Please explain how royalties work with Digital Downloads now

[nikkileigh]

Why am I making less money when it is SELF referred instead of NONE? 

When I sell a digital download with no referral I make $10.55

When I sell a digital download with 3rd party referral I make $5.00

When I sell a digital download with SELF referral I make $5.00 and then $.42 so $5.42 total.

This is a mistake correct? 

can someone from Zazzle please answer this?

[Cat]

Oy Vay! Well, if you do the math under the new Ambassador Program self referrals are paid a TOTAL (royalty plus referral) of between 35%-50% of the net purchase price. According to the agreement, you get the same royalty as you would if the referral was 3rd party plus enough referral to make your total earnings equal 35%-50% of the net price paid. For physical products it ends up being comparable to what the Promoter 2.0 program paid before on self-referrals, but for downloads it means we take a huge hit. I don't know if this is a feature or a bug, but it seems pretty unfair to penalize us for promoting our own products! 

[mylittleeden]

Agree the digital sales are not even close the the money we were getting as the artist when selling digital you risk the misuse of your original artwork too, that is on us no one else. At close to $10 that is a risk worth it at under $4 and less than 50% that isn't. (see example) I am deciding if still worth it? Could we have the option to turn off 3rd party on certain items?
My husband has been doing digital downloads he has been creating (mods for flight sim).
So I know I could set then up to sell them directly via my own website for cheap cost, it is an option and quite easy to do. I would rather sell on here though as some in collections for example, but not be forced in this low ball price situation. I would prefer we set the price we want for digital and then Zazzle calculates the retail price based around that instead. If the customer really wants it they will still get it I am quite sure of that. Seems unfair about the digital side I do think. I am not overall happy as it seems clear now designers at least initially will be taking most of the hit, if promoters and your own efforts in promoting work out of course we could turn things around but it is a lot of if and buts and the moment that is for sure.

[Cat]

I'm still hopeful that this is a bug... well not a "bug" in the sense of a programming error because it's calculating it exactly the way the agreement says it should. But I'm hoping that they didn't think through this scenario and that they'll come up with a remedy. 

[Connie]

WOW, I didn't realize that the 35%-50% applied to DIGITAL sales too! That's insane! Before, the Promoter 2.0 excluded Digital downloads, so we just got our regular royalty percentage. Now we are taking a huge cut just for bringing customers to Zazzle for free!