The pitch is always the same shape. You send someone to a service, they pay every month, and a slice of that payment comes back to you every month for as long as they stay. Told that way it sounds like a decision with no downside. Told with numbers, it becomes a question of arithmetic: how many people, paying how much, staying how long, minus what the State takes on the way through. A student in Galway with two hundred followers and a student in Dublin with two thousand can end the year in the same place, because the number that dominates the model is not the audience, it is retention. While that model takes a year to prove itself, some people cover the gap with small daily earnings from an app such as I am Beezy, which pays for time spent viewing content rather than for results a programme cannot promise.
What does a recurring commission actually pay over twelve months?
Before you compare programmes, build the calculation once on a single sheet. It takes fifteen minutes and it will decide which offers you never look at again.
The four numbers that decide the answer
Every recurring programme reduces to four inputs. First, how many people you can realistically put in front of the offer in a month — not followers, not views, people who see the recommendation and could act on it. Second, the share of them who actually sign up and are still there after the free trial or cooling-off period, because most programmes only pay on a completed, retained sale. Third, the commission per customer per month, which is usually a percentage of a subscription rather than a fixed sum. Fourth, and the one everyone underestimates, the average number of months a customer stays before cancelling or switching away.
Build the worksheet before you build the audience
Write the four inputs in a column, then a second column with a low case and a third with a high case. The gap between the two columns is your real answer, and it is normally wide enough to change the decision. A programme paying a small monthly slice on customers who stay two years beats a generous one-off on customers who leave in three months, and the sales page will never present it that way.
| Input | What to write in it | Where the number comes from |
|---|---|---|
| People reached each month | Only those who could realistically act | Your own last three months, not a projection |
| Conversion after the trial period | The share still paying after 30 days | Ask the programme for its retained-sale rate |
| Commission per customer per month | Net of any platform fee | The written programme terms |
| Average months a customer stays | The single most powerful input | Ask; if they will not say, assume the worst |
| Payment threshold and delay | When money actually reaches you | The terms, in writing |
| Clawback window | How long a commission can be reversed | The terms, in writing |
Where the model usually breaks
Around month seven, two things happen at once in almost every recurring model. The first cohort of customers starts cancelling, so the base you are paid on stops growing at the rate it did at the start. At the same time your reach is no longer new: the people closest to you have already signed up or already refused. A recurring commission grows quickly for two quarters and then flattens unless you keep adding new customers at the same rate. Plan for the flattening rather than being surprised by it.
Which Irish sectors genuinely pay month after month?
Recurring commission exists where there are recurring bills, and Ireland has a very particular map of those. Two features shape it: a lot of household spending is on monthly contracts, and the energy market has no retail price cap, so switching never stops being worth doing.
Energy, the one channel the regulator itself accredits
The Commission for Regulation of Utilities licenses fifteen energy suppliers — Electric Ireland, Bord Gáis Energy, SSE Airtricity, Energia, Flogas, Pinergy, PrePayPower, Yuno Energy, Naturgy, Community Power, Arden Energy, Water Power, Cenergise, Ecopower and Go Power — and, unusually, it also accredits four price comparison services: bonkers.ie, Switcher.ie, PowerToSwitch.ie and EnergySwitch.ie. Those services are paid by suppliers when a household switches, which makes them the clearest working example in the country of an introduction business operating under a regulator's eye. Two details matter if you are studying that model. There is no retail price cap in Ireland, so a household that never switches quietly pays more every year, which is what keeps the channel alive. And PrePayPower and Yuno Energy are two brands of the same company, Yuno Ltd, so a comparison that presents them as independent rivals is misleading.
Telecoms, subscriptions and software
Mobile and broadband are the other genuinely recurring bills. At least eight consumer brands sell mobile in a country of five and a half million people — eir, Vodafone, Three, Tesco Mobile, Virgin Media, Sky, GoMo and 48 — and the Commission for Communications Regulation counted 10.9 million mobile subscriptions at the first quarter of 2026, of which 78% were bill pay contracts rather than prepay. A market that dense is a market where people move, and where introductions have value. Software subscriptions behave the same way, with one difference in your favour: business customers churn far less than consumers.
The programmes worth walking away from
Walk away when the recurring element depends on the person you recruited recruiting others, when the terms allow the rate to be cut on existing customers without notice, or when payment only happens above a threshold you are unlikely to reach in a year. Those three clauses turn a recurring commission into unpaid work, and all three are visible in the terms before you sign anything.
Who is allowed to pay you, and for what
The second gate is not commercial, it is regulatory, and in Ireland it is drawn in one place rather than shared between several bodies.
Credit, insurance and investments sit behind a licence
The Central Bank of Ireland is both the central bank and the single regulator of financial services here: banks, insurers, funds, payment and e-money firms, intermediaries and credit unions all answer to it, and it publishes registers of the firms it regulates at registers.centralbank.ie. If a programme asks you to introduce people to a loan, an insurance policy, an investment or a payment product, that is the territory where the firm — not you — has to be able to explain the arrangement. Check the firm on the register first, then ask in writing what your position is before you send a single name. A payment that a firm is not allowed to make is a payment you will never receive.
Everything else is a commercial agreement
Outside financial services the ground is much wider. Introducing people to a broadband package, a language school, a gym, a delivery platform or a software subscription is an ordinary commercial arrangement between you and the business, governed by the terms you accept. That does not make disclosure optional: tell your audience the link pays you. Readers forgive the commission; they do not forgive discovering it later.
The €650 that decides whether a small recurring income is worth it
Here is the part that surprises people who have read British advice and assumed it applies. It does not. There is no Irish allowance that lets you keep a small trading income without telling anyone about it, and the charge that bites first is not income tax.
Under €5,000 from self-employment
Irish social insurance for the self-employed is Class S PRSI. If you earn less than €5,000 from self-employment in a year, you are exempt from PRSI — but that is an exemption from the social contribution, not from tax. You must still tell Revenue about the income. Below the chargeable-person thresholds you do that through a Form 12, a Form 12S or the online form in myAccount rather than through full self-assessment.
The moment you cross €5,000
Above that line, Class S PRSI is 4.2% of your total taxable income or €650, whichever is the greater, since 1 October 2025. On a self-employment income of exactly €5,000 the flat €650 applies rather than the percentage, which is an effective rate of 13% on that slice. That is the single most important number in this article, because it means a recurring commission that creeps over €5,000 can cost more in social insurance than the last thousand euro earned. If you are under the threshold and want to protect your pension record, you can pay a voluntary contribution of €650 instead — a choice, not an obligation.
Two more layers: the form you file, and VAT
You become a chargeable person, filing a Form 11 through the Revenue Online Service, once your net non-PAYE income reaches €5,000 in a year or your gross non-PAYE income reaches €30,000, even where no tax ends up due. Pay and File falls on 31 October, extended to 19 November in 2026 for those filing through ROS — not the 31 January date used across the Irish Sea. Above all this sits the Universal Social Charge, which is levied on gross income and is not reduced by tax credits, at 0.5%, 2%, 3% and 8% across its 2026 bands. VAT only appears much later: registration is required at €42,500 of turnover for services, and commission is a service, not at the €85,000 threshold that applies to goods.
| Yearly commission income | Class S PRSI | How you report it |
|---|---|---|
| Under €5,000 net, alongside a job | Exempt; voluntary €650 possible | Form 12, Form 12S or myAccount |
| €5,000 net or more | 4.2% or €650, whichever is greater | Form 11 on ROS as a chargeable person |
| €30,000 gross or more | 4.2% or €650, whichever is greater | Form 11 on ROS, even if no tax is due |
| Over €42,500 of service turnover | Unchanged | Form 11 plus VAT registration |
Funding the slow first months with I am Beezy
The weakness of recurring income is not the size of the cheque, it is the delay before the first one. Programmes hold commissions for a clawback window, then pay above a threshold, then pay on a monthly cycle — three queues in a row before anything reaches your account.
What it pays, and when
I am Beezy pays for time spent viewing content — videos, articles and advertising — and sends the earnings to your usual payment method. Across the platform the realistic range is €5 to €15 a day, in euro, with no currency conversion to think about in Ireland. It is not a career and it is not a substitute for a salary; it is a way to keep the lights on while a slower model matures.
Why it does not replace the commission
The two work differently on purpose. Viewing earnings arrive quickly and stop when you stop. A recurring commission arrives slowly and continues without you, provided the customer stays. Using the first to survive the wait for the second is a sensible sequence; treating either as the whole plan is not.
How do you decide in a single evening?
You do not need weeks of research. You need the terms, an hour and a willingness to reject most of what you read.
Three questions to put to the programme in writing
Ask what the average customer lifetime is in months, ask whether commission rates can be changed on customers already introduced, and ask for the exact clawback window and payment threshold. An honest programme answers all three in a paragraph. A programme that answers none of them has told you what you needed to know.
The record you start on day one
Open a file the day you accept your first programme and keep every statement, every payout notice and every set of terms you agreed to. Because there is no Irish allowance that exempts small trading income from being declared, the question is never whether you tell Revenue, only which form you use — and a dated record turns that into a short conversation instead of a long one. When the first payments do arrive and you want a smaller, faster stream alongside them while the model matures, I am Beezy is one way to keep something coming in every week rather than every quarter.
