Related Pages
- Deal Posting Guidelines - Affiliate & Referral Links
- List of Referral Codes & Links containing the full list of stores we support.
- Posting Referral Links in Deals & Comments
Original Post
This morning we pushed out a new user-submitted referral changes. This is an update to the previous attempt in 2012. Problem with the previous one is that it's difficult to add new stores that support referral benefits, and the feature ended up only supporting GreenManGaming and not being used much by our users here. What happened afterwards were wiki pages created for each online shop. Yes it's an interesting use of the wiki pages, but
- Not a good idea to let any member to be able to edit everyone's code.
- Free-form might not be the most ideal format, and hard to police everyone to edit in the same format.
- The list is ordered rather than randomised.
What we have done now is having a single place for you to put in all your referral codes. Go to your Settings page and click on the referrals tab. You should be presented with a list of "stores" that we currently have referral support. For the comprehensive list of stores / products supported, please go to the referral wiki page.
New ones should be easily added as well if the method of referral is via a referral link (i.e. unique URL per referrer). Feel free to submit new ones in the comments. I need
- The URL format for the referral link
- Instructions to get the referral link
- Benefit for the referrers and referees.
Another reminder that Affiliate Links and Referral Links are different and we do not allow affiliate links here on OzBargain.
Once a referral system has been set up for that domain, for every deal posted to that domain, a grey box will appear below the content and above the Share buttons containing a randomised referral link AND OP's referral link (if OP has submitted one for that domain and the deal has hit the front page vote minimum - updated 9/5/16). The benefits for the referrers and referees are also shown so people know what they (and you) are getting. For example this Amaysim offer I submitted. In this case including your own referral link and link to wiki becomes redundant.
Yes this is still in beta and needs improvement. Some potential issues / possible improvements:
Since you do not really need to put referral link in your content, you can submit deals with your link in the referral box without the deal being marked as "referral post". This might lead to abuse of people posting excessive deals from the stores offering referral. I shall look at ways to prevent it. I don't want to mark them as referral post at the moment because previously submitter can pick and choose whether to include his/her referral link. Now it's always included. 9/5/16 Update: Your deal must hit the front page vote minimum (currently 30) to show. This was previously 5, before being changed to the front page vote minimum.
Referral-code / coupon-code type referrals are not yet supported. For example Budget Direct, Rabobank, etc. We can potentially generate a popup containing the code when people click on "OP" or "random".
A good idea to let people pick and choose? For example some people might not want to use OP's referral link, not a random one either but from a list of friends.
So here it is. Give it a try guys! I will start removing some of the wiki pages later today. Meanwhile, please leave feedback in the comments.
If your comment is automatically unpublished due to the referral link, do not worry, moderators can still see it and will republish it before replying.
It would require the referrer to put in his/her phone number on OzBargain. Even though for other users it might appear to be randomised, but people might still not be comfortable with it.