Frequently Asked Questions

• What is Cupid Media?
• What is Cupid Media’s Affiliate Program?
• Who can apply to be an Affiliate?
• Will my web site be accepted?
• How do I get started as an Affiliate?
• Who manages and administers the Cupid Media Affiliate Program?
• What is the payout rate for sales generated from my links?
• What do I have to do as an Affiliate?
• Can I earn money by referring other web sites to sign-up under my account?
• Do you accept non-English traffic?
• I wish to join the Affiliate Program but my country is not listed in the drop down menu. What do I do?
• What is Cupid Media’s policy on adult content?
• What are my responsibilities as a Cupid Media Affiliate Partner?
• What are the responsibilities of Cupid Media?
• How can I contact the Cupid Media Affiliate Team?

• What types of banners and links are available?
• How do I find and add Cupid Media banners to my web site?
• What are Cupid Media’s policies on search engine marketing?
• Can I link to a subscriber profile on Cupid Media’s web sites?
• Can I use e-mails to promote Cupid Media?
• Can I frame the Cupid Media landing site or any of its offerings with my own header?
• Can I accept membership information on my web site and forward it to Cupid Media?
• How often should I change Cupid Media banner and text links on my site?
• Can I publish your subscription prices on my site
• What if I experience problems with links or difficulty tracking?

• Will I know who signs up for Cupid Media through my site?
• What if I have more than one web site? Can I have more than one Affiliate site?
• Can I use the same Affiliate ID number for different Cupid Media sites, or do I need to sign-up as an Affiliate for each of your sites?
• How do I permanently terminate my Affiliate account?
• My affiliate account has been deleted?

• How does Cupid Media track visitors from my site?
• How long are visitors to my site tracked?
• How do I check the progress of my Affiliate links?
• It appears that not all of my orders appear when I check my statistic page. What’s happened?

• How do I get paid?
• How much money do I have to earn before I am eligible to receive a payment?
• When will I get paid?
• I have not received one of my payments posted on my stats page. What should I do?
• Can I have my payments deposited directly into my account?

• How is a sale defined?
• What is the difference between a registration and a subscription? What is paying member? What is a non-paying member?
• Do I earn commission on traffic to my web site?
• How much income can I make?

• How do I access my statistics page?
• How do I change the information in my profile?
• If I forget my password or affiliate ID number, what do I do?
• How often is my statistics page updated?
• How long does it take for new members to show up on my stats page?

• What forms of promotion can I use?
• I just logged into my account and it was banned. Why?
• What is considered spam?

• What is the best way to generate sales? - How can I increase my earnings?
• What can I do to improve my conversion rate?

Cupid Media operates innovative, database driven, interactive dating sites focused on niche markets based on ethnicity, religion, physical appearance, sexual preference and special interest. Cupid Media is a market leader in many of its chosen markets and has over two million customers in the USA, Canada, Europe, Asia, Africa, Latin America, Australia and the Pacific. With 18 different sites, (and more to come) people all over the world build treasured friendships and everlasting relationships through the help of our online dating services.

Cupid Media’s Affiliate Program is the most uncomplicated and straightforward program available! It’s simple, you send us your traffic, and in return we will pay you promptly as well as provide you with the benefit of an Affiliate relationship with a market leader and trusted online company. There are no complex calculations about conversion rates and percentages or complicated payout tables – you join as an affiliate, assist in the promotion of one or more of our diverse array of web sites and for every initial premium sign-up you will receive a flat payment of US$25.

Anyone who owns and/or operates a website can apply to become a Cupid Media Affiliate. Each Affiliate applicant is personally reviewed by a member of our Affiliate Team, and if accepted you will receive an email confirmation explaining the easy process of promoting us on your site. If your application is rejected you will receive a detailed email explaining the reasons for rejection and we encourage feedback if you are unhappy with the decision.

Here at Cupid Media we primarily seek to partner with Affiliate sites that possess the following:

• A distinctive and sincere user experience
• Have relevant content that would appeal to individuals in search of dating, personals and singles
• Are compliant with our search engine marketing and copyright policies
• Are visually pleasing
• Do not display adult/pornographic material or offensive content
• Websites must be fully functional, with all links working and are not under construction.

Once your application has been approved by a member of our Affiliate Team you will be sent via e-mail detailed instructions of what to do next. We will explain how to promote our site, including how and where to place banner advertisements and text links for optimal results. Once this promotional material is in place you can begin earning! It costs nothing at all to become an Affiliate, yet the earning potential is huge!

Cupid Media has teamed up with AffiliateShop.com to provide you with trusted third-party management, tracking, real-time reporting, and monthly commission payments. Once accepted into our program, you will be diverted to AffiliateShop.com to create your own secure, password-protected account.

You will be paid a flat payment of US$25 for every initial payment by a premium member. This makes our Affiliate Program more simplistic and straightforward than many other Affiliate offerings. Without complex calculations about conversion rates and percentages or complicated payout tables the process is easy to understand as well as monitor.

Register and place one or more of our banner ads on your site(s), then link it by using the Affiliate link given to you in your welcome emali that you received when you signed up as an affiliate. Attached to your Affiliate link will be a unique Affiliate ID, so that when a user clicks on a Cupid Media ad situated on your site and creates a profile, they will forever be tagged as coming from your site. As soon as the user purchases a Paying Membership, you will receive your payment.

At the moment Cupid Media will only make payments for every initial premium payment and not for any referrals of other affiates.

Yes, we provide a wide variety of foreign sites with multi-lingual interfaces available in English, French, German, Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, Japanese, Korean, Chinese and Indonesian. In this respect we most certainly welcome most non-English traffic from approved countries.

Affiliates who wish to join our program must be located in one of the following approved countries. Affiliates who are not listed on the approved country list are unfortunately unable to join.

The Cupid Media Affiliate program does not allow sites with adult content and reserves the right to review member sites for compliance to our policies. If your site(s) are deemed offensive, we reserve the right to reject an application or revoke a site’s Affiliate membership at any time. Affiliates who breach our adult content policy will have their affiliate agreement terminated immediately. Please refer to our Affiliate Agreement for additional information on our adult content policy.

• To drive potential subscribers to Cupid Media web sites
• To keep track of your link performance via your Affiliate Shop Account
• To comply with Cupid Media’s policies as outlined in the Affiliate Agreement

• To compensate Affiliates as stated for sending their traffic to Cupid Media
• To provide you with the necessary tools and support required to maximize sales across your site. We will provide highly performing banner ads and text links as well as a passionate commitment to converting your visitors into Cupid Media members.
• To continually provide the community with the most innovative personals and dating services available, striving to meet our customers every need.

Please send and e-mail to affiliates@cupidmedia.com with any questions that you might have

Once accepted by Cupid Media & AffiliateShop.com, you will have access to a wide variety of interactive original pieces that you can utilize to promote Cupid Media and its diverse array of sites. Whether you decide to use a banner ad, text link or HTML search function you will be able to target several different categories of users as desired. Links and images are regularly updated to ensure that only top performing pieces are available with up-to-date brand messaging.

To post a banner on your web site please follow these steps:
1. Go to the site you are affiliated with.
2. Click on the "affiliates" page link at the top of the page.
3. Log in to your affiliate account.
4. Click one of the "banners" links in the list of programs.
5. Copy the link in the boxes under the banner(s) you like and paste it directly onto your web page. You do not need to save the banners to your computer.

We operate a site-based Affiliate Program, as opposed to one which is exclusively search-based. Essentially, an affiliate cannot engage in search marketing or Pay Per Click advertising on behalf of Cupid Media or any of its family sites. All traffic from search engines must link to the affiliate site, rather than directly to a Cupid Media site. The affiliate site must be owned and/or operated by you and cannot consist merely of links to a Cupid Media site, instead it should provide a user-experience distinct from that available on a Cupid Media site (for example, it may include unique content or services). Furthermore, any of the following activities are strictly prohibited:

• Bidding on Pay Per Click advertising keywords that are in direct competition with keywords in which any of our sites advertise.
• Bidding on the Cupid Media service marks “CUPIDMEDIA.COM”, “CUPIDMEDIACOM”, “CUPIDMEDIADOTCOM”, “CUPIDMEDIA COM”, any variation of, or any other trademark or service mark of Cupid Media on any search engine.
• Including the CupidMedia.com service mark “CUPID MEDIA.COM”, any variation of, or any other trademark or service mark of Cupid Media in any paid search engine marketing copy.
• Using the Cupid Media.com service mark “CUPIDMEDIA.COM”, any variation of, or any other trademark or service mark of CupidMedia.com’s in any Web site Page Titles or Meta Tags.
• Pointing traffic from search engine results directly into a page of any Cupid Media site.

NO – Affiliates are forbidden from using the individual profiles and information of Cupid Media users/subscribers on their referring affiliate site. Doing so violates the Interactive Connections Pty Ltd Privacy Policy (Cupid Media Affiliate User Agreement) and will result in immediate termination of your Cupid Media Affiliation.

We have a firm ‘no spamming’ policy. Cupid Media reserves the right to immediately terminate an affiliate relationship if that affiliate uses unsolicited email to promote Cupid Media and any of its family sites.

No, this activity is strictly prohibited. This is not only a violation of copyright, but also jeopardizes the integrity of your tracking links.

No. Subscription information is accepted only on the Membership Registration form at Cupid Media sites. Note that your payout's are calculated only through the sign-up application form.

Whilst there is no requirement to regularly change links, we encourage you to change banner advertisements and text links occasionally in order to keep your site fresh for visitors. Understanding your visitors’ preferences will maximize click-throughs to Cupid Media sites and raise the potential for increased payouts.

You may describe at a given time prices and other details of the CupidMedia.com products – however, it is very important to note that prices, terms and options are subject to change. We will only honor the prices listed on CupidMedia.com, not prices, special offers or discounts made by affiliates on their referring web sites.

If you experience any technical difficulties with using your affiliate account please contact our Cupid Media Affiliates team describing the problem.

No. To protect Cupid Media customer privacy, the names or other personal information about specific customers is not provided to affiliates.

Yes, we encourage affiliates to promote the same provided link on as many pages and/or sites as you would like. The more banners you put up the more money you make!

You will only need to sign up once as an affiliate and you will be able to use the same affiliate ID for any or all of our sites.

If you want to remove your affiliate account from our database, please send us an email with "Remove" in the subject and include the following information: your affiliate ID number, company name, name, and the specific Cupid Media site you are affiliated with.

We reserve the right to delete any affiliate account that does not comply with our affiliate policies. Any sites that are

• Displaying adult/pornographic material or any form of offensive content
• Under construction, and not fully functional
• Any affiliate site that has been completly inactive (ie. has not sent any traffic to any CupidMedia sites) for a period of 6 months.
• Any affiliate found using the individual profiles and information of Cupid Media users/subscribers on their referring affiliate site. This is strictly forbidden.
• Any affiliate site found using unsolicited email (spamming) to promote Cupid Media and any of its family sites.

When you sign-up as an affiliate you'll be given a unique affiliate ID, which is the same as the number at the end of your tracking URL that you use to link to our site. We use this ID to tell us where a referral has come from in order to credit that account ID accordingly. If you forget to include your ID in a referral URL, there is no way to be accurately credit your account and you will not be paid for that portion of your traffic.

All traffic from any affiliate site will be tracked for 365 days. Affiliates will be credited with any initial payments that occur within these 365 days.

Your stats page is located at www.AffiliateShop.com our affiliate software provider. To access your stats page please follow these steps:

• Visit www.affiliateshop.com
• Click on the ‘Affiliate Login’ link
•  Sign in using your 6 digit Affiliate ID number and password.
•  Click on the "view traffic and sales statistics" link and this will take you to your statistics page

All orders must be approved before they will show up on your stats page and you are given credit. Some of these orders may not be approved due to any of the following reasons:
1. The credit card number supplied was incomplete, invalid, or not accepted.
2. There was a typo on the order form.
3. The credit card order was denied.
4. The credit card was reported as lost or stolen.
5. The order was a duplicate.

Cupid Media makes use of the PayPal system to pay affiliates. US Affiliates will be paid in US Dollars. Other International affiliates can choose to be paid in any of the following currencies.

• US Dollars
• Euros
• Pound Sterling
• Canadian Dollars
• Japanese Yen
• Australian Dollars

This will require all our affiliates to set up a verified PayPal account as payments will be made into Affiliates PayPal accounts. For more information on how to set and use a PayPal account to receive payments please visit www.paypal.com
 

PayPal is an account-based system that lets anyone with an email address securely send and receive online payments using their credit card or bank account. For more information visit www.paypal.com

All affiliates will receive payments into their PayPal accounts at the end of every month.

$25.00 - Payments are made monthly to affiliates who send through at least one subscribing member.

If you have not received a payment, please first verify that the email address you entered during enrollment is correct and then email our Affiliates Team. Please be sure to include your affiliate ID number, the site you are affiliated with, the month and the amount of the payment in question, and we will get back to you as soon as possible.

All payments will be made through the PayPal system into your PayPal account. You will then be able to withdraw money from your PayPal account directly to your bank account. To set up an account please refer to www.paypal.com.

CupidMedia.com and AffiliateShop.com are solely responsible for tracking subscription sales. A 'sale' is recognized when a subscription is purchased on the CupidMedia.com Web site via valid credit card, check or money order or other means. You can continually monitor sales performance of your account on AffiliateShop.com.

Registration is a free process anyone can complete in order to become a CupidMedia.com member. Registration allows a user to browse profiles and even create their own. However, in order to communicate with other members and find a potential date, one must become a paying subscriber. Commissions are paid on the initial payment made by paying subscriptions only.

Affiliates earn commission on paid subscriptions only. Traffic is only commissioned in the sense that it converts into paying subscribers.

You will be paid a flat payment of US$25 for every initial premium (paying) join. Earning options are limitless to the extent that an affiliate site can continually refer new and valid paying subscribers.

All affiliate statistics are tracked through our affiliate software AffiliateShop.com. To access this page

• Visit www.affiliateshop.com
• Click on the ‘Affiliate Login’ link
• Sign in using your 6 digit Affiliate ID number and password.
• Click on the "view traffic and sales statistics" link and this will take you to your statistics page

To edit your contact information you have entered during enrollment, including payment information, please:

1. Sign into your stats page at www.affiliateshop.com
2. Click on the "Settings" and then "User Profile" and make the relevant changes.
3. Once you have made the appropriate adjustments be sure to click on the "Click to Update Info" button at the bottom of the page.

To receive your password or affiliate ID number, you'll need to email our Affiliate Marketing Team and provide as much of the following information as possible: your affiliate ID number, company name, the site you are affiliated with, and the contact information of the person who signed up to become an affiliate. Passwords will only be sent to the registered email address associated with the affiliate account.

We update your stats page daily. Please note your stats are not real time and will not reflect new members immediately.

All memberships must first be approved and this basic screening process takes about 1 to 2 business days after which it will show up on your stats page.

The majority of our affiliates promote Cupid Media by placing our banners on their sites, but you may also join chat rooms, online clubs, etc. We strongly encourage you to remember chat room rules- it is better to simply talk about the benefits of meeting people on our site instead of just posting a URL. Please review our spam policy within our Affiliate Agreement.

Cupid Media does not condone cheating or spamming of any nature. Any accounts suspected of cheating or reported for spamming are immediately banned and all payment voided. Extreme steps must be taken to protect our company and legitimate affiliates. Typical reasons that we will terminate your affiliate account include:

• People emailing us that your affiliate ID was used in spamming activities.
• Creation of fake accounts.
• High chargeback rates.
• Other inappropriate actions.

Spam is considered to be any attempt to deliver unsolicited bulk mail over the Internet. Almost all spam is commercial advertising. Potential target lists are created by scanning Usenet postings, stealing Internet mailing lists, or searching the Web for addresses. Such information is gathered with automated searches to retrieve email addresses for spamming.

No, all our affiliates must make use of our proven banner and text links.

There is no “best way” to generate sales. Every affiliate has different goals, and we found that those that meet them consistently have one universal thing in common – they all deliver a unique and valuable experience to their users. We encourage you to find the best way to integrate CupidMedia.com into your site given the needs and expectations of your site visitors. We are very serious about promoting a fair and honest affiliate program, and will not tolerate any affiliate who violates our copyright policies and/or uses fraudulent or deceptive practices to generate subscriptions.

A conversion rate is described as the ratio of registered users who become paying subscribers. The best thing an affiliate can do to improve their conversion rate is to provide an honest and valuable user experience, while promoting CupidMedia.com in the most appropriate light possible. At CupidMedia.com, we employ a variety of programs to encourage registrants to subscribe, and ensure them that they will be glad they did!