Pinterest is definitely bogarting our referrals - any ideas how to stop this?

[GreenCarbonMail]

I just ran a few different test to see what happens to the links we create on Zazzle that are supposed to be Self referral links we can post on Pinterest and other social platforms. It's super fast and simple right - you create your design, add the title, tags and description and hit that little button and poof - it's auto posted to Pinterest. Simple enough, but if you then go to pinterest and click on that automated pin from Zazzle and then look in the URL you'll notice that your simple product URL now has after it the work "epik" and then a bunch of code. That code allows Pinterest to track conversions and claim referral credit and the Zazzle attribution system sees that tag and treats that pin auto published from the Zazzle site as if Pinterest is the referring source.

And, if you're think, fine then I'll just keep making my own pins and manually adding my URL to the website field. That will fix the issue and those pins drive more traffic anyhow. Well, they do drive more traffic, but go ahead and click on one of your pins that your carefully created, wrote a fully optimized description and added your product URL so you would get that Zazzle Self referral.  When your screen opens to your product, look at the URL - yup there it is. Pinterest added their "epik" parameter now making your pin their referral. All your hard work - gone.

I do love Pinterest and of course the auto social publishing on the Zazzle platform is helpful for getting our products more visibility. But it hardly seems fair for us to pay for marketing and lose referral dollars when we're doing so much work to drive traffic to our shops.

While doing my experiments, I noticed that when I posted content directly to my website Pinterest didn't alter the URL or insert their epik code. 

I also noticed that Pinterest does not insert its code into Amazon affiliate links. So, if Amazon can stop Pinterest from bogarting their affiliate links, I would think Zazzle certainly could do the same. And yes, I know Zazzle is a fraction of the powerhouse that Amazon is, but it would be worth a conversation to fix this situation and make it more equitable for all of us Zazzle shop owners - big and small.

[NigelSutherland]

Perhaps there's an agreement between Pinterest and Zazzle and they're working in collusion. I wouldn't imagine that Zazzle is unaware of the situation. Its another obstacle we have to contend with.

A workaround could be to create a Blog post for each item and then link to the Blog post using a photo. More effort involved obviously.

[Jadendreamer13]

They did respond to a previous, very long, thread about this. There is no collusion there, and Zazzle is investigating what, if anything, can be done about this (according to a moderator response that I read).

[GreenCarbonMail]

Thanks for that update. I did a search through the discussion,s but didn't see any recent updates from Zazzle about the ongoing situation.

[Ricaso]

There's a reply from Heather in this thread 

There's also a mention of the  "epik" link too. 

[Wildart]

these days everything is about profit and the filthy lucre

[Susang6]

Yeah, there’s truth to what you’re seeing. Pinterest really does add that epik tracking tag to outbound links, and Zazzle doesn’t seem to have anything in place to protect our referral IDs when that happens. Their docs don’t mention any safeguards, and I couldn’t find anything showing they block Pinterest’s tracking the way Amazon does.  Posting from your own site avoiding the rewrite also lines up with how Pinterest handles link sources. So your tests check out. It’s definitely something worth bringing to Zazzle’s attention.