Overview
Being an affiliate with Web Inn enables you to build up a residual monthly income from hosting, plus earn commissions on all domain registrations and project work (like website development) that we receive via you. An affiliate is somewhere between a referer and a reseller and is able to sell our services without having any of the responsibilites of a reseller or any of the limitations of a referer.
Unlike most hosting affiliate programmes, ours is A) hard to lose commissions on because we go out of our way to make people WANT to come to us via you, and, B) not prescriptive, but rather gives you as much control and flexibility as possible.
We achieve this by offering two affiliate options: a cookie based affiliate url that allows you to refer to our website easily and with peace of mind, OR, a sub-domain based option that works on the basis of a contained solution.
Each option has distinct pros and cons and it is up to you to decide which one you prefer. View our quick comparison for a basic overview of the differences.
Sub-domain based Programme - What You Get
- Free website that allows people to read all relevant information about our services, plus sign up or make enquiries on forms that are unique to you, without leaving your site.
This website can be marketed independently by yourself via any legitimate means that you prefer.
- Ongoing residual commissions on hosting.
- Healthy commissions on our various services and software programmes.
- Editing software that allows you to alter the non-critical content on your affiliate website.
- Banner and text adverts to place on any other of your websites. These are automatically encoded to point to your sub-domain website.
- Automatic updates of critical information, like pricing and policy changes. This works with iframes to avoid search engine penalties.
- Be copied in on all orders placed from your website so that you know exactly who has signed up for domain name registration and / or website hosting.
- Be copied in on all enquiries submitted from your website so that you know exactly who has requested a quote or made an enquiry for website development from your website.
- Printable project coupons that you can use for any offline selling that you may want to do AND that can be placed on your website to ensure that you get your commission on these sales. Each coupon offers a distinct incentive to visitors to make it worth their while to give you the credit for the referal. These incentives are not available to Web Inn clients in any way other than via our affiliates. - If they want to save, they have to come to us via you.
- Domain registration and hosting coupons that you can use for any offline selling that you may want to do. These work with incentives as per the point above.
- Affiliate member centre for you to see at a glance exactly how many signed up for what and what commissions are due and payable to you. This means you are never left wondering about what is due to you as an affiliate.
Cookie based Programme - What You Get
- Robust cookie and session tracking. Cookies have a lifespan of 365 days, which means that you will get commission as long as the visitor signs up within a year of their first visit. The first cookie recorded in the period is the one that gets the sale accredited to it.
- Healthy commissions on our various services and software programmes.
- Ongoing residual commissions on hosting.
- Editing software that allows you to alter the non-critical content on your affiliate website.
- Banner and text adverts plus coupons that you can place on any of your websites.
- Printable project coupons that you can use for any offline selling that you may want to do. Each coupon offers a distinct incentive to visitors to make it worth their while to give you the credit for the referal. These incentives are not available to Web Inn clients in any way other than via our affiliates.
- Domain registration and hosting coupons that you can use for any offline selling that you may want to do. Also work on an incentive basis as per the point above.
- Affiliate member centre for you to see at a glance exactly how many signed up for what and what commissions are due and payable to you. This means you are never left wondering about what is due to you as an affiliate.
Commissions Payable
| Service |
Amount |
Payable |
| New domain registrations |
25% (R50.00) |
Paid in the next payment cycle after payment received |
| Pure email hosting |
Nil |
Excluded |
| Website hosting |
20% of the new customer's first month's paid website hosting |
*Payable per month for the life of the account |
| Website development |
10% |
Paid in the next payment cycle after payment received |
Commission Payout Criteria
Commissions will only be paid once the amount due reaches R100 or more. Should your amount due in any payment cycle equal less than R100, the amount will be carried forward until this minimum amount due is achieved.
Bonus Commissions
All new affiliates receive a R25 sign-up bonus. This is payable subject to the commission payout criteria above and is only applicable to active affiliates.
In addition to the above, we also pay out performance bonuses. As soon as a commission due of R500 is achieved within any given payment cycle, an additional R100 bonus will be paid out. This applies to every amount of R500 due. Example: you have R1500 commission due to you in a specific payment cycle. Your bonus would be an additional R300, paid in the same commission cycle.
Affiliates may not request that any commissions due be carried forward to the next payment cycle for any reason whatsoever. Should any unavoidable situation arise (eg. an affiliate changing bank accounts) that leads to the accrual of commissions due, amounts carried forward will not be included in the calculation of eligiblity for a performance bonus.
Commission Payment Dates and Explanations
All commissions are payable by direct deposit (EFT) or Paypal between the 5th and 10th of the month (payment cycle).
All commissions are payable according to the commissions payable table above.
Commissions on hosting begin to be paid in the month after the first month that they become payable. In other words, the month after the guarantee month or the month after any free hosting period (coupons on web development offer free hosting periods as incentives to ensure that you get credited for the sale).
Commissions on domain name registrations are paid in the very next payment cycle.
Commissions on project work (like website development) are payable in the very next payment cycle.
Commissions are paid strictly on the basis of payments received. In other words, we do not pay commissions before we have received payment from the client.
Cut-off dates for calculation of commissions is the 3rd of each month.
Example on domain registration commission payment: Someone registers and pays for a domain name at any time between 4 March and 3rd of April (inclusive). You will receive payment of your full commission between the 5th and 10th of April.
Example on hosting commission payment: Someone signs up for hosting on the 6th of March. Their guarantee kicks in on the 1st of April and ends at the end of April. Provided that they are still hosting with us as at the 3rd of May and are up to date on payment, You will receive your first commission payment between the 5th and 10th of May and in each payment cycle thereafter, for the life of the hosting account. Should they pay late, the commission will become payable in the next payment cycle.
Example on website development commission payment: Someone signs up for a website to be developed and they pay their 50% deposit on 25 March. They then pay the balance due on 2 April. You will receive your full commission between the 5th and 10th of April. If however they pay the balance after the 3rd of April, you will receive commission on the deposit paid in April and on the balance paid in May.
Qualifying Criteria
There is no joining fee.
To qualify for affiliate commissions on any website development or graphic work, the project must be logged to your name prior to the project quote. No commissions are applied retrospectively to projects.
To qualify for affiliate commissions on any website development work, the affiliate must have previously successfully referred at least one development project on which no commissions were earned.
The above two criteria are in place purely to prevent abuse of our affiliate programme.
There is only one requirement for remaining an affiliate: in order to continue earning residual commissions on website hosting, an affiliate must remain active.
An affiliate is deemed to be inactive after achieving less than 5 new referals in any period of 2 consecutive calendar months. Should an affiliate become inactive through lack of referals, the commission payment made at the end of the first "inactive" period will be the final commission payment due to that affiliate.
An affiliate can also be deactivated despite refering new business, if he or she acts in a manner that is deemed to break good faith.
FAQ (Frequently Asked Questions)
What if I am an affiliate but also doing personal referals to people I meet - which process would apply to me?
You can use your affiliate programme for offline referals as well (people you refer face-to-face). Simply get them to sign-up via your own signup form.
On website development, you can either let them use your enquiry form or you can issue them with a redeemable coupon. You yourself can even call /email us with the information and we will contact them to take it from there.
What if I am an affiliate and want to resell website development, but branded to my company and not Web Inn
In this case the reseller criteria would apply on the website development, but the affiliate criteria would apply on the hosting. In other words, on the website development you would deal with the customer and we would be out of the picture, you would not receive any discount from us, but are free to charge the customer whatever you please. As soon as we are involved with the clients ourselves, our identity comes into play. Hosting can however never be branded to an affiliate.
Please take a moment to look at the comparison chart to see exactly how the different packages vary.
How does it work if I am both a client (referer) and an affiliate?
You can choose whether you want to simply remain a referer or prefer to be listed as an affiliate. The real differences come in with commissions payable on hosting that you refer to us and in the way that commissions are paid. Overall, it is more lucrative for you to be an affiliate. Please remember that you do need to specifically sign up for and be accepted into our affiliate programme in order to be treated as an affiliate.
What would qualify as breaking good faith?
Essentially an affiliate would be deemed to have broken good faith if they have intentionally or blatantly misrepresented our services in order to acquire a sign-up. Affiliates are required to familiarise themselves with our services sufficient to represent us honestly. As we provide all policy and pricing information direct to your sub-domain website (if you have one), and all other information is freely available via our website or by contacting us, it is easy to stay abreast.
An affiliate would also be deemed to be acting in bad faith if they breached any of our terms or advised any third party to do so; if they attempted to acquire or utilise any of our services in a manner other than that which was intended; or, if they attempt to reverse engineer, lay claim to, tamper with or in any way undermine any of our services or products, or our ownership/copyright thereof. This applies to any programmes that we may at any time become a reseller for.
I have more questions. What now?
Drop us a line or call us. We will be more than happy to answer any questions that you may still have.
