There’s how I interpret the rules and regulations. How correct or incorrect I am can be subject to debate. There is some flavor of personal opinion within these words too, so be warned.
I believe the rules are geared towards shady behavior. Undisclosed links and items put up for the sole purpose of advertising, and that otherwise bring no value to the platform. They don’t want you spamming amazon affiliate links undisclosed and without any purpose. They don’t want you putting google ads in your descriptions that have nothing to do with the object itself. They don’t want you to put up a demo object with a description that says come to our site if you want the real thing.
I think Makerworld recognizes that people have a want and need to make money from the content they design. They need to balance those needs with their platform, and what they can find acceptable and doesn’t hurt the goals of the platform.
I think this stuff is allowed where appropriately disclosed and relevant. That means if it’s disclosed that it’s affiliate links and links to corresponding stuff (Like specific hardware). I don’t necessarily think it’s a sin either, if you have a sponsor. I’m not so sure what PCBWay has to do with that clicker, to be frank, so I’m not sure I feel it’s appropriate in this situation.
I was contacted by PCBWay about doing a sponsorship. I have a specific project in mind too that’d be great for that. It’d require a custom PCB and stuff. It’s something I kind of put off, because it would have required skills in electronics, and I’ve been focused on designing stuff that’d be easy for others to assemble. When PCBWay contacted me, it got me thinking, oh, this could be an avenue to make this project much more approachable. If I follow through with that project, I would want to partner with PCBWay, and that would include having that info in the description. It would be important though, because that would be my guidance for getting the PCBs easily!
So, I think there’s room for this stuff. I don’t think we should just shun it all. I don’t know that we’ll always see the best or appropriate uses, but I think there’s still a lot of cases where it’s warrant.
In the general sense of a sponsorship helping to fund a project, I’m not sure. The reality is, this stuff can take A LOT of work. Like I haven’t put anything out in a minute, not because I’m not doing anything, but because I’m taking on larger and larger projects. These things are costly to develop at times; especially when you’re not getting paid for it. (And as I dedicate my time to larger projects, I’m slipping behind on Makerworld in another sense, since my steady flow of releases is trickling, so my traffic slows too) If I pick up extra work in my day job, the hour rate I can make far exceeds what I can pull out of Makerworld, out of my whole collection.
I personally don’t feel a sponsorship is something to scorn. Any of this monetization stuff. We want amazing stuff on here, right? This is part of that, part of what it takes. All of us designers, we have lives we need to fund and support, so we can afford to eat and live too. We want to be able to bring amazing, jaw dropping, fun, outlandish, projects to you, to everyone! Stuff like this is giving us the tools to be able to dedicate more time and energy into projects like that.
I know it’s annoying, or can be, especially when people are shady with these things. Something I realized with watching youtube though is, well, yeah. There’s a lot of hard work that goes into things, more so than people might sometimes realize. We want all of this stuff for free, but we need to let the content creators be empowered to support themselves too, so they can provide this content for free.
(edit added) These topics obviously cover me too. My personal preference is to not beat you over the head with any of it, but I have all my avenues too with which I’m trying to use to help generate income for myself. I very much hope that it isn’t a problem, and I don’t want to someday come on here and see a thread like this talking about me. 
I want to find that balance we can all find acceptable.
