If you're running joint venture launches with affiliates or co-promoters, there's one clause that gets left out of 90% of handshake deals: refund/chargeback handling.

Here's the problem: you agree to pay a partner 30% of every sale they drive. A week later, 15% of those sales refund. If your agreement doesn't specify how refunds affect the payout, you're now paying full commission on revenue you never actually kept.

The fix is one sentence in your JV agreement:

"If a sale attributed to Party B is refunded or charged back within [X] days, the associated commission will be deducted from the next payout."

That's it. It costs you nothing to add, and it protects both sides — your partner still gets paid fairly on real revenue, and you're not stuck eating the margin on refunded sales.

A few other things worth locking down before you pitch any JV partner:

• Tracking method — unique link or promo code, never "just tell me who bought"

• Payout cadence — weekly builds trust faster than Net-30, especially with new partners

• Split % — 20-30% for pure promotion, higher if they're building custom creative or bringing a large proven audience

Most JV deals fall apart not because the offer was bad, but because the split structure was vague. Fix the structure first, then pitch.