Is Zazzle taking our referrals by overriding our cookies

[OakAndPine]

I have been promoting other designer's products on Pinterest via pins and boards for years, but have not received a single cross referral sale till date. Am I just marketing another's product for free? Is it possible that in some way Zazzle is able to convert my referral sale and themselves become the third party? Am I wasting my time ? Am I being a fool by advertising and marketing for Zazzle and being cheated of all referrals, even though the customer may have come through my Pinterest link? How is it possible that all my marketing efforts never bring me a cross referral? I am confused on what to do. Any advice is appreciated.

[Mariholly]

If you haven’t read this post, you might find it interesting:

https://community.zazzle.com/t5/technical-issues/corrupted-quot-cookies-quot/m-p/197376

[OakAndPine]

What a lot of confusion going on. Feeling cheated! No response from Zazzle even after so many days!!

[OakAndPine]

Can you imagine the amount of money that Zazzle would have to pay out if all referrals links were working correctly? So instead, the plan is to half the designer's royalties and keep the majority of referral sales with them by attributing it as 3rd party. They are making so much more money now. Really sorry to speculate, but there is no clarity from Zazzle. No response and we  designers are loosing our hard earned money daily 😞

[Mariholly]

ALL my few sales in May, EVERY SINGLE ONE, is from third-party referrals!

[OakAndPine]

Mine are few and far between and all are 3rd party after April 1st, except for 2 sales

[Mariholly]

I don't know, maybe it's just me, but it feels like everything is about to blow up at any moment. Many designers or creators, or whatever they want to call us, are angry—really angry, in fact. You can even sense a bit of distrust when, at the beginning of the month, our royalty amounts took a while to show up. Not to mention all the unanswered comments and posts. I don't know...

[LMGildersleeve]

I think  you have to analyze and do what is best for your business / hobby and time spent. If you are not getting referrals via Pinterest there are two ways to look at this.

Firstly, are your promotion efforts worth changing up? Should you spend the time creating manual pins vs. the Share button on Z? Do you do the research of what is trending on Pinterest, or just pin willy nilly whatever floats your boat?

The second question you have to ask yourself, if you are not willing to put the extra time to up your Pinterest game, is it worth it to continue?

If you feel you've exhausted any extra efforts to promoting on Pinterest and it's not giving you $, it's up to YOU to decide whether to continue that avenue of promoting in the future. If it gives you anxiety to continue to do this kind of affiliate marketing you may just want the piece of mind and not doing it any longer.

There is no easy answer.

[OakAndPine]

Most of pins are manual pins. After April 1st was promoting more in the hopes of getting a few referral sales for myself, what with our royalties  halved, but nothing so far