We’ve made some changes to the Earnings section of your Account to improve transparency and to make it easier to understand how your Earnings are calculated.
The new Transaction Details Page brings all key information into one place, giving you a clearer view of what goes into each sale. You can access the transaction details page by visiting your Earnings history, Royalty history, or Referral history pages and clicking on the little eye icon in the right column. The transaction details pages will be available for Royalty and Referral transactions.
Here’s a quick look at some highlights of what’s included on the Transaction Details Page:
Published Product Details – All the key info about your Product.
Order Item Details – See when the Product was ordered, where it was sold, the Product type purchased, if it was a Referral Sale, and more.
Royalty Breakdown – Detailed information on how Royalties are calculated: Upcharge Royalties, Marketing Royalty Fees, Secondary Content involvement, Excess Royalty Fees, etc.
Earnings Summary – Includes the total Earnings for that transaction, including a breakdown of Royalties, Secondary Content Royalty Share, Referral Commissions earned, and more.
Quick Links – Share, edit, or transfer your design with ease and more.
Customer Details – View the customer’s name and location.
Some important things to note:
All sales prior to 4/1/25 will be on the old Earnings reporting system, so it won’t have the Royalty breakdown.
More changes are coming, but this should give you more clarity on how Earnings are calculated.
We’ve removed the rate column from the Referral history page. You can find more details about your referral in the Transaction details pages.
Your feedback has directly influenced these updates, and we encourage you all to keep submitting your questions and feedback to us. To help us track and respond to your input more efficiently, please use the form for all questions, feedback, and technical issues. While we’ll continue monitoring this thread, the form is our primary tool for managing feedback at scale.
Love this – thank you! Only thing, I wish there was a breakdown with cancellations – what was cancelled before receiving & what was actually returned after getting their physical product.
I wish the starting point in each detail page was Gross Earnings with another line for Discount Applied and then Net Earnings. I also want to see Gross Earnings, Discount and Net Earnings in the top level report so that we can easily visually eyeball how sensitive sales are to discounts. I suggested this at an earlier date in the “Ideas” forum.
Thank you. This certainly helps from a transparency point of view.
But I will admit: I’m willing to trade non transparency for my normal sales back the way they were
And I mean that in a nice way, not in a mean spirited way
I don’t believe there ever will be, because privacy.
But as been asked many many times, just making a distinction between it being Zazzle or Other is good enough.
Honestly I thought transparency would feel better but seeing how much I’ve lost this month alone to “marketing” (which clearly isn’t working since everyone’s sales are down) felt like a punch in the gut :sob: Ignorance really is bliss sometimes!
On another note, does anyone know now that the marketing fees are clearly listed if they can be deducted at tax time?
Marketing fees you see in these Zazzle reports are not deductible by you. You never had that cash and you never paid the fee out of money you had, so no, you do not have to bother tallying all that up. You can’t deduct those fees. File your return after looking at your Zazzle 1099, using exactly the amount you see there.
Heather, Can you explain why some of my products are listed as third party under the earnings, but then it is listed as a referral in the NEW earnings section? Thank you!
I’ve taken time to review the new earnings section page, and while I do appreciate the added transparency, it has also brought to light a very discouraging reality. A significant portion of our royalties and self-referral earnings are being withheld.
For those of us investing deeply in creating, marketing, and promoting our own products, it is disheartening to see how little remains after fees. We are doing the work to bring traffic to Zazzle, yet what used to be fair compensation now feels like a shrinking reward.
I know many fellow designers are feeling the same frustration. The numbers do not lie, and now we can finally see them clearly.
Zazzle, we value this platform and want to see it thrive. But we also need to feel like our work is respected and fairly compensated. I hope this new level of transparency leads to a sincere reevaluation of these cuts and how they are impacting your creative community.
Exactly. Zazzle should be transparent and designate themselves as 1st Party. So many of us have been saying this for years (as far back as a heated Zazzle town hall in June 2013 - I saved the transcript) . They should not shadily and conveniently be cloaking themselves with a 3rd party label. They are NOT 3rd Party. I don’t care who the other 3rd party referrers are. They should remain private. An eye opener for me was learning just how many 3rd Party Google Analytics hits have Zazzle rfs. It’s a HUGE percentage. HUGE. Purposely obscuring themselves as 3rd party strikes me as so dishonest. And let’s not forget that now that the new benefit of Zazzle cookies lasting longer — which they claim is such a wonderful thing for designers and referrers — also benefits the longevity of Zazzle’s zillions of cookies. Again, I can’t help but think that makes them the biggest beneficiary of that particular’benefit’.
There has to be a better way than reduce our royalties so drastically. Yes, there is POD competition. However, the cuts are so drastic, it’s impossible to believe this is the only way. Zazzle has a leg up on most of the competition because of customization, etc. instead of destroying our royalties, Zazzle, please find another way.
Reread the initial post from Heather. There is a form to use to ask your questions. It’s easier for them to receive a form with questions than it is to go through this long thread.
Ignorance really is bliss sometimes!