These apply to everyone in the GhostNode affiliate programme, alongside the Terms & Conditions. Joining means accepting them. The figures below are read out of the application's own configuration, so this page and the dashboard cannot disagree with each other.
Joining
You need a GhostNode account and an approved affiliate application. We can decline an application, and we do not have to give a reason — though in practice it is almost always either a throwaway email address or an account that already looks like somebody setting up to refer themselves.
You must be old enough to enter a contract where you live, and you must be entitled to receive the payments. One person, one affiliate account.
What you earn
Commission is a percentage of payments we receive, not of orders placed. It is earned on the first successful payment from someone you referred, and on every later payment they make — it is a recurring commission for as long as they stay.
| Tier | Referrals needed | Rate |
|---|---|---|
| Base | 0 | 10% |
| Silver | 10 | 15% |
| Gold | 25 | 20% |
Your rate is frozen on each commission at the moment it is earned, and never recalculated afterwards. Moving up a tier applies to what you earn from then on; it does not retrospectively revalue what is already in your balance, and neither does moving down.
People who arrive through your link get 10% off, which is ours to give rather than deducted from you.
If we change the rates we will tell you at least 30 days beforehand. Anything already earned is honoured at the rate it was earned at.
The monthly ceiling
Commission is capped at £200 per calendar month. It is there to bound the damage from a fraud pattern nobody has spotted yet rather than to limit genuine success — if you are consistently reaching it, write to us and we will raise it for your account.
How referrals are attributed
Somebody who follows your link gets a cookie holding your referral code, lasting 45 days. If they register in that window, they are attributed to you.
A customer belongs to one affiliate, permanently. The first referral registered against an account keeps it — there is no last-click override and no re-attribution later, including if they come back through somebody else's link.
Attribution needs the cookie to survive. A customer who clears cookies, switches device or takes longer than the window will not be attributed, and we cannot add them manually after the fact — not as a policy but because we have no way to know it is true.
When it becomes yours
Commission is pending when earned and becomes cleared after 30 days — or 60 days until your account is established, which happens after 5 referrals that have each paid 2 times.
That period exists because it covers our 72-hour refund window and most early chargebacks. Only cleared commission can be withdrawn.
Getting paid
- As account credit, from £5.00. Applied to your own invoices, and available immediately once cleared.
- As cash, from £25.00, paid to the details on your account.
We pay approved withdrawals within 14 days. We may hold one while we check something and will tell you if we do.
Nothing here guarantees you any earnings. Commission depends entirely on people you refer buying and continuing to pay, and we make no representation about what the programme is worth.
We may set off and recover. Anything you owe us — a reversal, an overpayment, a sum paid on a referral later found to breach these terms — may be deducted from your balance, from a pending withdrawal, or from any other amount we owe you. Where we have paid you commission that was not due, we may recover it, and for a business affiliate that is a debt.
Refunds, chargebacks and reversal
If a payment is refunded or charged back, the commission on it is reversed. This applies retroactively, including to commission already paid to you.
A reversal comes out of your pending balance first, then your cleared balance, and it can take your balance below zero. Nothing becomes payable by you when that happens and we will not invoice you for it; future commission clears the deficit before anything else is paid out.
We would rather explain this plainly than have it discovered. It is the mechanism that stops the programme from being a way to convert refunded payments into cash.
What is not allowed
Self-referral
No referring yourself, through a second account, another email address, a shared card, a household member or a colleague. This is checked automatically at the point of conversion — matching card fingerprints, or a shared IP address within 7 days — and a blocked referral never earns again, on that payment or any later one.
Advertising and search
- No paid search on GhostNode brand terms or misspellings of them, and no bidding on our name.
- No domains containing our name, and nothing that could be mistaken for an official GhostNode site.
- No unsolicited email, no comment spam, no unsolicited direct messages.
- No cookie stuffing, forced clicks, hidden iframes, or setting the cookie without a real click.
- No coupon or voucher sites listing codes we did not give you.
Honesty
- No claims about our service that are not true — invented uptime figures, specifications we do not offer, prices we do not charge.
- No implying you are us, or that you speak for us.
- Disclose that you earn commission. This is not just our preference: the US FTC endorsement guides, the UK CAP Code and the Australian Consumer Law all require it. A visible line saying the link is an affiliate link satisfies all three.
- No offering cash, items or in-game advantages to people for signing up through you.
Where you may not promote
Nowhere that would breach the Acceptable Use Policy if we hosted it — sites carrying illegal content, pirated resources, malware, or material that harasses somebody.
Using our name and artwork
You may use the GhostNode name and logo to promote us, unmodified, and we will give you assets if you ask. You may not alter the logo, use it as your own, register anything confusingly similar, or use it in a way that suggests we endorse something we have not seen. That permission lasts as long as your affiliate account and ends with it.
Tax
Commission is taxable income and declaring it is your responsibility, not ours. We do not withhold tax and we do not give tax advice. Your dashboard has the complete record of everything earned and paid, which is what your accountant will want.
If you are in the UK, this is usually self-assessment income. In the EU, local rules on invoicing us may apply. In the US, we may need a W-9 or W-8BEN before paying you, and we may be required to file an information return — we will ask if it applies. In Australia, providing an ABN may affect withholding.
Suspension and closure
We may suspend or close an affiliate account for breaching these terms, and where we do, the commission connected with the breach is reversed and unpaid commission is forfeited. For a borderline case we will ask you about it first; for clear fraud we will not.
We may also close the programme, or your participation in it, on 30 days' notice for no reason at all. If we do that, cleared commission is paid out in full and pending commission clears normally — you do not lose what you have earned because we changed our plans.
You may leave whenever you like. Cleared commission remains payable.
Relationship
You are an independent contractor. These terms do not make you an employee, agent, partner or representative of GhostNode, and you cannot enter into anything on our behalf or hold yourself out as able to.
Disputes and changes
Write to support@ghostnode.gg. If you think a referral was wrongly attributed or a reversal was wrong, say which one and when, and a person will look at the records rather than at the automated decision.
We will change these terms from time to time. Anything that materially affects what you earn or when you are paid comes with at least 30 days' notice by email, and anything already earned is honoured on the terms it was earned under.
GhostNode Ltd is a company registered in England and Wales, company number 17414337. Registered office: 66 Paul Street, London, EC2A 4NA, United Kingdom. General enquiries support@ghostnode.gg; anything about personal data dpo@ghostnode.gg.