Four kinds of promoter, and why one agreement cannot bind them all
An individual, a creator with an audience, a registered business and a member of the shop’s own staff carry different obligations. A company accepting an individual’s terms is not bound by them — so the affiliate programme keeps one agreement per kind.
· 3 min read
The first version of the affiliate programme’s data model held exactly one current agreement for everybody. It lasted until somebody tried to write the starter contracts — and immediately needed four different ones for four different kinds of promoter, with nowhere to put them.
That is the useful kind of failure: writing the real documents exposed a modelling error before a single promoter had accepted anything.
Four kinds, with genuinely different obligations
| Kind | Who they are | What the agreement has to say |
|---|---|---|
| Individual | A customer who likes the shop and tells friends | Plain terms, no invoicing clauses that mean nothing to a person |
| Creator | Somebody publishing to an audience | That they promote only on accounts they control and can show are theirs |
| Business | A registered company or firm | That it is validly registered, that the person accepting can bind it, and that its details stay accurate |
| Employee | A member of the shop’s own staff | How taking part sits beside their employment |
The differences are not cosmetic. An individual accepting a company’s agreement is agreeing to invoicing clauses that mean nothing for them. A company accepting an individual’s agreement is not bound by it in the way the shop needs. Each kind gets its own current agreement, and an applicant accepts the one for the kind they are.
A company accepting an individual’s terms is not bound by them. One agreement for everybody binds nobody properly.
Change your answer, and the tick clears
The application asks which kind of promoter you are, and shows you that kind’s terms. Change the answer and two things happen: the terms re-fetch, and the acceptance tick is cleared. A tick given against one document must never carry over to a different one — which is the kind of thing that is obvious when written down and routinely wrong in software.
Employees are detected, not declared
One kind is not chosen at all. Whether an applicant works for the shop is detected from the employment record, because the shop already knows who its staff are — and because a member of staff applying as an individual, to avoid the terms written for staff, is exactly the case the separate agreement exists for.
And a fallback for a shop that wants one document
Some shops will want a single agreement for everybody, and that is a legitimate choice. So there is an any agreement: not a fifth kind of promoter, but the document a shop can run the whole programme on, and the one used for any kind that has no agreement of its own.
What every agreement says a promoter must not do
- Use their own code on their own purchases.
- Bid on the shop’s brand name in paid search, or run paid advertising with its name, without written permission.
- Post codes on voucher and coupon sites.
- Claim things about the products the shop has not claimed.
- Pose as the shop, or use a name confusingly similar to it.
Why the programme was built in this order
The sign-up first, and the money half waiting on three decisions.
Read part 1
