Looking for an affiliate agreement template (6)
Just struck an agreement with a local company to do affiliate sales online for their product. I'd just like a working agreement to have in place while we get started before something really serious is underway. Does anybody have or know of where I can get a good template to draw something up from?
Hmm, I don't know of a template for anything like that - you may (in fact, probably should) have to ask a lawyer to draw one up, particularly if serious money is involved.
What's the juristiction (country/state)?
Get a lawyer, if it's not super unique stuff involved, probably he's got some kind of template so costs should be well worth it. Anything 'commission sales' or 'sales agent' should probably do a job if you just want to have something in place while starting out.
Agree with Caurmen, you won't want a template if it's big $, get something custom.
I will have to disagree here.
Affiliate agreements are simple and, for the most part, standardised contracts. There is no reason to reinvent the wheel, especially if you are paying someone $500 an hour to do so.
If you are a reasonably bright guy, you can do 95% of this work yourself. That is what I always did, and then I paid lawyers to just review the contract I created. As a result, we just paid for 1 hour of legal time instead of 12 hours.
This is not like drafting an M&A agreement for a PE backed multinational with 5 different classes in the debt and equity capital structure into a variable interest entity, where you definitely need to hire one of the top global laws firms who know exactly what they are doing and who need to draft a highly tailored series of contracts from scratch.
In your case, you can use pre-existing contracts like any of these for your baseline and modify them based on your needs, before having a lawyer review what you created:
http://www.cj.com/psa-us
http://secure.hostgator.com/~affiliat/agreement.html
http://www.match.com/cp.aspx?cpp=/cp...agreement.html
http://www.cafepress.com/content/cp-...useragree.html
http://www.hotwire.com/affiliates/terms/index.jsp
http://www.entrepreneur.com/formnet/form/1165
https://www.udemy.com/static/affiliate-agreement/
http://www.fatcow.com/affiliate/affiliateagreement.bml
By actually doing the initial work yourself, you will not just save money, but you will also become a much savvier entrepreneur. Doing the initial work yourself will force you to understand every clause in your agreement as well as the commercial and legal rationale behind why they are there. Most new affiliates and entrepreneurs are clueless when it comes to such things, so this experience and knowledge will give you a significant leg up on the competition.
cmdeal's approach is the same one that I use on standardised film contracts and simple IP acquisition deals - definitely works.
Do make sure to include the "review by a lawyer" portion of his advice, though - I've seen too many filmmakers and startup guys skip that step and get badly burned.
And do make sure that the standardised contract that you're modifying is appropriate for your juristiction. If you use a US agreement for a German contract, you'll not save much money because your lawyer will have to change so much.
Personally, if it's the first time I'm getting a contract in a new area for me, or I'm more strapped for time than money, I'd sometimes go the lawyer route even if it's a comparatively simple document. That means that I've got an agreement that I know is well-drafted for my situation and I can then adapt in future.
However, overall, given you're entering into a very well-understood class of business relationship, I'd say listen to cmdeal not my initial advice on this one.
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