Here's my latest. My commission - after the excess royalty fee is deducted - should be $10.19. And instead it's $5.06.
And now this morning it's no longer "none" - it's a 3rd party sale. 😡
Here's another one for me today. Would have been a very decent royalty for a single sale had it not been cut. (I sincerely hope we'll either have transparency explaining the "why" for reduced royalty or be reimbursed the difference to make up the correct amount.)
When you have a sale you get an email (if you've opted for such).
Those emails show you the TC (tracking code) if one was used.
Those TC's can confirm it was a 3rdP referred sale.
They are not always there but they are there often enough to recognize those long strings of random characters as a TC from Zazzle/paid ad or even a real 3rdP affiliate.
So, for your sales that were labeled as NONE but were being charged as 3rdP, and have now converted to being labeled as 3rdP sales - Look at those emails.
Not every 3rdP sale is going to have a TC on it, but many do. So do some cross-checking. If you can find some sales formerly labeled as NONE in your earnings report but that have a TC in the sales email, then you know it was indeed actually a 3rdP sale that was mislabeled.
This was def a major flub on Z's end but you can maybe re-assure yourself that all is still on the up&up by cross-checking earnings reports to those sales emails.
* I don't take credit for thinking of this cross-check using the TC in the sales emails. That came from another Designer but it was so sensible I wanted to share it. The lack of a TC in the sales email doesn't mean it was a None sale, but if one is present then it was def 3rdP even if it ended up being labeled as None.
I didn't realize it either until earlier this year so I signed back up for them. They look like this:
That long string is the TC on this 3rdP sale. I've been told that the _BwE part has been seen since the beginning of time. There's also a _wcB one but of my last 10 or so referred sales, only one has wcB, the rest are BwE. Not sure anyone knows exactly what these signify, but it's been assumed for years that if such tracking codes, Zazzle is the 3rdP. And sometimes there's ones that are obviously Z like "emc_20250407_EMAIL_TIMETOSAVEAPRIL_LC".
And anyone can include a tracking code, so if I used "tc=Pinned_By_ColsCreations_On_Date" and someone purchased your item, that would show in your sales email.
Not all 3rdP sales are going to have a Tracking Code. But considering the number of designers who were effected by this mislabeling, there's a pretty good chance at least some could be confirmed as actual 3rdP sales by looking at the emails for those sales.
