the click. This is the layer that lets every asset stay unchanged while destinations and tags change in one place.

Where the links live in the assets

Every outreach HTML file currently hardcodes a placeholder destination (e.g. postai.llc/list/vehicle) and carries a visible badge: "Idea starter — affiliate link is a placeholder pending Doug's real link." That badge is non-negotiable until real links land — it keeps us from implying a payout path that doesn't exist yet.

The earnings model (placeholder economics)

| Hook | Destination type | Trigger that pays | Who earns | |------|-----------------|-------------------|-----------| | List your car / room / tools / driveway | First-party | Asset gets listed + rented | PostAi marketplace take | | Get a free quote (seasonal) | First-party | Homeowner books a contractor | PostAi booking fee | | Tool / equipment idea-starter | Affiliate (future) | Purchase at partner retailer | Referral commission | | Contractor "claim leads" | First-party | Contractor subscribes / buys lead | PostAi lead revenue |

Exact rates are TBD and owned by Doug. Nothing in this table is live revenue today — it's the intended shape.

What's blocking real money (today)

1. No real destination links — KB_Outreach_4.a. Every CTA is a placeholder. Until Doug supplies real URLs (and any affiliate tags), clicks go nowhere monetizable.
2. No tracked redirect layer — KB_Outreach_5.b. Without /go/[slug], there's no attribution and every link change is a manual find-replace across many files.
3. No click analytics — feeds the planned KB/37 DataHub Outreach panel once the redirect logs exist.

How to make a hook "go live" (the checklist)

When Doug provides a real link for a given hook:

1. Add or update the slug in the /go/[slug] map (once KB_Outreach_5.b ships).
2. If the destination is an affiliate partner, confirm the affiliate tag is appended and add the FTC disclosure line to the asset.
3. Remove the placeholder badge from the HTML hook.
4. Note the go-live date in outreach_state.md so future cycles stop treating it as a placeholder.

Until all four are done for a hook, it stays labeled as an idea starter.