A Word of Warning about In-Progress or Share Links and Royalties

[Cat]

So, I got a chat from a customer who needed help with a seating chart. Long story here, but she sent me a share link to her work in progress and she had managed to completely butcher the layout, so it turned out to be easier to copy her customized text into a new project rather than trying to fix her mess.

Anyhow, I sent her a share link back, she was delighted and bought the product - but I didn't get a royalty. I finally figured out that since I had started fresh, and never published the new version for sale, it didn't tag it as my work.

It was only a few dollars in royalties, so it's not a huge deal, but I just wanted to share this so nobody else ends up in the same boat. The share link only gets you royalties IF you're sharing an edited version of something previously published. If you start from scratch and send a share link from something that you haven't yet published (even if you're cutting and pasting the elements from a published product) you don't get a royalty. That should have been obvious, but for some reason it wasn't.

Lesson learned!

[J32Design]

I remember an issue that was discussed a couple of times in the old forums. I believe once you customize a product and then share the customization with another person it becomes a private product and therefore there is no royalty.

I believe the best way to move forward with a customer in a scenario like yours would be to ask them invite you to use the collaboration feature. You could still use the customers custom text and copy and paste other relevant design elements into the collaboration.

[Cat]

Wait, so you're saying that if I customize a published design and then send the customer a share link, I still won't get a royalty?!? I hope that's not the way it works. I just spent 2 weeks working with someone in Australia - couldn't use the collaboration feature because we're in radically different time zones, so the only way to do it was to send links back and forth. Anyhow, I sent her a pile of share links on previously published items. Those links still have my store name on them, so I'm really hoping I get the royalty because that would be a bummer. 

Can anyone from Zazzle weigh in and confirm?

[J32Design]

I cannot remember exactly what triggered the private product scenario. Personally I always publish the products for sale and set them to direct only and once purchased I set them to hidden, just to be safe.

[Cat]

Well, I haven't gotten any royalties from the customer in Australia. I had been assuming that she just hadn't placed the orders yet, but now I'm not so sure. I guess I'll just be creating a pile of direct only products at least until I can get come confirmation one way or another on this.

[shellifitz]

I was the one who had a long drawn out ordeal over "private" products and no royalty earned on my own products. 

Like Penguin Power, I also am not sure how it works with a shared link but my question is how are you sharing the links? Because you should at least be getting referrals for this kind of work.  That means you want to always share your links via email so that when the customer comes in on the link it is an external link and not an internal one.  does that make sense? 

 There are still things that can go wrong and cause you to miss the referral but at least this way you have a chance to earn it. 

Adding: chat links are already on Zazzle so referrals will not work from them. 

[Cat]

I'd be happy if I just get the royalty! We're talking about a full wedding suite with at least a dozen products!

[J32Design]

The posts that I remember were specifically about not receiving a royalty when a customer bought it. Shame we can't look it up in the old forums any more.

[Cat]

So... I contacted the woman from Australia, to ask her if she'd bought any of the stuff yet, and it turns out she's only purchased one item so far and I did indeed get the royalty for it - just missed it on my reports. Sooo, I think that you do get the royalty if you send a share link to a product that you've previously published. Whew!

[PenguinPower]

I’m not sure about shared links… but if you are buying your own product and make a change to an existing product (even changing template text) and then buy it, it gets treated as a new, unpublished product and you get no royalties. Not sure if this has any implications in regards to the situation of changing something and sharing with another party though. 
I definitely recall this coming up a few times on the old message boards. 

[Cat]

Hmmm... perhaps sharing links this way is a bad idea after all. I hate to have to publish a pile of private products, but that may be the way to go.

[NHW]

When I customize one of my designs for a customer, I go the collaboration route so I don't have to publish a new product, and the original design gets credited with the sale if they buy. I've found this to be the simplest solution.

[Cat]

I've avoided using that tool mostly for scheduling reasons - but maybe it's worth trying it.