By industry · Telecom & utilities
Telecom & Utilities
Affiliate Programs
The Address Decides the Sale, and the Chain After It Is Long
Every other shelf here is gated by country. This one is gated by street: a campaign can list your market, accept your traffic and still be unable to serve a reader whose building is outside the footprint. Then comes a credit check, a switch date and sometimes an engineer — all before the conversion exists.
- Serviceable, or it does not exist
- Seven stages after the click
- Five sub ID slots per link
- What decides it
- Serviceability at the reader's address, not the country
- Qualifying action
- An order, an activation or a first bill — the brief says
- The wait
- An install or switch date somebody else sets
- Watch the word
- “SMS” is a product here and a restricted source
What is on this shelf
Twelve shelves, three very different funnels
A prepaid top-up completes in a minute, a fibre install takes an engineer, and a leased line starts with a survey. They are all telecom, and almost nothing about promoting them is shared. Find the row your readers are actually deciding on first.
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Mobile plans and SIM-only
The broadest demand on this shelf. A SIM-only switch can complete in days; the same plan with a handset attached drags the whole order through a credit decision first.
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Handsets on a contract
The device is a retail product and the contract is not. The retail half has its own page; here the payout follows the airtime agreement rather than the box.
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Prepaid and top-ups
No contract and no credit check, which makes it the shortest funnel here. Whether a repeat top-up pays anything is a brief line rather than a safe assumption.
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eSIM and travel data
Bought in a hurry, often at an airport. Activation is immediate, so this is the one row on the page with no install date standing between the order and the payout.
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Home broadband and fibre
Where the address rule bites hardest. A national campaign plus a reader in an unserved street is a click that cannot convert, however well the page is written.
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TV, cable and bundles
Frequently sold with broadband rather than alone, so which product in the bundle actually counts is a scope line to settle before you build a comparison.
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Landline and VoIP
Residential and business behave differently: one is a line on an address, the other is a seat count on a company. Read which of the two the brief means.
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Home energy supply
A switch rather than a purchase, with a cancellation window and a supply start date the reader does not choose. Nothing about it resembles a checkout.
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Smart meters and efficiency kit
Hardware sold against a utility account. Whether the campaign covers the device, the installation or both is worth confirming before you write about either.
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Business connectivity
Leased lines, multi-site broadband and managed connections. A survey and a quote come before anything is sold, so in practice you are reading a B2B lead brief.
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Business messaging platforms
Bulk sending, verification codes and notification APIs, sold to a company by seat or by volume. This is the product half of the SMS query, and it reads like software.
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Device protection and add-ons
Cover sold alongside a plan. Anything carrying an insurance claim runs under the finance rulebook as well as this one, so read both before you publish.
One word on this page means something different everywhere else on the site. Here “utilities” is the bill a household or a business pays — energy, broadband, airtime. The system optimisers, converters and desktop tools that carry the same name are software, and they live on software campaigns and digital service campaigns. The handset as a product you simply buy is on electronics affiliate programs; anything carrying an insurance claim reads under finance and fintech as well as here. What is open to applications right now is in the campaign index.
The line that decides the rest
The address decides, not the country
Read a brief anywhere else on this network and the market list settles availability. Here it is only the first of two gates, and the second one is invisible from where you are standing.
- 01
The country list is not the map
Everywhere else on this network a campaign's market list is the whole answer. Here it is only the first filter: a campaign can list your country, accept your traffic source and still be unable to sell to a reader whose building is outside the footprint.
- 02
You cannot see the footprint from your side
No brief prints a street map and no report tells you a click failed because of an address. Conversions simply do not arrive from part of your audience, and it looks exactly like a page that is not working.
- 03
So the placement's job is the checker, not the plan
The most useful thing a page can do on this shelf is land the reader on the advertiser's own coverage or eligibility check. A page that sends them straight to a specific plan spends the click on a question nobody answered.
- 04
Coverage moves and published pages do not
A footprint expands, a service is withdrawn, a technology is retired. A guide built around what was available when you wrote it carries an expiry date you did not put in the title.
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Local and national pages fail in opposite directions
A national page reaches readers it cannot serve. A local page reaches far fewer, but every one of them is inside one footprint. Neither is the right answer everywhere, and the choice is worth making on purpose rather than by default.
The national half of that gate is the network's own rule: a conversion from a market a campaign does not list is rejected rather than repriced, on affiliate programs, compared. The street-level half is the advertiser's, and it is not published anywhere you can read — which is why the checker matters more than the plan. Label placements finely enough to see a region go quiet: link anatomy and the five sub ID slots are on tracking links.
Between the click and the payout
Seven stages, and any of them can end it
On most shelves a conversion is one event. Here it is a chain that runs for days or weeks, and one row of it waits on somebody being at home. The second column is what stops it; the third is where that is written down.
| Stage | What can stop it here | Where it is written |
|---|---|---|
| The order is placed | A plan chosen for an address the service does not reach. Nothing later in the chain repairs it. | The advertiser's own coverage check |
| Identity and credit check | A contract with a term attached is a credit decision. A declined applicant is an order that stops existing. | Validation rules on the brief |
| Number port or switch request | A mismatch between what the reader typed and what their current provider holds on file. | Advertiser terms |
| Install or engineer visit | A date somebody else sets, for a visit the reader has to be home for. The longest step anywhere on this site. | Validation rules; the screening window |
| Activation | Nothing, usually — this is the first moment the service exists. A brief can put the qualifying action here rather than at the order, and that is the line to read first. | Qualifying action, first line of the brief |
| Cancellation window | A contract unwound inside the window the advertiser states. Whether that reverses a counted conversion is a validation line. | Validation rules |
| The first bill | Where a campaign pays a share rather than a flat amount, this is the first number that exists at all. | Payout terms |
Row two has a page of its own, because underwriting is a subject rather than a step: loans and lending affiliate programs takes apart what a credit decision does to a payout. What the states between pending and paid actually mean is on payouts, and the dates a cleared balance leaves on are on the payment schedule.
The word with two meanings
“SMS programs” is two separate questions
One half is a product sold to a company. The other is a way of reaching people that this marketplace mostly refuses. Nobody searching the phrase says which they mean, so both are answered here rather than one being quietly assumed.
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Half one
SMS as a product — business messaging platforms
Bulk sending, one-time verification codes, notification and alert APIs, sold to a company by seat or by message volume. The buyer is a developer or an operations team, the decision is planned, and the qualifying event is normally a paid plan or an activated account rather than a signup.
In practice you are reading a B2B software brief with telecom vocabulary on it.
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Half two
SMS as a traffic source — messages you send
This is the half most people mean and the half with the least room in it. Mass unsolicited email or SMS is prohibited across this marketplace, and conversions from prohibited sources are invalidated and removed from payouts rather than paid at a lower rate.
Where a campaign accepts messaging traffic at all, it names it — and permission-based only.
The prohibition in half two is the marketplace's, not this page's: mass unsolicited email or SMS sits in the refused list on campaign guidelines, alongside what a breach costs. The product half is a business purchase and behaves like one — business service campaigns covers how a company-side enquiry is screened, and SaaS and cloud covers per-seat subscriptions.
What pays
Three events a campaign here can pay on
Which one applies is the brief's to say, and this site publishes no campaign list in its marketing pages — so none of the three is described here as the usual one.
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On activation
Paid when the service goes live
The end of a long chain.
The conversion exists when the line, the plan or the supply actually starts — after the check, after the port, after the visit. Slow to arrive and durable once it does, because most of what could reverse it has already happened.
Suits broadband, energy and anything with an install date.
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On a validated enquiry
Paid when somebody accepts the lead
A person or a system decides.
Business connectivity and multi-site quotes rarely sell themselves in a session, so the payable event is an enquiry the advertiser accepts. What makes one valid — and what a rejection reason is telling you — is written on the brief.
Suits business connectivity, surveys and callback funnels.
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Across the cycles
A share while the service runs
Only where it is written down.
A telecom or energy account bills every month, but a product renewing is not the same as a campaign paying across renewals. Where a campaign does, it says so and says how many cycles — never assumed from the fact that the bill recurs.
Suits audiences you own rather than one-off search traffic.
The models behind these events are compared side by side on payout models. What makes a lead valid — and what a rejection reason is actually telling you — is on CPL affiliate programs, and what “recurring” covers is on recurring commission programs.
Creative
Coverage is a claim, not a detail
Speed, availability and price on this shelf are statements about somebody else's regulated service. The first list is what you can put your name to; the second is what ends a placement regardless of how well the page reads.
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Safe to publish
- The advertiser's own published tariff or speed figure, with the date you checked it
- Availability written as something the reader confirms at their own address
- Contract length and what happens at the end of it, as the advertiser states it
- Your own experience of a service, clearly described as yours
- Images and copy taken from the campaign's creative pack
- A link that lands on the advertiser's own coverage or eligibility check
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What pulls a placement
- Speed, coverage or reliability figures the advertiser has not published
- Availability stated as fact for a town or region rather than checked per address
- A promotional price shown without its term and what it reverts to
- Comparisons against a named rival's tariff you have not verified today
- Savings or bill-reduction figures nobody has published
- Countdowns and urgency the advertiser never set
This page names no carrier, supplier, tariff or device, on purpose: coverage and pricing are theirs to publish and both move. It names no law either — cancellation windows and switching rules differ market to market, and the campaign's own terms and market list already reflect wherever it operates. The ladder after a breach runs in three rungs: the campaign is paused with a notice, the affected conversions are invalidated, and severe or repeated breaches end the account, all on how approval works.
Questions
Telecom and utilities questions
What publishers ask before committing a page to a shelf where the reader's address can veto the sale.
What are the best cell phone affiliate programs?
No ranking is published here, and a ranked list elsewhere is usually the list-maker's own affiliate links. Judge a mobile campaign on four lines instead: which event pays, whether a handset on a contract is in scope or only the airtime, what a credit decline does to a counted order, and which markets the campaign lists. A large rate on a plan your readers cannot be sold is worth nothing.
Why do my broadband conversions never arrive?
Usually one of two things, and neither shows up in a report. Either the readers are outside the serviceable footprint — a national campaign does not mean a national service — or the orders are sitting in the chain between the click and the activation, waiting on a credit check, a port or an engineer visit. The stage table above is that chain in order.
Are cable and TV bundle programs different from broadband?
The mechanics are the same; the scope question is sharper. Bundles are frequently sold as one order containing several products, so the line to settle before you write a comparison is which product in the bundle the campaign actually pays on — and whether an upgrade bought in the same session counts at all.
What are SMS affiliate programs?
Two different things share that phrase. One is business messaging platforms — bulk sending, verification codes, notification APIs — sold to a company, and read like a B2B software brief. The other is using SMS yourself to promote an offer. They have almost nothing in common, and the second one is the more restricted of the two.
Can I promote offers by sending SMS?
Mass unsolicited email or SMS is prohibited across this marketplace, and conversions from prohibited sources are invalidated and removed from payouts rather than paid at a reduced rate. Where a campaign accepts messaging traffic at all it names it on the brief, and it means permission-based lists you built yourself — anything not explicitly marked allowed should be read as refused.
Does a credit check change what I earn?
It can end the conversion entirely. Any contract with a minimum term is a credit decision about the reader, so an order that looks placed can disappear before activation. The brief's validation rules say what that does to a counted conversion. Underwriting as a subject of its own — and the four places a brief can put a payout around it — is on loans and lending.
How long do these conversions take to clear?
Longer than almost anything else here, and this site publishes no hold or window lengths in its marketing pages. Plan around the shape rather than a number: the order waits on a check, then on a switch or install date somebody else sets, then on the campaign's own validation and hold before the balance joins a payment run.
Do energy switching programs work like the rest?
They run on the same brief lines and behave differently in one respect: nothing is bought. A switch has a supply start date the reader does not pick and a cancellation window the advertiser states, so the gap between a completed form and a payable conversion is set by a calendar rather than by a checkout.
Which traffic sources are accepted?
It is set per campaign and printed on the brief, and anything not marked allowed should be read as refused. Brand bidding is refused network-wide unless a campaign permits it, and incentivised signups only count where the advertiser has tagged the campaign for them — which matters here, because a free SIM or a switching bonus is an easy thing to incentivise badly.
Is a handset review page enough to earn on this shelf?
It earns on the retail side, where the device is the product — that is covered on electronics affiliate programs. On this shelf the device is the doorway and the airtime agreement is what pays, so the page has to carry the reader past the phone to a plan and then to the coverage check. Those are two different articles, and often two different campaigns.
Keep reading
- Affiliate programs, compared The parent: what every line of a campaign brief decides
- Electronics programs The handset as a retail product, rated per item
- Loans & lending programs Underwriting, and the four places a payout can sit
- Business service campaigns Where a business connectivity enquiry is screened
- Campaign guidelines Accepted sources, creative rules and the enforcement ladder
- Payment schedule Holds, thresholds and when a run is paid
Check the footprint, then write the page
Create your publisher account, then apply to the telecom and utilities campaigns whose markets, qualifying action and creative rules match the readers you already have.