How to Build a Referral Login Portal Free for Your Website (Google Sheets Database)

R22 is a referral portal you can bolt onto a site you already run. Someone creates an account, gets their own referral code, and passes it on. When the next person signs up using that code, the referrer's member count and points go up — all held in a Google Sheet you own, with no affiliate platform in the middle.

Signing up and being credited

Registration takes a username, a password and, optionally, somebody's referral code. A username already in use is refused rather than silently overwritten. On success the new member is issued their own code, and an email goes out telling them what it is and which code they signed up under — the wording of that email is plain text in the code, so it can read the way your brand talks.

The dashboard a member sees

After logging in they get their user ID, their own referral code, how many members they have brought in and how many points that is worth. A member list shows exactly who joined through them, prints for a record and downloads as a PDF. If you would rather members could not see each other's referral codes in that list, the walkthrough shows the line to remove.

Points, and what you set

Points are counted with a formula: how many people used that member's code, multiplied by the value you decide a member is worth. Three points per member in the demo, but that multiplier is a cell — change it and the whole scheme changes.

Worth knowing before you launch

The points formula lives in the sheet and needs dragging down as the member list grows, so leave yourself plenty of filled rows. Earnings are not built in; points are the measure the portal ships with, and a money column is something you would add yourself.