---
title: who gets credit when you bring a deal
canonical_url: https://ensurance.app/guide/who-gets-credit-when-you-bring-a-deal
markdown_url: https://ensurance.app/guide/who-gets-credit-when-you-bring-a-deal.md
subtitle: a land referral fee goes broker to broker. a lead pays for what you know. the record keeps your name.
category: how-to
---

# who gets credit when you bring a deal

*a land referral fee goes broker to broker. a lead pays for what you know. the record keeps your name.*

You know a parcel before anyone else does. The creek bottom going back to willow, the ranch whose owner is ready to step back, the hillside the heirs have never visited. You want to know who pays you if that tip turns into a deal.

**A land referral fee, in the strict sense, is a share of a broker's commission, and in most states only a licensed agent can receive one.** If you hold a license, you refer the client through your broker to a licensed partner and the commission is shared broker to broker. If you don't, you can still be paid, but for the information you bring, not for whether a sale closes. In ensurance, all of this sits under one word: **attribution**, meaning who gets paid because they originated or drove something.

This post sorts the ways credit turns into pay, which ones pay through licensed partners, which are planned, and which ensurance will not do.

:::johnson
**you get paid for what you know, and your name stays on the record.** Licensed referrals go broker to broker. Everyone else is paid for information, never for the outcome of a sale.

[tell us about a place you know →](/contact?from=guide&topic=every-way-the-work-pays)
:::

## start with the place, not the fee

Take a wet meadow at the head of a small valley. In spring it holds snowmelt and lets it go slowly. The hay ground below stays green into August, the town well holds its level, and the elk calve in the willow edge. Nobody sends the meadow a bill for that, and nobody pays it either. The rancher downstream, the water district and the county road crew all depend on it.

The meadow does that work whether or not anyone writes an instrument for it. What a tip does is put it in front of people who can measure it, value it and find someone who will pay for its keeping. That first pointing is the start of every deal in ensurance.

## where this sits on the value gap

Every place has a **cost** (the land or easement, the project, the crew), a **value** (what the living system does in a year, by a published method) and a **price** (a certificate is priced on cost). The **gap** is the living work the deed price does not carry. [The value gap](/guide/the-value-gap?from=guide) is where the money in ensurance comes from, and nobody is paid until someone pays.

Bringing a deal is the first act of **reading the value**. Before a valuation, before an agent, before a certificate, someone has to say: look here. That information has worth, so it gets paid for.

## the two worlds of referral pay

Real estate already has rules for referral pay. Ensurance keeps them.

| You are | How you're paid | What you're paid for |
|---|---|---|
| **a licensed agent or broker** | A referral fee, broker to broker, through a licensed partner such as the Andrus & Morgan brokerage | Sending a client whose transaction closes |
| **a scout or local finder** | A fee per verified lead, plus a bonus when the property enters the pipeline | Information: location, photos, what you saw, who owns it |
| **a land trust, watershed group or coordinator** | Either of the above, through a referral agreement | Parcels outside your mandate or capacity |
| **an onchain group or agent** | Group mint price and royalty you set; a share of fees routed to a split | Driving instruments for a place |

The line that matters: **commissions go through licensed partners, and scouts are paid for information, not deal outcomes.** A finder whose fee depends on a closed sale can be acting as an unlicensed broker, depending on the state. A finder paid for a verified lead is on the information side of that line. The structure stays there, and you should still check your own state's rules.

## scouts: paid for information

The scout path builds on bird dogging, the old practice of paying someone with local eyes to find property, but points it at places worth keeping instead of flips. The full how-to lives in [how to get paid to find land worth protecting](/guide/how-to-get-paid-to-find-land-worth-protecting?from=guide). The short version:

- **A verified lead pays a fee.** The location, a few photos from the road, the ecological signals (water, intact cover, wildlife, adjacency to protected land) and any motivation signals (vacancy, an estate, an owner stepping back).
- **A bonus follows when the property enters the pipeline.** That means it has passed the broad criteria and is taken up for assessment.
- **Amounts are a proposal you agree up front.** You know what a lead pays before you drive a road.

Who makes a good scout: ranchers, retirees who know every family in the county, mail carriers, hunters and anglers, extension agents, land trust volunteers. You need local knowledge, not capital or a license.

## licensed referrals: through the brokerage

Some parcels are not for ensurance at all. A property with a high conventional use goes to a conventional deal, a living one goes toward ensurance, and a mixed one can go both ways (development plus conservation). The sorting runs through a licensed brokerage, Andrus & Morgan, which works as the deal desk for the ensurance system.

If you're licensed, refer the client there and the fee moves broker to broker under a written agreement, the way it would on any other referral. If you're a CPA, estate attorney or title officer who sees land change hands first, the relationship is an introduction. Your client gets a conversation, and any pay goes through the channels your license allows.

## onchain: four pipes, one word

On the ensurance side, the contracts already carry slots for credit. They are easy to blur together, so here they are as one idea with four pipes.

| Pipe | What it is | When it pays |
|---|---|---|
| **provenance** | The record of who originated a claim, a parcel or a piece of evidence | It doesn't pay on its own. It is the claim the other three pay on |
| **mint referral** | The referral slot built into agent and certificate mints | Once, at mint |
| **initial allocation** | Units set aside for an originator when an instrument is made | Once, as a holding |
| **ongoing share** | A coin's payout recipient, a split, or the in-app trade fee routed per coin | On every trade or premium while the instrument lives |

How each one works in ensurance:

- **Mint referral.** The slot points at the protocol: agent mints at the origin proceeds account, certificate mints at Basin OpCo. Outside agents passing their own referrer when they route a mint through ensurance is planned, with counsel first for certificates and coins.
- **Coin platform referrer.** It is permanent when set, so it points at origin proceeds and never at a person. That one will not change.
- **Ongoing share.** A coin's pool fee goes to its payout recipient, which can be a split that includes the people and agents who brought the place in. The 1% app fee on trades through ensurance can be routed per coin to a split the same way. These pay on instruments the protocol issues, never on a sale of real estate.
- **Initial allocation.** Certificates set aside for the originator of the evidence an instrument cites are planned. Creator coins are liquidity inventory. Nobody is ever paid by selling them into the pool.
- **Group income.** If you run a group, you set the mint price for agents in it and a royalty on resale. That is credit you own outright. See [how to create an ensurance group](/guide/how-to-create-an-ensurance-group?from=guide).

## what will not happen

- No commission paid to someone without a license, dressed up as a "finder's fee" on a closed sale.
- No person baked into a coin's permanent platform referrer.
- No pay that comes from selling creator or treasury coins.

Those lines protect you as much as the protocol. A scout who stays on the information side, and a broker who stays on the licensed side, can both do this for years.

## four yields from bringing a deal

Bringing a place in returns more than a fee. Ensurance keeps four yields on one account.

| Yield | What it is here | Where it reads |
|---|---|---|
| **financial** | A lead fee and a pipeline bonus; a referral fee broker to broker; a split share or group royalty on instruments that follow | The invoice, the referral agreement, the split |
| **ecological** | A parcel that gets read: condition, stocks and flows, and whether they hold | The parcel's account on [natural assets](/natural-assets?from=guide) |
| **social** | Scouts paid in their own county; land trusts and groups formed around a place | The agent, its group, the proceeds graph |
| **cultural** | The local knowledge that found it, named on the record | Provenance; never a cash payout |

The financial row is the one the search was for. The other three are why it's worth doing in the county where you live.

## how to bring one

1. **Know which world you're in.** Licensed: you refer through a broker. Not licensed: you bring information.
2. **Write down what you see.** Location, photos, the water and cover, and anything you know about the owner's situation.
3. **Send it.** [Tell us about the place](/contact?from=guide&topic=every-way-the-work-pays). Land stewards and watershed groups can start from [solutions for land stewards](/solutions/land-stewards?from=guide&topic=every-way-the-work-pays).
4. **Keep your name on it.** Provenance is how credit follows a place from the first tip to the instruments that come after.

The meadow was doing its work before you noticed it. Pointing at it is how the people who depend on it start paying for its keeping, and how you get paid for knowing where to look.


## the series

- [how to make money with ensurance](/guide/how-to-make-money-with-ensurance?from=guide) (the hub)
- [the value gap is where the money is](/guide/the-value-gap-is-where-the-money-is?from=guide)
- [four yields, one place](/guide/four-yields-one-place?from=guide)
- [what natural asset work pays](/guide/what-natural-asset-work-pays?from=guide)
- [how to bring a property into ensurance](/guide/how-to-bring-a-property-into-ensurance?from=guide)
- [protect your property by paying what protects it](/guide/protect-your-property-by-paying-what-protects-it?from=guide)
- [who gets credit when you bring a deal](/guide/who-gets-credit-when-you-bring-a-deal?from=guide)
- [you make your money when you buy the land](/guide/you-make-your-money-when-you-buy-the-land?from=guide)
- [where you sit in a blended finance stack](/guide/where-you-sit-in-a-blended-finance-stack?from=guide)
- [a coupon that rises with the hazard](/guide/a-coupon-that-rises-with-the-hazard?from=guide)
- [keeping wealth in a living asset](/guide/keeping-wealth-in-a-living-asset?from=guide)
- [how to make an instrument for a place you care about](/guide/how-to-make-an-instrument-for-a-place-you-care-about?from=guide)
- [getting paid to provide liquidity to a small market](/guide/getting-paid-to-provide-liquidity-to-a-small-market?from=guide)
- [the effect is the revenue](/guide/the-effect-is-the-revenue?from=guide)