Affiliate Inventory | Namecheap

What it is

Namecheap is an ICANN-accredited domain registrar that also sells shared, WordPress, VPS and dedicated hosting, SSL certificates, private email, a VPN and a set of marketing tools. It has been trading since 2000 and competes mainly on price. Its customers are small site owners, developers and resellers.

The deal

Rates are set per product, not as one headline number. Domains, email and PremiumDNS sit at the low end and hosting and SSL at the high end, and since domains are cheap the hosting and SSL rates are where the money is. The core products pay once: only a new customer’s first order counts, and everything that customer buys afterwards, including renewals, is not commissionable. That makes this a volume-of-new-customers program rather than a residual one.

Two products break the pattern and are worth reading separately. FastVPN pays the entire first month back on the monthly plan and then a smaller share of the following six renewals, and RelateSocial pays across a year of renewals and counts existing customers as well as new ones. Both are listed in full above.

Excluded from commission entirely: premium domains, Marketplace domains, hosting add-ons and apps other than RelateSocial and FastVPN. Coupon, cashback, loyalty and sub-affiliate networks may be offered less than the standard rate.

Getting paid

You pick your platform when you join, and it decides your terms. Impact has the low threshold and pays by bank transfer or PayPal, with either a fixed monthly date or automatic release once you clear the floor. CJ has a higher floor, no PayPal, and pays around the 20th of the month, but suits people already aggregating earnings there. Refunded orders have the commission removed. Disputes must be raised with the affiliate team, with order and affiliate IDs, within 48 hours.

The rules

You cannot bid on search terms containing the brand name, its misspellings or derivatives, or brand-plus-coupon and promo variants, and you cannot put the trademark in a domain name, which is grounds for immediate removal. Domain forwarding straight to the site through your affiliate link is banned, as is cookie stuffing or any technique that sets the tracking cookie without a real click. Purchases by you, your employees, agents or contractors earn nothing, multiple accounts owned by one person are excluded, and Namecheap staff and their families cannot join. Sites that are not live, under construction, or personal homepages can be removed. Coupon codes only pay when the code came through the affiliate program.

Sources

• https://www.namecheap.com/affiliates/
• https://www.namecheap.com/support/knowledgebase/article.aspx/9933/55/what-are-the-namecheap-commission-rates/
• https://www.namecheap.com/support/knowledgebase/article.aspx/9996/55/affiliate-programs-faq/
• https://www.namecheap.com/support/knowledgebase/article.aspx/9994/55/payment-options-and-minimum-payout-limits-for-affiliates/
• https://www.namecheap.com/support/knowledgebase/article.aspx/10143/55/namecheap-affiliate-program-beginners-guide/
• https://www.namecheap.com/legal/affiliate-program/affiliate-agreement/