11 Crucial Terms Every Affiliate Terms and Conditions Template Must Have

Sep 5

Looking for the right affiliate terms and conditions template for your affiliate program? I am sharing exactly which terms you need to be legally compliant and fully protected (anywhere in the world).

Having an affiliate program is a great way to gain more brand awareness and drive sales, but if you’re anything like me, you are researching everything you need to ensure you have everything you need to legally protect your brand’s reputation. As a lawyer myself who drafts contract templates for online entrepreneurs like you, I am giving you the essential terms you need in your affiliate terms and conditions template.

I will provide an overview of everything you need in your affiliate terms and conditions template, whether you get your template from an AI affiliate terms and conditions generator or using a one page affiliate agreement template you found online.

After learning about what you need in your affiliate terms and conditions template, you will have everything you need to boost your sales while protecting your brand’s reputation and money.

This post is all about the important terms you need in your affiliate terms and conditions template.

Essential Affiliate Terms and Conditions Template

Affiliate terms and conditions generator

Now, let’s get right into what those essential terms are for your affiliate terms and conditions template.

1. Clear guidelines on what is NOT allowed

With a brand sponsorship agreement, you have full control over what an influencer creates for you and can give exact directions on what they should say and show.

However, with affiliate marketing, you don’t tell your affiliates exactly what to create for your affiliate links. You have a lot less control over what content is created about your brand.

That is why you need to give your affiliates very clear guidelines on what they can do with your affiliate links. But, more importantly, you need to state what they can NOT do with your affiliate links, your brand’s images and other content you make available for affiliate marketing purposes.

Some examples of what they may not do when using your affiliate links and content are spamming, giving false or misleading information about your products, promoting illegal activities with your products, saying offensive or harmful things when using your content, etc.

For more examples to include in your affiliate terms and conditions template, read this blog post on the 5 Major Mistakes to AVOID in Your Affiliate Program Terms and Conditions.

2. Copyrights to what they create with your content

Of course, you need to state in your affiliate terms and conditions template that you remain the owner of all intellectual property rights attached to your content and the products your affiliates promote.

But another thing you need to specify is that whatever your affiliate creates with your promotional content also becomes your intellectual property, not theirs. When your affiliates create something, like a blog post or social media post, with the content you make available for affiliate marketing purposes, they can become the (co-)owners of that new content they create with your materials.

So, to ensure that you are, remain, and become the owner of anything new your affiliates create to promote your brand, you must ensure you have that agreement in writing by including the proper provisions in your affiliate terms and conditions template.

3. Protection from disparagement

We assume that most of your affiliates will become great partners with whom you have great relationships.

However, there are a billion reasons why an affiliate might not be happy with you, your brand or your product. That’s fine, but you definitely do not want these affiliates to influence others into despising your brand or spreading any negativity about your brand.

Therefore, you need to include provisions in your affiliate terms and conditions template prohibiting your affiliates from ever making any statements that may disparage or hurt your brand in any way (at least not without paying for damages).

4. Compliance with (influencer) marketing & advertising laws

When promoting your products, your affiliates must comply with (influencer) marketing and advertising laws. These laws set certain rules which are also applicable to affiliate links. Affiliates must inform their audiences that they earn a commission for promoting your stuff, and there are rules on how they must do so.

When they do not comply with those rules, they could be fined, but also YOU could be fined, even if you had no idea about your affiliates breaking the law.

Therefore, you must include the appropriate protections in your affiliate terms and conditions template to ensure your affiliate pays and compensates you for their mistakes.

5. Your commission rate and other terms

You need to specify in your affiliate terms and conditions template what your commission rate is for sales your affiliate makes. This may be a flat fee or a percentage of your product’s price.

In addition, you need to specify whether and how discounts, transaction costs and other costs affect the commission rate actually paid out.

You need to specify all that so there can be no discussions about how much your affiliates should receive.

6. The right to change your commission rate and other terms

You may want to change your commission rate in the future as market practice changes over time. Or maybe you have higher costs in your business that do not directly affect your commission rate, so you need to lower the commission rate. Or maybe your business costs have become significantly lower, so you may allow yourself to pay your affiliates a higher commission.

You may also want to change other terms of your affiliate agreement template. For example, your payment terms. Maybe you adopt a new payment system in the future, so you need to use a new payment method or maybe payouts will take longer.

For all these reasons, you need to have provisions in your affiliate terms and conditions template that give you the right to change the commission rate and other terms of your affiliate terms.

7. Pay only for sales actually made

To track your affiliates' sales, you have to use a software program that registers when sales are made through their links.

However, that software may have an error, so the actual sales are not properly registered.

For that reason, you need to include in your affiliate terms and conditions that (1) you can not be obligated to pay commissions if your software does not register the sales made and (2) your software is the only source based on which you determine whether your affiliate get paid a commission. Your affiliates may use their own tracking software or analytics to analyse the sales made through their affiliate links. You do not want to end up in a discussion about how many sales are made based on their software.

For more on what you must include in your affiliate terms and conditions template for this specifically, read my blog post on the 9 Must-Haves for Your Affiliate Terms and Conditions.

8. Loss of commission rights for bad behaviour

Not all your affiliates are going to be great. Some will break the rules and mislead their audience about your products, spam people, say inappropriate things concerning your brand or even damage your reputation. And that might cost you more damage than the commissions they earned.

Therefore, you need to have provisions in your affiliate terms and conditions template that entitle you not only to terminate their affiliation but also to take away all their rights to commissions immediately.

9. Ban affiliates from your program for whatever reason

Some are bad apples, and some are not necessarily all that ‘bad’, but the behaviour, maybe how they communicate to their audience about your brand or products, may have some negative effects. Or maybe your affiliation with certain affiliates has undesirable effects on your reputation that are not necessarily ‘bad’ but not how you want to be portrayed.

That is why you need to have the proper wording in your affiliate terms and conditions template that allows you to terminate their affiliation with immediate effect and for whatever reason, even if they technically adhere to all your rules.

You do not want to end up in a discussion with your affiliates about whether they have complied with all your rules. It’s your affiliate program, so you should be entitled, at your own discretion, to keep and remove whoever you want.

10. Dealing with claims from customers

When your affiliates say things about your products that are not true or misleading, you should not be the one held responsible for that.

If you receive a claim from customers based on misinformation from your affiliates, your affiliates should pay, not you.

Therefore, your affiliate terms and conditions template should have indemnities and exclusions of liability for claims from customers and others because of incorrect information the affiliate provides about your brand or product.

11. Keep an eye on your affiliates

Even though your affiliates can place their affiliate links wherever they want, you want to be able to monitor whether your affiliates comply with your affiliate terms.

Thus, you must include the following in your affiliate terms and conditions template:

The right to inquire about where exactly your affiliate links are placed by your affiliates.
Access to any platforms that may be exclusive, like your affiliates’ membership programs or paid courses.
The obligation of your affiliates to inform you about how your affiliate links are used whenever you ask about that.

Want to dig deeper into some of the crucial terms we just discussed? Read this blog post on the 9 Must-Haves for Your Affiliate Terms and Conditions.

Using a free one page affiliate agreement template

If you got your template from an AI affiliate terms and conditions generator or are using a one page affiliate agreement template you found online, use this list to ensure it contains all the important terms your brand needs.

You can use this list as your checklist for your affiliate terms and conditions template!

My simple affiliate agreement template

If you want to ensure you have an affiliate terms and conditions template with all the essentials I just discussed, my simple affiliate agreement template contains everything you need!

With “simple”, I’m not saying my template is a one page affiliate agreement template, but it is simple to use and easy to create, with guidance for every step. My affiliate terms and conditions template is comprehensive and fully customisable for your specific affiliate program. It contains everything you need to protect your brand’s reputation and money!

You can purchase your affiliate terms and conditions template on this page of my contract shop.

This post was all about the crucial terms your affiliate terms and conditions template must have to protect your brand’s reputation and money.

Want to dig deeper into some of the crucial terms we just discussed? Read this blog post on the 9 Must-Haves for Your Affiliate Terms and Conditions.

Want to learn more about affiliate terms and conditions? Read this blog post on What Is an Affiliate Agreement | The Ultimate Guide for New Brands (+ 13 Key Essentials & Mistakes to Avoid).

Want to know what mistakes to avoid when using a simple affiliate agreement template? Read this blog post on the 5 Major Mistakes to AVOID in Your Affiliate Program Terms and Conditions.

You can get your affiliate terms and conditions template on this page of my contract shop!