Interesting affiliate case

Hey guys,

So, I just bought an item off of CodeCanyon and got the email receipt as usual.

But I didn’t notice this until today: the download link for your purchased file is something like this:

Note the referral at the end. I said “Ok, they must be using this in their analytics”.

But I looked up the user emailreceipt and it referred quite a lot of people. That would be technically impossible, since you cannot refer an user who has already signed up (as he made a purchase). Not to mention, the rules say that if a user previously visited an Envato marketplace, it doesn’t count as your referral.

So how can this be?

I’m not entirely clear how the affiliate tracking program works behind the Envato scenes but I don’t see any reason to assume that the user referenced in that URL received any monetary gain from your purchase.

It could be solely used for tracking purposes and once checked against the affiliate rules (a percentage of the purchase given ONLY for new members), no credit given would have been given to them.

Regardless, if you need clarification, it’s probably best to contact support.

JamiGibbs said
[...] but I don’t see any reason to assume that the user referenced in that URL received any monetary gain from your purchase.

Nope, never even thought about that, and I wouldn’t care either since I didn’t pay more. It wouldn’t even make sense that the user gains money, since that would split it into more locations, meaning more micromanagement for Envato.

I was just curious how can this user have referred people if they were already registered.

digitalimpact said
I was just curious how can this user have referred people if they were already registered.

perhaps from people forwarding the newsletter and perhaps the newsletters being online somewhere and people stumbling across them…

Mhhh, that is interesting. I would love to know the solution of this puzzle.
Maybe this link doesn’t refer to the user that is called emailreceipt but it is an indication for Envato how much people click on their download link through the email. So maybe it only is a coincidence that there is a user with the same name that Envato uses for such analytics.

MSFX said

digitalimpact said
I was just curious how can this user have referred people if they were already registered.

perhaps from people forwarding the newsletter and perhaps the newsletters being online somewhere and people stumbling across them…

Didn’t think of that, it is indeed a possibility Thanks MSFX !

Think about it – it’s in Envato’s interest, both from a monetary point of view & a business tracking point of view, to put referral links in as many places as possible.

1) The more they can kill off other people’s referrals, the more money they don’t have to pay out to affiliates. (Creaticca, tutsplus, freelanceswitch etc)

2) They can see track where people are coming from

Think about how many hundreds of thousands, if not millions of email receipts have been sent out – some of those will be forwarded to the client, boss, accounts guy, workmates etc

Touché to Envato on this!