Dominique,
The T & C contract is a standard affiliate agreement with no surprises. I’ll share a secret with you, most of the clauses were derived from leading poker sites, with content alterations of course to avoid copyright violations.
2.1:
Each Affiliate shall chose whether to sign up for the Revenue Sharing Plan of the Referral Fees Plan and such decision shall be final. Under no circumstances may an Affiliate change the Plan for which Such Affiliate have signed up.
The purpose of this clause is to avoid situations where affiliates start to alternate between the two models and create a “higher of which” effect, where they start with high cpa, then change to %%, or change back to cpa if they’re not happy with the %% reward for specific players. It does NOT mean that we will not open ANOTHER account for the affiliate, or change the account model for NEW players upon the affiliate’s request. In other words, we want to avoid a situation where an affiliate changes the model on which he is rewarded for a certain player, but we have NO problem changing the model as many times as affiliates want so that they can study our product better. As long as we don’t pay for one player twice.
3.4 Time of Payment. Affiliate Fees will be payable within fifteen (15) days after the end of each calendar quarter, except that, in no event will the Company pay to an Affiliate an amount lower than $150, and in the event such Affiliate balance at the end of a calendar quarter is below $150 such balance shall be carried over and added to the next quarter’s Affiliate Fees. In the event, the balance amount carried over does not total $150 within a three consecutive calendar quarters, then the amount due will be voided and cancelled, and the Company may terminate this Agreement.
The purpose of this section is to protect GammonAffiliates from facing legal charges in a case of several weeks delay in payment. Delay are usually related to CPA fraud inspections and other verification process (rake back deals, etc). (note: in the 12 months that we operate we did not have a single delayed payment incident, these are usually very extreme circumstances as CPA frauds harder to do in GammonAffiliates.
Our payment policy is as follows: Affiliates are paid on the 15th of each month to the previous month. We do NOT pay quarterly; Payments are released automatically unless the affiliates choose to accumulate them and cash out upon request.
5. No Competitive Marketing
It is hereby clarified that you shall not be entitled to market to potential Players (i) on any Internet site on which we promote the Site; (ii) on any Internet search engine on which we promote the Website; and (iii) in any other manner which results in your competing with us in relation to the promotion of the Website. In the event that you are in breach of the foregoing provisions, we reserve the right to render the Tracking URLs assigned to you inoperative and you shall have no claims against #siteurl#, its owner or their directors, officers, shareholders or employees in respect of such action taken by us
Search engine issue is related mostly to PPC activities (e.g. AdWords) which compromise the company’s positioning and/or listing due to Google’s policy. Check out PartyPoker’s 3.4 clause. Very similar indeed.
6. … All Players shall be considered as customers of Company only and an Affiliate may not contact a Player without receiving the Company written approval for such contact. If in the Companys opinion you either try to or do make contact with a Player without the Company’s written approval, the Company shall be entitled to immediately terminate this Agreement and to withhold all commissions owed to you at such time. Further, if following your receipt of Company ‘s written approval for your contacting or corresponding with a Player, Company deems that such contact or correspondence is against the best interests of Company, Company shall have the right both to revoke the approval previously granted and to terminate this Agreement and to withhold all commissions owing to you at such time
Dominique, this is a standard clause which protects merchants from facing abusive behaviors by affiliates who try to steal their players. It also suggests that players’ contact info is the merchant’s property and will not be disclosed to any third party, including affiliates who acquired them.
Obviously, if these people are a part of your community and you have their contact information before they registered with us, this clause does not take effect in your case.
I hope I answered all your questions.
Regarding Arnold’s question about Google’s classification of the word “backgammon”, it is harsher than it was in the past but as you can see there’s a decent amount of competition for it, although you cannot direct an Ad directly to GammonEmpire.com; But I’m sure that you all know much better than me, the different tricks and treat to make it work.