MIDWEST SUPPLIES AFFILIATE TERMS AND CONDITIONS

Please read our affiliate terms and conditions carefully before you join our program or begin promoting our program. Each Affiliate is responsible for assuring that its employees, agents and contractors comply with these terms and conditions.  Affiliate terms and conditions are subject to change.

DEFINITIONS

As used in these terms and conditions: (i) “affiliate” or “Affiliate” means an individual or entity enrolling in the Program to market certain products on behalf of Midwest Supplies for a commission tracked through our affiliate tracking platform. (ii) “we”, “us”, or “our” refers to Midwest Supplies; (iii) “you” or “your” refers to the Affiliate; (iv) “our website” refers to the Midwest Supplies website located at www.northernberwer.com; (v) “your website” refers to any websites that you will link to Our Website; (vi) “Program” refers to the Midwest Supplies Affiliate Program, of which these terms and conditions are a part.

ENROLLMENT IN THE AFFILIATE PROGRAM

After we receive your application, we review your website and promotional methods and notify of your acceptance or rejection into our program. Please include all your websites that you plan to use for promoting our products and mention any other traffic sources that you might use for promotion. Application review can take up to 48 hours. Midwest Supplies reserves the right to approve or reject any application for any reason including if we determine that your website is unsuitable for participating in our program. Sites not suitable for enrollment in our program may include: coupon sites, sites that contain content inappropriate for our target audience, sites with very less content or content that aren’t relevant to our products etc.

If for some reason you believe that your website was unreasonably declined for participation in the program, we encourage you to contact us with a clear explanation as to why your website might be appropriate for Midwest Supplies’ audience. Please also note that if your website was approved and later determined that it was unsuitable to participate in our program, we may terminate your participation without notice and any unpaid commission accrued may be voided. Our approval of your Website shall not be considered an acknowledgement of any qualities of your Website or waive your obligation to comply with all of the terms contained herein.

You will ensure that your information including your email address is up to date at all times as we may send communications related to the affiliate program to the email address associated at with your account. You will be deemed to have received all notifications, approvals, and other communications sent to tat email address, even if the email address associated with your account is no longer current.

Your participating website(s) may not:

1. Infringe on our or any anyone else’s intellectual property, publicity, privacy or other rights or violate any law, rule or regulation.


2. Contain any content that is harassing, defamatory, threatening, obscene or harmful to minors.


3. Contain nudity, pornography or sexually explicit materials.


4. Incentivize or reward anyone for clicking on affiliate links pointing to our website that results in a commission or promote any sweepstakes or contests to do the same.


5. Contain any viruses, Trojan horses, worms, time bombs, cancelbots, or other computer programming routines that are intended to damage, interfere with, surreptitiously intercept or expropriate any system, data, or personal information.


6. Contain software or use technology that attempts to intercept, divert or redirect Internet traffic to or from any other website, or that potentially enables the diversion of affiliate commissions from another website. This includes toolbars, browser plug-ins, extensions and add-ons.

LINKING TO OUR WEBSITE

Upon acceptance into the Program, links will be made available to you through the affiliate interface. your acceptance in our Program means you agree to abide by the following.

1. You will only use linking code or tracking URL obtained from the affiliate interface without modification or manipulation.


2. All your domains that use your affiliate links to promote us must be listed in your affiliate profile.


3. your website used for promotion will not in any way resemble, or mirror the look and feel of our website. You will also not use any other means such as using a similarly named domain to create the impression that your website is our website or any part of it including, without limitation, framing of our website in any manner.


4. We will not be liable to you with respect to any failure by you to use tracking links.


5. You will not engage in any kind of cookie stuffing, include misleading pop-ups or links on your website where our products are being promoted. In addition, you will not attempt to mask the referring URL information (i.e. the page from where the click is originating).


6. Using redirects to bounce a click off of a domain from which the click did not originate in order to give the appearance that it came from that domain is prohibited.


7. You acknowledge that, by participating in the Program and placing any of the tracking links on your Website, we may receive information from or about visitors to your Website. We may monitor, crawl or otherwise investigate your website in connection with the program.

QUALIFYING PURCHASES

We will pay Standard Program Fees in connection with “Qualifying Purchases”, which (subject to the exclusions) occur when:

1. Our customer clicks through an affiliate link on your site to northernbrewer.com and subsequently makes a purchase, pays for, and receives the order.


2. For each Qualifying Purchase, the corresponding “Qualifying Revenue” is equal to the amount we actually receive from that Qualifying Purchase, less any shipping charges, gift-wrapping fees, taxes, service charges, rebates, credit card processing fees, and bad debt.

DISQUALIFIED PURCHASES

Qualifying Purchases are disqualified whenever they occur in connection with a violation of this Affiliate Program Fee Statement or any other terms, conditions, specifications, statements, and policies that we may issue from time to time that apply to the Affiliate Program. For example, no Program Fees are payable for a purchase that is not correctly tracked or reported because the links from your site to the www.northernbrewer.com are not properly formatted, or for a purchase through a Special Link that violates the terms of the Affiliate Program.

Additionally, the following purchases that would otherwise be Qualified Purchases are disqualified and excluded from our Affiliate Program:

1. Any product purchased after termination of your affiliate contract. 


2.  Any Product order where a cancellation, return, or refund has been initiated.


3. Any Product purchased by a customer who is referred to Midwest Supplies through any advertisement that you purchased through participation in bidding or auctions on keywords, search terms, or other identifiers that include the word “Midwest Supplies”, or “northern brewing”, or any other trademark of Midwest Supplies, or variations or misspellings of any of those words (e.g., “Nothern Brewer”, “northernbrewer”, and “northern brewing”) (all, a “Prohibited Paid Search Placement”)


4. Any product purchased by a customer who is referred to Midwest Supplies by a link that sends users indirectly to the Midwest Supplies site via an intermediate site via redirection, without requiring the customer to click on a link or take some other affirmative action on that intermediate site.


5. Any Product purchased by a customer, where such customer does not comply with the terms and conditions applicable to the Midwest Supplies site.

PPC GUIDELINES

If you are enrolled in our Program and participate in pay-per-click “PPC” advertising, you must adhere to our PPC guidelines as follows:

1. You may not bid on any of our trademarked terms (which are identified below), including any variations or misspellings thereof for search or content-based campaigns on Google, Bing, Facebook, Adroll or any other PPC network.


2. You may not use our trademarked terms in sequence with any other keyword to target potential buyers (e.g. Midwest Supplies Coupons, Midwest Supplies Vouchers etc.).


3. You may not use our trademarked terms in your ad title, ad copy, display name or as the display URL.


4. You may not direct links coming from a PPC ad to our website or use redirects that yield the same result. Affiliate links must be directed to an actual page on your website where you might be promoting Midwest Supplies.


5. You may not bid in any manner appearing higher than Midwest Supplies for any search term in position 1-5 in any auction style pay-per-click advertising program.


6. If you automate your PPC campaigns, it is your responsibility to exclude our trademarked terms from your program and we strongly suggest you add our trademarked terms as negative keywords. We have a strict no tolerance policy on PPC trademark bidding. You will forfeit all commissions for a minimum of the past 30 days and your commission will be set to 0% without warning if you engage in PPC trademark bidding that uses our trademarked terms.

Trademarked Terms: Midwest Supplies, NorthernBrewer.com, www.northernbrewer.com

COUPON GUIDELINES

If you are enrolled in our Program and Your Website promotes coupon codes, you must adhere to our coupon guidelines (“Coupon Guidelines”) as follows:

1. You may ONLY advertise coupon codes that are provided to you through the Program that are displayed on Our Website(s).


2. Posting any information about how to work around the requirements of a coupon/promotion (e.g. first time customers only) will result in removal from the Program.


3. Coupons must be displayed in their entirety with the full offer, valid expiration date and time and code.


4. You may NOT use any technology that covers up the coupon code and generates the affiliate click by revealing the code(s).


5. You may NOT advertise coupon codes obtained from any non-affiliate marketing channel, including coupon codes from our email, paid search or any other non-affiliate advertising campaigns.


6. You may NOT give the appearance that any ongoing offer requires clicking from Your Website in order to redeem. For example, if all items on the site have free shipping over $100, you may not turn this into an offer that infers that the customer must click from Your Website to get this deal.


7. You may NOT present a button that claims to show all offers that sets the affiliate cookie in the background.


8. You may NOT display codes that do not exist in order to generate a click.


9. You may NOT use technology that generates a click or sets the cookie from the action of copying a coupon code or through a pop under.

DOMAIN NAMES
Use of any of our trademarked terms as part of the domain or sub-domain for your website (e.g. northern.brewer.com or northern-brewer.com), using a misspelled version of our website’s domain (e.g., northenbrewer.com), or using the exact same name as our domain only with a different top level name(e.g., northernbrewer.cc)  is strictly prohibited.

EMAIL MARKETING, ADVERTISING & PUBLICITY
If you want to promote our Program via email campaigns, you must adhere to the following:

1. Abide by the CAN-SPAM Act of 2003 (Public Law No. 108-187) (the “Act”) with respect to our Program.


2. Email must set forth you as the “sender” of such messages as required by the Act and must not imply that the email is being sent on behalf of Midwest Supplies.


3. Email must adhere to our Program terms and remain consistent with the Midwest Supplies brand.


4. Email with content promoting our website or products may only be sent to those who opted in to receive emails from you and may not be sent to email addresses obtained via other means such as email harvesting.


5. You may not send SMS or MMS messages promoting Midwest Supplies to a user’s device unless the user has specifically opted in to receiving such messages, in compliance with all applicable laws, rules, regulations and best industry practices.

SOCIAL MEDIA AND VIDEO SHARING SITES
Promotion on Facebook, Twitter, Google Plus and other social media platforms as well as on Youtube, Vimeo or other video sharing sites is permitted following these general guidelines:

1. You shall comply with all terms, conditions, guidelines and rules set forth by the applicable social media platform provider or video sharing site, and shall not take any actions that would put Midwest Supplies in violation of such requirements.


2. You ARE allowed to promote offers to your own lists; more specifically, you’re welcome to use your affiliate links on your own Facebook, Twitter, Youtube etc. pages.


3. You ARE PROHIBITED from posting your affiliate links on Midwest Supplies’ social media sites (including without limitation Midwest Supplies’ Facebook, Twitter, Youtube or Pinterest company pages, or any Midwest Supplies administered social pages in an attempt to turn those links into affiliate sales.


4. You ARE PROHIBITED from using Midwest Supplies’ trademarked company name or any variation as a targeted “Interest” or keyword in ads purchased on Facebook.


5. You ARE PROHIBITED from creating a social media account that includes Midwest Supplies’ trademark in the page name and/or username.


6. You ARE PROHIBITED from using misleading posts on your social pages to direct traffic to Midwest Supplies.

OPERATIONS OUTSIDE UNITED STATES

If you are conducting business in or taking orders from persons in other countries, you will follow the laws of those countries.  For example, you will comply with the European Union’s Privacy and Electronic Communications Directive if you are conducting business in or taking orders from persons in one or more of the European Union countries.

REVERSAL & COMMUNICATION POLICY

Midwest Supplies takes pride in its very low reversal rate, which we attribute to open communication with our affiliates. However, we reserve the right to reverse orders due to order cancellations, duplicate tracking, returns, disputed charges, and program violations as outlined in these terms and conditions.

Additionally, if we ask you for clarification or more information on any orders or clicks that we suspect may be in violation of our terms and conditions, we expect that you will respond in a timely and honest manner. Below are violations of our communications policy.

1. You are not forthcoming, intentionally vague or are found to be lying.   


2. You are not responsive within a reasonable time period and after multiple attempts to contact with information listed in your network profile.


3. You cannot substantiate or validate the source of your traffic to our program with clear and demonstrable proof.

If any of the above apply, then we reserve the absolute right to reverse orders, set your commission to 0% for those orders or suspend you from the program for the period or orders in question. We know that many violations are a result of automated processes; however it is incumbent upon each affiliate to ensure that it has the appropriate checks and balances in place to pro-actively address these issues and adhere to our program rules.

FTC DISCLOSURE REQUIREMENTS 

You shall include a disclosure statement within any and all pages, blog posts, social media posts and emails where affiliate links for our affiliate Program are posted, and where it is not clear that the link is a paid advertisement. This disclosure statement should be clear and concise, stating that we are compensating you for your review or endorsement. If you received the product for free from us or from the affiliate management team for review, this also must be clearly stated in your disclosure.

• Disclosures must be made in as close proximity as possible to the claims.


• Disclosures should be placed above the fold; scrolling should not be necessary to find the disclosure. (e.g. Disclosure should be visible before the jump).


• Pop-up disclosures are prohibited.

You must comply with all FTC disclosure requirements, including the FTC’s “Dot Com Disclosures” Guidelines at http://www.ftc.gov/os/2013/03/130312dotcomdisclosures.pdf; and the FTC’s Endorsement Guidelines at: https://www.ftc.gov/tips-advice/business-center/advertising-and-marketing/endorsements

Transaction Lock Dates

All sales will remain in a “pending period” and will not lock until 30 days following the date of the transaction.  All payments will be processed on the 20th of the month following the lock date. For example, if a transaction occurs on 4/17, it locks on 5/17 and is paid on 6/20.

SUB-AFFILIATE NETWORKS

Promoting Midwest Supplies through a sub-affiliate network is permitted, however you must be completely transparent with regards to where traffic from your sub-affiliates originated. Sub-affiliate networks must ensure that all sub-affiliates promoting the Midwest Supplies program adhere to our program terms and conditions. This includes restrictions on advertising through toolbars, browser extensions, and through any paid placements such as a pay-per-click campaigns. Sub-affiliate networks must also receive approval prior to allowing any type of coupon sub-affiliate to promote the Midwest Supplies program. 

Failure to comply with our sub-affiliate network terms may result in a loss and/or reduction of commission from sales made through any sub-affiliate that does not comply with our program terms.