When dealing with cryptocurrencies you'll hear about so-called reflinks very soon. Reflinks, often also known as referral links or affiliate links, are customized links leading to a page where you can register to use a service. It’s possible to receive your own reflink from the website of the service, if you are logged in to your account. If you are sharing your reflink now, other users click on it, and then sign in to this service, the person whose reflink was used (you) will get a small commission for referring this new user.
Reflinks are different from normal links where the person sharing the reflink receives a small commission and reflinks are usually also visible in the link, often the link contains an individual letter / number combination or an username.
Therefore, reflinks are very popular, because the "owner" of the reflinks can earn a bit by sharing it. Unfortunately, this fact often results to so-called "Refspam" that reflinks are posted everywhere to get users who sign up via this reflink. Because of this, Bitcointalk has a rule to prevent "ref-spam":
4. No referral code (ref link) spam.
Source:
Unofficial list of (official) Bitcointalk.org rules, guidelines, FAQ If you post reflinks, your posts will be deleted, and if someone is systematically repeating refspam posts, it may even end up in a (temporary) ban.
Therefore, you should always be careful and avoid posting reflinks.
There are some
exceptions, where reflinks could be tolerated like if you are including it in a very informative reply / description which adds value, a site owner who wants to track traffic coming from Bitcointalk or similar where it's very clear that it's no
ref-spam.
When in doubt you should avoid getting troube, better follow the rules and use legal ways how you can use reflinks in Bitcointalk:
1.) Reflinks in your signature It is allowed to use reflinks in your own signature. In order to be able to wear a signature, your account has to be at least Jr. Member. But it’s not possible to click the links in signatures of Jr. Members, other users would have to copy them in the URL by themselves. In signatures of Member accounts and above, it’s possible click on links in their signatures.
It’s described in 2.) how to change your personal signature.
2.) Use reflinks as a website in your profile Reflinks can also be linked in your own profile page and then referenced in a post. Linking a reflink in your own profile page works as following:
Choose
Profile in your profile =>
Forum Profile Information and there you can insert your reflink at Website URL. If you like, you can select a name at
Website title, which will be displayed in your profile in
Website.
In
Profile =>
Forum Profile Information you’ll find also the option to change your personal signature.
![](https://ip.bitcointalk.org/?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.talkimg.com%2Fimages%2F2023%2F05%2F19%2Fprofil6c8a0513ccc96a9d.jpeg&t=665&c=CiiPmuFKNON8Kw)
![](https://ip.bitcointalk.org/?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.talkimg.com%2Fimages%2F2023%2F05%2F19%2Fneu2611354bc7a048615.jpeg&t=665&c=1E2H7WLic6Qehg)
In a normal post on the forum you can point out that you have a link in your profile at "Website". It will look like that:
![](https://ip.bitcointalk.org/?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.talkimg.com%2Fimages%2F2023%2F05%2F19%2Fneu1b3d8ee0f51aea78.jpeg&t=665&c=rbpIhHPQ1BCVTg)
3. Refliks in your personal textIt's also possible to post your referral link as personal text. You can find it in your account settings, described by sheenshane
here. It should work if your link is not too long because your personal text is limited and you can only use a limited number of characters.
Thanks to
hugeblack for suggesting this.
I hope this little guide will help for you to avoid misunderstandings if you are honestly sharing your reflink.
But please, don’t spam reflinks in normal posts, better use the strategies described above. Refspam is annoying and not allowed. And if you are abusing these strategies to produce sigspam / spam to refer to your reflink in your profile you’ll also get a problem. Better be careful
![Smiley](https://bitcointalk.org/Smileys/default/smiley.gif)
Hi @1miau I found this topic so educative that I will like to translate it to my local board (Naija local board). pidgin, if permitted will be glad.