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Billing terms and conditions template for Product quality

[Music] before you have affiliates promoting your products or services it's really important to have a contract in place to prevent any kind of legal issues or misunderstandings plus having a contract that dictates the affiliate partnership just solidifies the relationship and also builds trust which is a key ingredient to a successful affiliate partnership so in this video we're going to talk about what's an affiliate contract why it's a must to use with your affiliates and then i'm also going to share with you eight important things that you should absolutely include in your affiliate contract to protect yourself and your business and then as a lawyer i'm often asked how do you create an affiliate agreement on your own so what i've done is i put together a helpful affiliate program template that you can download instantly and i'm going to show you how to use that template and get done with your affiliate agreement in just 15 minutes if you're new to my channel welcome my name is amira i am the business lawyer blogger and coach behind aselfbrue.com where i help you make money online and legally protect your business with my affordable legal templates and coaching services please don't forget to hit the like button on this video and subscribe to my channel if you haven't already now let's first talk about what exactly is an affiliate contract you may have heard of it as an affiliate agreement affiliate program agreement affiliate marketing contract affiliate terms and conditions operating agreement there are all these different names for it but they're essentially like referring to the same thing which means that it's a legal contract between you the creator of the affiliate program and the people that are promoting your products and services the affiliates so it's a legal contract between you and your affiliates and it outlines the terms and conditions of your affiliate program so this way both you and your affiliates know exactly what to expect and what are the terms of your program and you both avoid any kind of legal issues that way now when it comes to using a proper affiliate contract with your affiliates you need to remember to include at least eight different things in your affiliate program agreement if not more but let's first talk about what are those eight important things that you should absolutely have in your contract to protect yourself as the creator of the affiliate program number one your affiliate program registration process just kind of letting your affiliates know what products they're promoting where where they can get more information about the program and just like what the registration process looks like and also letting them know like what's the cookie period cookie period is sometimes 30 days 60 days 90 days or even up to a year or more so you just need to clarify in the agreement that what is that cookie period meaning how long will the affiliate link work for sometimes you know if i click on your affiliate link there's a cookie placed onto my computer for 30 days that means within that 30-day window i can still you know um you can still earn a commission if i go ahead and purchase through your link but if the 30-day cookie period has passed then that link will no longer generate the commission so these are things that you kind of have to spell out in your agreement so this way your affiliates know exactly what that time period looks like so the next thing you want to think about is really important and that is what does the affiliate commission percentage look like you need to spell it out in the contract that how much you're going to pay your affiliates like what percentage are you going to pay them 20 30 40 50 of the sale you just need to clarify that in the contract so for example i pay very generously i pay 40 to my affiliates for promoting any of my legal templates in my store and that has allowed me to you know make seven figures but i also pay like six figures in commissions to my affiliates so you know you kind of have to weigh it out and see what works best for your business model and then you also want to reserve the right to modify the commission so you know when kovit came a lot of affiliate programs and businesses suffered and then they lowered the commissions which was unfortunate for affiliates because a lot of us do really hard work to promote other people's products but you at the same time can never expect how the business is going to generate revenue right like whether things are going to go downhill or uphill so you do need to reserve the right to be able to modify the terms of your program as needed and you need to put that all in the contract okay so now let's talk about the third thing that you should absolutely include in your affiliate contract and this one is everyone's favorite and that is payment terms i love paying my affiliates as a creator but i also love receiving affiliate payments so you need to let your affiliates know how and when are they going to get paid as for as for the how you need to let them know the method right so i highly recommend that this is a pro tip that you make your affiliate payments through paypal because by doing that you don't have to issue those 1099 tax forms at the end of the year when it's time to file taxes otherwise you'll end up owing those tax forms and have to worry about having your accountant issue those but if you use paypal then that paypal just kind of handles all of that tax paperwork for you now you also need to let your affiliates know when are they going to get paid like whether you're going to have some sort of a period in between where payment is on you know on hold so sometimes people you know reserve a payment and they don't pay until like 30 or 60 days after the transaction has happened because in case there are any kind of refunds you need to be able to have that money sitting instead of losing money and paying upfront but it's totally your affiliate program so you get to decide how you want to proceed some people make payments right away some people wait 30 days after to make the payment some people wait 60 days it's totally your call but you just need to clarify that in the contract okay so the fourth thing that you have to remember to include in your affiliate contract has to do with defining the relationship of the parties so you're being the program creator and your affiliates are the independent contractors and you have to spell it out in the contract so this way there is no confusion as to the status of the parties and you just don't want um you know any kind of confusion later on and you want to make it very clear that the affiliates are as independent contractors not your employees are responsible for filing their own taxes and reporting that income on their tax return and so forth so you just need to do that to limit your legal liability and this way it's totally clear that what the relationship is for both parties before we get to the next legal class that you should absolutely include in your affiliate contract if you're liking this video so far please hit that like button and subscribe to my channel and i also have a free legal guide for you which shows you how to avoid the common legal mistakes i see entrepreneurs making in their business so i will link to that free guide in the description of the video so definitely sign up for it so let's talk about the fifth thing that you should include in your affiliate contract and that has to do with your trademark and copyrights so as the program creator i'm sure that you're you know giving people the legal rights to be able to use your product images for promotions or maybe even your logo and some other promotional materials that you would be sharing with your affiliates but you need to still reserve the legal rights to have the ownership of all of that material and you need to clarify in the affiliate program that you're simply giving them a limited license in other words legal permission to use those uh you know assets those business assets whether it's product images whether it's email swipe copies or anything else that you're sharing with your affiliates you're just giving them the limited legal rights to be able to use that content strictly for affiliate marketing purposes only that they can't just copy and steal it and start you know using it for any other purpose so you need to like outline all of that in the agreement very clearly and these are like kind of tricky terms that you should honestly not try to write on your own because you wouldn't know what to write and you definitely need some lawyer expertise here someone that is well versed in the legal realm to be able to draft these contracts properly and to make sure that your illegal rights are protected okay so the next legal class that you should include in your affiliate contract and this one is really really important and sometimes people forget about this did you know that you could be legally held liable for the legal mistakes of your affiliates that's why it's so important for you as a program creator to protect yourself and cover your butt and one of the ways that you do that is to spell out legal compliance and federal trade commission affiliate disclosure requirements in the contract so under the federal trade commission you are supposed to give affiliate disclosures any time that you share affiliate links publicly so whether you share in an email or blog post or youtube video social media anywhere you need to give an affiliate disclosure which i'm sure you may have seen already it's something like this this email may contain affiliate links which means i will earn a small commission and no extra cost to you please see full policy here so something like that is legally required it's not an optional thing and you need to make sure that your affiliates are following these legal rules and regulations otherwise you could be held responsible for not putting them on notice and then not running your program legally so in order to avoid those mistakes and you know costly fines and issues you need to spell it out in the contract and put your affiliates on notice and also give them the responsibility to make sure that they're following the rules and are legally promoting your products and services also if you would like to learn more about affiliate disclosures and disclaimers and the difference between the two because people often get them confused then i highly recommend that you watch this video next because i walk you through uh you know a website disclaimer as well as disclosures that you need and i also give you the website disclaimer template and just a lot more in that video but it's gonna really walk you through everything that you need to know okay so now let's talk about the seventh thing that you should include in your affiliate contract and that has to do with what happens when someone doesn't follow the rules i mean we talked a lot about rules and all these requirements right but what happens when someone violates your terms and conditions then you want to be able to terminate that affiliate partnership right so that's why the next legal class that you should absolutely include is what's called the termination clause that gives you the legal right to be able to end the affiliate partnership and not owe them any money okay so the next important legal clause that you shouldn't forget to include in your affiliate contract has to do with the governing law provision in other words how and where legal disputes between you and your affiliates will be resolved so make sure to include that legal provision as well now so far we've talked about eight really important legal clauses that you should absolutely include in your affiliate agreement but there are at least 20 more additional legal provisions that you should have in a properly written affiliate contract that fully protects you as the business owner so in order to make your life easy what i've done is i've put together a really helpful instantly downloadable legal template that you can download and begin using in the next 15 minutes this is the affiliate agreement that is trusted by thousands of entrepreneurs that i've helped over the years as you can see hundreds of love notes on my website on my youtube channel on my facebook page and so forth so this template includes everything that you can think of it has 25 different legal provisions already built in for you you simply download the template instantly and fill in some highlighted blanks as you can see right now where i walk you through what to input you input your business information as instructed and you can start using the template in the next 15 minutes so the good thing about getting a legal template from a lawyer like me is that you don't have to worry about making legal mistakes you don't have to waste time trying to write the contract on your own you don't even have to research anything on google and most importantly you won't be held legally responsible for your affiliates mistakes so it's definitely a great legal contract that you can download i will link it in the description of this video if you would like to check it out also there are a couple of things to note here number one you can download the template individually which i will link to in the description of the video or if you would like to save more money and get the template at a much bigger discount then you can look into my vip legal bundle which includes this particular template as well as 15 other legal templates that you need to run your business legally it also comes with 16 incredible bonuses it's definitely a steal and one of my most popular bundles i will also link to that in the description if you would like to grab that bundle instead because it gives you all the website legal policies as well as other essential legal contracts that you need to run your business and you save a lot more money and time with that bundle versus getting the template individually but it's totally up to you now one last thing to remember about the affiliate agreement is to make sure that you have some sort of an electronic consent from your affiliates meaning you either get their electronic signature to the agreement or you get them to click to accept the affiliate terms and conditions at the time of signing up for your program whatever option that you decide you just need to have some sort of an electronic acceptance and consent from your affiliates in order to bind them now before you go do you have an affiliate program of your own i would love to check it out so please comment below and let me know if you have an affiliate program and share the link and if this video helped you in any way please don't forget to like it and hit that subscribe button so i can see more helpful videos for you thank you so much for your love and support all the helpful links will be in the description of the video and i will see you next time [Music] you [Music]