Definition
Self-referral
Self-referral is placing your own order through your own affiliate link to give yourself a discount. It is the most common fraud in an affiliate program.
Its simplest form is also the most frequent: someone signs up as an affiliate, buys with their own code, and collects the commission on their own purchase. Variants follow quickly — lookalike email addresses, purchases for relatives, or a second affiliate account created to earn twice through multi-tier.
Even at small scale it matters. A commission paid on a purchase the person was going to make anyway is an unbudgeted discount, granted without a decision, and it does not stop on its own: if it passes once, it repeats on every renewal when the program is recurring.
Detection rests on simple matches — buyer email against affiliate email, same domain, same device — and above all on rules written plainly in the program terms. An explicit rule settles most good-faith cases, which are the majority: plenty of people sign up as affiliates sincerely believing it is the intended way to get a discount.
At earnwithaffiliate
Detected automatically at conversion time: the event is recorded and flagged as rejected, and no commission is created.
Related terms
Multi-tier commission
A multi-tier commission pays an affiliate on the sales of the affiliates they recruited, on top of their own.
Referral code
A referral code identifies an affiliate inside a program. It is what appears in every shared link and, often, in the matching coupon.
Chargeback
A chargeback is a payment dispute the customer raises with their bank. The money is taken back from the merchant, and the commission has to follow.