Indeed in the report selection there is the option “Advertising / Affiliate content”, so it’s clear MW don’t want it.
My jury is out on Patreon etc, who’s to say that sending people back to your MW account to download the model isn’t Point Manipulation? Seems like double dipping and not beyond some of the recent characters that’ve been in the scope of late. Of course there is very little being done about it as every dl here is a win for makerworld.
Hmm, interesting take. So you are saying a creator could potentially set up an alternative account or multiple accounts on Patreon and use them to download their own models on MW? Or a group of users could use Patreon as an underground tunnel to sneak into MW to do download trading?
They would have to create MW accounts in order to download models, right? They can’t just log into MW using their Patreon account cretentials.
@GenericUser This is not to make light of your concerns. I think it’s refreshing and beneficial to have a different take that I and perhaps most haven’t even considered. Just wanted to understand your view better, that’s all.
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Put that way it does seem a little far stretched I have to admit.
I wanna preface that I don’t think anyone is scamming, I think they are legitimately being sponsored, running a patreon, etc
It feels rude to me to be able to double dip the consumer (not double dip MakerWorld)
Some users will have:
- popular models already, that drive attention to their profile and add legitimacy
- Verified and official promotion from bambu themselves
- A link to patreon for people to obtain other related models (using some mw stuff as their gateway, which is arguably against the rules)
- a link to their thangs paid tier, same as above
- And now sponsor spots are popping up
Theres also the issue (which I find as just a moral issue) of people getting popular, then taking half their stuff down and paywalling it
It’s just greedy, as a consumer I see people like this and I want to have nothing to do with them, no matter how good their models are
I have a BuyMeACoffee link at the bottom of some of my files, it’s purely for a person to donate to me if they want, and recently I’ve been swapping that out for a boost button since it’s less energy on the end user to give me a boost which doesn’t cost them anything
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Well, i was almost forced to create a patreon just that people stop nagging me. Until 2 days ago i had no patreon, no commercial licenses, nothing! But then i got messaged from some honest(?) people enquiring about how could they sell my stuff and if i had a patreon they would subscribe just for that license… turned out no one did it and everyone’s selling it anyway. There goes the honesty 
Either way, i am one of those people that hate subscriptions and i hated to do that. I thought about Cults but can’t sell what is here on the exclusive program and Patreon was one of the ways of doing it because no model is hosted there and instead people are given the corresponding makerworld model link.
Buy me a coffe is the same. Put it there because people asked me how could they “tip” me for my work. Created one and… nothing also 
So… surely i am not farming points or anything even close, but i get your point.
It’s a tricky situation becase Makerworld has icons pre defined for social networks and patreon is one of those that can be linked in the bio, but i agree, some people abuse those links as a way to redirect people to there or to their affiliate links. And those affiliate links are the ones that are not allowed, there’s even a dedicated report message for that. But hey, people do it because they can… 
I feel this in my bones, every week or two I get a friendly message from someone who has seen a file of mine for sale on Etsy/fb/etc
its why I just thought “nah, I don’t have the mental energy for this” and went with offering my stuff free and telling people to donate if they want
I have a real job, I don’t have the time to commit to paying followers, and I’ll never be zou3d and have 21000 patrons at $16AUD each
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So the way that it seems to me, under MW’s new exclusive content category. It’s one of 2 things, we are either selling our designs to MW when we upload them, and have no actual rights to them anymore. Post upload since it forces your model into “standard digital file license”. That is until you take it off of the exclusive tier. Or we retain ownership of our models, but have to put some barrier to allow people to physically print and sell our models. You could simply tell each person they are allowed to sell your model for free, but that is still a barrier that they need to contact you to recieve permission. Which signing up for a Patreon is obtaining permission. Now I do not believe you can post your files there “for free”. I don’t know if uploading your files early for backers violates the spirit of the rules though. That’s my 2 sense on Patreon. As for paid advertising, honestly I don’t know how I feel about that. We’ll see if MW bans people popular enough to have brands reach out to them.
there’s gotta be a line though, at the moment Makerworld brings them nothing but printer and filament sales.
A lot of the creators that are doing all these weird tactics are making a lot more points than me, and i haven’t paid for filament all year thanks to points
I wonder how much money MW thinks a user is worth to give them loads of points/gift cards only for them to send people off their platform to patreon/thangs/advertisers
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MW is basically doing the same thing YouTube did about 10 years ago with the creator programs. They just want the best models on their site, traffic is the most important thing. Then they will worry about how to make money later.
It’s the same way every social media company has operated for the past 10 to 15 years. Operate at a loss, drive traffic, then sell your user base to investors. Then the investors decide if advertisers, or subscription models work better for the platform.
I’m not saying that’s bad, but that’s the only way any of these companies are able to make money. So if we are not taking money from Bambu labs by offering a Patreon I don’t see an issue with that. Until they figure out monetization I think they are kinda leaving everyone alone. I believe they will make an announcement and give everyone time to figure out what to do before they start punishing people for using Patreon. I don’t think they have an issue with it.
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this person is still doing it, fyi
@MakerWorld is affiliate/sponsor ads allowed on our uploads? I would think not as it’s one of the options in report
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See that download count? Don’t get your hopes on they doing something. If you do that, then it’s a matter of hours until it’s taken down and you get penalized. This ones? No way…
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it’s a shame because they are supported in so many ways already, i wonder what they are doing with all those points… surely they don’t need any more machines or filament
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Well, i know cases where some sell printers that they got with the coupons or even sell coupons on their patreon and yet some don’t even use Bambu printers at all. It’s a busines and makerworld is happy with it so there’s nothing we can do, unfortunately.
On a bright side, there will be news over at printables about the same problematic subjects around here and with a solution and by also penalizing people. Can’t wait for that to be announced. Maybe makerworld follows also
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What do you think about this guy that posted one model just to he can bring traffic to other platforms
https://makerworld.com/en/@LoftedGoods
Sure his model is good and a lot of people downloaded the vase but is this enough, pay the platform with one model when you have a business? This is business for him, he is living out of these models selling them on Etsy and Thangs. Wouldn’t be more appropriate to use the paid promotion that businesses use? He is not a "passionate user " that tries to get some points to fund his hobby.
Even with my gripes about this I don’t know exactly if it’s truly wrong. Maybe I didn’t get the point, maybe I’m too idealistic and have a distorted view about what MW is but sure I would have proffered to have this clearly stated by him and by Maker World.
i dont see any issues with his link… makerworld lets us share our links in our bio so i dont see why we couldnt in our description
I’ve followed this guy on Insta for a bit, his stuff is fine but it’s all…. The same?
Anyway, he used to have more stuff on MW and seems to have removed it all
If it’s any consolation he seems to get all his traffic from tik tok and instagram, makerworld is probably very low on his priority list
The point I was making is that this is not “just a guy”, he is a business. I was raising the question if it’s ok or not considering that the stakes are different. I don’t know but I’m curious about other peoples opinions.
This seems excessive, no? 
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Hey mum can we have STLFlix
“We have stlflix at home”
Reported that model and user