were you on fatwallet too?? never saw you there ??
What if the link is direct, but it is to a product sold by the person posting it? Is that still considered a prohibited referral link?
For example, @melody keeps posting links to cheap Chinese products sold by āiParadā on Amazon to āhot dealsā. The posts often (always?) include some kind of a discount coupon, and I believe a few of them were well received, but I feel like the relationship should at least be disclosed.
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This is one of my pet peeves concerning slickdeals. Products sold by genetically named, faceless Chinese companies who compensate members for posting their coupon code deal to slickdeals. You can usually identify these products because the item title reads like a laundry list of searchable keywords.
I was wondering if we could revisit this issue. Allowing referrals on FW would have been a problem because it was such a large community with so many short term people joining that it would have clogged up the board, so I understand and agree with the thought that we shouldnāt have allowed them here when this board was becoming a FW replacement.
3 years later, however, and it is apparent that this is a much smaller community and we probably wonāt have the issue that FW wouldāve had if it allowed referrals to be posted.
That said, I still donāt think we should encourage multiple referral threads. But, may I propose one single referral thread in which folks can post their referral links? If the thread becomes a spam fest, maybe we can revisit the issue, but until that happens, I think itās safe to assume this board could handle a referral thread.
Thoughts?
@DaveHanson
not sure who else is a mod, so Iām just gonna tag a few of the most active people on here
@shinobi @Bend3r @glitch99 @scripta @xerty @pattyb53 @Honkinggoose @jerosen @gwraigty
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Not a mod, butā¦
What kind of referrals are you talking about? I think commissioned / indirect links that donāt provide anything special to the buyer should not be allowed, because weāre bound to get spammed by all kinds of crap.
We probably could use a thread with referral links where both parties get paid, but only if that payment is as good as or better than a publicly available offer / direct link. For example, Chase and CapOne credit cards pay a bonus to the referrer while the referred gets as much as the public offer. The current GPay deal pays both, and I donāt think you get anything with a direct link.
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Iād have no objection to dumping it all in a single thread. Iām a volunteer mod, but I donāt call the shots on this sort of thing. I imagine the issue is we end up with a bunch of randoms showing up to drop their links on us, and the mods end up spending a lot of time deleting them.
It might be better for the people signing up to just indicate interest and exchange links privately. Then, users get to refer people, without turning this into their own personal monetized site. Ie- āI want an Amex Biz Plat. PM me.ā
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Iām down for this, but there are things people donāt know about unless someone says, āHey, I got a referral to ABC and it makes us both X!ā 90% of the time, the referrals donāt have to be people you know, so the stuff you get in the comments of DoC work fine. But @scripta guessed the case that made me wish referrals were legit on here - the new GPay deal where both sides make the same amount and they say you can only refer people you know. I would never think to create a post with referrals where the person being referred got a worse deal that what is publicly offered, so I agree with that rule.
Should I just start a thread about GPay and hint at the fact I have one more referral slot and then just see if someone PMās me? I wasnāt sure if the board wanted a bunch of āHey, have you heard that Chase gives referrals for their sapphire card, wink, winkā threads, or if it would be better to just have one thread where we can all openly post. I think if we were gonna have a bunch of randoms showing up to drop links, that would have already happened by now, no?
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I thought the whole thing with āreferral linksā was regarding people posting about an item, but using a link that includes their personal affiliate info for that store/seller instead of just a link to that item/store? I didnt think it was intended to stiffle collaborative activities?
Iād say just warn everyone not to spam us with your worthless, self-serving links, and then let it become a problem before worrying about it. I think most everyone here can grasp the difference between contributing and spaming. I cant believe thereās a line of snake oil salesmen waiting patiently for our rules to be relaxed before posting their links; if they want to post links here, theyāre going to try to do it regardless of the stated rules.
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No, cause we donāt allow referrals now 
Are there a bunch of randoms trying to post them and the mods are deleting them and we havenāt noticed?
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Doubtful.
I agree with this idea.
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i hear ya! I hate SD dotomi links (mainly b/c my work PC blocks it ) I wish there was a work around, right now I copy and google
My Pihole setup blocks it too. It hasnāt bothered me so much that Iāve even bothered to fix it. I just copy and translate the url. If I clicked a lot of SD links, it would be worth troubleshooting and fixing, but for me, itās only one click per day, at most.