Is Yazing’s 10% fee on payouts fair?

Yazing recently announced that they would begin taking a 10% fee on all portal payouts, starting March 2019. Reader Tariq forwarded me the following email from Yazing:

Dear Valued Yazing Members,

The goal with Yazing is to continue to grow and build a solid and health business that creates opportunities for every individual to generate extra income by recommending money saving deals from the top online brands.

Our original idea was that we could pass 100% of the commissions back to our members and earn commissions on the non-referred transactions that come in through our deal pages.  Our theory is that as more and more of our members post their brand referral links on their blogs, social media accounts and forums to make money that this activity will generate more non-referred transactions through higher rankings of our deal pages in the search engines.

While we still believe in this model, we have not seen the volume of shared links that we were expecting and need to start charging a small payment processing and services fee.  Starting in March of 2019, we will begin charging a small 10% fee on all payments.  We hope you will agree that this is a small and fair amount.

As our members continue to use the influencer and affiliate aspects of Yazing to make money via online recommendations, we expect that our non-referred transactions will grow and that we will be in a position to re-evaluate the necessity of this fee in the future.

Thank you for your understanding and continued support of Yazing!

Adam

Is the 10% fee fair?

Yazing has been my go-to cash back portal for giftcards.com purchases for almost three years. The portal often has better rates than TopCashBack and pays out much faster than any others I’ve used before. So is this 10% fee fair? I think Yazing is a business that offers a great service and should be generating revenue from it.

TopCashBack actually has a tipping field on their cash out page, so I don’t blame shopping portals for trying to stay afloat. Assuming their cash back rates are higher than other shopping portals, I will continue utilizing  Yazing and don’t mind the 10% fee, when it makes financial sense.

I suspect some portals make their money by failing to track some transactions. I’ve never once had this issue with Yazing. They pay out every 30 days, like clockwork. Other shopping portals might take upwards of 90 days. So my preference is always to use Yazing, when it makes sense.

I have no relationship with Yazing and nothing to gain from promoting them over other portals. In fact, I could use this opportunity to hawk my TopCashBack referral link…which I totally did, in a previous paragraph. 😉

I’m all for minimizing manufactured spending costs and if Yazing happens to pay out the highest cash back rate, then I don’t mind giving them a 10% fee. It’s worth noting that in some cases, you’ll still come out ahead despite the 10% fee.

When it makes sense to pay Yazing’s 10% fee

Right now, Yazing is offering 1% cash back on Visa gift cards purchased through GiftCardMall. TopCashBack is offering 0.75% cash back at the same merchant.

On a $1,500 order, you would earn $15 cash back through Yazing as opposed to $11.25 through TCB. Yazing would take $1.50 in fees, leaving you with a cash back rebate of $13.50. That’s still lower than TCB’s.

Note: I’m using a $1500 example because larger orders incur a mandatory $10.95 shipping fee. Buying in $1500 increments works out cheaper.

While a $2.25 saving may not seem like much, it adds up. If you purchase the maximum $60,000 worth of gift cards in a month, you’ll save $90 on gift card fees. That’s over $1,000 a year.

Of course, that’s assuming the cash back rates remain the same. I highly recommend comparing shopping portal cash back rates through sites like Cashback Monitor and CashbackHolic.

Should you keep using Yazing?

Yazing’s 10% fee on cash back rates isn’t ideal, but I understand it. It’s a business and revenue matters. Gift card churning is a numbers game and keeping costs down is essential. I’ll continue using Yazing when it works out cheaper than other portals, which is what I’ve always done.

What are your thoughts on the 10% fee Yazing is imposing on cash back payouts? Will you keep using the portal for gift card orders?

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