Pilot Karaoke Affiliate Program FAQ
Below are answers to the most common questions regarding our affiliate program. If you are considering becomming an affiliate, be sure to also read the Affiliate Program Ternms and Conditions carefully.
Overview
The affiliate program provides a way for us to give others a financial incentive for referring customers to our site.
Our affiliate program is open to anyone based in the United States (providing a valid US based physical address) with a valid PayPal account that is willing to comply with our affiliate program's terms and conditions as outlined in the Pilot Karaoke Affiliate Program Agreement (which includes this FAQ).
The only technical experience required is the ability to add a hyper link (which will be provided to you) to your website.
No, not at this time. For legal reasons this program is limited only to US based affiliates. If you are non-US based and you attempt to register as an affiliate, we will remove your affiliate account. Commissions will NOT be paid and will not be due to non-US based affiliates!
Anyone can join our affiliate program as long as the other requirements are met (i.e. You are US based, you have a PayPal account, etc). Keep in mind, however, that affiliate commissions are not considered as earned and payable until they reach $50. (Approximately $1250 in orders based on the current commission rate). There is no time limit to accumulate to this, however. (We do have a gift card program for affiliates that rarely if ever exceed $50 in commissions, the that FAQ for details).
Commissions
At present, we are paying a 4% commission on all completed sales tied to your Affiliate ID. Commissions are not said to be "earned" until they accrue to be greater than $50.
Commissions are paid within 15 calendar days of the end of each calendar quarter for which your accrued commissions exceed $50. The months commissions are paid are January, April, July, and October.
Commission payments are sent via Paypal to the email address associated with your Affiliate account. (Affiliates are responsible for any applicable fees for receiving such a payment).
An affiliate will receive a commission report along with their quarterly payment. In addition, an affiliate can request a commission report on demand which will be provided within 5 business days of the request.
Although we work very hard to prevent such occurrences, we cannot be held liable if this happens. If you are not properly credited with an order and we can positively determine that order should have been attributed to you then we will credit you for the order after the fact. This is, however, at our sole discretion and will only be on a case by case basis.
If there is a technical glitch that affects all or most affiliates for a period of time, we will not typically go back and try to piece together what orders should have been attributed to each affiliate due to the overhead necessary and a lack of sufficient resources. The limit of our responsibility in this case is to restore the Affiliate functionality within 5 business days of discovering a problem or as expeditiously as possible if not within 5 business days. We cannot be responsible for lost commissions during such outages.
If there is a technical glitch that affects all or most affiliates for a period of time, we will not typically go back and try to piece together what orders should have been attributed to each affiliate due to the overhead necessary and a lack of sufficient resources. The limit of our responsibility in this case is to restore the Affiliate functionality within 5 business days of discovering a problem or as expeditiously as possible if not within 5 business days. We cannot be responsible for lost commissions during such outages.
If your company regularly exceeds $25,000 per quarter in affiliate orders, we may be willing to negotiate a higher commission rate as an incentive. Unless your company is particularly well known, we ask that you be a part of our affiliate program for at least two (2) full calendar quarters (at least six months) before contacting us to negotiate a higher commission rate.
No, not at this time. To keep the overhead for running this Affiliate program to a minimum, the commission rate is not negotiable by product or category. Under certain circumstances, we may be willing to negotiate a higher commission across the board for very high volume affiliates, but this will not be common.
Two reasons. One, you may be surprised at how quickly affiliate commissions can be earned by just referring 5 or 10 friends. The other reason is that unpaid commissions that do not reach the $50 threshold at the end of a calendar quarter can be transferred to a gift card for use in our store upon request. (We will NOT automatically do this). If you'd rather not wait until the end of the calendar quarter to receive your gift card you can request an early transfer, but such a transfer is not guaranteed.
Note: Gift cards are sent via email, you will not receive a physical card.
Note: Gift cards can ONLY be used on purchases that go through our Shopping Cart. Gift cards can not be used for karaoke downloads through our Tricerasoft Portal, from our eBay store, or via any other means that do not go through our shipping cart at PilotKaraoke.com.
Note: Gift cards are sent via email, you will not receive a physical card.
Note: Gift cards can ONLY be used on purchases that go through our Shopping Cart. Gift cards can not be used for karaoke downloads through our Tricerasoft Portal, from our eBay store, or via any other means that do not go through our shipping cart at PilotKaraoke.com.
Promotional Materials
Affiliates are granted a "License" to use the images and other textual descriptions of the products available on this site provided they are not modified in a way that reduces their accuracy or makes additional claims that are not made on our web site. For example, if you are promoting one of our CD+G dives, you can't make the claim that the drive will work with ANY karaoke software as this is not a claim we make (due to the fact that this is not possible).
Affiliates can obtain the images and textual descriptions of our products directly from the various product pages. Affiliates can obtain their affiliate ID from the Affiliate member's area of our web site.
Affiliates can obtain the images and textual descriptions of our products directly from the various product pages. Affiliates can obtain their affiliate ID from the Affiliate member's area of our web site.
Yes. The affiliate agreement has details on these restrictions, but the intent as that all affiliate advertising remains a fair and accurate description of our products or services, that Affiliates do not use deceptive or intrusive advertising practices (such as unsolicited SPAM email), etc.
NO! Affiliates may not use unsolicited emails as a form of driving traffic to our web site. Advertising emails with an affiliate link to our site or which point customers to any web page that has an affiliate link to our site must only be sent to the affiliate company's existing customer base or to other customers that have specifically opted in to such advertising. In either case, customers receiving such email must have the capability to un subscribe from receiving future such advertising emails and that un subscribe process should only require the customer to click no more than two links or buttons (e.g. an un-subscribe link and then an "OK" button).
Pilot Karaoke does not send SPAM emails in its marketing campaigns, and we will not allow our affiliates to negatively impact our company's reputation by sending SPAM emails.
Pilot Karaoke does not send SPAM emails in its marketing campaigns, and we will not allow our affiliates to negatively impact our company's reputation by sending SPAM emails.
No. Businesses joining our affiliate program MUST have a website that has at least one affiliate link to Pilot Karaoke (that also complies with the Affiliate Agreement). (This does not apply to bona fide private individuals that join our affiliate program on their own behalf and are not affiliated with a company that markets products on the Internet.)
Yes. Pilot Karaoke's Affiliate Program is intended for other companies that have legitimate products of their own for which our products would act as a good compliment. Although it is not our desire to have affiliates with a substantial source of income from affiliate commissions, we can allow such companies on a case-by-case basis. Please contact us for pre-approval.
Technical
When you sign up for the affiliate program, you will be provided with an Affiliate ID which is a 5 digit number. All of the links to our web site from your web site will include "affiliateID=XXXXX" appended to the hyper link. For example, "http://www.pilotkaraoke.com/index.aspx?affiliateID=XXXXX" or "http://www.pilotkaraoke.com/p-19-pilot-song-book-creator.aspx?affiliateID=XXXXX". Virtually any link to our web site can have your affiliate ID associated with it which allows you to limit your marketing to specific products or categories if you choose to do so.
When someone clicks a link with your affiliate ID, you affiliate ID is added to their customer record in our database (even for anonymous customers). When they make a purchase, the affiliate ID in their customer record is copied to the order record which is what will be used to compute commissions.
When someone clicks a link with your affiliate ID, you affiliate ID is added to their customer record in our database (even for anonymous customers). When they make a purchase, the affiliate ID in their customer record is copied to the order record which is what will be used to compute commissions.
You will still be credited with the order as the customer's record is flagged with your affiliate ID. Even if they return a year later to make their purchase you will still receive credit as long as they have not subsequently clicked on a different affiliate link.
When the customer clicks on your affiliate link, their customer record will be "flagged" with your affiliate ID. Any orders they make while your affiliate ID is associated with their customer record will be attributed to you. If the same customer clicks on another affiliate's link, your affiliate ID in their customer record will be overwritten with the new affiliate's ID and subsequent orders will be attributed to the new affiliate. This will not impact any prior orders made by the customer when associated with your affiliate ID.
It depends. If the customer clicks your link and then registers as a customer on our site on the same computer then you will receive credit for the order even if they later make a purchase from a separate computer or location as long as they make the purchase with the customer account they created earlier.
If a customer clicks your affiliate link and remains anonymous then subsequently makes a purchase from another computer without following your link to get to our site then you will not be credited with the order as there is no technical way to know the two separate customer records are for the same person.
If a customer clicks your affiliate link and remains anonymous then subsequently makes a purchase from another computer without following your link to get to our site then you will not be credited with the order as there is no technical way to know the two separate customer records are for the same person.
Yes. Its the hyper link itself that associates the customer record with your affiliate ID, not the location of the hype link. With this being said, please refer to the previously mentioned restrictions associated with email marketing.