Our affiliate agreement

We are striving to keep this as simple and plain-English as possible.

Between:

This agreement is made between VariSearch-LLC, a McKeesport, Pennsylvania, USA based company (later called "we" or "us") and you, the affiliate.

Our relationship with you, the affiliate:

This agreement is not meant to convey employment of any type.  It is a 'contract sales' agreement.  If you are a United States Citizen or resident, and develop sufficient earnings during a calendar year, we will require you to verify appropriate information so we can provide you with a tax statement at the end of that calendar year (not a W-2).

If you do not reside in the United States, reporting of any income to your governmental authority is your responsibility.  Our sole responsibility will be to provide you with an accurate summary of payments made each calendar year.

No guarantee of income:

On the site, we have provided some illustrations of what money can be earned if you achieve certain sales rates.  You agree that these are illustrations only, and not promises of income.  Moneys earned by you will be directly related to the sales you help make, and earnings will be according to the information shown under Our Responsibilities / Payment, later in this document.

Privacy: Your info:

Any information you provide to us will only be used by VariSearch personnel.  Your email address will be used to contact you with news from our system, which will normally happen no more than 5 times per month.  Your name, email, address and payment information will be kept on file, but will not be transmitted to others, except in the case of a legitimate court order.  Simply put: we will not give out your information unless a judge requires it.

Also, we will not 'rent a list' of your email addresses, nor will we send out email on any other parties' behalf.  Some of our newsletters may occasionally contain 1-2 sponsored ads, but the main purpose of communication to you will be for VariSearch / VS-TrEx business only.  [Or to answer questions you might ask.]

Our responsibilities:

1: Uptime: No one is perfect: We will do our best to keep our server, sites and systems running, but will not guarantee 24x7 reliability of the system.

2: Crediting: We will do our best to make sure you are properly credited with any leads you bring in:

• We will attempt to place a cookie on any browser that comes to a referral page
• We will also make a record of IP address, browser type and referral ID on our own local database
• We will also provide a 'dibs table', where you can place a name and email address pair for someone you contacted directly

When someone makes a purchase, we will check the coupon code first, then the dibs table, then the cookie, then the IP address. 

3: Payment: We will pay commissions according to the stated schedule.  As of 1 April, 2006, the schedule is:

• Any direct sale by a non-customer affiliate: Affiliate gets 12.5% of license sale
  • If the affiliate achieves more than 2 sales in the prior 6 months:
    • The rate increases by 6.25% per 2 sales, to a maximum of 37.50%
    • All sales, including financed sales, are counted in the month the first payment was received for this purpose
  
   
• Any second-tier sale (sale by a referred customer): Affiliate gets $25.00
  • After 6 sales in the prior 6 months, the rate increases to $30.00
  
   
• Any customer affiliate participates in the "2 + 2.5" plan
  • That means their earnings start as if they already sold 2 copies
  • That also means that they earn 2.5% more at each sales level
  • This also adds $5.00 to each of the 2-levels of second-tier sales
  
   
• Payment for each sale shall be made when the return policy expires, which is the greater of:
  • 30 days after full payment has been made (non-financed)
  • 30 days after the first installment payment (not the up-front payment) has been made on financed sales
  
   
• If the purchaser gets a volume or reseller discount, this reduces the direct referrers' commission
  • We offer a 15% discount on purchases of 3-5 copies, reducing the base from $400 to $340
  • We offer a 20% discount on purchase of 6 or more copies, reducing the base from $400 to $320
  • Resellers also have the option to self-install, which reduces the base price by $80
  
   
• Payment will be made by electronic means: either through Pay Pal, Alert Pay, Money Bookers, eGold, or any other system we find mutually agreeable to use.
   
• For clarification on this table, see the 'potential earnings' page, which is now incorporated into this agreement.

4: Answers: We will do our best to provide timely answers to questions.  We will be adding an 'affiliates-only' section to the TrexCore.com forum for this purpose, but will also answer email on a best-efforts basis. 

5: No Fees: We will NOT charge for membership in this affiliate system.  This does not prevent us from having other systems that we do charge for, but we will not charge for you to be a member of the VS-TrEx affiliate system.

Your responsibilities:

1: Requirements: By joining our affiliate system, you attest to the fact that you are of 'legal age' in your locale, and are under no hindrance that would prevent you from entering into an agreement. Generally this means that you are old enough to have a driver's license, and have not been found incompetant in court. You further attest that the information you provide us is true and accurate, and not designed to evade taxation or other legal issues.

2: No lying: You agree to make only truthful and honest statements to customer or prospective customers.  You have the right to say "I don't know": a customer will appreciate the honesty.

3: Proper use of site resources: You may use our banners, text ads, and our 'postcard pages' in any manner you see fit.  However, you will NOT place your direct referral link on a traffic exchange.... this would fill our database with bogus entries credited to your account. 

4: No 'claim jumping': You will not be allowed to place 'dibs' on entire email lists.. the system is for direct-contact-people only.

5: No misrepresentation: You are not an employee of VariSearch, and will not represent yourself as such.  You are an affiliate, and we will generate an electronic business card for you upon request.  You may not modify that card, other than to resize it, if we provide you with one.

6: No popup/popunder or 'expired domain redirects': Many sites will offer you "exposures" through these mechanisms.  We state our belief that these systems are categorically a waste of money, and can damage our company's reputation.  Do not use these ad mechanisms.

7: No spam: You may not promote our software through the use of unsolicited commercial email (Spam / UCE).  You MAY send email through safelists, but MAY NOT purchase or rent email 'leads' to send this information out.  Remember: The only "double opt-in" list that you know is legitimate is a list that you yourself have built up; anyone else's list is fodder for a spam complaint.  We will not tolerate spam.

8: Working email: You MUST provide us with a valid email address, so we can contact you on company business.  We understand that people need to change email providers, and sometimes hosts do go down, but if your email bounces more than 2 weeks in a row, you will be in violation of this agreement.

Liability:

While we will make a 'best-efforts' attempt to keep the site and system up and running at all times, we will not guarantee the system will always be running.  So we disclaim any liability incurred due to site outages.  We will not be responsible for damages, direct, indirect or consequential, arising from the use or inability to use our systems or services.

Likewise, with our software: We have made a 'best effort' to make sure the software is bug-free, and will work as generally described on this site.  We provide free lifetime bug fixes to help address anything in the software we may have missed, or not anticipated (such as a new version of MySQL or PHP).  Outside of this statement, we disclaim any warranty of merchantability, suitability or fitness for a particular purpose.

Termination:

This is an 'at-will' agreement.  Either party may terminate the agreement at any time, without cause by simply providing sufficient notice.  Because this is an 'online company', sufficient notice will be considered an email to the appropriate address, assuming that the email does not 'bounce.  The only exception to this will be if your email stops working.  You may also terminate this agreement by logging in and closing your account, at which point, you will get a close notice, and your account will be closed within 3 days.

If you terminate the agreement, this will not prevent you from receiving payment for sales made in the month in which they terminated the agreement.

In the event that you violate any of the 'your responsibilities' clauses, above, we reserve the right to terminate the agreement, along with stopping any and all payments to your account.

Modification:

We will do our best not to make any drastic or dramatic changes to this document.  We will always keep the current copy at this location (http://vs-trex.com/sell/agreement.php).  Changes to the agreement, if necessary, will go out in the email to current affiliates prior to the change taking place.  We reserve the right to amend this agreement, upon the advice of counsel.