I very rarely get referrals since I don't do much promoting but I had one surprise referral in April and at the higher "Self-Promotion" rate none the less. After reading your post I looked at my VB page and was even more surprised to see a dollar amount there for April that's almost 5x's greater than the total of that one referred sale I had.
No idea what it means.
Ohhh. This
- Add to Cart
- View Cart
- Click "Add Digital for $14.95"
is probably the key to why you got the ref for the print but not the digital in same order. I would guess that Z sees their prompt at checkout to add X as marketing that's bringing that extra sale and thus they get the 3rdP ref credit for that portion of the order. ??
-- digital Royalty is reduced by Excess Marketing Fee, but NO REFERRAL WAS PAID TO ME
The line-item for this on your royalty report, did it show it as a 3rd Party referred sale?
I usually try not to clutter-up Tech forum threads with excess commentary but since the many in this same vein have been unanswered I'm kind of assuming it doesn't matter right now. So,
I did read the above mentioned thread but think it's coming at things from a different angle and doesn't really apply here.
The terms @YesItsRoy quoted:
3.3.1. Marketing Royalty Fee: If the sale of a Product is to a User referred (i) by an Ambassador from Links (as defined in the Ambassador Program Agreement); or (ii) through Zazzle’s marketing efforts (e.g., social media or affiliate networks, search engines, press release(s), tv/media ads, etc.), then a marketing fee (“Marketing Royalty Fee”), equal to a percentage of your Gross Royalty for the Product as specified here, will be deducted.
How that can be parsed:
3.3.1. Marketing Royalty Fee: If the sale of a Product is to a User referred by
1) an Ambassador from Links
or
2) through Zazzle's marketing efforts (e.g., social media or affiliate networks, search engines, press releases, tv/media ads, etc)
then a marketing fee ... will be deducted.
Read that closely. How would one just viewing an ad on TV pick up a referral "cookie" ????
I am not saying that it's right, wrong, ethical or other, just that, prompts at checkout to entice the customer to add other products to their order could easily be part of that "etc". And adding a whole 'nother product (which a digital download would be) is not the same as upgrading a product to a more expensive version such as other paper or fabric type ...
The updated Ambassador FAQS say this (more than once):
With updates to Zazzle’s tracking technology, Referral attribution is now more precise. As a result, more sales are showing as attributed to a Referral source including Self-Promotion and/or Third Party.
So it's possible that additional items ordered due to a prompt by Zazzle on the checkout page are now being more precisely credited to Z as 3rd Party.
I would like to think that what @YesItsRoy experienced here is a "glitch", but without an explanation from a Zazzle official and in light of the above, it's not unreasonable to think it's by design.
OK. So it was your own digital download which showed up on your Royalty report as referrer = Self but there was not a corresponding entry on your Referral report for it. That makes things clearer but without actual numbers it's impossible to say what occurred. But,
- Click Checkout button
- LOGIN
- Complete payment
when you purchase your own digital downloads, they are deeply discounted. My DD card set to be $10.00 is only $1.15 to me when added to my cart.
$1.15 purchase price x 91.5% royalty = $1.05 gross royalty, if a self-referred sale it would subject to the 50% total earnings cap so royalty + referral couldn't go over $0.52.
I would now guess that since DD's are already deeply discounted when they're our own since we're just buying back our own artwork, that maybe the usual rules don't apply to them. Or maybe they do but the royalty you earned on it was by itself at the 50% mark, leaving zero for referral and instead of showing as 0%, it just didn't show at all on the ref report.
On your order invoice, how much does it show you paid for the download? Did you pay the full customer price or the deeply discounted price since it was your own and you logged in before paying? How much does it show you earned on it in your Royalty history? Without knowing the specific numbers we're just spinning our wheels guessing. (I understand that's why you posted to the Tech forum, because the Z mods have access to those specific numbers, but with no response from them, the rest of us are just trying to puzzle it out without all the info.)
I have another thought, but I need help from @ColsCreations on the math. Do you have your percentage for digital products set higher than the default?
The way it works now is that your total earnings for digital downloads are capped at 50% of the net price on self-referrals - because they subtract the marketing fee from your royalty and then your referral amount is flexed so that the total you receive = 50% of the net price. This means that the referral amount is pretty tiny ($0.42) if you have the royalty at default 92.89%
I'm wondering if you have the percentage set higher than the default, would the excess royalty fee end up being more than the referral amount thus cancelling out the referral completely? I tried to do the math and quickly got my brain tied in a knot, partly because I don't exactly understand how the excess royalty fee is applied.
Could that possibly explain it?
You could be on to something for my ADDED post -- the Self Referral issue. 💡 I'm not going to mark "Accept As Solution," however, because my Volume Bonus calc went up repeatedly with sales of NOT my Products. I still believe something is wrong here with Referrals.
Do you have your percentage for digital products set higher than the default?
No -- it's the Digital Royalty default of 94.315%. I see your screencap is 92.9%, which may be default for Invites. This is a poster, and 94.315% was the Default for a Poster.
The way it works now is that your total earnings for digital downloads are capped at 50% of the net price on self-referrals - because they subtract the marketing fee from your royalty and then your referral amount is flexed so that the total you receive = 50% of the net price. This means that the referral amount is pretty tiny ($0.42) if you have the royalty at default 92.89%
I do understand about the flex -- I created an entire calculator in Excel to drop in numbers when I make a sale and confirm what's happening. That 50% is the Wedding Department rate. Do you know whether each Department rate applies to digital or is it 50% across all departments for digital? I didn't originally review the digital FAQ b/c I don't offer a lot (asset restrictions). I noticed it said "calculated the same as physical products" and took a wait-and-see approach with plans to probably not sell the few invites I have digitally in the future. That's garbage to have a 92% rate and make $5.00. I promo my own stuff and expect to make MORE and not LESS than if someone else promos it or the customer snags a Z cookie from their emails, even if Selfs are few and far between.
This is the Royalty -- a little more than 50%. And using my calculator -- which says $7.76 is the right Royalty -- it says the Referral would a negative $2.48 with Department rate at 40%. Perhaps in this exercise we've finally found Z's line in the sand: When we have to pay them for a self-referred sale, they don't take it away from us. 🙄
The bottom line for me, assuming this is how it's "supposed" to work, is that they REDUCED my Royalty by 40% for a sale that was SELF-REFERRED. I didn't get paid the $13.39 and I didn't get an additional Referral. Reading that again: Not Referred would be $13.39 Royalty and Self-referred is $7.76 Royalty without any Referral earnings. Make that make sense. 😲
Nope. That is just not going to work. 🤷♀️ I think that's the conclusion of my test -- I will sell digital on Etsy and my own website before I allow my earnings to get assaulted that way.
Thanks, @Cat. I appreciate your contribution here!
Now we wait to see whether they respond to VB continuing to increase with no Referrals paid.
Now that we have the actual numbers and know that it was in the Wall Art & Decor cat at 40%, not Invites & Stationary at 50%
The $7.76 she earned as the Royalty is 51.9% of the order total, they didn't actually reduce her total earnings by the 2.48 to bring it under the 40% cap. They just ignored the ref part and let her keep the full royalty amount even though it exceeds the department cap for a self-referred sale. So that's good. Means the calculations are so convoluted it creates a "loop hole" like this under the right conditions, or, because of all the clap-back over how digital sale earnings are now calculated, they've made an allowance for it.
As for the original question about the VB totals not matching the Ref reports, I think you are probably correct in that the VB chart is likely including amounts from other products on the order that weren't yours so while you didn't earn a ref on them, you still get credit. ('you' used in the general sense here.)
* Also interesting that the full price stuck even after she logged in at the check-out stage, it didn't recognize her as the designer and reduce the price accordingly.
But as an example, I have a Product that used to be 14.9% and is now higher; sales priced at the higher rate, but the VB credit was exactly what it would've been at 14.9% (there are no options or upgrades for that Product).
Not too long ago I was Googling up for info about the VB program as now that it's discontinued, I couldn't find any explanations about it directly on Z and not ever having been into referrals, I had no real personal prior understanding of it.
With that disclaimer, what I read was that the VB amount "credited" is not the order total paid but the base price of the item(s). That was both eye-opening and logical to me. That would mean if the base price was say $10, it wouldn't matter if your royalty was 10% or 45% (thus greatly effecting how much the customer actually paid for it) - the VB would credit only the same $10 base price. Which makes sense because after that, the rest is just being paid back to the designer for their royalty.
Could it be a way for their accounting system to be prepared for a transition from the old to the new reports they're promising to come out with? To keep the accounting accurate for tax reporting. I'm totally guessing on this. If the VB is retired, then it must be some sort of holding for the future reports we're about to see soon. Idk. Waiting to see.
