Track where your backers come from
You put your wall link in a lot of places. This tells you which ones bring real backers. It’s a Max feature, and the report lives on Payouts under Where your backers come from, covering the last 90 days.
Two things it shows
- Top referrers — the sites people clicked your link from. This works automatically, with nothing to set up.
- Top UTM sources — tags you add to your own links, so you can tell your newsletter apart from your pinned post.
Tagging a link
Add ?utm_source= to your wall URL before you share it:
https://sponsoredby.io/you?utm_source=newsletterUse a different value everywhere you post — newsletter, readme, pinned-post, episode-42. Each becomes its own row in the report.
Only use letters, numbers, dots, underscores and hyphens. A space or any other character makes checkout fail, and the person clicking your link won’t be able to back you at all. Write utm_source=spring-launch, never utm_source=spring launch.
The tag has to be on the wall link itself — the page where someone actually backs you. Tags on a page earlier in the journey don’t carry through. Monthly backings keep their original source on every renewal.
What won't show up
Backers arriving from search, from a direct visit, or from a browser that hides the referrer won’t appear under referrers. That’s a real limit of how browsers work, not a gap in the report — which is exactly why tagging your own links is worth the effort.
Related guides: