Understanding the Logic Behond Zazzle's New Fee Structure

[CreativeLeahG]

The way I see it, Zazzle’s new fee structure is about protecting their bottom line.

1. They run big discounts (sometimes as high as 40% ), and to ensure those sales are impactful prices must appear significantly lower. High royalties might cancel out the impact of sales. Hence discouraging higher royalties?

2. Google made massive changes to what they show via images so the promotional pins took a hit, they don't appear in results like they once did. Sales overall might be significantly down. We have Amazon and Temu offering personalized goods at significantly lower prices. That has got to have made a dent.

The way to overcome that is to focus on personalized goods that neither of those providers is capable of producing!

3. Part of it is also about royalties/referrals. With a high royalty rate and 35% self-referral fee Zazzle could actually end up barely covering their own costs once sales and discounts were applied. So now with the carve-outs and caps, they’ve made sure that doesn’t happen anymore. I can see the logic there. 

4. I also think Zazzle wants us to market ourselves more. By making royalties alone less reliable, they’re nudging us to use referral links, which saves Zazzle the cost of advertising. Hence cover images and videos and reward systems/features for those sharing media and so on. I expect to see more reward systems in the future for those doing particularly well on social media. 

5. And then there’s the category thing — higher carve-outs in areas like home décor and digital products just mean Zazzle makes sure they always get their cut, no matter what we set as a royalty.

So yeah, it’s built to make sure Zazzle stays profitable. Our job is just figuring out how to work with the system instead of fighting against it. I'm working on that now. I as you know haven't been active on Zazzle a while so it will take some time to work out new strategies. But I am on it! 

[Cat]

Unfortunately, the way the new referral system works, even when your promotional efforts result in a sale, the chances of actually getting credited with the referral are pretty darned low - at least that's been my experience, and it seems to be what others are experiencing as well. Perhaps there is some "secret sauce" that the rest of us have not yet come up with. I look forward to any insights that you might be able to uncover!

[CreativeLeahG]

It may be related to the fourteen day rule?

Zazzle’s referral tracking lasts forty-five (45) days, with a rolling fourteen-day (14-day) lockout period during which other referral clicks won’t override your attribution.(help.zazzle.com)

In simple terms:

• Once someone clicks your referral link, you’re credited with any sale they make up to 45 days later.

• For the first 14 days, your link is "locked in"—even if they click someone else's referral link, yours stays valid.

• After day 14, if they click a different referral link, the new referrer gets the credit for any future purchases.

I wonder if 'new referrer' includes Zazzle itself as a referrer?

[Cat]

Pretty sure "new referrer" does include Zazzle.

I think the 14 day rule has a lot to do with it, but it also may be the "other technologies" that Zazzle is employing to track referrals. Nobody knows exactly what is included in "other technologies," but folks have speculated that they may be using tracking pixels in their ads and emails meaning that the user does not necessarily need to click on a link in an email or an ad, they simply have to see it and the pixel is picked up and the referral is recorded.

The long and the short of it is that if a person it searching the web for "wedding invitations" for example, they are extremely likely to be shown a Zazzle ad and pick up a Zazzle tracking cookie (or whatever other tracking mechanism they're using) before they ever get to your web or social media page, making it very difficult to secure referrals.

And once someone has a Zazzle account, they are sent advertising emails on a regular basis. I'm unclear exactly how one picks up a tracking pixel or cookie from an email, but I think all they have to do is open it and be shown the images in the email and the tracker is activated.

All of this means that we're very unlikely to get referrals from active Zazzle users or anyone actively searching the web for products that Zazzle is advertising. 

There are a LOT of assumptions built into what I just wrote, so I may be completely off base, but that's my guess as to what's going on. 

I have done a little bit of testing with my own promotional efforts. What I have seen is that the products that I have heavily promoted do indeed get more views and sales than the ones that I haven't, BUT I have yet to secure a single self-referral on any of my heavily promoted products. What I glean from that is that promoting definitely works in terms of driving views and sales, but that the referral program is structured so that the cards are really stacked against us in terms of actually securing self-referrals.

Once again, I'm assuming a lot and working with a tiny sample size, so I could be completely wrong, but that's certainly what I'm seeing.

[CreativeLeahG]

Thank you Cat. There really is no work around if the issue relates to the technologies you mention. 

[Cat]

I don't know. Maybe the work around is to find a niche that Zazzle is not actively promoting? That might be one way to side step the impossible task of trying to compete with Zazzle for referrals.

A LOT of folks have increased their royalties dramatically to compensate for the new fees. I've raised mine a tiny bit, but so far have steered clear of any major changes in that department. But maybe that's the path forward, I just don't know.

[CreativeLeahG]

There are workarounds regarding increasing sales and royalties generally ( ignoring referrals). I look at those strategies in my new guide. Split testing is required though as early days.