Whether or not you allow affiliates to earn commissions on their own orders is a key policy decision for your program. By default, Self-Referrals are enabled, but you can easily restrict this to ensure commissions are only paid on external customer acquisitions.
How to Manage Self-Referral Settings
If you want to prevent affiliates from receiving "cash back" on their personal shopping through their own referral links, follow these steps:
Access App Settings. From your main merchant dashboard, navigate to Settings in the side menu.
Go to the Referrals Section. Select the "Referrals" tab within the settings menu.
Adjust the Toggle. Locate the setting labeled "Self-referrals."
Enabled: Affiliates will earn commissions if they use their own link or code to make a purchase.
Disabled: The system will identify if the customer's email matches the affiliate's email and will not generate a referral for that transaction.
Important Rules to Remember
Email Matching: The "Self-Referral" logic relies on the email address used at checkout. If the checkout email matches the email address on the affiliate's profile, the referral is blocked.
Existing Referrals: Changing this setting is not retroactive. If you disable self-referrals today, any self-referrals that were already recorded in your system will remain there; only future attempts will be blocked.
Complementary Strategy: For the most robust protection, we recommend combining this setting with the "Non-Affiliate Customer Segment" restriction in Shopify to prevent affiliate codes from even being applied at checkout.
What Happens When Disabled?
When an affiliate attempts a self-referral while the setting is disabled:
The sale will process normally in Shopify.
Simple Affiliate will detect the matching email address.
No referral record will be created in the app, and no commission will be added to the affiliate's "Owed" balance.
What Happens Next?
Once you’ve updated your preference, it's a good idea to update your Affiliate Program Terms & Conditions to clearly state whether self-referrals are permitted. This prevents confusion if an affiliate notices a personal purchase didn't trigger a commission.