Affiliates talk. In this vertical they talk in private Telegram groups you will never see, and a program with vague deductions or a manager who replies in four days is publicly known as such within a month. Most failed affiliate programs did not fail at recruitment. They failed at terms. These are the four clauses that generate almost every dispute we have been asked to mediate.
1. The NGR definition
“Net gaming revenue” means whatever the operator’s finance team decides it means unless the contract says otherwise. Bonus costs, payment fees, chargebacks, jackpot contributions, taxes — each one is either in or out, and every one that is ambiguous is a future argument.
Write it as a formula. GGR minus a named, closed list of deductions, each with a cap where one makes sense (payment fees capped at a percentage of deposits, for example). Publish a worked example with real-looking numbers.
2. Negative carryover
If a partner’s players win in March, does the partner start April at zero or at minus €4,000? Both are legitimate models. Only one of them is legitimate when the partner discovers it in the April statement.
State it on the sign-up page, not on page nine. If you carry over, say for how long and whether it resets. Programs with hidden carryover pay more for worse traffic within a year, because the good partners leave and tell the others.
3. Payment timing and thresholds
“Paid monthly” means nothing without a day. “Minimum payout €100” with a silent rollover to the next month is a deduction with a different name.
Fixed day, fixed method, fixed threshold, and what happens below it. Two late payments in a row will cost you your top three partners regardless of the commission rate.
4. Termination and post-termination revenue
Lifetime revenue share that quietly ends when the contract does is the clause partners screenshot. So is “we may terminate at any time for traffic quality reasons” with no definition of traffic quality.
Define quality in numbers — chargeback rate, bonus-abuse rate, self-referral — and define what survives termination. If revenue share stops, say when and why.
The commercial point
None of this is generosity. A program known for clean terms recruits without paying for recruitment, keeps partners without raising rates, and spends its manager’s time on growth rather than disputes. The ones with clever clauses spend that time on Telegram, defending themselves.
What to do on Monday
- Read your own terms as a partner would. Mark every sentence that could be read two ways.
- Add a worked NGR example to the terms page, with the deductions listed.
- Check your last three months of payouts against the stated day. If any were late, tell the partners before they tell each other.