Affiliate Program Terms & Conditions

 SIGMA Corporation of America

Affiliate Program Terms & Conditions

Please read our affiliate terms and conditions carefully before you join our program or begin marketing our products. By enrolling, you agree to be bound by these Terms and the decisions of the Company on all matters related to the Program. The Company’s decisions on membership, including individual termination of membership, are entirely in its sole discretion. The Company reserves the right to terminate, modify, revise, or change the Program and these Terms, in whole or part, at any time with or without notice. Changes may revise or reduce, for example, rules for earning or using commissions, benefits, or rates of payout. Changes may result in a reduction in the value of benefits or commissions already accumulated. 

1. DEFINITIONS

As used in these terms and conditions: (i) “Sigma”, the “Company”, “we”, “us”, or “our” refers to SIGMA Corporation of America and our  websites; (ii) “Affiliate”, “you”, or “your” refers to the Affiliate; (iii) “our websites” refers to the Sigma properties located at www.sigmaphoto.com; (iv) “your website” refers to any websites that you will link to our website; (v) “Program” refers to the Sigma Affiliate Program. 

2. ENROLLMENT

To become an affiliate, you must register and create an account. We will notify you of acceptance or rejection into our Program. Please allow up to 3-5 days for the review process (we reserve the right to take a longer period of time). We reserve the right to reject any potential affiliate for any reason or no reason. We do, however, encourage you to contact us if you feel we have made an incorrect decision. 

3. COMMISSIONS

To receive commissions, you must agree to these Terms and Conditions as well as all other terms we may require to continue participating and receiving benefits. Each Affiliate is an independent contractor. Affiliates will receive compensation at a rate of 3% for products purchased directly on sigmaphoto.com (excluding service orders). The minimum payout for payment of any commission is $100; any purchases resulting in a calculation of a commission payment lower than $100 will not be paid until the accrued amount is $100 or more. Payments will be made via direct deposit. Once accepted, a Sigma account representative will reach out for the necessary banking/routing information. Submission of IRS form W-9 is required for participation in this Program and to receive commissions. U.S. taxpayers will be issued a 1099 form in compliance with federal law.

4. COMMISSION RULES

A. Returns will be deducted from earned commissions. A negative commission balance will result in withholding of future commission payments unless and until the negative balance is brought current.  

B. Other scenarios where affiliate purchases may not result in commission might be:

    i. If a user exits an affiliate session by relaunching a new browser after the initial session has started.

    ii. If due to inventory limitations the session results in a referral to a retail store for purchase. 

    iii. Cancelled Orders. If any order is cancelled before shipped, the commission will not be applied to the account. 

5. WEBSITE RESTRICTIONS

Your participating website(s) may not, in Sigma’s sole discretion and interpretation:

A. Infringe on our or any anyone else’s intellectual property, publicity, privacy or other rights. 

B. Violate any law, rule or regulation.

C. Contain any content that is threatening, harassing, defamatory, obscene, harmful to minors, or contains nudity, pornography or sexually explicit materials.

D. 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.

E. 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.

F. Make offensive comments that have the purpose or effect of creating an intimidating or hostile environment.

G. Use ethnic slurs, personal insults, obscenity, or other offensive language.

H. Make any comments or post any content that in any way promotes unsafe activities that could lead to an unsafe situation involving Sigma consumers or any other individuals.

6. LINKING TO OUR WEBSITES

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.  

A. You will only use linking code obtained from the affiliate interface without manipulation.

B. 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. 

C. 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). 

D. 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.

E. You may not use any Sigma 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 Sigma websites without written approval from Sigma. 

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%, and you may be disqualified from participating in the Program. This does not include using “out” redirects from the same domain where the affiliate link is placed.

7. PPC GUIDELINES

If you are enrolled in our Program and participate in PPC advertising, you must adhere to our PPC guidelines as follows:

A. You may not bid on any of our trademarked terms, including any variations or misspellings thereof for search or content-based campaigns on Google, MSN, Yahoo, Facebook or any other network.

B. You may not use our trademarked terms in sequence with any other keyword (e.g.  Sigma Coupons).

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

D. 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. 

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

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.

8. COUPON GUIDELINES

If you are enrolled in our Program and your Website promotes coupon codes, you must adhere to our Coupon Guidelines as follows:

A. You may ONLY advertise coupon codes that are provided to you through the Program.

B. 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.

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

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

E. 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.

F. 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 site to get this deal.

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 3%, you may be offered a lower commission than our standard rate to offset the reduced profitability of orders. 

9. 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. 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.  

10. DOMAIN NAMES

Use of any of our trademarked terms as part of the domain or sub-domain for your website is strictly prohibited (e.g.  Sigma.website.com or www.Sigma-coupons.com) 

11. ADVERTISING & PUBLICITY

You shall not create, publish, distribute, or print any written material that is distributed in hardcopy/physical form that makes reference to our Program without first submitting that material to us and receiving our prior written consent. If you intend to promote our Program via e-mail campaigns, you must adhere to the following:

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

B. E-mail must be sent on your behalf and must not imply that the e-mail is being sent on behalf of Sigma.

C. E-mails must first be submitted to us for approval prior to being sent or we must be sent a copy of the e-mail. 

12. SOCIAL MEDIA

Promotion on Facebook, Instagram, and other social media platforms is permitted following these general guidelines: 

A. You ARE allowed to promote offers to your own lists; more specifically, you may use your affiliate links on your own Facebook, Instagram, and other social platform pages. For example:  You may post “25% off sale at Sigma Photo through Wednesday with code SIGMA25.” 

B. You ARE PROHIBITED from posting your affiliate links on our social media pages. 

C. You ARE PROHIBITED from creating a social media account that includes Sigma trademarks in the page name and/or username

13. 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. 

14. REVERSAL & COMMUNICATION POLICY

Sigma takes pride in its very low reversal rate, which we attribute to open communication with 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.

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

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

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

D. You do not agree to receive email notifications to the email address assigned to the account.

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. 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.

15. FTC DISCLOSURE REQUIREMENTS

You must include a disclosure statement within any and all pages, blog posts, or social media posts where affiliate links for our Program are posted as an endorsement or review, and where it is not clear that the link is a paid advertisement. This disclosure statement should be clear and concise and easily visible stating that you are being compensated 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 at the beginning of the claims and may not appear solely in a “Terms of Use”, “Legal”, “About Us” or other linked page.
• 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, hover state and button disclosures are prohibited.
• Disclosure policy applies to all social media, even when space is restricted (e.g., tweets)
• Disclosures should be made in the same medium as the claim (e.g. video, text)

For more information about FTC disclosure requirements, please review the FTC's "Dot Com Disclosures" Guidelines at  http://www.ftc.gov/os/2013/03/130312dotcomdisclosures.pdf (example 21) and the FTC's Endorsement Guidelines at http://business.ftc.gov/advertising-and-marketing/endorsements  

If you engage in so called “native advertising”, you further agree to comply with the FTC’s Enforcement Policy Statement on Deceptively Formatted Advertisements at https://www.ftc.gov/system/files/documents/public_statements/896923/151222deceptiveenforcement.pdfand the related guidelines.

16. JURISDICTION

This Program and these Terms and Conditions shall be governed by, construed, and interpreted under the laws of the State of New York. The Federal and State courts of the State of New York shall be the exclusive court of jurisdiction for any disputes. As a condition of participating, you agree that any and all disputes which cannot be resolved between the parties and causes of action arising out of or in connection with this Program, shall be resolved individually, without resort to any form of class action, exclusively before a court located in New York having jurisdiction. Further, in any such dispute, under no circumstances will participants be permitted to obtain awards for, and hereby waive all rights to claim punitive, incidental, or consequential damages, including attorneys’ fees, other than actual out-of-pocket expenses, and further waives all rights to have damages multiplied or increased. 

17. TERMINATION

We reserve the right to terminate this Program at any time, without notice. We reserve the right to terminate your account for any reason, in our sole discretion. After termination, all benefits, commissions, and value accrued are rendered invalid and without any value, even if value remained in your account.

18. CONTACT INFORMATION

For communications concerning the Program or these Terms and Conditions, please contact the company via jack Howard;jhoward@sigmaphoto.com

19. IMPORTANT NOTICES

A. The Company provides the Program, these Terms and Conditions, and other services and products “As Is” and, to the fullest extent permitted by applicable law, expressly disclaims any representation or warranties of any kind, express or implied, including but not limited to warranties of merchantability, or fitness for a particular purpose. Under no circumstances, including but not limited to, negligence, shall the Company be liable for any direct, indirect, incidental, special or consequential damages arising out of the Program or any such other products or services, even if the Company has been advised of the possibility of such damages. In the event the Company or the Program is held liable for any damages related to these matters, your sole and exclusive remedy will be limited to reimbursement for services or products paid for by you.

B. Earning commissions or benefits is subject to all applicable laws and regulations. Commissions, benefits, or value may be subject to income or other taxes. Such taxes and all disclosures related thereto are your sole responsibility, not the Company’s. 

C. The Company is not responsible for, and reserves the right to correct any pricing or typographical errors, errors of description, or errors regarding the Program. 

D. The Company reserves the right to correct any benefit granted in error.

E. The Company is not responsible for late, lost, incomplete, or misdirected entry information or communications; computer system, phone line, electronic equipment, computer hardware, software or program malfunctions, or other errors; failures or delays in computer transmissions or network connections; or for any other technical problems. The Company is not responsible for incorrect or inaccurate entry information, whether caused by members or by any of the equipment or programming associated with or utilized in the Program, or by any technical or human error which may occur in the processing of commissions, benefits, and account information. CAUTION: ANY ATTEMPT BY A PERSON TO DELIBERATELY DAMAGE ANY WEB SITE OR UNDERMINE THE LEGITIMATE OPERATION OF THIS PROGRAM IS A VIOLATION OF CRIMINAL AND CIVIL LAWS AND SHOULD SUCH AN ATTEMPT BE MADE, THE COMPANY RESERVES THE RIGHT TO SEEK DAMAGES FROM ANY SUCH PERSON TO THE FULLEST EXTENT PERMITTED BY LAW.