How to read a crypto affiliate agreement before you sign it

An affiliate agreement is a commercial contract, and in this sector it is usually one drafted entirely by the party paying you. That is not sinister — it is normal — but it means the document is organised around protecting the operator, and the clauses that will actually affect your income are not the ones the recruitment email highlights.

Start at the end

Read termination first. Almost every affiliate agreement permits the operator to terminate at will, often with little or no notice. The question that matters is what happens to your accrued balance when they do. Some agreements pay out earned commission on termination; others forfeit anything below the payout minimum; a few forfeit everything unpaid. The difference is the difference between a business relationship and an unsecured loan you did not know you were making.

Read the account-closure clause next, particularly any provision allowing the operator to close your affiliate account for a vaguely defined breach and retain the balance. Terms such as “fraudulent traffic” or “traffic not in the spirit of the agreement” are common, and they are usually defined by the operator alone with no appeal.

How your traffic must behave

Most agreements restrict the ways you may promote. Common restrictions include bidding on the operator’s brand name in paid search, using their trademarks in a domain, promoting via unsolicited email, and using incentivised traffic where the user is rewarded for signing up. Violating these is one of the most frequent reasons for forfeited balances.

Look also for geo restrictions. Crypto services are unavailable or unlawful in a number of jurisdictions, and referrals from a restricted market may be voided even if the user completed every step. If a substantial share of your audience is in one country, confirm in writing that the country is served.

Where the money can go backwards

Three mechanisms can reduce a commission that has already been credited. Negative carryover applies to revenue-share deals and rolls a negative balance into the following period. Chargebacks reverse commission when a deposit is disputed or recalled. And most agreements reserve a general right to adjust for fraud, sometimes retroactively across an unspecified period.

The question to ask for each is how far back it reaches. A ninety-day reversal window and an unbounded one are very different commercial propositions, and only one of them lets you treat received payments as settled.

How attribution is decided

The cookie window tells you how long a click stays valid, but two adjacent details decide whether it works in practice. Attribution is either last-click or first-click, which determines who gets credit when a user clicks several affiliates before signing up; last-click is more common and less favourable to publishers who introduce a reader to a platform early. And cross-device attribution is usually absent entirely — a user who reads on a phone and signs up on a laptop is often simply lost.

What the rate is applied to

A revenue-share percentage is meaningless until you know its base. Gross revenue and net revenue after the operator deducts its own costs can differ by half. Ask specifically which costs are deducted before your share is calculated, and whether that list can change during the term.

Similarly, confirm whether the rate is fixed or tiered. Tiered rates that rise with volume look attractive but often reset monthly, so a good month does not carry forward.

The questions to send back

Before signing, ask these in writing and keep the reply: Does a negative balance reset each period? What is the reversal window for chargebacks and fraud adjustments? What happens to my accrued balance if you terminate, or if I stop promoting? Is the revenue share calculated on gross or net, and what is deducted? Which jurisdictions are excluded? Is attribution first-click or last-click, and is cross-device tracking supported?

An operator that answers all of these clearly is telling you something useful about how they will behave later. One that will not put the answers in writing is telling you something equally useful.

How and when you actually get paid

Payment mechanics are frequently vaguer in the agreement than the commission terms, and they decide how much of your earnings survive the journey. Establish the payment currency: commission denominated in a token rather than a fiat currency transfers price risk to you between the moment it is earned and the moment it is converted, which on a volatile asset over a monthly cycle is a real exposure rather than a technicality.

Establish the payment schedule and the lag. Monthly with a thirty-day delay means work done in January is paid at the end of February, so your first payment is roughly two months after your first effort. Establish who bears transfer costs, because a fixed fee on a modest balance is a meaningful percentage. And establish whether the operator requires its own verification before releasing funds, which is common and occasionally the point at which a relationship stalls.

Sub-affiliate clauses and exclusivity

Some agreements offer a share of the commission earned by affiliates you recruit. This is legitimate and widespread, but read the term for how deep it runs and for how long, and be alert to any program where recruiting other affiliates is emphasised more heavily than promoting the product itself.

Watch also for exclusivity. A clause preventing you from promoting competing platforms narrows your options considerably, and is rarely worth accepting without a rate that reflects it. Related, and easier to miss: a clause granting the operator a licence to use your content, name or traffic data. That is usually harmless, but it should be a decision rather than a surprise.

What we do with this

These are the same fields we intend to publish for every program in our directory, sourced from the operator’s own terms and dated, with anything unpublished marked “Not disclosed” rather than estimated. Our approach to sourcing and ranking is set out on the Methodology page, and our own commercial position is on the Affiliate Disclosure.