Ambassador help

Everything you need to know to earn well in the BuzzHive Ambassador Program — what gets paid out and when, how attribution sticks, what trips a T&C violation, and how to read your dashboard.

1. Program overview

You're a 1099 contractor who refers promoters to BuzzHive. Every ticket those promoters ever sell pays you a cut of BuzzHive's per-ticket platform fee — for life, unless you violate the T&Cs.

BuzzHive's platform fee on every ticket is 2% + $0.99. Your share is a percentage of that fee, NOT a percentage of the ticket price. So a $20 ticket generates roughly $1.39 in platform fee ($0.40 + $0.99), and at Tier 1 you'd earn about $0.14 of that.

2. Signing up

If you're already on this page reading it because you signed up, skip ahead. If you're still researching, the application form is at /ambassador. The signup is short:

1. Name, email, password, phone.
2. Agree to the T&Cs.
3. Captcha (Cloudflare Turnstile, usually invisible).
4. Submit → you land on the Stripe Express onboarding flow.

You can be both an ambassador and a promoter. Use the same email if you like — the two accounts get linked automatically. The one rule: you earn ambassador commission only on the promoters you onboard. Your own promoter account earns you nothing on the ambassador side, and no ambassador (including you) earns commission on your own events. Run your shows on your promoter account, bring crews in on your ambassador link, and get paid on the crews — never on yourself.

3. Stripe Express

We pay you through Stripe Express — Stripe's hosted payouts product for 1099 contractors. You'll provide:

• A bank account or debit card (where your monthly payouts land).
• Your tax ID (SSN or EIN for individuals/sole props; Stripe handles the W-9 paperwork).
• Identity verification (ID upload may be required for accounts above certain thresholds).

BuzzHive never sees your tax ID or bank account number. Stripe stores all of it. Your year-end 1099-NEC generates automatically through Stripe Express — you'll pull it from your Stripe Express dashboard in January.

If Stripe needs more info later

Stripe sometimes asks for additional verification after your first payout clears a certain threshold. Watch the email tied to your Stripe Express account. If they pause your payouts pending verification, your BuzzHive earnings keep accruing — they just won't transfer until Stripe is satisfied.

White-screen on return?

If you ever hit a white screen coming back from Stripe (rare but it's happened), refresh the page and sign back into /ambassador/login. Your Stripe account is fine; the sync just hiccupped. If the dashboard still shows the orange "Finish your Stripe setup" banner after you completed the form on Stripe's side, click that banner to re-enter the flow.

4. Your referral link

Your referral link lives at the bottom of /ambassador/dashboard, with a copy button. It's shaped like:

https://buzzhive.info/ambassador-signup?ref=your-code

Where your-code is a stable slug derived from your name. Anyone who clicks that link and then signs up as a promoter gets attributed to you.

The link works whether or not the promoter signs up immediately. The ?ref= parameter is stored in their browser, so even if they click on Monday and sign up on Thursday from a new tab on the same browser, you still get the credit (within a 30-day window).

5. Attribution rules

Attribution is lifetime, per-promoter. Once a promoter signs up through your link, every ticket they ever sell on BuzzHive feeds your stats — whether their first event is next week or three years from now.

• First-click wins. If someone clicked your link first and clicked someone else's later, you keep the attribution. Switching ambassadors mid-flight isn't supported.
• One promoter, one ambassador. A promoter can only be attributed to one ambassador. We don't split per-sale shares between multiple referrers.
• You can't earn on your own events. You're welcome to run your own promoter account — but it earns you no ambassador commission, and no ambassador earns on it. The system links your accounts by email and Stripe-verified identity (individual.id) and permanently excludes your own events from all payouts. Referring yourself just excludes your own events; it can't pay you.
• T&C violation forfeits everything. If we catch you running fake promoter accounts or colluding with another ambassador to game referrals, the account is terminated, all referrals are revoked, and any accrued unpaid earnings are forfeit.

6. Tier ladder

The percentage of BuzzHive's platform fee you earn depends on your tier:

Both conditions need to hold in the SAME month for you to earn at that tier. Think of it like a broker maintaining their book — lifetime unlock is the license, monthly threshold is staying active.

Retroactive recalc within a month

If you cross 500 monthly sales mid-month, every attribution that month gets recalculated at the T2 rate, including ones earned before you crossed the threshold. Same for crossing 1,000 sales to T3. You don't lose the early-month earnings — they get upgraded to the higher rate when you qualify.

7. Payouts

• Cadence: Monthly. Payouts kick off on the 1st of the following month for the prior month's earnings.
• Method: Stripe Transfer to your Stripe Express account, then Stripe pays out to your bank account on your normal Stripe payout schedule (usually 2-business-day standard).
• Floor: $25. If your monthly earnings are under $25, the balance rolls forward to the next month and pays out as soon as the cumulative total clears the floor.
• Stripe Express required: Your account must be fully active (Stripe says "payouts enabled") for a payout to fire. If Stripe is still verifying your account, your earnings accrue and pay out the first month after Stripe is satisfied.

8. Refunds & chargebacks

If a promoter refunds an order, that sale and its ambassador attribution gets reversed:

• The refunded earnings are deducted from the month they originally happened in, not the current month. So if a June sale gets refunded in July, your June earnings are recalculated.
• If June already paid out, the deduction comes out of your next pending payout (in this example, July's earnings).
• Tier qualifications you already earned stay. If a refund drops your monthly sales from 510 back to 509, you don't lose Tier 2 retroactively — you'd just need 500+ again next month to keep T2.
• Chargebacks (when a buyer disputes through their bank) are treated like refunds for attribution purposes.

9. Taxes & 1099

You're a 1099 contractor. BuzzHive does not withhold taxes from your payouts — you're responsible for setting aside the appropriate amount.

The basics

• If Stripe Express transferred you $600 or more in a calendar year, Stripe auto-issues a 1099-NEC tax form to you in late January for the prior year.
• BuzzHive does not file your 1099 directly — Stripe Express is the payor of record for all connected-account payouts. We never see or store your tax ID; Stripe Express has it.
• If you earn under $600, no 1099 is issued, but you still owe taxes on the income. Stripe Express shows you the annual total in their dashboard for your records.
• The threshold is based on what Stripe transferred to you in the calendar year, not what you earned. A December earnings month paid out on January 1 counts toward the later year, per IRS rules.

Where to find your 1099-NEC

1. Go to express.stripe.com and sign in with the email and phone number you used during BuzzHive onboarding.
2. In the left navigation, click Tax forms (some Stripe accounts label it “Taxes” or “Tax documents”).
3. Your 1099-NEC for the prior tax year is downloadable as a PDF. If it isn't there yet, Stripe is still finalizing — they release forms by January 31 for the prior tax year.
4. Save the PDF for your records. Your accountant or tax software needs it for Schedule C / Schedule SE filings.

What if Stripe Express asks for more info before issuing?

Sometimes Stripe needs additional verification (a missing SSN/EIN, an address confirmation, a citizenship attestation) before they can issue a 1099. They'll email you with the request. Complete it through the Stripe Express dashboard, not BuzzHive — we can't update your tax info on Stripe's behalf.

Cross-checking against BuzzHive's records

Your dashboard shows a Tax Year card with the year-to-date total Stripe has paid you so far. It also tells you whether you've crossed the $600 1099 threshold, and how much more you'd need to earn this year to qualify if you haven't yet. The number on that card should match what eventually appears on your 1099-NEC.

Reminder email in January

Every year around January 15, ambassadors who hit the $600 threshold get a reminder email from BuzzHive with a direct link to Stripe Express, so you don't miss the form. If you didn't get one and think you should have, contact support.

We're not tax advisors — talk to a CPA if you're unsure how to handle 1099 income, especially around quarterly estimated payments.

10. Reading your dashboard

Your dashboard has five main sections:

This month · tickets / earnings

The two stat cards at the top show how much you've earned in the current calendar month so far. Earnings is computed live from sale attributions — it's what's currently owed if the month ended now, after any refunds.

Lifetime · tickets / earnings

All-time totals, after refunds. The "lifetime tickets" number is what drives your tier unlocks.

Tier ladder

Visual progress bars showing how close you are to T2 and T3 on both the lifetime and monthly axes. If you're already at T2 or T3, the corresponding rung is marked unlocked.

Daily chart

Tickets attributed to you per day this month, with a cumulative line in orange. Helps you spot which days of the week your referrals sell best.

Referred promoters / Payout history

Side-by-side tables: the left shows every promoter you've referred (with their lifetime ticket count and your earnings from them); the right shows your monthly payouts, current and historical.

11. Account & password

• Sign in: /ambassador/login with the email + password you set at signup.
• Forgot password: /ambassador/forgot-password. We email a one-time reset link (good for 1 hour).
• Change bank account: Update directly in your Stripe Express dashboard — we don't store it, so we can't change it for you.
• Change name/email/phone: Contact support via /contact. We don't have a self-serve profile editor yet.
• Close your account: Email /contact and ask to be terminated. Any unpaid balance under the $25 floor is forfeit on account closure.

12. T&Cs recap

The full Terms & Conditions live at /ambassador/terms. The condensed version of what trips a violation:

• Dummy emails / household members / yourself. Referring fake accounts to game referral counts = immediate termination + forfeiture of all accrued unpaid earnings + revocation of every attribution.
• Misrepresenting BuzzHive. Telling promoters something that isn't true to close the referral (e.g. "I can guarantee you better fees" or "I can comp your tickets" — you can't) is grounds for termination.
• At-will termination by BuzzHive. We reserve the right to terminate any ambassador for any reason or no reason at all, with or without notice. Ambassadors are independent contractors, not shareholders.
• Forfeiture on termination. Any termination — for cause or no cause — results in all accrued unpaid earnings being forfeit to BuzzHive.

13. Contact support

For anything not covered above — tax questions, attribution disputes, Stripe Express issues we can help debug, T&C clarifications, account changes — reach out via the contact form. Include your ambassador name + email and we'll get back to you within one business day.

Last updated June 16, 2026. Spotted something out of date? Let us know.