I found this disturbing to say the least. Zazzle has its own design store: StudioZ (Zazzle.com/studioz). This store joined the marketplace in 2025 and already has over 8,800 products, at least 50 of which have Editor’s Pick. In addition, the products from this store seem to receive substantial exposure on premium areas on the Zazzle website. The current main Zazzle landing page has a section advertising the new premium business cards. Five of the 7 business card designs shown belong to StudioZ. The same happened with letterpress invitations. Search Zazzle.com/letterpress and you will find the main heading space wedding suite, as well as the majority of the invitation examples shown on the page belong to StudioZ. It appears this store has the majority of its royalties set at 5%, the lowest possible royalty, making its items some of the least expensive in the marketplace.
Along with the many changes that have happened in the last year, this is just another thing that makes you wonder the direction Zazzle is going.
I see where you’re coming from, but I look at it a bit differently. On the one hand, I completely agree that it can feel discouraging to see these products get so much prominent placement. On the other hand, Zazzle operates on a much broader scale. There are unassigned items, officially managed trademark brand stores that naturally get high visibility, and premium specialty lines like letterpress where it makes sense for Zazzle to set a high design benchmark as a showcase.
In some cases, having in-house designs is simply practical for their internal teams to work smoothly. In a way, having these clearly labeled as their own store is at least transparent. They have to do own test, own trials, own experiments.
And of course, exclusive tools like PhotoPop can feel a bit frustrating for designers who have spent a lot of time achieving similar effects through intricate masks and layers.
Overall, it doesn’t completely discourage me, but my main concern lies elsewhere: the current shift toward opening products directly in the editor seems to minimize individual shop visibility and gently steer customers away from discovering the independent designer behind the work. Even though creators carry full responsibility for their content, our presence feels increasingly secondary. Being repeatedly surprised by rapid changes without much dialogue is what feels most unsettling. If workflows can shift so quickly, it naturally leaves many of us wondering what the future holds for independent creators on the platform.
I’m not sure what I think about it, but on a good note, at least we can see how they do their tags, descriptions and titles for best practices. On a good/bad note (depending on whether someone has it), it probably means having an “editor’s pick” is the only way to truly be bumped up in the marketplace.
I wonder why they don’t put out a call to designers to design the items they’re looking for (like the blue tartan plaid ornament).
Also in the news today: Etsy just announced that they’re testing offering printed products for digital buyers. Canva has already had this. I’m trying to figure out how to navigate/pivot. I think the “many streams makes a river” thing is probably the best move here through all of this. The only other thing I can think of would be to just go with a website and offer high end/highly custom items. The market is flooded with sellers. It’s also flooded with buyers, though. Right? I hope? ha! I’m rambling on now.
Oh, I suppose you’re right. Good point! I have too, now that I look at my old ones. Some never got sales either. It must boost visibility, though. I just assumed because it seems like all of the products that are at the top are editor’s picks.
I honestly don’t find this disturbing at all, and maybe I’m missing something in the conversation, but what Zazzle is doing is exactly what platforms have always done. Before POD, I was a writer, and at eHow, Associated Content, Demand Media, and Helium, the parent company had their own in house writers and editors publishing content right alongside freelancers. That was completely normal. Corporate teams produced articles, set editorial standards, and filled gaps in the marketplace.
Zazzle doing the same thing isn’t unusual. They built the platform, they created the original customizable products, and they have every right to run their own store within their own marketplace. Independent creators still have full opportunity to publish our artwork and earn royalties.
Every business I’ve ever worked with has had a corporate presence inside the platform. I guess I am just used to it and a Z store well its expected.
Boy that’s a blast from the past! I remember eHow and oh what was that cool search engine from way back? Ask Jeeves, I think? There are others I just can’t think of right now. I remember when Amazon sold mostly books and videos too. Ahh the good ole days when, if you were lucky enough to get a backlink from an .edu, you ranked higher in the search engines. Remember the backlink sharing pages on every website ha!
I have mixed feelings about it. I suppose if they are a platform for designers, then it wouldn’t make sense for them to compete. But a lot of companies do. Amazon definitely competes with its sellers.
I kind of wish they would put out something out like “Calling all Designers: We need dark blue plaid Christmas items.” But, I suppose maybe this is their way of saying it.
Were you a content writer for eHow.com? I stayed there until they ended article submissions and sold my content to eHow during the buyout. I absolutely loved that platform and yes, it was Ask Jeeves back then! I remember the backlink chains and those connected .edu articles; I still add .edu sources to my blog posts today. Not sure if they still give a boost in SEO, but I like the reliability and authority they add. A lot of my writer friends moved to Squidoo afterward, and the friendships I made in the eHow forum have lasted we still talk daily. What a blast from the past!
Just because other places also did questionable things doesn’t make it OK. If Zazzle has its own store, it has an inside advantage over every other designer. Zazzle knows what customers are searching for, and can make designs based on that information. They can make designs “inspired by” some of the top-selling items, undercut them with a low percentage, and make more sales. Also, if it’s Zazzle’s own store, they get all of the profit. For designers, the best we can hope for as a real number is 14.9%, and we almost never get that. Or even close to it, thanks to referral fees, sales, or the customer ordering while facing southwest during the spring or whatever. It was already highly questionable when Zazzle became a “third party” referrer to itself to take a bigger cut of our commissions. Zazzle making its own designs means it doesn’t need us. Cutting designers out of the picture would save Zazzle a boatload of cash, after all.
It’s definitely been a bummer to see. I first noticed it when I saw one of their products made in late May was already on the Best Seller list by July. There are more and more of their products populating the top of search results. And of course they are being promoted in their e-mails as well, and most of the landing pages and homepage in spots that designers would die to have.
No, I wasn’t. I was busy planning out my what I thought would be an “empire” of wedding invitation kits and later templates. I did pretty well and hit the top of Google for that search term at one point (using the old rules of SEO), but I remember how much easier it was to get there. Now, the trade-off is that people are definitely 100% more comfortable buying online than they were back then.
I look at some of my old websites I built using the WayBack machine. Ahhhh nostalgia. Something tells me I was on to something back in 2010. Ughhh hindsight. I remember sitting with my notebook doing figures and planning. I took the avg number of weddings in the US and estimated how many might be diy, and the sales numbers came back some crazy super high number. I thought “nah, that can’t be” - well, yes, the market ended up being much bigger than that number even. Now, with Canva, it’s over the moon and so hard to even be seen in any marketplace with so much competition.
I digress. If you find a time machine, let me know. I miss those days. I’ll hop back on it with you and do a redo hehe : ) I cringe at my old photos. I think I used, oh, what was that program called. Dr something. I think it came bundled in on a CD with my printer or something. I would take those photos on my dining room floor and meticulously draw lines around all of them, delete the background and add a shadow.
Back to the topic. I’m just trying to roll with the changes here. I guess there isn’t really anything we can do about Zazzle competing with us but hope that it brings in more customers, that we can learn how to set up titles/tags/descriptions from their listings, and that maybe some of our products end up in the “swap designs” or “templates” tab in there.
I think it’s important to remember that we’re not employees we’re independent contractors creating artwork and earning a royalty. Zazzle owns the platform and the products; we own the designs. That’s the relationship.
Their in‑house store isn’t unusual either. Every platform I’ve ever worked with had a corporate content team creating right alongside freelancers. They built the marketplace, they know their search data, and they’re going to make products based on what performs well. That doesn’t mean they’re trying to replace creators it just means they’re running their business the same way other companies do.
And it’s not written in stone that anyone can only earn 14.9%. You can raise your royalty to offset marketing fees, referral fees, or anything else. Many creators already do this. Run your store and price your products at what feels fair for your brand.
Honestly, who else is giving us this kind of opportunity that Zazzle gives us? If you had to build your own storefront, handle hosting, customer service, manufacturing, and line up your own drop‑shipper, it would cost a lot more out of your pocket. Zazzle provides the infrastructure, the marketplace, and the opportunity.
I also don’t see the fees as ‘questionable.’ Zazzle has been transparent about the fee structure and the third‑party/ambassador program. We may not love every part of it, but it’s not hidden and creators have plenty of ways to adjust their pricing to compensate.
There have always been third‑party sales, so that part isn’t new. Their Z store simply exists alongside ours, just like corporate content existed alongside freelancers at eHow, Demand Media, Helium, etc. Independent creators still have full opportunity to publish our artwork, build our niches, and earn royalties
Having their own store would be fine if they would have had it all along. But they created the store last year, when all of these other changes began to happen. Why? And yes, Zazzle has been open about the changes to the royalty system and we are able to make changes to offset their fees, however that is not the only major change they have made. Some of their recent changes, they have not been as open about despite receiving tons of feedback from designers that we believe those changes are negatively affecting us. Someone even asked to have a town hall type meeting where designers and corporate talk about Zazzle as a collaboration and how we can make things better together. Yet, we have not received any reply on that or the other issues such as the templates, moments or links opening in the design editor. Another thing that happened is that Zazzle is no longer accepting applications for premium products such as embossers, foil napkins and the recent letterpress invitations (When you click on the Google form it says “We are no longer accepting applications”). This is a red flag to me because that means they are not looking to expand the available designs through independent designers.
Having their own store feels like another thing they are testing. And yes, Zazzle does provide an opportunity for designers, however, that opportunity seems to be eroding little by little.
I’ve been here a very long time. I know how to play the game. I just don’t like to play a game that’s rigged.
I did not say the fees were questionable. I said Zazzle being a third party to itself was questionable.
Again, just because other companies do the same (or similar) thing doesn’t mean it’s the right thing to do. I’m no Zazzle cheerleader. I’ve seen Z do some things that have made little to no sense from the outside, but I’m sure they have their reasons. Just as they have their reasons for this.
If you agree with it or simply just accept it, that’s fine. For me, it’s just another thing about Z that makes me angry, and that isn’t going to change.
On a side note, I saw that about applications being closed for certain products. Which is a shame because I would love to design on their newest letterpress line of products. It is going to be interesting seeing how all of this unfolds.
Re the foil stamped napkins and letterpress. It could be because the printing partner (not Zazzle) is having issues with designer files (some maybe who don’t know how to design for these production methods) or that they’re swamped or expect to be swamped for the holiday season and need it to be throttled back. I used the same printing partner as Zazzle uses for these. Vistaprint (and I’m sure many others) uses the same one too (and they also offer letterpress and foil stamped napkins).
I’m not sure, but I don’t think Zazzle produces most of the items. They use printing/production partners (makers), so they do have to pay them too. Not that that makes any of this better, but they’re definitely not pocketing everything even if it’s their own designs. They just seriously cut the overhead on those items.
i guess because i’ve worked online for such a long time, i don’t see zazzle as a threat or as a company using inside data against creators, and i’m not worried about them copying my niche or undercutting me because they don’t need to do that, so i don’t really look at their store or their best sellers as competition. i understand why some creators feel worried about changes, but my own experience online makes me see it differently, and i just focus on my own work and let the marketplace be big enough for everyone. and i’m not sure if you were referring to me with the “cheerleader” comment, but if so that actually made me smile because any moderator would tell you that’s the furthest thing from the truth, i’m definitely not a cheerleader for zazzle, i’ve just been online long enough to see platforms come and go and i tend to look at things from a practical standpoint rather than a fearful one.
I first noticed it when I saw one of their products made in late May was already on the Best Seller list by July. There are more and more of their products populating the top of search results. And of course they are being promoted in their e-mails as well, and most of the landing pages and homepage in spots that designers would die to have. 
