Shouldn't Direct Only (private) Products All be Considered Self-Referrals?

[Cat]

Since the new TOS went into effect, I've been feeling a renewed grumpiness about having to help customers with their orders. I've long been a proponent of the "good karma" approach, figuring that assisting customers with designs might not pay off immediately, but that in the long run it will because even if I only make a few dollars on their purchase, it will bump the product up in the algorithm and that will in turn lead to more sales.

But with the new system in place, my already small royalties are becoming so ridiculously small, that I'm really not feeling at all enthusiastic about helping customers in that way. There are customers that I've literally been working with for months to perfect their wedding designs, and it seems incredibly likely that in that time they will have picked up a 3rd party cookie somewhere, so when the order is finally placed I'll make practically nothing, despite the MANY hours I have devoted to helping them.

Then suddenly today it occurred to me that when we create a direct only product for a customer, it really ought to count as a self-referral. I mean there is no way that they could even access a direct only design unless I sent them the link, so by definition, I have referred the customer to that product.

It seems to me that crediting sales of direct only products as self-referrals would totally change the dynamic of the whole custom request situation, and it would be a fair and reliable system, unlike "cookie madness." At the VERY least, direct only products ought to be exempt from marketing fees. 

[Anne]

@Cat Indeed. I would like to add that there really should be an option to opt-out of the chat function altogether. Or the other way round even: make it only opt-in for those who like to have this available.

[idraw]

It’s possible that if you were able to opt out of chat, you would also be opting out of being able to chat with Zazzle….

[LMGildersleeve]

@Cat If it were me (in your shoes) I would definitely write to Z on their form regarding this question with the new Ambassador Program. That is a huge issue with your business for time vs. income ratio. Zazzle needs to step up and do the right thing.

[CrazyMermaid]

I think it depends on how the customer initially found your product. If the customer finds you through a Zazzle email or an affiliate site, then those entities sent you the traffic and are entitled to their royalty for a specified period of time. Whether you decide to do custom work doesn't negate their cookie. At least if I were an affiliate, that would be my take. I think the cookie is definite for 14 days, then if the customer enters through another affiliate portal it might get reset. I am a little foggy on that. I think the only way to be sure you are compensated for additional design work is to set up a contractual arrangement that doesn't depend upon clean links and cookies. 

[Cat]

I absolutely see that point and that's been my position for a long time. I guess that based on things I've read recently on the forum, I just don't have a lot of faith in the cookie system right now. Plus, I think there's an argument to be made that when you create a custom design for someone, it's no longer the same product as the one that was promoted. 

Here's a scenario that keeps rolling around in my mind. I promote my products, and someone comes to buy it. We spend a bunch of time going back and forth on the design, and they order some samples. This process inevitably takes more than 14 days, and since they're now in the system, they're on Zazzle's email list and they're very likely to pick up a Zazzle cookie. So by the time they place the real order with a large quantity of invites/enclosures/signs/menus/programs etc. it gets flagged as 3rd party and I get almost nothing for my trouble - even if I was the initial referrer!

I dunno, it just feels like royalties are so small now that it's hardly worth it. I would like to not have to raise my royalty rates, but I think it may come to that - it's just not feasible to do this kind of work for so little money. 

[tiffjamaica]

I just turned down a custom order from a repeat customer who has me draw things and create products for her.  I told her straight up that Zazzle changed our earnings structure and it isn't worth it for me to do custom work anymore.  I offered to make her the thing she wanted with existing art and she was okay with that. Now when her order inevitably comes in as third party instead of self, I won't be so depressed.  I agree there needs to be a way to earn on these types of orders!! 

[Cat]

Yeah. I've started telling some people that I don't do custom design work - especially for anything that looks like it might take more than 10 minutes of my time. 

[Jadendreamer13]

There is a way to ensure your earnings on customer orders. You need to create a contract with the customer directly. A contract consists of an offer and acceptance. After you decide on a price, the customer pays you 50% of that fee directly to you before you begin the custom work. Then you decide (within the scope of the contract) how many hours you will spend on the design, and how many revisions you will make. When you’ve reached the limits of your agreement, and the customer approves your design, they must submit the remaining balance, and you then send them a direct link to your product. (And you will also get the Zazzle royalty.) If the customer doesn’t like the final design, you get to keep the original 50% fee (known as a “Kill Fee”)—which you will also include in the contract.

Never do custom work without an agreed-upon scope of work, payment structure, start and end date, hours worked, revisions allotted, and prepayment, final payment, and kill fee.

You are running a business. Do not work for free, it devalues you and your work.

You can draw up a standard contract that you can use as a template for all your custom work.

Stop waiting for Zazzle to take care of you. You have no control over Zazzle. Start taking care of yourself. You have control over that.

You might be able to find sample contracts for custom artwork online.

[Cat]

That is, of course, one way to handle the solution. But IMHO that goes WAY beyond the scope of designing through Zazzle. If I wanted to open my own business, I would just go do that - and I would do it in a way that gave me control over the production end of the business as well as the design part. 

I really think that these sorts of "side arrangements" open up a whole nest of worms that's just asking for trouble. It creates a really muddy situation. Is the customer ordering from me or from Zazzle? What happens if they're happy with the design but the product gets lost in the mail, or if there are printing problems and Zazzle can't correct it in time? 

You can build all of that into the contract, but it just seems like a very messy arrangement, and certainly not something I'd want to get in the middle of. 

Plus (and maybe I'm off base here) it starts to feel unethical to me - like I'd be poaching a customer from Zazzle or something. I dunno. I'd guess I'd just rather keep it clean - either I'm working through Zazzle or I'm not - a half and half arrangement seems guaranteed to backfire sooner or later.

[tiffjamaica]

I agree - and also the things I say yes to are designs that I know are going to resell.  I wouldn't feel good about charging a customer for a commission and then turn around and resell to others who wouldn't incur that fee. 

[Connie]

Yes, I agree, Cat. I don't want to be in the business of doing custom orders.

[tiffjamaica]

Sure, you can always do outside payment. My point is that the recent changes to royalties and unreliable links have made low-effort, mutually beneficial customer support a lot less sustainable. My smaller creative requests that used to make sense within the Zazzle system now kind of don’t. And since they don't give us an opt-out for chat, I think Zazzle should be fostering (incentivizing) that kind of interaction between designer and customer, because it is part of what makes the platform unique, not because I expect them to take care of me. 🙂

[CarlaRolfe]

I used to do exactly this for years (before zazzle offered digital downloads) but didn't include the non-refundable fee.  I had my custom design fee/contract structure posted on my blog and just referred folks there to read it in full to understand what they were paying for.  I had 100% success rate with it. 

[Cat]

I'm still ruminating on this topic and trying to wrap my brain around it. So, you created agreements with Zazzle customers to provide digital versions of your Zazzle products outside of Zazzle? And Zazzle was OK with that?!? I'm just kinda baffled because at other organizations I've been involved with, the customer list was a closely guarded treasure, and any sort of behavior like that would get you terminated immediately. 

Maybe I'm missing something, but it seems like it's a pretty small step from there to just using Zazzle as a place to farm customers. I mean, since they've basically made us the first line of contact, what's to stop a designer from simply pointing all those customers over to their Etsy shop and cutting Zazzle completely out of the loop? I'm not suggesting that, BTW, it sounds completely and utterly unethical to me, but by putting us in the position of fielding all the customer service requests, and then refusing to provide any mechanism to compensate us for the many hours we put in assisting customers with their designs, it seems like they're pretty much begging people to do it.

Maybe I'm just old and suffering from a provincial outlook, and maybe this is just how business works these days, but it sure seems crazy to me that Zazzle would create such an incentive for designers to steal their customers. 

[Connie]

I don't do fully custom work. in lieu of my fee, I post a public product that I can earn future royalties on. I've explained that to several customers, and they were fine with it.

[Cat]

That's generally how I like to approach it too, but when a customer has trouble customizing the template - like they can't fit the text into the field, or they need help with alignment on a complicated seating chart I often feel obligated to step in and help. In this case it was a religious wedding with a bunch of specific requirements, and there was a ton of back & forth with the clergy on wording. 

I'm holding off on making any rash changes to give Zazzle an opportunity to address this stuff, but I'm very close to just telling customers to contact support when they need help customizing a design.

[CLC]

Hi....your time and skills have value, if you are designing artwork from scratch for customers why not tell them there is a design fee and send a paypal invoice for your services. You don't work for this marketplace, don't give your services away for free.

[Cat]

I've considered that, but honestly, I've had enough bad experiences with scammers and trolls that I'm just not willing to take the risk of working independently like that. Legal fees add up real quickly, and unless you're an LLC and have business insurance, you can open yourself up for a lot of trouble that way.

[CLC]

...then what about raising the royalty rate on that product since you are creating a new and hidden link for just that client and explaining to the customer that the artwork fee is included in the product price, then you would be covered all around.

[Cat]

That is a potential solution. But if the sale gets marked as 3rd party (which it most likely will), Zazzle is going to take half of my royalty as a marketing fee - so I'm gonna have to raise the price a LOT in order to get any meaningful compensation - and that is likely to scare off most customers. 

I think more than anything what's bothering me is the lack of transparency with this whole 3rd party referral system, and the fact that once someone has spent any time in the Zazzle system, they are flooded with emails which will inevitably lead to them picking up a Zazzle cookie. I don't really have a problem with a genuine referrer being credited for bringing in a customer (whether that referrer is Zazzle or not) - but in these cases where I'm actively working with a customer for many weeks, the original referrer cookie is inevitably going to have been overwritten by Zazzle, and that doesn't seem like a fair system to me.  

[Cat]

Case in point... a customer that I've been working with since January to fine tune her wedding suite just placed her invitation order and it came through as 3rd party. Pretty sure whatever referral cookie she might have had initially has long since expired - so whoever is getting credit for the referral, it sure isn't the entity that initially brought her here.

Don't get me wrong, I DO support rewarding the referrer for bringing a customer to the site, but I also think it's pretty clear that she would not have purchased the invitations had I not spent months working with her. I've also designed custom programs, and signs and decor for this customer - pretty sure when she buys those they'll all be 3rd party as well - and I know for CERTAIN that she would not have bought any of that stuff had I not created it all specifically for her. 

When a 3rd party sale took a small bite out of the royalty it was annoying but I could live with it. When it takes HALF of the royalty, especially in a situation like this where the initial referral has long since expired, it's a different story altogether, and it really feels unfair. I just think Zazzle needs to address this situation. 

[Connie]

Yes, I agree.

[SORS]

I'm with you 100%. I've made Zazzle so much money with my "custom orders" that customers have asked for.  I can't work for free...and it's extremely disheartening. I hope Zazzle will address this soon.