HQST Affiliate Terms & Conditions
Please read our affiliate terms and conditions carefully before you join our program or begin marketing our program. These terms and conditions are written in plain language intentionally to ensure that they may be clearly understood and strictly followed by affiliates. 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. Thank you.
DEFINITIONS
As used in these terms and conditions:
(i) “We”, “us”, or “our” refers to HQST and our website; (ii) “you” or “your” refers to the Affiliate; (iii) “our website” refers to the HQST properties located at www.drprepare.com; (iv) “your website” refers to any websites that you will link to our website; (v) “Program” refers to the HQST Affiliate Program.
ENROLLMENT
After receiving your application, we will review your website and notify you of your acceptance or rejection into our Program. Please allow up to 48 hours for your application to be reviewed. We reserve the right to reject any application, however we encourage you to contact us if you feel we have made an incorrect decision. Please include all of the websites that you use in your profile will help us make a better decision.
WEBSITE RESTRICTIONS
Your participating website(s) may not:
1. Infringe on HQST’s or any third party’s intellectual property, publicity, privacy or other rights.
2. Violate any relevant law, rule or regulation.
3. Contain any content that is threatening, harassing, defamatory, obscene, harmful to minors, or contains nudity, pornography or sexually explicit materials.
4. 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.
5. 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.
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 and abide by the following.
1. You will only use linking code obtained from the affiliate interface without any modification or manipulation.
2. All domains that use your affiliate link must be listed in your affiliate profile.
3. Your website will not in any way copy, resemble, or mirror the look and feel of our website. You will also not use any means to create the impression that your website is our website or any part of our website including, without limitation, framing of our website in any manner.
4. You may not engage in cookie stuffing or include pop-ups, false or misleading links on your website. In addition, wherever possible, you will not attempt to mask the referring URL information (i.e. the page from where the click is originating).
5. 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.
6. You may not use any HQST’s trademarked terms or misspellings of trademarked terms to re-direct traffic through an Internet Service Provider (ISP) to a page on your website or the HQST’s website without written approval from HQST.
If you are found redirecting links to hide or manipulate their original source, your current and past commissions will be voided or your commission level will be set to 0%. This does not include using “out” redirects from the same domain where the affiliate link is placed.
PPC GUIDELINES
If you are enrolled in our Program and participate in 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, MSN, Yahoo, Facebook or any other network.
2. You may not use our trademarked terms in sequence with any other keyword
(i.e. HQST Coupons).
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 link to our website from any Pay Per Click ad or use redirects that yield the same result. Affiliate links must be directed to an actual page on your website.
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.
COUPON GUIDELINES
If you are enrolled in our Program and your Website promotes coupon codes, you must adhere to our Coupon Guidelines as follows:
1. You may ONLY advertise coupon codes that are provided to you through the
affiliate program.
2. Posting any information about how to work around the requirements of a
coupon/promotion (i.e., 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 code.?
4. You may NOT use any technology that covers up the coupon code and
generates the affiliate click by revealing the code(s).
Additionally, if your website ranks on the first page of Google for terms related to our
website or company name(s) combined with the words coupon, coupons, coupon code,
promo code, etc. and/or your conversion rate exceeds 25%, you may be offered a lower
commission than our standard rate to offset the reduced profitability of orders.
COUPON ATTRIBUTION & AUTHENTICATION
Affiliates whose primary business is posting coupons, who are viewed by the program as being a coupon site, and/or who are tagged as coupon in our system, may not be paid commissions for sales generated without a corresponding valid coupon code. Valid codes are defined as codes that are made available to the affiliate channel in general, through newsletters or the Deals Database in ShareASale, and directly or privately to affiliates. Coupon codes that are not real, expired, not specific (e.g., up to 40% off sale items) or are long-term sitewide offers that do not require a code may not considered valid codes and the affiliate will not be given commission on these orders.?
SUB-AFFILIATE NETWORKS
Promoting HQST 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 HQST program adhere to our program terms and conditions. This includes restrictions on advertising through any paid placements such as a pay-per-click campaign. Sub-affiliate networks must also receive approval prior to allowing any type of coupon sub-affiliate to promote the HQST 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.
DOMAIN NAMES
Use of any of our trademarked terms as part of the domain or sub-domain for your website is strictly prohibited (i.e., HQST.website.com)
CONFIDENTIALITY
All confidential information, including, but not limited to, any business, technical, financial, and customer information, disclosed by one party to the other during negotiation or the effective term of this Agreement which is marked "Confidential," will remain the sole property of the disclosing party, and each party will keep in confidence and not use or disclose such proprietary information of the other party without the express written permission of the disclosing party.
SOCIAL MEDIA
Promotion on Facebook, Twitter, and other social media platforms is permitted following these general guidelines:
?
1. 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, etc. pages. For example:? You may post, “25% off sale at HQST through Wednesday with code HQ25.”?
2. You ARE PROHIBITED from posting your affiliate links on HQST Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, etc. company pages in an attempt to turn those links into
affiliate sales.
3. You ARE PROHIBITED from running Facebook ads with HQST trademarked company name.
4. You ARE PROHIBITED from creating a social media account that includes HQST trademark in the page name and/or username.
REVERSAL & COMMUNICATION POLICY
HQST 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% 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 proactively address these issues and adhere to our program rules.
PRODUCT GIFTING
HQST is able to gift products in exchange for guaranteed exposure on your website(s)
and/or social media platform(s). To be eligible for product gifting, you must:
• Be approved by HQST to receive a product gift
• Have an audience that is aligned with the HQST brand
• Provide exposure and custom content to your audience(s)
• Accurately portray the product(s) gifted to your audience, using the product correctly as intended
• Allow HQST rights to share your content on HQST’s website and social channel(s)
© 2021 HQST & Acceleration Partners LLC
