Why We Built Founding Promoter Tiers (and What They Actually Mean)
Last March, we had a problem. Early testers on Rippl were sharing their referral links inside Telegram groups and Discord servers, converting real clicks into real earnings, and asking us a blunt question: 'When do I know if I'm getting the best deal?' That question led directly to the MRVL 500 program and the Builder and Vanguard tiers we launched this year.
The founding-promoter question we couldn't ignore
When you run a community (a Discord server with 4,000 members, a WhatsApp group of 800 people, a Snapchat circle of micro-influencers), you earn trust slowly. You post content. You answer questions at 11 p.m. You moderate. You build something real. The last thing you want is to feel like a replaceable link.
We noticed early Rippl users were asking us: what makes an early adopter different from someone joining next year? And they were right to ask. The communities doing the heavy lifting now, the ones willing to test an unfamiliar platform and share feedback, deserved to know there was recognition built into the system itself.
That's where Builder and Vanguard came in. Not as names pulled from a hat, but as a commitment: early promoters get meaningful advantages that don't expire.
Builder tier: the starting point for serious community owners
Builder is the first MRVL 500 tier, and it's where most founding promoters land. It's not a free tier. It's the tier you enter when you decide you're going to use Rippl to create a sustainable income from the community you've already built.
What does Builder include? You get unlimited promo links (so you're not constrained to three like a free user). You get priority access to brand campaigns as they launch, which matters more than it sounds. When a £2,000 CPC campaign drops, and slots fill within hours, priority means you see it first. You also get a badge on your Rippl profile identifying you as a founding promoter. That's not vanity. That's signal to brands that you've been verified, you're early, and you've proven you can move the needle.
We set the Builder tier because we saw a gap between free users (who are testing) and Business users (who are running multiple promoters on a team). Builder is for the solo community owner who's decided to earn seriously.
Vanguard: for the promoters setting the pace
Vanguard is the tier we reserve for the top 500 promoters by early activity and verified community size. If Builder is 'I'm serious about this,' Vanguard is 'I'm leading the way.'
Vanguard promoters get everything in Builder, plus a few things that compound. You get early beta access to new campaign types and features before they roll out to the wider platform. In practice, that's meant some of our founding Vanguard members seeing CPA (pay-per-action) campaigns weeks before standard Pro users could access them. You also get direct access to our partnership team, so when a brand has a complex brief or a niche audience requirement, Vanguard promoters get a conversation, not just a link.
The naming matters here too. Vanguard isn't just a badge. It signals to brands that this promoter has already demonstrated results inside real communities. When a brand runs a campaign targeting 'Vanguard promoters only,' they're filtering for proven performance.
How the tiers actually work in practice
We've intentionally kept the MRVL 500 tiers simple. You don't need to jump through hoops month after month to stay there. Once you're in Builder or Vanguard, you're in. That stability matters because community building isn't a sprint.
The benefits stack on top of Rippl's core mechanics: you set up a campaign via our brand-side dashboard or apply as a promoter, generate a trackable link, share it inside your real community, and we handle the verification. Clicks get tracked. Conversions get logged. Payouts flow through Stripe. For founding promoters, you're doing exactly that, but with unlimited links, faster campaign access, and a brand profile boost.
One thing we don't do: we don't gate the platform itself behind tier walls. Free users still get three links. Pro users (£9.99 a month) still get unlimited links and badge visibility. Business users still get team features and analytics exports. The MRVL 500 tiers reward early adoption and sustained community leadership, but they don't lock anyone out of the core experience.
Why this matters more than it sounds
The referral and community space is crowded with programs that promise fairness but deliver opaque algorithms. We built Builder and Vanguard because we wanted founding promoters to know exactly what they're getting, and to know it won't change because we pushed an update.
A few of our early Vanguard promoters are now running campaigns that generate £30 to £80 per week in earnings, working from inside communities they already owned. They're not becoming influencers. They're not changing who they are. They're just using Rippl to monetise the trust they'd already built. And because they got in early, they have priority and visibility that newer promoters will need to earn through performance.
The MRVL 500 program caps at 500 Vanguard spots, but Builder is open to any founding promoter who decides to commit. We're tracking both tiers actively and we'll scale them if the demand and quality stay high.
If you're running a community right now, even a small one, the question isn't whether Rippl is for you. The question is whether you'd rather know today that early adopters get real advantages, or find out six months from now that you missed the window.