There is a lot of justified confusion on how User Options added by customers from the product pages affect our earnings. Other than this note at the bottom of the Royalty History page
^ User Options, such as special sizes and embellishments, pay a fixed royalty of 5%.
I can't find anything anywhere on Zazzle mentioning anything about it.
If you're reading this it's probably because you've already seen the extra ^ 5% line on a sale in your Royalty History and are wondering how they arrived at the numbers shown. It seems complicated but it IS decipherable. Here are a number of threads discussing User Options, most of which include detailed examples of how the math works out.
Another weird math problem for royalty received
Zazzle 5% Fee
Zero royalty earned
Enclosure Cards Price Royalty v Personalisation
User Options, such as special sizes and embellishments, pay a fixed royalty of 5%.
If you've had a look at those threads you'll have a better understanding of what this one is showing and how my calculator helps you figure it out with just a couple of numbers input from you.
OK, so here we go ...
This is a screenshot of an actual sale with a 5% User Option applied:
Very little to go on here to figure how they arrived at a net royalty of $2.14 but you can do it if you know what you're looking for, which is the list price of the base product and the upgrade they chose. In this case the list price of the base product is $25.45 and they chose glossy as an Upgrade for $9.20 for a non-discounted total list price of $34.65. 25% off reduces that total to $25.99 which is what the two amounts shown on the Royalty Report add up to, matching the $25.99 shown on the product page as the discounted total.
So where on earth did the $16.79 on the Royalty Report come from? Well, they subtract the full amount of the User Option ($9.20) from the total the customer actually paid ($25.99) leaving a remaining balance of $16.79, and that is what your chosen royalty rate is applied to.
That's a lot of messy manual math which is where my calculator comes in.
It looks like a whole lot of numbers, but no worries, everything is calculated for you. You only need to enter four things: your royalty percent, the list price for the base product, the User Option cost, and the discount %. (These are the four gray shaded cells at top of spreadsheet.) Some products have multiple upgrades available - like frames and paper type for posters - so you can enter as many as four here. Also note that it's possible a customer may have used a different promo code than the sale discount advertised on the product page so you may have to guess sometimes on the discount % to enter.
The green shaded section calculates how things actually break down to arrive at the numbers shown on your Royalty Report (F14, G6, and F26 or 27). For comparison, the gray shaded section shows how I think one would logically expect things to break down. 😉 The purple cells show what your earnings and fees would be / would have been if they had purchased only the base product without the user-option.
Here's a second real-life example:
This shows a situation where the Remaining Balance (F14) turns out negative but the Gross Royalty (G18) still is positive so the Creator still earned something on the sale. This thread seems to show that when the Gross Royalty (G18) ends up negative, earnings are capped at $0.00. In other words, you don't earn anything, but you aren't actually dinged for the negative amount either, it just shows as $0.00. So my sheet is set so that if Gross Royalty (G18) ends up negative, the Nets (F26 & 27) automatically default to $0.00. However, there weren't any product links in that thread to verify the math against, so it's possible the Gross Royalty (G18) in those cases was still slightly above zero with the Net Royalty dipping below zero only after fees. If I get that data I'll update my sheet to be sure it is accurately explaining the nitty-gritty breakdown of zero amounts, but, either way the result is the same - a negative Net results in $0.00 "earned",
Sooo, like my original Earnings Calculator, you can use this one before or after a sale. You can test how much you would earn with x Upgrade + x% off, and you can use it after a sale to figure out how the numbers on your Royalty History line were arrived at.
What I've seen with User Options is that you generally do earn a little bit more with them, but less than you would earn if the formula wasn't shifting the amount the customer saved on the upgrade to the Creator's side of the balance sheet so to speak, which as shown can result in earning significantly less or even $0.00 when you combine a pricey upgrade with a deep discount. What is really notable to me is that these same upgrades that do little for (or even hurt) the designer's royalties earned, they can significantly increase earnings for the Referrer. So if you're an Affiliate or heavily promoting your own stuff, it definitely pays to be pushing the user-option versions (framed vs unframed as example). If it's your own product the extra you earn on the referral more than offsets the reduced royalty. If it's someone else's product, well, you made out good on the referral but the designer themselves takes a hit.
Bottom line is - if you are Zazzling full-time, working it a business, then you should have a full understanding of how all this shakes out so you can better decide on what options you want to promote your products with in different situations. You should also be able to see exactly why you earned what you are earned. This calculator will help you do both. It's free, no strings attached, and it's just a spreadsheet you can download so perfectly safe. I've locked/Protected the sheet so you can't accidentally delete or mess-up the formulas in the cells, but you can un-lock it with no password required. Here's the download link for it:
https://www.colscreations.com/SharedFiles/UserOptionsCalc.xlsx
* No strings attached here, but if you find this helpful I would be grateful if you wanted to promote something from one of my stores in return. 😉
This shows a situation where the Remaining Balance (F14) turns out negative but the Gross Royalty (G18) still is positive so the Creator still earned something on the sale. This thread seems to show that when the Gross Royalty (G18) ends up negative, earnings are capped at $0.00. In other words, you don't earn anything, but you aren't actually dinged for the negative amount either, it just shows as $0.00. So my sheet is set so that if Gross Royalty (G18) ends up negative, the Nets (F26 & 27) automatically default to $0.00. However, there weren't any product links in that thread to verify the math against, so it's possible the Gross Royalty (G18) in those cases was still slightly above zero with the Net Royalty dipping below zero only after fees.
Oops! All those (G18)'s should be (F18). Sorry, I had the wrong column letter stuck in my head while typing that up.
Real-life example of zero royalty "earned":
Line-item from sale of a framed print, referrer =None:
This shows a situation where the User-Option x 5% ($7.90) wasn't enough to offset the negative Remaining Balance x set royalty (-$13.08), resulting in a negative Gross Royalty and thus a net royalty "earned" of $0.00.
Disclaimer: This order was recorded on 7/30/2023 while deep discounts for "Christmas in July" were being offered. The math here works out exactly to the customer somehow getting 75% off this order. It is possible that something else happened here that the numbers coincidentally perfectly match a 75% off discount, but only Z knows for sure.
I just noticed this posted in the Creator News section 9-18-2023:
I'm really not sure how to interpret this yet but at first glance it sounds like maybe those of you who "earned" zero royalties on your framed prints may be getting compensated.
