Affiliate Reset / Self-Referral Links
Affiliate links place a cookie on the viewer’s computer when they are clicked on. This cookie lets a marketplace see which advertiser referred the viewer to the store page.
The use of affiliate links is common practice and provides communal incentives for sharing work from other creators, and typically results in the advertiser getting a percentage of a referred sale.
Unfortunately, a certain number of affiliate advertisers do not strictly follow guidelines, such as the ASA guidelines on affiliate marketing, instead falling into exploitative practices known as cookie stuffing. This most commonly takes the form of affiliate links hidden in short-links so the viewer is unaware that the advertiser it trying to place a cookie on their machine. The presence of affiliate links should be clearly outlined before the user clicks on them.
Typically, on our content, we compromise by using the (Affiliated) tag before the link, which itself is never hidden in a shortlink so the user can find the referral code in the link if needed.
Given the volume of content published, there may be human-error exceptions where the (Affiliated) tag is missing. This is most likely to be the case with self-referral links.
Please feel free to let us know if you find an error.
In relation to Curtis Holt products, while we do work with a small number of carefully selected affiliate partners, their behavior may change over time to contradict our advertisement philosophy. It may take time to make a decision about removing them, or contacting them about their approach.
In regards to Blender Market (Superhive after rebranding), a feature has been added to allow product creators to ‘reset’ the affiliate link using their own referral code.
Like any other affiliate link, this will look like the product link followed by a ?ref=94 code (94 is our affiliate ID for the platform), but each creator will have a different ID.
Our website’s store page uses these self-referral links to reset the cookie to our ID, as it makes sense that when you choose to come to this store, 100% of the earnings goes directly to Curtis Holt (and commission splits for the platform), instead of, say, 50% of the earning going to another advertiser (such as another YouTuber) just because you happened to click on a link for a completely different product two weeks prior.
The cookie placed on your machine lasts for a set amount of time, defined by the marketplace platform. Depending on how the platform has been designed, it does not have to apply to just the product your originally clicked on, meaning that if you watched a compilation video about Blender addons, then clicked on a shortlink in the video description, there’s a good possibility that a percentage of any purchases you make will go to the YouTuber, provided the creator of the product you purchased had set that YouTuber up as an affiliate at some point in the past. The cookie will persist if you leave the page and come back in your own time. It will also persist if you rediscover the products through the original creator, such as by coming to the store page on this website.
More information on self-referrals can be found on the Blender Market / Superhive documentation.
Note: That while resetting the cookie with our ?ref=94 code does clear the previous affiliate cookie, it will also cause us to become the new default affiliate. Meaning if you went on to purchase the products of another creator that we are associated with as an affiliate, then we will get a percentage of the income.
If you are uncomfortable with having an affiliate cookie associated with your browsing session, we recommend clearing them from your browser. All browsers allow you to clear cookies and cache data.