How can I refer a friend to the Very Friendly Sharks website?
Thank you for your interest in our referral system and for wanting to grow our community further!
Here is how our Very Friendly Sharks card market referral system works. You invite someone by handing out your referral link found on the account page:
All you must do is click the “Copy” button, and the link will automatically be ready to be passed to any of your friends or community.
The people you’ve referred the link to will then see the referral page, where your username will automatically be entered inside of the “Referred By” field:
Please note that this field is non-editable; this way, no mistakes can be made.
Once the user successfully registers and verifies, you will see them under your account page in the list of "Referral Users":
What is Very Friendly Sharks Referral Credit?
Very Friendly Sharks Referral Credit is money added to your referral credit wallet whenever someone you’ve referred checks out a cart on the website if specific prerequisites are met.
Referral credit will be tracked separately on your account, and you can view this amount under your wallet:
PLEASE NOTE: You cannot pay out the referral credit into your bank account, as this credit will only be usable for purchases on the Very Friendly Sharks website.
Referral credit is not withdrawable. This type of credit will remain assigned to your account until you use all of it or delete the account itself. Once you receive it, it's yours to keep for as long as you'd like until you purchase items on our website; then, the credit will automatically be used first.
If you delete the account, your credit will be forfeited and will go back to Very Friendly Sharks Limited.
Please have a look at our Terms & Conditions for further information.
How do I obtain credit from the people I’ve referred?
Obtaining referral credit through Very Friendly Sharks is simple!
Once a user you've referred purchases on the website of £20 or more in cards, sealed products or any other collectibles on our website, our system will track that purchase and wait until it's been verified by both parties.
Please note the purchase must be of at least £20 in a single checkout, and only checkouts of at least £20 in item value will be counted towards your website credit.
The £20 threshold might be lowered for future referral releases.
The £20 threshold is based on the value of the items purchased and does not count VAT, shipping fees, or additional fees on top of the value of the items.
Once the purchase arrives and the transaction is fulfilled, 1.5% of those items’ value gets added to your credit counter:
Credit will only be added when the transaction has been completed, without any specific increments. This credit is taken from our 4% commission on a specific item and is not added to our 4%.
The percentage of the referrals you get from the people you’ve referred might change when we reactivate the referral system. This means the 1.5% could only be there at the website launch. Should the percentage change, we will inform the community.
If the percentage changes, it will also apply retroactively to people you’ve previously referred, not just the new ones.
If a purchase needs to be fully refunded by our admin team, then the credit will also be refunded. This is to protect our buyers from malicious sellers.
Due to this, there will be a cooldown between the transaction and your receiving the credit to allow for such eventualities.
The cooldown period is up to 30 days. This is also in line with our Terms & Conditions.
Can I check how much referral credit I get and from which users?
The only way to check how much referral credit you’ve obtained is via the abovementioned view.
You’ll be able to see which users you’ve referred and how much total referral credit you’ve obtained from them.
But, to maintain the privacy of our users, you will not be able to see how much referral credit you’ve received from which user.
How do I use my referral credit?
Referral credit will automatically be used at checkout.
Our system will always prioritise referral credit when you checkout to pay for an item, and you’ll use regular Very Friendly Sharks credit to pay the remainder of the price of the cart.
This means that if an item costs £10 at checkout, and you have £2 in referral credit, you will only have to pay-in £8+pay-in fee or use £8 of your regular Very Friendly Sharks credit to pay for the cart.
For more information about our fees, have a look at our FAQs page.
Is there a limit to how much referral credit you can obtain?
There is currently no limit to how many referrals or how much referral credit you can obtain through our platform.
The only limit will be when the referral system is active, as we only temporarily turn on the system.
Please note that if you’re an affiliate of Very Friendly Sharks, you will keep receiving referral credit even when the main system is turned off.
While the system is active, any people you’ve previously referred to the Very Friendly Sharks platform and any new people you refer will generate referral credit when the abovementioned requirements are met.
Is the referral system always active?
The referral system will be active from the day of launching the Very Friendly Sharks website for two consecutive months.
Afterwards, the system will be turned off. This doesn’t apply to referral credit for affiliate ambassadors.
But don’t worry; we’ll bring the referral system back up online at specific periods of the year so that you can earn more Very Friendly Sharks credit!
This means that, while the referral system is online, you’ll want to bring on the platform as many people as you can as quickly as possible to earn referral credit from their £20 and above purchases.
How will I know if the referral system is back online?
If you’ve signed up for our marketing emails, we’ll inform all the users through email.
We will also announce it through our social media channels (found at the bottom of each page of the website) and on our Discord community.
So, sign up for our marketing emails and our social media channels to keep up to date with the times we’ll put the system online!
What happens to my referral credit when the system isn’t active?
Nothing happens to your referral credit. The referral credit will always remain in your account if you don’t check out and purchase new items on the website.
The only difference is that you won’t be able to obtain new referral credit from old or new people you’ve referred to Very Friendly Sharks until the referral system is back online.
As soon as the referral system is back online, all the people you’ve referred and the new ones you will refer will start generating referral credit once more.
What is an affiliate ambassador, and how do I become one?
An affiliate is an individual who endorses our Very Friendly Sharks brand and vice-versa, someone we feel matches our company ethics and has a large outreach within the community, whether it’s via social media, events or just gatherings.
The only difference from a normal user is that an affiliate's referral link and ability to earn referral credit for their invited users will always be active as long as they're a member of our affiliate group. This means that even when the general referral ability for other users is temporarily shut off, ambassadors can still obtain credit.
To become an ambassador for our platform, you must meet some internal criteria, namely proof of an active and large following and outreach in a specific TCG/collectable community, whether via social media or other channels.
We usually contact affiliates ourselves, but if you want to become one, please feel free to contact us either via a support ticket or get a hold of one of the admins through our many social media channels and Discord.
Please keep in mind that we have a rigorous selection process.
The process for applying for affiliates might change in the future. If it does, we will inform our users through our different channels.
How does referral credit behave differently for affiliate ambassadors?
Affiliates will always have an active referral credit and, depending on the deal agreed upon between them and Very Friendly Sharks, might even have different referral % rates.
They might also have different purchase/checkout thresholds than other users.
This means that even when we shut off the referral system for our users, our ambassadors will still be able to obtain referral credit to reward them for continuously growing our platform and community with their hard work.
This does not affect items that they sell themselves, but only the items purchased by those that have been referred to VFS by them.
