Z-link — is a special link to a course (https://stepik.org/z/ID, where ID is the course number), which helps to determine the amount of commission charged for each purchase of a paid course. You can generate a link to your course in the "Publish" section of the course.
There are two types of commissions:
- Reduced (12%) — charged from sales of paid courses, if the purchase was made within 7 days after clicking on the author's z-link;
- Basic (30%) — charged if the z-link was not used (if there is no z-link by default, it is considered that there is a promotion on the part of Stepik).
Why you need a z-link
- Z-link helps to unambiguously determine who exactly contributed to this purchase (the author or Stepik);
- it helps to unambiguously determine the Stepik commission from each sale of a paid course.
The Z-link allows authors to attract students to their course and not worry about the fact that some users will be counted with a 30% commission due to the fact that they will go back and forth on the platform pages and referral links in our emails for several days before making a purchase.
Thanks to the use of the z-link, the rule for calculating the commission on each purchase is unambiguous and transparent. This helps both the authors and the Stepik team to actively engage students in all available ways and be confident in the final amount of the commission.
If you place links to your courses somewhere yourself, we strongly recommend replacing them with links of the following type https://stepik.org/z/ID (where ID is your course number).
Terms of the introduction of z-links
Z-links define the commission:
- from January 1, 2021, for authors who have published a paid course staring from December 14, 2020;
- from February 1, 2021, for any other author (who published the course before December 14, 2020).