How do I make money from an audience as a real estate agent?

Yes. A follower who buys or sells with you becomes a client like any other.

Both codes of ethics reach what you publish online. NAR's Code requires REALTORS® to make their status as real estate professionals "readily apparent in their advertising, marketing, and other representations" (NAR, January 2026). CREA's REALTOR® Code calls a REALTOR®'s website an advertising vehicle and requires property advertising to "prominently display the name of the brokerage" (CREA, May 2023).

State and provincial license law add their own advertising rules, which differ by state and province. Your state's real estate commission or your provincial regulator publishes them.

Turning followers into conversations is covered in Reasons to Call and in how to get listings without buying leads.

Yes, within limits. RESPA allows "cooperative brokerage and referral arrangements or agreements between real estate agents and real estate brokers," and the regulation says that exception covers only fee splits where everyone is acting in a real estate brokerage capacity (CFPB, April 2023).

State license laws decide who can pay or receive a referral fee and whether it must go through your broker. They differ by state, so check with your state's real estate commission. In Canada, your provincial regulator sets the equivalent rules.

Disclosure differs between the two codes. NAR's Code requires REALTORS® to disclose financial benefits from recommending products or services "other than real estate referral fees" (NAR, January 2026). CREA's Code requires disclosure to clients of any financial or other benefit from recommending real estate products or services, and it names other brokerage firms that may pay a referral fee among them (CREA, May 2023).

This is where RESPA matters most. No one may give or accept "any fee, kickback or other thing of value" for referring settlement service business on a federally related mortgage loan (CFPB, April 2023).

Settlement services include mortgage lending and brokering, title services, inspections, hazard insurance, homeowner's warranties and the services of real estate agents themselves (CFPB, April 2023).

Payment for goods or services actually provided is allowed. If a payment bears no reasonable relationship to the market value of what was provided, the excess can be used as evidence of a RESPA violation, and payments that keep coming and are tied in any way to the volume or value of the business you send are evidence of a referral agreement (CFPB, April 2023).

The codes add disclosure. NAR's Code names homeowner's insurance, warranty programs, mortgage financing and title insurance among the products whose financial benefits to you must be disclosed (NAR, January 2026), and CREA's Code requires disclosure of such benefits to clients and customers (CREA, May 2023).

Thanking a follower for sending you a client raises the same question. Real estate agents' services are on the settlement service list, so the rule can reach anything of value you give in return for a referral (CFPB, April 2023).

Each platform sets its own rules on its own help pages. YouTube, for example, opens its Partner Program, which pays creators part of the ad money from their videos, to channels with 1,000 subscribers and either 4,000 qualified public watch hours in the last 12 months or 10 million qualified Shorts views in the last 90 days (YouTube Help, read October 2026).

You must also live in a country or region where the program is available, and the channel must follow YouTube's monetization policies, have no active Community Guidelines strikes, have advanced features access, use 2-Step Verification and link an AdSense for YouTube account (YouTube Help, read October 2026).

Other platforms publish their own thresholds. Read them on the platform's help pages before you plan around them.

In the US, the FTC says an endorsement should make it obvious when you have a "material connection" with the brand, and that includes free or discounted products as well as payment (FTC, November 2019).

Put the disclosure with the endorsement itself, in plain words such as "ad" or "advertisement." In a video, the FTC says the disclosure should be in the video and not only in the description (FTC, November 2019). For affiliate links, it suggests wording like "I get commissions for purchases made through links in this post" (FTC, June 2023).

In Canada, the Competition Bureau says the Competition Act applies to anyone promoting a product, so it applies to influencers, and that you should disclose every material connection: payment or commissions, free products or services, discounts, free trips or tickets, and personal or family relationships (Competition Bureau, January 2022).

It adds that tagging a brand, posting a discount code or linking to an affiliate page "is unlikely to be enough" on its own (Competition Bureau, January 2022).