I joined zazzle in 2005 and they are taking more and of my royalties, either by 3rd party referrals or by changing a 45% marketing fees for a self sale? The only way I make any money is with my Ambassador referrals which don’t happen often. What is going on? When I first joined in 2005 it was easy to make good money but now for me, at least, it is not. Anyone else?
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@dfishbac In April 2025 - Zazzle updated their T&Cs which included their new Ambassador Program and where these Marketing Referral Fees came into play.
Depending which department your product is in - there is a fee that you will be charged when you make a sale.
Self Referrals changed too- now it’s all about “goals”
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Thanks for your response and information. I did read up on department fee charges. I have anywhere from 100+ in each department with 292 in one and 749 in another. I just did get a self referral yesterday, the first one this year. Last year I think I only got about 4-5 and I promoted mostly on Pinterest. All of the 15% fees we are charged that I see in my earnings. Do you know how those come about? Are they from someone who made a self-referral on my product? I don’t think I have ever seen a fee there from someone I referred to?
Many thanks for your thoughts,
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@dfishbac Congrats on the self referral!
I’m confused with your statement of _“the 15% fees we are charged that I see in my earnings” - _the fees range from 35% to 50% nowadays.
Where have you been charged a 15% fee?
No one else can earn a “self referral” from your product. Only you can earn a self referral. They earn 15% affiliate commission if they promote one of your products and it sells but you still get charged the MRF (35% to 50% department fee)
You can normally see on your sale shipment emails if it was a zazzle 3rd party or if an affiliate had added a tracking code (but rarely find out who that affiliate was)
See below for a zazzle 3rd party referral that’s in a shipment email
If you have any pinterest links with your Ambassador ID attached - you would only earn 15% referral. This is considered a cross promotion link
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Whenever a sale is a referal, I look at that as being charged a 15% fee. 95%+ of my sales are by 3rd party. Was it always that way? I can’t remember.
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I was in the old referal program and later joined the Ambassador program and since I don’t get a lot of self-referals since this is just part-time for me and promotion can take a lot of hours. I feel like I earned more before the Amb program. I know I can opt out of the Amb program but I am not sure if that is a good idea or not? Do you do Zazzle full-time? Thanks
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@dfishbac You be as well staying in the ambassador program - they’re not going to change it back and you never know, you may earn some more self referrals.
Keep zazzling!
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I joined in 2008 and I make less now with 100k products that I did back then with a few 1000 products. Obviously more competition, but the fees were the last nail in the coffin for meaningful earnings.
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I wonder if it’s competition or corporate greed? Are you sticking with it? I am going to back off on the number of hours I put into it and use them for a better purposes.
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I think it’s both. Designers can work around competition, but not corporate greed.
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I agree. Thanks.
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I haven’t worked that much in January. I have some personal things happening that need a lot of attention and I’ve been able to pick up more shifts at my real job since that is guaranteed money. Not the daily pennies here. This use to be my full time job, and it paid appropriately.
I’m not sure what my future is here, but right now I’m making about the same with Amazon Merch and I haven’t added anything there in years.
Plus with Zazzle hiding 1000s of my products because of this arbitrary 100k product cap I’m having less and less reason to put time in. Which breaks my heart, this has been my home for 18 years.
I’ve begged Zazzle for years to please make a new cap for platinum or diamond level, I know other stores have more than 100k, so they definitely make exceptions. I might be able to continue if my new products didn’t get hidden within 3 weeks. I feel like I’m playing whack-a-mole trying to unhide 1000s of products instead of focusing on creating.
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I am really sorry to hear that. Shame on Zazzle. I wonder if they are catering to some really high earning creators that are giving Zazzle a big percentage of their overall sales? I took some training several years ago from some heavey hitters out of Canada. These people made it sound like the training was going to help everyone who took it to dramatically increase their earnings but it didn’t do that for me and I am pretty sure it didn’t for most of us. I know a lot more about designing than I did before but I still haven’t earned what the training cost and it’s been over 4 years now. I would say they over promised and under delivered.
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So these trainers are the kind of big hitters I was talking about.
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I had the same experience.
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Bummer, I won’t be going down that road again.
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I’m sorry the training didn’t work for you but I respectfully disagree. I can’t say that the training dramatically increased my earnings, but they did go up substantially (until April). I’ve learned much more than I ever could have on my own. I’ve more than paid for the training quite a few times over. If anything, they under promised & over delivered for me.
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I had the same experience as you Marcia and agree with all you said. That training opened my eyes in so many areas and until April I was doing very well.
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I’m glad it worked for you. I wonder if we had the same trainers?
Again, I wonder if we had the same training. You said you were doing well until April. What happened in April if you don’t mind me asking?