Our affiliate program allows you to place House of Staunton links on your web site and earn a commission when one of your visitors purchases from the House of Staunton. When a visitor to your web site clicks on one of those links, our website can identify them as having been referred by your website through a web browser cookie,. This allows our website to be able to track any and all purchases that they make - both now and in the future!  Every time that one of your referred visitors  purchases from us, you will receive a commission of 10% on their purchase price. For example, if a customer that was referred by your site purchases $100.00 worth of products from HouseofStaunton.com, you will earn a commission of $10.00. 

• It's free and easy! There's no charge to participate - In fact, we pay you! Every time you send a customer to us from your site, you earn a commission on their purchases. There's no easier way to add e-commerce to your site. All it takes is a few minutes of your time.
  
• It's gives your visitors added value by bringing the goods they want to purchase directly to them! Chess players want chess equipment. With the House of Staunton, you'll be able to offer them the world's finest Chessmen. We get a new customer, you'll get a generous commission and they get terrific Chess equipment  - It's a win-win-win situation! 

Before our affiliate system was made available to the public, we asked several Chess website operators to help us test our new system by including tracking links on their websites. The results were astounding!

Within 5 hours of going live, the first affiliate-tracked sale was registered in the amount of $103.95 - or $10.40 in earned commission. Over the next 2 weeks of testing, our affiliates generated sales that had an average purchase of $128.30, or an average of $12.83 in earned commission per sale. There were even 5 affiliate sales that had a purchase price of over $300.00. 

Imagine, putting a link on your website and earning $30.00 just by someone clicking on it! 

We understand the concerns that many website operators have questions about whether or not their website has enough traffic to generate sales. After all, generating sales is the heart of the program and the means by which our affiliates are compensated for linking to us. It's a fair question and we want all of our affiliates to feel like they are an important part of the team, regardless of their size. 

With this in mind,  the House of Staunton is proud to offer our Affiliate Reward Program. There are two components to the Affiliate Reward Program:

1. The House of Staunton will send each of our active affiliates a $25.00 Gift Certificate on the anniversary of their joining our affiliate program. If you sign up to become a House of Staunton affiliate and maintain active affiliate status, we will mail you a $25.00 Gift Certificate on each anniversary as a thank you. Active affiliate status means that you must maintain at least one affiliate tracking link on your website for The House of Staunton. That's the only requirement, having that link. Even if not a single visitor is referred by your website, you will receive the gift certificate just for maintaining at least one active link. And yes, we will be checking for links.. :)  
   
   
2. Each week, we will randomly select 10 active affiliates and award them a $10.00 Gift Certificate to the House of Staunton.  There is no limit to the number of times you can win a $10.00 Gift Certificate and your odds of winning each week will be based upon the total number of affiliates. The First Drawing will take place in November 2008.  
   
   And let's be honest, there really aren't that many Chess-related websites on the Internet so your odds of winning are quite good. Especially when you consider that over 500 gift certificates will be awarded each year. For just a few minutes of your time, each and every week you will have a chance of  winning a $10.00 Gift Certificate. You have nothing to lose and everything to gain. 

Imagine what you can do with that $25.00 Gift Certificate! A new Chess Clock? A new Chess set? You can redeem it for whatever you want from the House of Staunton.. 

Note: There is a limit of one (1) Anniversary Gift Certificate per mailing address  Anniversary Gift Certificates can not be combined with other Anniversary Gift Certificates issued within one calendar year of each other. 

Taking part of our affiliate program couldn't be easier! There are a few simple steps that must be followed... 

1. Click here to sign up for our affiliate program. You'll need to give us some basic information about yourself and your web page. It only takes a few minutes to fill out the form and become one of our affiliates. Once your application has been submitted, it will be reviewed by our staff within one business day. .

2. Once your application has been approved, you will receive an email that contains your login information. It is important that you note the login id that you were assigned in the email. This number is the identifier by which your website will be tracked via the affiliate system. REMEMBER THIS NUMBER! You will need it to log into the Affiliate System Management Center on our website and set up correct link..

3. Once you have received the email, Click here to log in. You'll need to enter the login number from the email and the password you selected when you registered.. Once you have logged in, please familiarize yourself with the affiliate center. It is here that you will be able to monitor your affiliate account, including earned commissions.

4. The final step is to create web links to our website from your website. When setting up the web links, it is critical that you include the correct web address. The following is an example of an affiliate-tracking  link:
   
   http://www.houseofstaunton.com/cgi/affiliates/click.cgi?prg=hos&affil=383  
   
   As you can see, the last section of the URL is the affiliate id. In the above example, the affiliate id is #383. What you need to do is change this number to the affiliate id  that you were assigned and use to log in to the affiliate system. For example, if your affiliate id is #1280, the correct link would be...
   
   http://www.houseofstaunton.com/cgi/affiliates/click.cgi?prg=hos&affil=1280
   
   Note:  If you do not put the correct URL in your web links, including the correct affiliate id, visitors will not be tracked correctly and you will not receive a commission for referred sales. You must put it EXACTLY as explained above for your web site to receive proper credit.

That's it!

A link is a piece of text or an image in a Web page that, when clicked on, takes you to another Web page. 

TEXT LINKS: As it's name implies, a text link is a line of text that, when clicked on, takes you to another web page. If you are unfamiliar with HTML programming, the following line of HTML code will create a text link on your website that displays the text  "Visit The House of Staunton, Inc". that when clicked on, will direct your visitors to our website with affiliate tracking. 

SOURCE CODE: <a href="http://www.houseofstaunton.com/cgi/affiliates/click.cgi?prg=hos&amp;affil=383"><b>The World's Finest Chess Sets - Only at the House of Staunton, Inc.</b></a>  
WHAT VISITORS SEE: The World's Finest Chess Sets - Only at the House of Staunton, Inc.

Once again, please be sure you change the affiliate id to your website's affiliate id. 

IMAGE LINKS: As it's name implies, an image link is a graphical image that, when clicked on, takes you to another web page. If you are unfamiliar with HTML programming, the following line of HTML code will create an image link on your website that  when clicked on, will direct your visitors to our website with affiliate tracking. We have prepared a number of different graphical images that you can put on your website.

SOURCE CODE:  <a href="http://www.houseofstaunton.com/cgi/affiliates/click.cgi?prg=hos&amp;affil=383" target="_blank"><img border="0" src="http://www.houseofstaunton.com/smallbanner3.gif" width="87" height="120"></a>
WHAT VISITORS SEE: 

At the bottom of this page is a number of banner advertisements (of various sizes) that our affiliates are more than welcome to place on their website/s. The banners are of varying sizes and colors to allow you to select  the image that is most appropriate. Please be sure and check back often, as we plan on constantly changing our default banners to help "keep them fresh" on your website.

SCROLL DOWN TO THE BOTTOM OF THE PAGE TO SEE SAMPLE ADVERTISEMENTS THAT OUR AFFILIATES CAN USE. YOU CAN JUST CLICK ON  THE "CLICK TO COPY" BUTTON UNDERNEATH EACH OF THE ADVERTISEMENTS AND THE SOURCE CODE WILL BE READY TO BE PASTED INTO YOUR WEBSITE. JUST MAKE SURE YOU CHANGE THE AFFILIATE ID!

Your account will reflect commissions immediately on each purchase that you refer and you will be paid monthly when commissions earned are greater than or equal to $20.00. All Payments are remitted within 30 days and are remitted via check or PayPal - your choice!  For example, an affiliate payment for the month of June will be paid the last day of July. This allows us to take into consideration returns and order changes.

All of our affiliates have the option to redeem their commission for a House of Staunton  gift certificate that is worth DOUBLE what their commission is!

For example, If you are owed a commission of $30.00, you can redeem it for a $60.00 Gift Certificate for our catalog. It's the quickest and easy way to get great Chess equipment. This program is especially valuable for Chess Club websites, where your members can buy from the House of Staunton and your club will effectively earn 20% in free merchandise!