Draft, not yet reviewed by counsel. This document describes how SharpTraffic intends to operate. It is published for review and comment and is not yet a binding agreement.
1. What SharpTraffic is
SharpTraffic ("we", "us", the "exchange") is a bid-matched exchange for solo ad clicks: email clicks that sellers route to a SharpTraffic stream URL and that we deliver to the highest eligible buyer order in real time. We operate the exchange, hold prepaid buyer balances and seller earnings in a ledger, and pay sellers out on request. We are not a party to the advertising itself.
By creating an account you accept these terms, the acceptable use policy and the privacy policy.
2. One account, two sides
One account can both buy and sell. You must be at least 18, give a working email address and keep your password and any two-factor secret to yourself. You are responsible for everything done with your account.
Both sides of the exchange are anonymous. Sellers appear to buyers as a stable anonymous id ("Seller #4821") with measured quality numbers; buyers appear to sellers as "Buyer #1203". You may not try to identify, contact or deal with another member off the exchange, and you may not link accounts to trade with yourself.
3. Selling
A seller creates a stream with a name, a minimum price per click (the floor) and a return URL. Every click to the stream URL is classified and then sold to the highest eligible order at or above the floor, sent to our own funnels (section 6) or returned to the return URL. Unsold clicks are never charged to anyone and never earn anything.
A new stream must first send about 300 test clicks to our funnels. We publish the thresholds a stream must meet to go live (at launch: opt-in rate of at least 25% and a share of bot, proxy and datacenter traffic of at most 8%). A stream that does not pass can be tested again. Streams are measured continuously after going live, and the measured numbers are shown to buyers.
New sellers are limited to 500 sold clicks per day until they have sold 2,000 clicks over at least 7 days with a quality grade at or above the network median. We may throttle, pause or close a stream or an account whose traffic we believe to be fraudulent, scripted or in breach of the acceptable use policy. Enforcement looks forward only: earnings already credited are never clawed back.
4. Buying
A buyer prepays a balance (minimum deposit $50) and places orders: one landing URL, a number of clicks or a budget, filters, a minimum opt-in rate, a maximum price per click and an optional daily cap. Every delivered click is unique to the buyer: a visitor we have delivered to you before, through any of your orders, is never charged to you again.
The price of each click is set by a second-price auction. The winning buyer pays one cent above the next best eligible bid, or the seller's floor when there is no other bid, and never more than their own maximum. The seller receives the full clearing price.
Orders can be paused, edited or cancelled at any time. Cancelling stops the order winning clicks immediately; the unspent balance stays in your wallet. Clicks that were already delivered are charged.
Landing URLs are scanned before an order starts and on every edit, and re-scanned while the order is open. We may pause an order whose URL is unreachable, flagged by a safety service or in breach of the acceptable use policy. Above a volume threshold (at launch, 1,000 clicks per day to one destination domain) we require proof that you control the destination domain.
5. All sales are final; there are no disputes
Delivered traffic is final. A click that was sold to an order is never re-classified, credited or refunded afterwards, whatever is later learned about it. Buyers protect themselves up front with filters, quality thresholds and a maximum price; mid-flight by pausing, editing or cancelling; and afterwards by blocking a seller. There is no dispute process, no dispute queue and no chargeback. Support handles account, deposit and payout questions only. See also all sales final.
6. How the exchange is paid: the 5% skim
We charge no commission and no spread. For every live stream, about 5% of the clicks it would otherwise sell are routed to our own funnels instead. These clicks are on top of what a buyer ordered: the buyer still receives every click they pay for, and the seller is not paid for a skimmed click. Skimming happens only while an order would otherwise have bought the click; a stream with no matching demand is never skimmed.
On our funnels we measure opt-in, email engagement and sales, and we publish the results as the seller's quality numbers. Visitors who opt in become leads of the company that operates SharpTraffic. We mail those leads our own offers and earn from them. That revenue, and nothing else, is how the exchange is paid. Buyers acknowledge that the exchange collects leads from 5% of the clicks sold through their orders' streams and markets to them.
7. Money
All payments are in crypto (at launch: USDT on TRC-20 and ERC-20, and BTC) through our payment processor. Balances and prices are kept in US dollars; the processor's exchange rate at confirmation applies. Network and processor fees are passed through at cost and shown before you confirm a deposit or a payout. We do not accept cards, bank transfers or PayPal.
Sellers may request a payout at any time once their available balance is $50 or more. There is no hold on earnings. Payouts go to a crypto address saved in your account; adding or changing an address requires two-factor authentication and locks payouts for 24 hours. We may hold payouts while a reconciliation of the ledger shows a discrepancy, and we tell you when we do.
Deposits that arrive underpaid, late or without a matching invoice are credited once we can attach them to your account. We do not pay interest on balances.
8. The operator participates
The company that operates SharpTraffic, and people who work on it, hold ordinary accounts and buy and sell clicks on the exchange on the same terms as everyone else. The network's seeded sellers and buyers at launch are ours. Our participation is subject to the same auction, the same measurement and the same rules.
9. Your content and ours
You keep the rights to your landing pages and your mailings. You grant us the right to scan, screenshot and classify landing URLs you place orders for, and to route and record clicks to stream URLs you create. SharpTraffic, its software, its measurements and its anonymous ids are ours.
10. Closing an account
You can delete your account from Settings once your balances are zero and no payout is open. Deleted streams keep redirecting to their return URL forever so that links in old emails never break. We may suspend or close an account that breaks these terms, the acceptable use policy or the law; credited earnings remain payable unless a court or sanctions rule prevents it.
11. Liability
The exchange is provided as it is. We do not promise any volume, price, opt-in rate or result. To the extent the law allows, our liability to you for anything arising from the exchange is limited to the fees we received from you in the preceding three months, which are nil, and in any case to the balance held for you at the time.
12. Changes and law
We may change these terms; we will date the change here and notify account holders by email before it takes effect. The governing law, venue and the operating entity are to be confirmed by counsel before launch.
Questions: see help.