BlueHost.com Affiliate Agreement Program Terms and Conditions

Summary

BlueHost.com has an affiliate program that provides for a $65 payment of commission for any referral who signs up for their hosting services. The affiliate agreement as of 3 March 2014 is below.

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Affiliate Agreement

Our affiliate program is designed to help you generate income in exchange for referring new hosting clients to our company. Listed below are the terms and conditions associated with our affiliate program.

Payment:

• Affiliates are paid a one-time referral fee for each hosting account referred to our services. A referral is counted when a unique customer first clicks on an affiliate tracking link and within 90 days completes the signup process and stays active for 90 days.
• Affiliate accounts must be active at the time of the referral. No referral fee will be given to your affiliate account for sales that occurred before you joined the affiliate program.
• Missing or untracked affiliate referrals must be reported during the current referral period (1-15th of the month or 16-end of the month). Referrals that take place and are not reported during the current period will not be credited to your account.
• Affiliate referral fees are locked 45 days after the end of the month in which the credit is recorded. Payments are then processed and sent out from the 16th through the last day of the month or until all payments have been sent. EXAMPLE: Credits recorded in January will lock on the 15th of March and payments are sent after the 16th.
• Affiliates must earn a minimum of $100 before the affiliate account is eligible for payment.
• Payments are sent using the PayPal mass payment system (we pay for the transaction fee so PayPal does not deduct anything from the payment). If you do not supply a PayPal address a check will be sent. Payments by check take up to an additional 30 days to arrive. For larger affiliates with balances of over $10,000 per month we offer Wire Transfer. To update your payment information, please contact the affiliate department.
• Affiliates are responsible for ensuring that all payee information is up to date in the affiliate system. We are not responsible for lost/stolen payments. The affiliate is responsible for keeping all information up to date including postal and email addresses, name, payment information, tax information or any other personal information that will impact the ability to issue a valid payment. Failure to provide current information may result in forfeiture of any referral fees due to you. Referral fees that are left unclaimed or are returned for invalid or insufficient address information or for other reasons may be forfeited as well.
• There is a $35 charge to re-issue payment and it will be deducted from the affiliate earnings.
• Affiliates are responsible for making sure they are able to accept payments. Please ensure that your bank or PayPal account can accept payments from US-based companies.
• Affiliates are responsible for any and all fees, taxes, exchange rates, surcharges and other expenses incurred in order to receive their referral fees. Please check with your local banking institution or PayPal to find out if any of these apply for your account.
• Tax information is required to be on file in order for you to be paid. If you have not submitted a tax form, you can access it by clicking the edit button next to the Payee Information section of the Affiliate Manager.
• It is the affiliates responsibility to provide a valid tax form within 90 days of a referral fee being earned. If the tax form has not been recorded, the referral fees will be forfeited and no payment will be issued.
• Referral Fees may not be paid for a Referred Customer that has transferred from any of our partners or subsidiaries.
• Because of the high frequency of credit card fraud and cancellation rates, we reserve the right to hold referral fees for up to 60 days for verification. We also reserve the right to cancel referral fees in the event that we are unable to collect funds, the order is fraudulent, the customer cancels within the first 30 days, or if we learn that the referral fee was earned improperly for any other reason.

Reversals:

• Referrals must have an active hosting account for 90 consecutive days or referral fees will be reversed.
• Referrals that downgrade their hosting package below 1 year will be reversed.
• Referrals that issue a chargeback or are found to be fraudulent (false information, fake/stolen credit cards, selling counterfeit goods etc.) will be reversed regardless of the amount of time that has passed since the signup occurred.
• Referrals that cancel before you have met the $100 payout minimum will be reversed.
• Customers using non-standard rates (rates not available through the affiliate program) are not eligible for affiliate referral fees. Non-standard rates include but are not limited to: sales, promotions, email offers, prepaid accounts and discounted pricing offered for educational, government, non-profit and charity organizations.

Advertising Compliance:

• Affiliates MAY NOT offer cash back, rewards or other incentives to drive traffic/sales via their affiliate tracking links.
• Affiliates MAY NOT use traffic that is generated by pay to click, pay to read, banner exchanges, click exchanges, CPV advertising, pop-up/under, SPAM, purchased traffic or similar methods.
• Affiliates MAY NOT use cookie stuffing techniques that set the tracking cookie without the user actually clicking on the referral link (for example a 1×1 pixel iframe).
• Affiliates MAY NOT bid on or use trademark, trademark +, or misspelled keywords for the purpose of PPC on Internet search engines (Google, Yahoo, MSN, Ask etc.).
• Affiliates MAY NOT use trademark, trademark +, or misspelled keywords in their domain names.
• Affiliates are responsible for ensuring their tracking code is working properly before sending traffic to our servers. Any modification to the links is the sole responsibility of the affiliate. Referral fees will not be paid for tracking errors caused by editing, masking, redirecting or tampering with your links.
• The use of redirected pages and links to send a user to our site is prohibited. Example: you may not have a PPC link on a search engine that redirects the user to our site.
• Domain forwarding is prohibited – you may not purchase a domain and set it to forward directly to our site using your affiliate link.
• Affiliates MAY NOT copy our website or portions of it and display them on their own site or subdomain.
• Affiliates MAY NOT engage in the advertisement of business-opportunity sites or use marketing practices that attract fraudulent or short-term customers (customers with low retention and renewal rates).

FTC Disclosure Policy:

• It is our intent to treat our customers fairly and comply fully with all Federal Trade Commission regulations related to advertising (See http://ftc.gov/os/2009/10/091005endorsementguidesfnnotice.pdffor more information.). As such, we require our affiliates to comply with these regulations. This includes, but is not limited to, Federal Trade Commission 16 CFR Part 255: Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising, which requires, among other criteria, that material connections between advertisers and endorsers be disclosed. This means that directories, review/rating sites, blogs and other websites, email or collateral that purport to provide an endorsement or assessment of an advertiser must prominently disclose financial or in-kind compensation is provided from the advertiser.
• For more information and suggestions about how to comply with these guidelines, please click the “FTC Disclosure” tab when logged in to your affiliate account. Please note: this page is only intended to provide guidance. It does not purport to provide legal advice, nor does it guarantee that you will be in compliance with FTC regulations should you follow the suggestions presented there. You are advised to seek and obtain your own legal advice on how these rules apply to your website or other promotional activities for which you receive compensation.
• We reserve the right to withhold fees and/or cancel the affiliate relationship for failure to comply with the mentioned guide or other FTC regulations.

Deactivation:

• Affiliate accounts may be deactivated at any time without warning or notice. Your account WILL BE DEACTIVATED and referral fees set to $0 for failure to comply with the Affiliate Terms and Advertising Compliance contained herein.
• Any false or misleading advertising or suspected fraudulent activity associated with your affiliate account will result in immediate deactivation.
• Affiliate accounts generating a large number of fraudulent accounts will be deactivated.
• Affiliates may not resell hosting. All clients must provide their own payment method and contact information to be eligible for affiliate referral fees.
• If you would like to discontinue your affiliate status, simply remove your affiliate links and no longer promote them. For accounting purposes your account and personal information will not be removed from our system.

BY REGISTERING AS AN AFFILIATE YOU ARE AGREEING TO THE TERMS AND CONDITIONS. IF YOU DO NOT AGREE TO THE TERMS AND CONDITIONS, YOU MUST DISCONTINUE THE REGISTRATION PROCESS, DISCONTINUE YOUR USE OF THE AFFILIATE PROGRAM, OR DEACTIVATE YOUR ACCOUNT IF YOU ARE ALREADY A MEMBER.

Changes to the Terms and Conditions apply to you. You may review the most current version of the Terms and Conditions at the site. Bluehost may change the Terms and Conditions, in whole or in part, at any time at Bluehost’s sole discretion. Posting of such changed Terms and Conditions on the site shall constitute notice of such changes to you, although Bluehost may choose additional types of notice. Bluehost will use reasonable efforts to provide you with 7 days advance notice of changes that materially and adversely impact your use of the Affiliate Program. Your continued use of the Affiliate Program following notice constitutes your acceptance of all changes. If you do not agree to any such changes, your sole and exclusive remedy is to deactivate your account as described above.

If you have any questions regarding our Affiliate program, please open a Ticket in the Affiliate queue at http://helpdesk.bluehost.com or call us toll free at (888) 401-4678.

Thank You,
Bluehost