This is a good idea to have one main thread for Benable as it seems like there are a billion separate ones for it now. 😮 Might be better suited for the Promoting forum, though, maybe a Mod will move it.
And a question - has anyone earned a referral from Benable yet? I'm in the promoter2 program and of the two I'd rather get my promoter referral than the referral offered through the Benable site... but the links list look like my clean ones that I need. Should I switch the Benable "auto affiliate link" off on all of my Z items or is is possible to earn in both places..
@MOM and I are in the process of real-world testing.
Can confirm so far that if you use your own regular link w/ RF#, not Benable's auto-affiliate link, it goes thru as a normal self-referred sale where you get the standard 15%. You just have to be sure to toggle-off the default "auto-affiliate" link and paste in your own instead.
I understand that to get the 35% PP referral, you need to use "clean" links with no RF#. If you just add a "clean" link to Benable and leave the auto-link on, it converts to a referral link for Benable which looks something like htt...benable.com/a/5qgsaxy. In that case Benable would be the 3rd-Party referrer getting 15% from Zazzle and in turn paying you out 6%. So again, need to make sure to toggle-off the auto link and paste in your own clean one instead.
You're not going to be able to double-dip. One's either going to get the 15/35 from Zazzle, or Benable's going to get the 15 and pay you out the 6.
When you click the + to add a card/list item, the first thing you get is the prompt to enter a link.
After you paste in your link you can either hit your Enter key or click the purple link that appears below it.
On the next screen, you can see the auto-affiliate link toggle is in on by default.
If you check the text link shown at top, and mouse over the purple link icon at bottom, both show the link as you pasted it.
So you think everything is fine. You click Next, add your Note, and Confirm. Done.
But now open the posted card and mouse-over the link it shows you.
You can see in your browser what the link actually is. Benable's.
So even though it looks like your own RF link or own clean link - make sure that toggle is OFF. You can toggle it off even after originally posting. Which I did here and you can see it now shows my own RF link as intended.
They provide the very obvious toggle button for using their Auto-Affiliate link or not, but it's still a little deceptive/confusing as it still appears to be your own link until you check it after publishing. So check your links and make sure that toggle is off.
You can toggle the link choice for each and every card/list item you add, so absolutely choose whichever is best for the individual circumstance. With Zazzle, we all obviously will benefit more by having it off, using our own link for the possible 15/35% referral commission direct from Zazzle. Would be silly to use the AA link (what I am going to refer to the auto-affiliate link as for easier typing) where Benable gets the 15% from Z and you only get 6?% from Benable.
For people already enrolled independently in various affiliate programs/sites, again, going to be better to use your own link for the full commission instead of giving it to Benable and then only getting a % of that from them. For me, I am not in any such programs, so anything I might decide to post that is not Zazzle, I would use the AA link as then I would get whatever % from Benable. In this sense (cents? LOL) Benable is a very cool platform as you can potentially earn affiliate money, small as it might be, without having to jump through the hoops of enrolling to be an affiliate for this that or the other site.
That's interesting as Benable's draw is that you can earn affiliate income from "35,000 partnered brands" without having to sign up for a bunch of individual programs. But poking around my Benable account after reading your post I found this:
I don't know how to decipher that. I mean, Zazzle manages it's own affiliate program too so whats the difference? This makes it sound like Benable is not actually "partnered" with Amazon so to get a commission you need your own Amazon Associate ID anyway even if auto-affiliate link is ON, and then you are paid via Amazon as you would be in any other circumstance as an independent Amazon Associate. So sounds like people who aren't already Amazon Associates with their own ID would not get any kind of commission from Benable for linking to Amazon items. Not to be a naysayer but now I am wondering how many of the other "35,000 partnered brands" also require an independent ID to earn anything?
That last paragraph especially is a real head-scratcher, can be interpreted numerous ways. I have no idea what it all means.
According to Benable, it's only "up to 6%" for Zazzle:
I'm not going to gripe too much.. as I'm not really in the affiliation game and wouldn't be tracking down all those companies to join a bunch of schemes anyway... My primary purpose will be to get my own work seen and if in the process I make another buck here and there, that's fine with me, if I don't it won't bother me much either.
I am of the exact same mindset there. However, that doesn't preclude me wanting to understand the "fine print" of a platform when it seems they are being purposefully vague about it. It's like "doing the math" on Zazzle. What they show on our royalty report isn't exactly clear about how they arrived at the total paid out to us, hence we have studied it to learn how they arrive at that figure. I'm grateful for any sales but I still like to know how my share of it is figured. 🤔 😉
I think they are being a bit disingenuous with the "you keep the whole commission" part ... They are giving you all of what they list as the affiliate percentage.. I guess
I agree. That's how I interpret that, too. You get all of what they list as the commission, which might be 6% for Z. But everyone who is already an independent affiliate knows you'd get 15% on your own. Whatever smaller percent one gets via Benable is a fair trade-off for not having to sign up with everybody everywhere, but then we see in the case of Amazon at least, that there's more to it. I think it's a neat platform (you can find me there as 'colscreations') but the pragmatic side of me wants to understand how it really works.
Just poking more around my account and found this link to a Google Doc with more info about "Auto Affiliate" links. But still says they don't take a cut.
Which still doesn't add up as with Zazzle as example, we know for sure that their referral commission is 15% (or even 35% if a PP) but Benable says "up to 6%". I have no answer and am still going to use the site, but this is just nagging at me.
