Do All or Most 3rd Party Purchases Earn Designers a Referral?

[MyBlueSkye]

Many of the purchases my customers make show as 3rd Party in my Earnings list, but most of them mysteriously do not also have a referral - for example, I post a lot of items on Pinterest with my referral code attached to the item link, and it seems as though even these purchases might not come with a referral, since the number of posts I make and the level of exposure there (currently at over 3,000 views per month) doesn't come remotely close to the number of referrals I should be getting from customers clicking my Zazzle pins on Pinterest to navigate to Zazzle and buy.

Thank you in advance for your assistance/advice.

Laurie

My Blue Skye Too - Pinterest

[Windy]

I've read in these forums that for every 1000 views on a particular pin, you might expect one referral sale on that particular pin. I am not sure 3000 views per month across all your pins would be particularly likely to result in a sale. 

[MyBlueSkye]

Hi, Windy! Thanks for your reply. I'm still curious as to if all 3rd Party sales earn a referral or not, however. 

[PenguinPower]

They all technically do - BUT, many of them are likely to actually be Zazzle itself. If the person who is buying comes in from an outside Zazzle link that the company itself has created, like a banner ad or from a sale email Z is the third party.

[MyBlueSkye]

So, 3rd party orders are paid as a referral only if the person ordered through a link/image/banner posted outside of the Zazzle website, correct?

[Malissa]

You will see 3 referral types in your earnings:

1. “None” meaning the customer either came in without a link or had cookies blocked so a referral doesn’t happen at all

2. “Self” meaning YOUR link, whether it’s a promoter or regular referral link, is where the customer came in and you get paid the referral 

3. “3rd party” meaning someone besides you, whether that is Zazzle itself or another affiliate, brought the customer in and they are the ones that get paid the referral.  You will still get your royalty on the sale however. 

both the self and the 3rd party referrals come from links posted outside of the Zazzle website.