DiscountMugs Affiliate Program Terms & Conditions

Updated 11/26/2019

Please read our affiliate terms and conditions carefully before you join our program or begin marketing our program. These terms and conditions are written in plain language intentionally avoiding legalese to ensure that they may be clearly understood and followed by affiliates. Each Affiliate is responsible for assuring that its employees, agents and contractors comply with these terms and conditions. Affiliate terms and conditions are subject to change. Thank you.

DEFINITIONS

As used in these terms and conditions: (i) "We", "us", or "our" refers to DiscountMugs and our website; (ii) "you" or "your" refers to the Affiliate (and, where applicable, extends to Affiliate's officers, directors, members, managers, employees, representatives, agents, parents and subsidiaries); (iii) "our Website" refers to the DiscountMugs properties located at www.DiscountMugs.com; (iv) "your website" refers to any websites that you will link to our Website; (v) "Program" refers to the DiscountMugs Affiliate Program.

ENROLLMENT
After receiving your application, we will review your website and notify you of your acceptance or rejection into our Program. Please allow up to 48 hours for your application to be reviewed. We reserve the right to reject any application; however, we encourage you to contact us if you feel we have made an incorrect decision. Including all of the websites that you use in your profile will help us make a better decision.

WEBSITE RESTRICTIONS
Your participating website(s) shall not:

1. Infringe on our or any anyone else's intellectual property, publicity, privacy or other rights.
2. Violate any law, rule or regulation.
3. Contain any content that we determine, in our sole and absolute discretion, is unlawful, threatening, harassing, defamatory, obscene, profane, vulgar, harmful to minors, or contains nudity, pornography or sexually explicit materials, hateful, or racially, ethnically or otherwise objectionable.
4. Contain any viruses, Trojan horses, worms, time bombs, cancelbots, or other computer programming routines that are intended to damage, interfere with, surreptitiously intercept or expropriate any system, data, or personal information.
5. Contain software or use technology that attempts to intercept, divert or redirect Internet traffic to or from any other website, or that potentially enables the diversion of affiliate commissions from another website. This includes, but is not limited to toolbars, browser plug-ins, extensions and add-ons.

You agree to defend, indemnify and hold us harmless from any and all claims, liabilities, damages, costs and expenses, including reasonable legal fees and expenses arising out of or related to (i) your breach of these Terms and Conditions or (ii) any suit, claim, or demand arising from or relating to these Terms and Conditions.

LINKING TO OUR WEBSITE

Upon acceptance into the Program, links will be made available to you through the affiliate interface. Your acceptance in our program means you agree to and abide by the following.

1. You will only use linking code obtained from the affiliate interface without manipulation.
2. All domains that use your affiliate link must be listed in your affiliate profile.
3. Your website will not in any way copy, resemble, or mirror the look and feel of our Website. You will also not use any means to create the impression that your website is our Website or any part of our Website including, without limitation, framing of our Website in any manner.
4. You may not engage in cookie stuffing or include pop-ups, false or misleading links on your website. In addition, wherever possible, you will not attempt to mask the referring URL information (i.e. the page from where the click is originating).
5. Using redirects to bounce a click off of a domain from which the click did not originate in order to give the appearance that it came from that domain is prohibited.

If you are found redirecting links to hide or manipulate their original source, then at our sole election, your current and past commissions will be voided or your commission level will be set to 0%. This does not include using "out" redirects from the same domain where the affiliate link is placed.

PPC GUIDELINES

If you are enrolled in our Program and participate in PPC advertising, you must adhere to our PPC guidelines as follows:

1. You shall not bid on any of our trademarked terms (which are identified below), including any variations or misspellings thereof for search or content-based campaigns on Google, MSN, Yahoo, Facebook or any other network.
2. You shall not use our trademarked terms in sequence with any other keyword (i.e. DiscountMugs Coupons).
3. You shall not use our trademarked terms in your ad title, ad copy, display name or as the display URL.
4. You shall not direct link to our Website from any Pay Per Click ad or use redirects that yield the same result. Affiliate links must be directed to an actual page on your website.
5. You shall not bid in any manner appearing higher than DiscountMugs for any search term in position 1-5 in any auction style pay-per-click advertising program

If you automate your PPC campaigns, it is your responsibility to exclude our trademarked terms from your program and we strongly suggest you add our trademarked terms as negative keywords. We have a strict no tolerance policy on PPC trademark bidding. You will forfeit all commissions for a minimum of the past 30 days and your commission will be set to 0% without warning if you engage in PPC trademark bidding that uses our trademarked terms or copyrighted works.

Trademarked Terms: DiscountMugs

COUPON GUIDELINES

If you are enrolled in our Program and your Website promotes coupon codes, you must adhere to our Coupon Guidelines as follows:

1. You shall ONLY advertise coupon codes that are provided to you through the affiliate program.
2. Posting any information about how to work around the requirements of a coupon/promotion (ie first time customers only) will result in removal from the program.
3. Coupons must be displayed in their entirety with the full offer, valid expiration date and code. 
4. You shall NOT use any technology that covers up the coupon code and generates the affiliate click by revealing the code(s).
5. You shall NOT advertise coupon codes obtained from any non-affiliate marketing channel, including coupon codes from our email, paid search or any other non-affiliate advertising campaigns.
6. You shall NOT give the appearance that any ongoing offer requires clicking from your website in order to redeem.  For example, if all items on the site have free shipping over $100, you may not turn this into an offer that infers that the customer must click from your site to get this deal.

Additionally, if your website ranks on the first page of Google for terms related to our Website or company name(s) combined with the words coupon, coupons, coupon code, promo code, etc. and/or your conversion rate exceeds 25%, you may be offered a lower commission than our standard rate to offset the reduced profitability of orders.

COUPON ATTRIBUTION & AUTHENTICATION

Affiliates whose primary business is posting coupons, who are viewed by the program as being a coupon site, and/or who are tagged as coupon in our system, shall not be paid commissions for sales generated without a corresponding valid coupon code. Valid codes are defined as codes that are made available to the affiliate channel in general, through newsletters or the Deals Database in Impact, and directly or privately to affiliates. Coupon codes that are not real, expired, not specific (i.e. up to 40% off sale items) or are long-term sitewide offers that do not require a code may not considered valid codes and the affiliate will not be given commission on these orders. 

SUB-AFFILIATE NETWORKS

Promoting DiscountMugs through a sub-affiliate network is permitted. However, you must be completely transparent - and upon request you shall immediately disclose to us - where traffic from your sub-affiliates originated. Sub-affiliate networks must ensure that all sub-affiliates promoting the DiscountMugs program adhere to our program terms and conditions, as amended from time-to-time. This includes but is not limited to, restrictions on advertising through toolbars, browser extensions, and through any paid placements such as a pay-per-click campaigns. Sub-affiliate networks must also receive our prior written consent before allowing any type of coupon sub-affiliate to promote the DiscountMugs program.

Failure to comply with our sub-affiliate network terms or our program terms may result in a loss and/or reduction of commission from sales made through any sub-affiliate.

DOMAIN NAMES

Use of any of our trademarked terms as part of the domain or sub-domain for your website is strictly prohibited (i.e. www.DiscountMugs.website.com or www.DiscountMugs-coupons.com

ADVERTISING & PUBLICITY

You shall not create, publish, distribute, or print any written material that makes reference to our Program without first submitting that material to us and receiving our prior written consent. If you intend to promote our Program via e-mail campaigns, you must adhere to the following:

1. Abide by the CAN-SPAM Act of 2003 (Public Law No. 108-187) with respect to our Program.
2. E-mail must be sent on your behalf and must not imply that the e-mail is being sent on behalf of DiscountMugs.
3. E-mails must first be submitted and approved by us prior to being sent.

SOCIAL MEDIA

Promotion on Facebook, Twitter, and other social media platforms is permitted following these general guidelines: 

1. You ARE allowed to promote offers to your own lists; more specifically, you're welcome to use your affiliate links on your own Facebook, Twitter, etc. pages. For example:  You may post, "25% off sale at DiscountMugs through Wednesday with code DiscountMugs25." 
2. You ARE PROHIBITED from posting your affiliate links on DiscountMugs Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, etc. company pages in an attempt to turn those links into affiliate sales.
3. You ARE PROHIBITED from running Facebook ads with DiscountMugs trademarked company name.
4. You ARE PROHIBITED from creating a social media account that includes DiscountMugs trademark in the page name and/or username.

OPERATIONS OUTSIDE UNITED STATES

If you are conducting business in or taking orders from persons in other countries, you will follow the laws of those countries. For example, you will comply with the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) if you are conducting business in or taking orders from persons in one or more of the European Union countries.

REVERSAL & COMMUNICATION POLICY

DiscountMugs takes pride in its very low reversal rate, which we attribute to open communication with our affiliates. However, we, in our sole and absolute discretion, reserve the right to reverse orders due to order cancellations, duplicate tracking, returns, disputed charges, and program violations as outlined in these terms and conditions.

Additionally, if we ask you for clarification or more information on any orders or clicks that we suspect may be in violation of our terms and conditions, you hereby agree to immediately and without delay respond and in a honest manner. Below are violations of our communications policy.

1. You are not forthcoming, intentionally vague or are found to omit or misrepresent any fact which we determine is material.
2. You are not responsive within a reasonable time period.
3. You cannot substantiate or validate the source of your traffic to our program with clear and demonstrable proof.

If any of the above apply, then we reserve the absolute right to reverse orders, set your commission to 0% or suspend you from the program for the period or orders in question. We know that many violations are a result of automated processes; however, it is incumbent upon each affiliate to ensure that it has the appropriate checks and balances in place to pro-actively address these issues and adhere to our program rules.

DISPUTES

You agree that the laws of the State of Florida will apply to any disputes arising out of or relating to these Terms and Conditions. All claims arising out of or relating to these Terms and Conditions will be litigated exclusively in the federal or state courts of Miami-Dade County, Florida; and, you and we consent to the exclusive jurisdiction in those courts. You also agree not to assert in any legal action or proceeding involving these Terms and Conditions that a court sitting in Miami-Dade County is an inconvenient forum for such legal action or proceeding. All such actions, claims, disputes or controversies shall be resolved individually and not as a part of any class action or class arbitration and the right to commence or participate in any class proceedings is specifically waived by you. EXCEPT AS PROHIBITED BY LAW, YOU AGREE NOT TO SEEK A JURY TRIAL IN ANY LAWSUIT, OR OTHER PROCEEDING BASED UPON, OR ARISING OUT OF THESE TERMS AND CONDITIONS.

SURVIVAL

The invalidity of any term or condition stated in these Terms and Conditions will not affect the enforceability of the remaining terms of these Terms and Conditions as deemed to be enforceable by applicable law.

FTC DISCLOSURE REQUIREMENTS

You must include a disclosure statement within any and all pages, blog/posts, or social media posts where affiliate links for our affiliate program are posted as an endorsement or review, and where it is not clear that the link is a paid advertisement. This disclosure statement should be clear and concise, stating that we are compensating you for your review or endorsement. If you received the product without charge from us or from the affiliate management team for review, this also must be clearly stated in your disclosure.

• Disclosures must be made at the beginning of the claims and may not appear solely in a "Terms of Use", "Legal", "About Us" or other linked page.
• Disclosures should be placed above the fold; scrolling should not be necessary to find the disclosure. (e.g. disclosure should be visible before the jump).
• Pop-up, hover state and button disclosures are prohibited.
• Disclosure policy applies to all social media, even when space is restricted (e.g., tweets)
• Disclosures should be made in the same medium as the claim (e.g. video, text)

For more information about FTC disclosure requirements, please review the FTC's "Dot Com Disclosures" Guidelines at http://www.ftc.gov/os/2013/03/130312dotcomdisclosures.pdf (example 21) and the FTC's Endorsement Guidelines at https://www.ftc.gov/tips-advice/business-center/advertising-and-marketing/endorsements%2C-influencers%2C-and-reviews

If you engage in so called "native advertising", you further agree to comply with the FTC's Enforcement Policy Statement on Deceptively Formatted Advertisements at https://www.ftc.gov/system/files/documents/public_statements/896923/151222deceptiveenforcement.pdf and the related guidelines.

PROHIBITION AGAINST SOLICITATION FOR RESIDENT AFFILIATES IN SELECT STATES

Due to local state tax laws, we unfortunately are not accepting affiliates residing in Missouri. If at any time following your enrollment in the Program you become a resident of Missouri, you will become ineligible to participate in the Program and your participation in the Program will automatically terminate, on the date you establish residency in that State. In addition, you must promptly notify us in writing of your Missouri residency, which you may do via the the email on file in Impact for DiscountMugs.

If you are an organization, such as a club or non-profit group, in addition to the above requirements, 1) you will maintain information on your website alerting your members to the prohibition against each of the solicitation activities described above, and 2) you will provide an annual certification under penalty of perjury that your website includes information directed at your members alerting them to the prohibition against the solicitation activities described above.

© 2019 DiscountMugs & Acceleration Partners LLC