Updated June 22, 2021

Preamble

This agreement is between The Coptic Fellowship (Merchant) and Partner, and will define the nature and substance of the relationship between parties.

This agreement may be amended and changed from time to time, and it is the responsibility of The Coptic Fellowship to make sure that Partner is informed of any changes made.  Furthermore, if any changes require a response from the Partner, The Coptic Fellowship is responsible for giving the Partner a reasonable amount of time to respond, which is hereby defined as a 30-day time period.

Partner is welcome to suggest amendments or changes to this agreement and Merchant agrees to give each suggestion due consideration.

Terms of Use

The The Coptic Fellowship Partner Program (which will hereby be referred to as ‘The Program’) is intended to be used by the Partner to promote the Merchant’s products in exchange for a commission.  It is not intended to be used as a personal discount program, and therefore Partner may not earn commissions on personal purchases.

It is expected that the Partner will actively promote the Merchant’s products.  This means that promotional materials will be posted to Partner’s website within 2 weeks of joining The Program and/or one or more emails sent to Partner’s mailing list within the first month.  Further, Partner is required to maintain promotional materials on his/her website and/or promotional emails sent to his/her mailing list at least twice a year.  Failure to meet any of these requirements may result in the termination of Partner’s account.

Minimum Eligibility Requirements

In order to earn commissions with The Program, Partner agrees to the following:

  • To maintain a website that appears to be professionally designed.  This enhances the visitor experience and increases trust and respect, thus leading to increased profitability for both Partner and Merchant.
  • Partner’s site may be brand new or a site that Partner has owned for years.  Quality is more important than longevity.
  • Partner’s site must be focused on our primary niche, which is personal development.  Partner’s site may focus on any aspect (or sub-niche) of personal development.  Merchant’s definition for personal development is “information and tools to effect personal change”.  In other words, Partner’s site must focus on helping people change themselves, not the world around them.  This means that a site focused on Internet Marketing or “how to make money” does not qualify.
  • Above website must be located on a domain registered by the Partner or an agent acting on behalf of the Partner.  Thus, BlogSpot, Facebook, and MySpace pages do not qualify.  However, due to the nature of YouTube, BlogTalkRadio, iTunes, and similar websites, if Partner has an established following on such a business-oriented website, that will suffice.
  • Partner’s site needs to offer visitors a reason to spend time there.  Most web surfers quickly scan a site and decide in 2 seconds whether they will spend any time there or move on to something else.  If Partner’s site is unable to capture the visitor’s attention, any promotion done on that site will fail.  This goal can be accomplished by posting articles, product reviews, or other content, offering free ebooks, creating a web directory that offers at least SOME information on the sites listed there, or maintaining a blog or discussion forum.
  • Partner’s site must focus on real benefits to visitors and not be a platform for marketing hype.  For the same reasons, Partner’s site must not contain any content that could be construed as hateful, vengeful, sinister, illegal, or morally questionable.
  • It is preferable, but not required, that Partner’s site focus on building a mailing list where Partner can build a relationship with his/her audience.  This helps to make promotions more effective for both Partner and Merchant.
  • In order for Partner to maintain eligibility, Partner must actively promote Merchant’s products on an ongoing basis.  Either by maintaining promotional content on Partner’s site (banners, text ads, articles, videos, podcast episodes, product review, branded ebooks, etc.) OR by email broadcasts to Partner’s mailing list at least twice a year.

Agreement Termination Conditions

Partner may terminate this agreement at any time for any reason.  No action is required on the part of the Partner to effect this termination other than to stop promoting the Merchant’s products.  However, the Partner may contact the Merchant to express a desire to have the agreement terminated, which will be immediately acted upon.

If and when the agreement is terminated, any commissions owed to the Partner will be paid if they meet the minimum payout requirement ($50).  If this minimum requirement is not met, then any commissions owed to the Partner become forfeit.

Merchant may terminate this agreement only under the following conditions:

  • The Partner is caught spamming.  (Any generated commissions will become forfeit.)
  • The Partner is sending “junk traffic” to the opt-in page, resulting in a flood of subscribers who never buy anything.  (Any generated opt-in commissions will become forfeit.)
  • The Partner posts material to their site which may be considered hateful, vengeful, spiteful, illegal, or morally questionable.  This includes mis-representing, or giving a false description of, Merchant’s products or Merchant’s policies.  (Any generated commissions will become forfeit.)
  • The Partner’s website fails to meet the minimum eligibility requirements and Partner fails to rectify the situation within a reasonable period of time after being contacted by the Merchant.  (30 days)  (Any generated commissions will be paid.)
  • The Partner posts any suggestion that the general public should NOT buy the Merchant’s products.  Recommending that a specific individual may see better results using a competitor’s product is perfectly acceptable.  (Any generated commissions will be paid.)
  • The Partner fails to actively promote the Merchant’s products within any given 6-month time frame.  This includes promotional material posted to Partner’s website and/or email broadcasts to Partner’s mailing list.  (Any generated commissions will be paid.)

Marketing Materials

Merchant will provide Partner with sample marketing materials that Partner may copy and paste into their website and email broadcasts.  These marketing materials may take several forms and may include banners, articles, text ads, sponsor ads, solo ads, and/or other ads.  Partner is welcome to edit these marketing materials to better match Partner’s brand identity and personality.

Merchant will make a good faith effort to insure that all marketing materials provided to Partner are effective.  Partner is expected to personalized any provided text copy to better match their audience and present a true and accurate representation of Partner’s experience with the Merchant’s products.

Merchant cannot guarantee any specific measure of response to the provided marketing materials, as the Merchant cannot control the whims of the public at large.  Further, it is recognized that the relationship the Partner has with their audience (website visitors and mailing list subscribers) has a significant impact on promotional results.

Referral Tracking

Partner referrals are tracked using the standard tracking mechanism — cookies.  Cookie lifetimes are set at 90 days and all sales made during that time frame earn a commission for the referring Partner.  Referral reports show only UNIQUE visitors and not repeat visits from the same referral.  As such, when testing, it’s best to do so with ‘incognito’ windows.

Multiple sales resulting from a single referral are all tracked and the referring Partner earns commission on all of them during the tracking period.

In a case where the same website visitor is referred by multiple affiliates, credit is assigned to the last affiliate referring the customer.  This is an industry standard policy, and rewards affiliates who are able to be more persuasive with their referrals.  If Partner A makes a weak referral and the visitor is not convinced to purchase, Partner B may be more persuasive and get the sale.

Commissions

Commissions are earned on all completed sales referred to the Merchant by the Partner.  By definition, this is a Pay-Per-Sale affiliate arrangement.  The commission percentage earned by the Partner is 50% of the product total for all virtual product orders placed by the Partner’s referrals, except for products for which a special commission rate is defined.  Physical products (t-shirts, sweatshirts, hoodies, tote bags, mugs, etc.) earn commissions of 20%.

Commissions are not paid on shipping fees nor taxes.  If a discount is applied to the order, commissions will be calculated on the discounted amount.

Commission Payments

Commissions are paid on or before the 15th of each month for commissions earned through the end of the previous month.  This means that commissions earned at the end of one month are paid to Partner a few days later if Partner’s commissions are equal to or greater than the minimum payout amount.

The minimum payout amount is $50.  Only when the Partner has earned commissions equal to or greater than this number will commissions be paid.  This is done for 2 reasons.  First, to motivate the affiliate to continue promoting if their first promotion gets little results, and second, to minimize our accounting expenses so we can pay higher-than-average commissions to our affiliates.

Commission will be paid by PayPal only.  Partner is responsible for setting his/her PayPal email address in his/her member account.  If this information is not made available, Merchant will be unable to pay commissions.

No “processing fees” are taken out of Partner’s payment, as Merchant considers this a cost of doing business.  Merchant also does not hold back any amount of Partner’s commissions to cover possible refunds on sales referred by Partner.  If Partner refers customers with an abnormally high refund rate, the Merchant may choose to make an exception to this general rule.

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