MTC affiliate programme - Rules

Version 1.1 - December 26, 2014

Overview

The Musician Training Center (MTC) software is a multimedia, interactive training software for musicians, available for Windows and Mac. It contains several innovative, highly effective musical courses and training modules, some of them free and some for sale.

The Musician Training Center's affiliate marketing programme gives an opportunity to individuals to earn money by promoting the Musician Training Center software online.

It basically works like this:

• You (the affiliate) place special links to MTC on web pages, mailing lists, Facebook pages, etc. inviting people to discover the Musician Training Center software.
• People who follow your links, download the software, or create a Musician Training Center account become "your" users, and when they buy any premium courses, you receive a commission.
• The commission is US$ 15 for every premium product registered to any account tagged with your affiliate ID.
• Users sometimes buy one or more courses right away, and sometimes weeks, months, or even years afterwards. Waves of sales also take place when we release new courses. Further sales take place when we offer special discounts, bundles, etc. All of the above translate into a long-term income stream for active affiliates.
• MTC currently contains 7 premium courses for sale. Several more are under development and will be added in the future. Acquiring one satisfied user account therefore can be worth up to $95 in affiliate commissions (7 courses x $15) and even more when new courses are progressively added and promoted.
• The best strategy for an affiliate, therefore, is to find ways to reach a public of musicians, music students, music teachers, etc. and recommend that they take a serious look at the Musician Training Center software. In this way the affiliate goes on acquiring more and more qualified users, which translates into immediate returns (when those new users buy something right after discovering MTC) and into long-term income stream (when users buy more courses later on, when we release new products and offer them to our users, etc.)

Following are more details and all the simple rules that govern your MTC affiliate activities.

Please read everything carefully if you intend to work as an affiliate.

Activation and agreement

By using MTC's affiliate links you declare to accept and abide by the rules listed in this page. If you don't wish to accept and abide by these affiliate rules, simply do not use MTC's affiliate system.

From our end, we at Micrologus.com will go on working to help you achieve the best possible results as an MTC affiliate, and will be available to answer questions and provide advice and support through the email address support@micrologus.com

Affiliate account

Your MTC affiliate account, and everything you need to use it, is already included in your MTC general account. You can start promoting MTC and earning commissions at any time.

Three web pages, accessible after you login, contain everything you need:
1. The "Rules" page you are now reading contains an overview of the affiliate system and all the associated rules.
2. The Links page contains instructions for using the various types of affiliate links, and various example you can directly copy and paste into your web pages.
3. The Sales page contains a real-time sales reporting database which shows your complete user acquisition and commission earning situation.

Operation

When users reach micrologus.com through your affiliate links and then download the MTC software or create an MTC account, your affiliate ID is attached to those downloads and accounts.

Those users (whose MTC accounts is associated with your affiliate ID) become "your" users, and whenever they buy a product (e.g. the "Improvisation By Degrees" course, the "Guitar Speed Trainer" method, etc.) and register it on their account you earn a commission.

Your best strategy as an affiliate, therefore, is to acquire as many qualified users as possible: musicians, music students, music instructors, etc. The more such users you acquire, the more commissions you will earn, over time, whenever those users buy MTC's current and future premium modules.

Notice that the commission is credited to the affiliate when a product is registered to an affiliate-tagged account, and not when the product is purchased. This arrangement offers the maximum guarantee to the affiliates that they will receive full credit. No matter who sells the product (us or a reseller) and no matter who buys it (the same end user or someone else) -- ultimately the product has to be registered to an account to be used, and when that product is registered to an affiliate-tagged account, the affiliate will receive credit for it.

Affiliate links

We offers several methods for affiliates to send trackable traffic to micrologus.com and ensure that the correct ID is associated with the accounts created through the affiliate's referral.

Here is a quick list of the main linking options. Full details are available in the Links page.

Standard affiliate links such as www.micrologus.com?a=123 indicate affiliate "123" is sending the traffic. Users are subsequently tracked by cookies and IP number.

Direct download links allow the affiliate to place a link for downloading the installer of the Musician Training Center program in the affiliate's web page. The user then downloads MTC with the affiliate ID already embedded in it.

Image links allow the affiliate to place images hosted by Micrologus.com which also perform the function of pre-tagging the visitors' IP numbers with the affiliate's ID. Visitors who later travel to MTC's web site, download MTC, and create an MTC account will be credited to the affiliate whose ID was present in the image links.

Affiliates can use any combination of the available linking methods. Full details and copy-and-paste examples are available in the Links page.

Commissions and payments

You will be credited a commission of US$ 15 for every product sold and registered to an account tagged with your affiliate ID. (A product is any premium module such as IBD, SRM, AFT, GST, GSM, GBET, HCM)

Also notice that the commission is a fixed US$15 amount per unit sold, regardless of the price paid for the product. $15 corresponds to 20% of the full price of most products (usually $49.95) but products may also be sold at significant discounts. For example, we may offer time-limited discounts, multi-course special deals, special bundle prices, etc. In all those cases the affiliate commission is still the same, $15. (which in percentage terms might correspond to 30%, 40%, or more of the purchase price) The main point is that the affiliate is guaranteed $15 for every premium module registered to any of the affiliate's referred users. Any discount that we may offer to users will not affect the affiliate commission in any way.

Commissions are paid monthly, in the second half of the month following the sales. So, for example, commissions earned in January are paid in the second half of February. (This is necessary to account for refunds, screen for frauds, etc.)

Commissions are paid via PayPal. You should specify a valid PayPal email address for this purpose in your account settings.

We don't charge any fee for maintaining your MTC and affiliate account.

We don't charge any fee for paying you via PayPal. PayPal itself however charges a small fee for the transfer.

If you cannot receive PayPal payments, alternative payment arrangements may be made, on a case by case basis, which will however likely include additional fees. Contact support@micrologus.com for more information.

Notifications and sales reports

Whenever you earn a commission our system sends you a notification email.

You can also access a database with all the details of your affiliate activities -- users acquired, commissions earned, payments received, current balance, etc. -- at your Sales page.

Promotion strategies policy

You may use any honest and fair promotion strategy to acquire users, such as links on web pages, truthful advertising, links in emails and newsletters, articles and reviews, etc.

Illegal or unethical strategies, such as spamming, tricking people to click on links, etc. are not acceptable and will result in the immediate termination of the affiliate account.

If you are not sure whether a certain promotion strategy is acceptable, or if you want feedback on your marketing ideas, please contact support@micrologus.com

Marketing tips are available in your Links page.

Representation and user support

You, the affiliate, do not represent micrologus.com or the Musician Training Center software projects in any way, and you are solely responsible for all your affiliate promotion activities.

You, the affiliate, are not required to provide any technical or commercial support to MTC users.

As a result of your affiliate promotional activities, if you are contacted with a request of technical or commercial support, you should reply by telling them to contact support@micrologus.com instead.

Privacy policy and tracking issues

Our long-standing policy is to protect the privacy of all our users, affiliates, and customers to the maximum degree possible.

In particular, when a user creates an account or purchases a product, we do not share the user's details with the affiliate who referred that user.

At the same time, to help affiliates monitor and understand where their sales are coming from, we assign a unique number to each user referred by the affiliate, and let the affiliate know which of their users is earning them commissions.

So, for example, the affiliate will know, for example, that their user #103 created an MTC account of Jan 1, bought one product on Jan 5th, and another product on Feb 10. That and the IP number of the user at the time of the MTC account creation can allow the affiliate to analyze their own logs and determine which of their pages and links are producing commissions, and optimize and improve their own promotional strategies accordingly.

Additionally, if the affiliate wants to further develop and optimize their own web page with A/B tests and other advanced techniques, we offer a simple method for making each link unique and traceable. So, for example, the affiliate can know if their best results come from the link in their Facebook page, or from the link in their web page X, Y or Z, or from the link at the top of the page rather than the one at the bottom of the page, and so on. This topic is explained in detail in the "Unique links" section of the Links page.

Termination

You, the affiliate, are free to start and stop using MTC's affiliate system at any time, without any obligations.

Micrologus.com is also free to suspend or terminate the affiliate program at any time. (Notification of any such change will be posted on Micrologus.com's web site.)

In case of termination by either party, unless fraud is involved, any remaining funds in your affiliate account will be paid to you in full according to the normal schedule (i.e. in the second half of the month following the sales).

Expiry

Active affiliates -- i.e. affiliates who continue to generate new sales from new user accounts -- will continue to receive commissions from all their old accounts indefinitely. In other words, the commission benefits of active affiliates never expire.

On the other hand, if an affiliate stops promoting MTC and stops generating new leads and corresponding sales, the payment of commissions from sales to accounts older than six months will also be discontinued and the accounts disconnected from the inactive affiliate.

The purpose of this rule is to encourage a long-term, asset-building approach by our affiliates. It's OK with us if an affiliate only wants to do a one-time burst of promotional activity (as long as it is not spamming or similarly undesirable) for a quick one-time gain and then stop, but in that case we may also not maintain the open accounting of the inactive affiliate for more than six months.

At the same time, if an otherwise active long-term affiliate is forced to suspend operations for a long period due to unavoidable circumstances, upon request we will happily continue to keep the account open until the affiliate is able to resume activities.

Policy changes

These rules may change at any time, in which case a notification will be displayed next time you log into your MTC account.

Support

For any question contact support@micrologus.com