Affiliate program agreement template: twelve plain-English clauses to paste, with the source of each

By Jimi Barkway · Published 7 September 2026 · Part of the blog

What should an affiliate program agreement say?

In shortTwelve things, in plain English, on one page. What you pay and for how long. When and how you pay it. What happens to a commission when the money comes back. Four rules on how partners may not send traffic. How a referral is credited. What tax forms you need before the first payout. That partners disclose the link. That they accepted this version, on this date. And how either side ends it. This page is that agreement, clause by clause, to paste and edit.

The research method was simple. Six of the clauses are the rules in the manual on this site, in the wording it already offers. The reward and hold clauses use the centre of 358 public programs. So the defaults are what the market prints. The tax clause uses the IRS's own pages. Then I wrote the rest in the same voice and put the lot in one document. In my experience the template agreements founders download are ten pages of boilerplate around three clauses that matter. The three are the ones a dispute is about.

Two things first, and one of them twice. A clawback is taking back a commission after a refund, either by voiding it before payout or by deducting it from the next one. And this page is general information, not legal advice. The manual says when to spend an hour with a lawyer. This page says it again at the end.

The agreement, to paste

In shortBelow is the whole thing. Square brackets are yours to fill. Everything else is a draft in plain English, in the manual's voice where the manual already had the words. Read it once as a partner would, then once as the person who will quote it in a dispute.

1. The reward. We pay you [25%] of every payment a customer you referred makes to us, for [12 months] from their first payment. A payment means a paid invoice, not a trial, a free plan or a refunded charge. Commission is calculated on the amount the customer actually paid, after any discount.

2. The hold and refunds. Commissions are held for [30 days] before becoming payable. If a sale is refunded or charged back, its commission is voided. If that happens after payout, the amount is deducted from your next one. The commission follows the money.

3. Payment. We pay by [PayPal or Wise], in [US dollars], on [the last day of each month], for all commissions that became payable in that month. A balance under [$20] carries over until it passes that amount, and is paid then. You give us the details of the account we pay. We are not responsible for a payment sent to details you gave us that were wrong.

4. No brand bidding. You may not run paid search ads on our brand name, product name, misspellings of either, or "brand + discount / coupon / review" phrases. You may not link ads directly to our site. Commissions from brand-bid traffic are reversed. Repeat offences end the partnership.

5. Coupon and deal sites. Coupon, deal and cashback sites may not join without written approval. Approved coupon partners are credited through their assigned code only, not through last-click links.

6. No incentivised traffic. You may not offer payment, rewards, points or prize entries in exchange for clicks, trials or purchases. Referred customers must be buying the product because they want the product.

7. No self-referral. You can't earn commission on your own purchases, your company's purchases, or accounts you control. These are detected and voided automatically.

8. Attribution. Referrals are tracked with a [60-day] window. Where more than one affiliate referred the same customer, the first qualifying link inside that window is credited. Once a customer is attributed to you, they stay attributed to you.

9. Tax forms. Before your first payout, you give us a completed W-9 if you are a US person, or a W-8BEN if you are not. We may withhold tax where the law requires it. We file the forms the law requires on what we pay you. You are responsible for reporting the income where you live.

10. Disclosure. Wherever you publish your link, you say that you may earn a commission from it, in the way the advertising rules where you publish require.

11. Acceptance. You accepted version [3] of this agreement on [date]. When we change it, the version number changes and we ask you to accept again. The version you accepted is the one that applies to you until then.

12. Ending it. Either of us can end this agreement at any time by telling the other. Commissions earned on sales before that date are paid on the normal schedule. A breach of clauses 4 to 7 ends it at once, and the commissions concerned are reversed.

Why the first three clauses are numbers, not rules

In shortBecause those are the clauses partners read, and the ones the software has to match. The rate, the duration, the hold, the payout day and the minimum are settings in every tool on this site's tables. The agreement should say what the settings say. The defaults above are the centre of 358 public programs: 25% of the sale, for 12 months, held for 30 days.

Let's say you sell a $50-a-month plan. Clause 1 as written pays a partner $12.50 a month for a year, so $150 per customer who stays. Change [12 months] to "for as long as the customer stays" and it is a lifetime reward. 76 of the 343 programs that pay per sale print that. Change it to "the first payment only" and it is one-time, which 63 print. The article on what programs pay has the counts. The commission module has the margin maths behind the rate.

Clause 2 is the manual's rule 6. 131 of the 358 programs left the 0-day default, and 184 set 30 days. The manual's advice is to set the hold at least as long as your refund window. The hold-period page sets the vendors' defaults beside each other.

Why clauses 4 to 7 are the ones a dispute is about

In shortBecause they are the four ways a partner can be paid for a customer who was coming anyway. Brand bidding is a partner running search ads on your own brand name, which intercepts your own search traffic. A coupon site takes a last-second click at checkout. Incentivised traffic buys signups that never wanted the product. Self-referral pays a partner for their own purchase. The manual's wording is reproduced word for word because it was written to be quoted.

The manual's own line on why the wording matters is the reason clause 11 exists. "When the dispute arrives, 'it was on the website' is a weak position. 'You accepted version 3 of these terms on 14 March, and clause 1 hasn't changed since' ends the conversation." So the agreement is only as good as the record of who accepted which version and when. That is a software question before it is a legal one.

The program rules module explains each of the four in full, with the failure pattern each one prevents. The coupon article covers the checkout case that clause 5 exists for. The fraud module covers what to do when a partner breaks one.

What the tax clause does and does not do

In shortIt gets the form before the money moves. A US payer collects a W-9 from US partners and a W-8BEN from everyone else. Backup withholding is tax you hold back from a payment and send to the IRS instead of the partner. Without a taxpayer identification number from a US partner, the IRS requires it at a flat 24%. For payments after 2025, the 1099-NEC reporting threshold is $2,000 in a calendar year. A W-8BEN stays valid to the end of the third calendar year after it is signed.

The clause does not say what is taxable where. That depends on where you and the partner are. A UK or EU payer has VAT questions instead. The self-billing article covers the reverse charge and the self-billing agreement that goes with it. The W-9 article covers the US forms in full. The tax-forms page covers which platforms collect them for you.

For example, imagine a US SaaS with a partner in Germany who earns $3,000 in the year. Clause 9 means a W-8BEN before the first payout. It stays valid through three more calendar years. Now imagine a US partner who never sends a W-9. Without a TIN the IRS requires you to withhold 24%, and clause 9 tells the partner that in advance. Now imagine you are in the UK paying a partner in the UK. Clause 9 needs rewriting: the question is VAT and self-billing, and the self-billing article is the one to read.

When this page is not enough

In shortThe manual's answer, repeated. These twelve clauses plus provable acceptance cover the everyday life of a small program. None of it is legal advice. Spend an hour with a lawyer when a partner negotiates custom terms or exclusivity. The same when you sell in a regulated market with disclosure rules, or when serious money flows through one relationship. One reviewed document beats ten template downloads.

A word on this site's own product, with its trade-offs. AffiliateRail stamps the version and the time of acceptance on every partner. So clause 11 is a record rather than a claim. Self-referrals are detected and voided, and the hold and the minimum are settings. Refunds from Stripe or Paddle void or net off the commission on their own. It has no lawyer attached and no template library; this page is the template. It takes 0% of every payout. It pays from your own PayPal or Wise on a schedule from the $59 plan.

The wording on this page is the manual's and the site's own, offered as a draft. The tax figures are from the IRS's pages on the dates in the sources. It is general information, not legal advice. It is worth an hour with a lawyer before it carries real money.

Common questions