Essential Documents To Use By Affiliate Marketers

There are some legal documents required when working as an affiliate marketer but many fail to realize this. Your business could easily be closed down with just one complaint so it is essential that you know what these documents are.

The documents that you need to put in place to protect both your business and yourself are set out below.

Terms of Use & Disclaimer

The Terms of Use and Disclaimer basically limits your responsibility to your website users and it therefore protects you substantially. You would include paragraphs on the Use Of Site, Limitation Of Liability, Licenses and other miscellaneous items. For instance, if you have a website where you allow others to post their views, then you need to mention that these views are the opinions of the user and are not the thoughts of you as the site owner.

Privacy Policy

You need to make your visitors aware of how you collect and use the information that they give you. You need to state that you will not use this information for any other reason and will not share their personal information with third parties. Agencies like the Federal Trade Commission make cause you problems if you do not have this.

Earnings Disclaimer

If you are running an affiliate program or selling any information package then you need to have an Earnings Disclaimer. The FTC may shut down your business without it.

Copyright Notice

You need a copyright notice to protect your website content and graphics. It will tell your visitors how they can use this content and you should indicate that you don't want to share your website content if this is the case. Otherwise, the visitor will need to get prior permission from you or he/she will be breaking the copyright laws. If you do want to allow people to use your website information, then you should mention it clearly in the copyright notice which content, graphics or product is free for use by anyone.

No-Spam Agreement

State that you have an anti-spam policy and will not send any unsolicited emails to advertise your programs, services or products without the prior permission of the user.

Spamming includes not only sending emails to people who have not given you permission to do so, it also includes posting ads in newsgroups and forums where such activity is not allowed. Posting ads in chat rooms and message boards are also not permitted and this is classed as spam also.

Affiliate Agreement

If you are running an affiliate program of your own, then you will need this agreement. It's used to set the terms and conditions that your affiliates must follow. They are required to observe the rules that you set down while they are promoting your products. If they fail to comply with these rules, you are able to freeze their commissions or cancel their membership at any time.

Make sure that you have all of these documents in place before you start your online business, as without doing so, your business could be in danger of being shut down from even one customer complaint.


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Karen Thomson is a Super Affiliate thanks to the Simple Cash Blog. If you found this article useful and wish to learn more on how you can become a Super Affiliate too AND get some FREE bonuses, head over to => http://simplecashblogbonus.com