Set the rules for affiliates before they start promoting

Website terms usually govern your relationship with customers, not the separate relationship with affiliates who promote your business for commission. Affiliate terms can deal with approval to join the programme, how referrals are tracked, when commission is payable, what conduct is prohibited, and when you can suspend or remove an affiliate. Without those rules in one place, disputes often arise around attribution, unpaid commissions, misleading promotions or use of your brand in ways you did not intend.

The document commonly covers eligibility to participate, sign-up and approval rules, commission structure, payment timing, excluded transactions, promotional restrictions, use of trade marks, disclosure expectations, intellectual property, confidentiality, termination rights and what happens to unpaid or disputed commissions. Some programmes also need clauses about coupon use, paid ads, email marketing, social content or use of approved creative assets. The right mix depends on how tightly you want to control affiliate behaviour and how your tracking and payment model works in practice.

Important details include how affiliates are recruited, whether they are individuals or businesses, how referrals are tracked, what counts as a valid conversion, when commissions vest, and what marketing channels are allowed or banned. It also matters whether affiliates receive access to customer information or analytics. If the programme touches customer data, the legal position depends on how your business handles information in practice, and the right drafting and advice depend on how that information is collected, used and shared across the programme.

A template may be a starting point, but it often leaves gaps around your actual commission logic, approval process, restricted conduct and brand controls. Generic wording can also miss practical issues such as self-referrals, coupon misuse, paid search restrictions, clawbacks after refunds, or the point at which a commission becomes payable. A tailored document is useful where the commercial model is more than basic referral marketing. You get guidance on the main legal risks and practical next steps, while compliance still depends on your circumstances and how the advice is applied.

The fixed-fee covers drafting or reviewing the affiliate terms document and providing legal input on the issues described on this page. It does not include ongoing representation, technical implementation of your affiliate platform, security remediation, or tax advice. If you also need related documents such as website terms, privacy wording or a separate influencer or ambassador agreement, those would usually be handled as additional work. We can flag where those extra documents may be worth considering based on your programme structure.

Just submit an enquiry via this page or click the 'get started' button on our website to submit an enquiry. After you've submitted an enquiry, one of our legal consultants will review your enquiry within 1 business day and get in touch to get a better idea of exactly what you are looking for.

Then your legal consultant will send through an email with a bit more information about the services you need, along with a fixed fee quote setting out costs, scope of the service and timing. Have a read through it, and if you're happy with the scope, you can accept and sign our engagement letter online - easy!

Once you've formally accepted, we'll connect you with a specialist lawyer and they will work with you to complete your project. They will contact you by email or phone if they need to get in touch.

Sprintlaw works on fixed-fee pricing wherever possible, so you can review the scope and cost before you decide whether to proceed. For the Affiliate Marketing Terms Conditions service, pricing starts from $900.00.

After you enquire, a legal consultant will confirm what is included, the expected timing and whether any extra work is needed before you engage us.

We operate completely online, which means we can help you wherever you are in New Zealand. We have office spaces in Sydney, and in Melbourne, but our use of technology allows our team members to work remotely from around the world. Our legal team are mostly based in Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane and Perth. We also have a London office for Sprintlaw UK.

Our legal team is made up of experienced lawyers, who are specialists in various areas of law and hold an Australian legal practising certificate. None of our Sprintlaw lawyers are New Zealand qualified lawyers and they do not currently hold a New Zealand practising certificate.

They provide legal services working remotely from Australia via our 'legal consultancy' model, through which (under section 6 and section 35 of the New Zealand Lawyers and Conveyancers Act 2006) our Australian legal team are permitted to provide legal services to New Zealand businesses provided they do not provide services in certain 'reserved' areas of law. You can read our FAQ page to learn a bit more about our 'legal consultancy' model.

Given the strong similarities between Australian and New Zealand law, and the areas of law in which we practice (being small business and startup law), we do not view the fact that our lawyers have not qualified in New Zealand as having any substantive impact on the quality of our service. We are committed to ensuring that we provide high quality, affordable legal services to all our New Zealand clients.

Our legal team have all trained at leading firms, but have left the traditional corporate law world to join us on our mission to create a new and better way of delivering legal services. They have specialist expertise in technology law, intellectual property law, contract drafting and review, corporate law and commercial law.