Creator terms

About these terms

These terms are an agreement between you and the entity that operates 26Ritual (the "operator", named on this page once confirmed). By applying to 26Ritual, connecting an account or accepting the terms in the app, you agree to them. We record the version you accepted and when.

Where a campaign or a partner store has its own rules, those rules add to these terms for that campaign or store. If anything conflicts, the campaign brief prevails for that campaign only.

Eligibility

To join 26Ritual you must:

• Be at least 18 years old.
• Be resident in India with an Indian bank account or UPI id, and hold a PAN in your own name or in the name of the business that receives your commission.
• Create content about beauty, skincare, haircare or wellness, and hold the rights to the content you post.
• For automated DMs, have an Instagram Business or Creator account that you control. A personal account can use links, codes and campaigns, but cannot connect for automated messages until it is switched.
• Not be barred from receiving payments under Indian law, and not act for a partner store or brand that employs you without disclosing it.

Application and approval

Applications are reviewed by the 26Ritual team. We may accept, decline or ask for more information, and we may decline without giving a reason. Declined creators may apply again; applications within 90 days of a decline are reviewed with the earlier decision in view. We check that the account you name is yours and that your content meets our community standards. There is no minimum follower count.

On approval you complete onboarding: basic details, Instagram connection, phone verification and payout details. You can skip payout and tax details at first, but no payout is released until they are complete. Your handle on 26Ritual defaults to your Instagram username and can be changed once.

Creators who were part of a partner store's earlier affiliate programme are pre-approved and receive a claim link. Their existing balances and history are migrated to 26Ritual with their agreement.

The commission model

You earn commission on orders attributed to you: orders placed through your tracked links, with your coupon code, or, once storefronts launch, from your 26Ritual storefront. Attribution is decided by 26Ritual on the server from the order data the partner store sends: the most recent click inside the attribution window shown in the app wins; your coupon code attributes the order when no click is recorded, and takes precedence over a click older than seven days.

Rates are set by rule. A campaign rate, if you are on the campaign, applies first; then any rate we have agreed with you personally; then rates by product, brand, category and creator tier; then the platform default. Rules can carry a date range, which is how festival and sale windows pay more. The effective rate for every product is shown in the app before you post, and every commission records which rule set it.

We may change rates. Increases take effect immediately. Decreases and the withdrawal of a campaign are announced in the app and by email at least seven days before they take effect, and never apply to orders already placed. Rates published for a third-party store depend on that store's programme and can change with it.

Commission is pending when an order is placed, confirmed after the partner store's return window closes without a cancellation or return, and reversed if the order is cancelled, returned, refunded, unpaid, or found to be fraudulent or a self-purchase. A reversal after payout is deducted from your next payout. Every change appears in your earnings ledger with its reason.

Commission is calculated on the order value the partner store reports, net of discounts, shipping and taxes, unless a campaign says otherwise. The store's record is final for order value and status; we reconcile our ledger against it every month.

Payouts and tax

Confirmed commission is paid monthly. The cutoff is month end; payouts go to your verified bank account or UPI id by the date shown in the app, once Finance has approved the batch. The minimum payout threshold is set in the app and shown on your earnings page; balances below it carry forward to the next month.

Commission is income in your hands. We deduct tax at source under the Income Tax Act 1961 at the rate that applies to you and deposit it against your PAN. If no valid PAN is on file, the higher rate applies or the payout is held, as the app states. You receive a statement for every payout showing gross commission, tax deducted and net amount, and an annual summary. If you are GST registered, add your GSTIN and your statements will show the treatment that applies.

You are responsible for your own tax filings. 26Ritual does not issue tax invoices on your behalf. A payout that fails because of wrong details is reversed and retried in the next batch once you fix the details through the secure link we send you.

Content rules and disclosure

You decide what you post; 26Ritual does not review or approve content before it goes live unless a campaign brief says so. When you post about a product you can earn from, you must:

• Disclose the relationship clearly, following the ASCI Guidelines for Influencer Advertising in Digital Media: use one of ASCI's permitted labels, such as #ad, #collab or #sponsored, that is visible without expanding the caption, in the same language as the post, and spoken aloud in video where the audio carries the message.
• Say only what is true. Do not make claims about a product's results, ingredients or safety that the brand does not make, and never present a personal experience as a guarantee.
• Make no medical claims. Do not say a product cures, treats or prevents any condition, and do not give medical advice. Skincare is not medicine.
• Respect the audience. No content that is hateful, harassing or sexually explicit, and nothing that targets minors.
• Follow the brand's usage rules for logos, product images and claims when a campaign supplies them, and Instagram's own terms at all times.

If we or a brand receive a complaint about your content, we may pause your links, remove you from a campaign or withhold the affected commission while we look into it. We will tell you what the complaint is and give you a chance to respond.

Prohibited conduct

You must not:

• Buy through your own links or codes, or arrange for family, staff or friends to do so, to earn commission. Self-purchases are detected and reversed.
• Generate fake engagement: bought followers, comment pods, bots that post trigger words, or automation that comments on your own posts.
• Buy traffic to your links or codes, run paid ads to them, or place them on coupon and cashback sites without written permission from 26Ritual.
• Spam. Do not post your links in other creators' comments, in groups where they are not welcome, or in unsolicited messages.
• Share, sell or trade another creator's codes or links, or use a code that was not issued to you.
• Misrepresent yourself, your audience or your relationship with 26Ritual or a brand, or claim that 26Ritual endorses you.
• Interfere with the platform: scraping, probing for vulnerabilities, reverse engineering, or using the API in ways the documentation does not allow.

Breaking these rules can lead to reversal of the affected commission, suspension or removal from 26Ritual and, where the conduct is fraudulent, recovery of amounts already paid.

Intellectual property

You keep everything you create. 26Ritual claims no ownership of your posts, videos, photos, captions or voice.

So that the platform can work, you grant 26Ritual a non-exclusive, royalty-free, worldwide licence to display your handle, profile picture and the public content you map to products in the creator app, on your 26Ritual storefront and shop-the-post pages, and in campaign reporting to the brand involved. Use in 26Ritual's own marketing needs your prior written agreement. The licence ends when you delete your account, except for reporting already delivered.

The 26Ritual name, marks, app and site are ours. You may use the 26Ritual name to describe your participation ("I earn with 26Ritual") but not in a way that suggests we operate your account or endorse a product.

Automated messages

When you connect Instagram and enable automated replies, 26Ritual sends direct messages from your account. Those messages go only to people who commented a trigger word on your post or messaged you first, inside the window Meta allows, at most once per person per post unless you configure a follow-up. You choose the trigger words and the message template; the default template is shown to you before it is used.

You are the sender. Messages must follow Instagram's terms and these terms, and you are responsible for the products and links they contain. You can pause or disable automated messages for any post or for your whole account at any time in the app, and disconnecting Instagram stops them immediately.

26Ritual may pause sending across the platform if Meta reports errors or if we believe the platform's messaging access is at risk. We will tell you when that happens.

Termination and cooling-off

You can leave at any time by deleting your account in the app or by writing to us. We can end your participation with 14 days' notice for any reason, or immediately if you break these terms, if a partner store or Meta requires it, or if we suspect fraud.

Commission that was confirmed before the end date is still paid in the normal monthly cycle, less any reversals that follow. Pending commission is paid if and when it confirms. Where we end the relationship for fraud, we may withhold unpaid commission linked to the fraudulent orders. Your links keep sending shoppers to the product for 30 days after termination, without attribution, so nobody lands on a dead page.

If you accepted these terms less than 14 days ago and have not yet received a payout, you may withdraw without giving a reason and we will delete your data under our data deletion process.

Liability

26Ritual is provided as it is. We work hard to keep the platform running, to attribute correctly and to pay on time, but we do not guarantee any level of earnings, that every click will be attributed, or that Instagram, a partner store or a payout provider will be available. Where an order is missed we investigate and correct the ledger; we do not owe compensation beyond the commission itself.

To the extent the law allows, our total liability to you in any twelve-month period is limited to the commission we paid you in that period. We are not liable for indirect losses, lost profits, lost followers or reputational harm. Nothing in these terms limits liability that cannot be limited under Indian law.

You are responsible for what you post and for complying with the law, including advertising standards, and you will indemnify us against claims that arise from your content or your breach of these terms.

Governing law

These terms are governed by the laws of India. The courts at the seat of the operating entity have exclusive jurisdiction, subject to any right you have under consumer or other law to bring a claim where you live. Before either side goes to court, we will try to resolve the dispute in good faith within 30 days of written notice.

Changes to these terms

We may update these terms. Changes that affect commission, payouts or your rights are announced in the app and by email at least 14 days before they apply, and you will be asked to accept the new version when you next sign in. Continuing to use 26Ritual after the effective date means you accept the change. If you do not, you can leave, and confirmed commission is still paid.

Contact

Questions about these terms go to hello@26ritual.com. Approved creators can also reach the team on WhatsApp from inside the app. The operating entity's name and registered address will be published here once confirmed.