Agent #36 in Malta has placed more orders than anyone else on this blog — 720 since the first COVID lockdowns — with exactly one cancellation. This is the case to read if you want to know whether it lasts.
Recruiting margins are tight and getting tighter. Clients expect more, competition keeps arriving, and every interaction has to carry its weight. So the useful question is not how to find a new business, but how to get more out of the work already going through your office.
Who this is
A small recruiting agency in Malta that places foreign workers, mostly from Southeast Asia. She registered with us in April 2020, in the middle of the lockdowns. Figures are as of 5 December 2025 — five years and eight months.
She works as a reseller: she fills in the application for each worker herself, buys the document at her discount, and charges her own price. We never pay her; her income is the difference.
She was not trying to start anything. She already had a steady stream of workers coming to her for help with employment paperwork, noticed that many of them needed this document too, and added it to the list of things she could handle for people who were already sitting in front of her.
Five and a half years, measured
| Paid orders | 720 |
| Cancellations | 1 |
| Cancellation rate | 0.14% |
| Orders per month | about 11 |
| Her current rate | 47% |
About eleven documents a month, for sixty-eight months. That is the whole story, and its unremarkableness is the point: there was no launch, no campaign and no spike. It simply did not stop.
One cancellation in 720
Read that again, then read the reason, because the reason is the transferable part: she fills in every application herself, for each worker, personally. She knows the data is correct before she submits, because she typed it. No client rushing through a form on a phone, no guesswork, no typos arriving from outside.
Recruiting offices are unusually well placed to do this. You are already holding the passport copies, the employment documents and the personal data — the information the application needs is sitting on your desk.
What she earns, and what we actually know
Here we need to be careful, because two different kinds of statement get mixed up in case studies like this one.
What we can verify: 720 orders, one cancellation, five and a half years, her current 47% rate. Those come from our own system.
What we cannot: what she charges her clients. As far as we understand, it is around €150. We do not publish partner resale prices as a rule, we have not audited that figure, and we are not going to build a headline number on top of it.
What we can give you instead is the structure, which is the part that transfers to your office anyway. Your cost is the base price minus your rate — around $60 base at 47% is roughly $32, or about €30 — and everything above that is yours:
| If you charge | Your margin per document | At 11 orders a month |
|---|---|---|
| €80 | about €50 | about €550 a month |
| €120 | about €90 | about €990 a month |
| €150 | about €120 | about €1,320 a month |
Pick the row that matches your market rather than ours. Malta is not Manila, and a price that works in one is wrong in the other.
Why it suits recruiting specifically
- You are already collecting the exact documents the application needs. One more form is close to free.
- Your candidates trust you on paperwork. When you say they will also need this, they listen — that is the relationship you already have.
- It fits the existing workflow. There is no new skill, system or supplier.
- Submitting it yourself keeps cancellations at essentially zero.
- No advertising, no stock, no capital at risk.
Is this a business? No. Is it worth having?
Nobody is going to restructure their agency around this, and she has not. What she has is a reliable second line on an existing service list, with predictable demand, no inventory and no downside, running quietly for five and a half years alongside the actual job.
For a small office, that is a good trade.
Two ways to earn, one ladder
Partners work with us in one of two ways. They pay differently, and it is worth knowing which one you are reading about before you compare numbers.
Reselling. You buy the document at your discount and charge your client whatever you decide. The difference is yours. You invoice the client; IDA never pays you anything. Your income depends on the price you set, so two resellers with identical volume can earn very different amounts.
Referral. You share a link, a QR code or an embedded form. Your client orders from IDA directly and pays IDA’s price. We then pay you a share of it. You set no prices and handle no money, so the income per order is fixed — and lower than a reseller’s markup usually is.
Both use the same ladder, and your position on it is set by how many orders you have placed:
| Orders | Your rate |
|---|---|
| 1st | 15% |
| 2nd-10th | 30% |
| 11th-30th | 33% |
| 31st-50th | 35% |
| 51st-100th | 37% |
| 101st-300th | 40% |
| 301st-500th | 43% |
| 501st-1,000th | 47% |
| 1,001st onward | 50% |
For a reseller the rate is a discount off the price you pay us. For a referral partner it is the share of the order we pay you. Same percentage, different direction.
One consequence worth stating plainly: reselling pays more per order than referring. In the one case on this blog where we know the reseller’s price, the margin is close to $99 per document; the referral partner in our Sri Lanka case averages roughly $18 per sale. Referring is far less work per order, so the right choice depends on whether your constraint is time or client flow.
Three ways to put it in front of your clients
At the desk. A QR code on the counter, a link in WhatsApp, a line in your confirmation email. The client orders on their own phone. Least work, and it survives staff turnover because nobody has to learn anything.
On your own website. Either a plain referral link, or our widget — an order form embedded in your own page. The client fills it in and pays on your site at IDA’s prices, and the order arrives tagged to you. You generate the snippet yourself in your agent dashboard; one key is tied to one domain, and you choose the language and currency it displays. Some of our partners run comparison and booking sites and place it exactly this way.
You submit for the client. You fill in the application yourself in your dashboard, using the documents the client has already handed you. This is the most work per order and by a wide margin the most reliable: every partner in these case studies with a near-zero cancellation rate works this way. Clean data in, no refunds out.
Partners who run their own systems and sustained volume can also integrate with our API directly. That runs under a separate agreement rather than as a self-service feature — if your volume is there and you want your own booking or CRM system to create orders, write to us and we will talk it through.
How the money actually reaches you
If you resell, there is nothing to wait for: you have already charged the client, and your cost was settled with us at your discounted rate.
If you refer, the money comes from us, and the timing has rules worth knowing before you start:
- An order is credited to you roughly a month after the client pays — not on the day of the sale. Credits are processed in a daily batch.
- You will see each order move through Not paid → Waiting for credit → Waiting for issued in your dashboard, so nothing is hidden from you.
- A refund reverses the credit. This is why the partners with the lowest cancellation rates earn the most predictable income.
- The cookie lasts 30 days. If your client clicks your link today and orders three weeks later, it still counts as yours.
- Payouts go out by PayPal, by bank transfer in 60+ currencies, or in USDT.
One limitation to know in advance, because it surprises people: you are credited for new clients only. If someone already has an IDA account that is not linked to any partner, their next order does not become yours, even if they reach us through your link. In practice this rarely bites — most of the people you refer have never ordered from us before — but you should hear it from us rather than discover it in your dashboard.
Getting started
Registration is at https://idaoffice.org/agent/register/ and takes a few minutes. There is nothing to buy, nothing to install, and no minimum volume.
Once you are in, you have a dashboard with your orders and balance, your referral link and QR code, the widget generator if you want the form on your own site, and your current rate — which moves up the ladder by itself as your order count grows.
What this needs from you is not effort so much as consistency. Every partner in these case studies does the same unremarkable thing: they mention it every time the moment comes up, not only when they remember to.
Evidence
Dashboard screenshots: order list and balance, personal data removed.
More partner case studies
- A one-shop scooter rental in Sri Lanka: 355 sales in eight months, with the payouts shown
- A travel and visa agency in Saudi Arabia: 555 documents in four years, without a single cancellation
- A multiservice office in Kentucky: what the program looks like at three orders a month
FAQ
Does this work for staffing firms outside Malta?
Yes. Nothing in it is specific to Malta — it works wherever agencies place workers abroad, handle seasonal labour or assist with relocation. The workflow is what matters, not the location.
My candidates are not drivers. Is this relevant to them?
Some will be and some will not, and you will know which. Workers heading to countries where they will drive for work, or who plan to rent a car once they arrive, are the obvious cases. If your placements are overwhelmingly non-driving roles, your volume will be lower than this case — be realistic about that before you start.
Eleven orders a month does not sound like much. Is it worth the setup?
There is essentially no setup to amortise: registration takes minutes and costs nothing, and the work per order is one form. The question is not whether eleven orders justify the setup, but whether your own flow produces one or two a week. If it does, the arithmetic is in the table above.
Do I need a licence or a special legal status to do this?
No. You keep operating as the business you already are, acting as an agent or reseller for IDA documents. Local rules on invoicing and tax are yours to follow as with any other service you sell, so if anything is unclear where you are, check with a local accountant or lawyer.
What exactly is the document my client receives?
An International Driving Permit issued by IDA: a translation of the details on your client’s national driving licence into a standard multilingual format. It is carried together with their national licence, never instead of it, and acceptance differs from country to country. Tell your clients this plainly — partners who set expectations correctly are the ones with no cancellations.
What happens if a client asks for a refund?
The order is reversed and so is your credit. This is the single strongest argument for checking applications before submitting them rather than after.
How much can I realistically make?
Multiply your own numbers rather than ours: how many clients a month plausibly need this, times your margin per document. The cases on this blog range from roughly 3 orders a month to roughly 44. What they have in common is not volume — it is that the offer is made every time, as part of the routine.
I have more questions.
Write to us before you register if you would rather. We would much rather answer them now than have you discover something in month three.
Published December 05, 2025 • 9m to read
