This is Getting Old

[Jadendreamer13]

So here I am again—in the exact same unfair scenario that I complained about last week.

Once again, today I sold 50 pens at a sale price of $245.00. Once again, it was a third-party sale (that’s all I get now). So, instead of receiving my 10% royalty of $24.00, I received $13.00 and some change. That’s nearly 50% of my royalty given to a third-party, leaving me with a ridiculous 5% royalty.

This has got to stop. 🛑 Something is drastically wrong and out of balance with this scenario.

If I set my royalty at 10%, I want 10%, not 5%. So, in order to receive a 10% royalty, do I have to raise my royalty to 15%? And will the third-party receive half of that, leaving me with 7% instead of 10%?

What will it take for me to earn the 10% royalty that I want and deserve?

[NigelSutherland]

Time for Zazzle to hold up their hands and admit they've got this wrong. Revert to the old ways and try to quell the dissent that they have engineered amongst their creators, the very people that they depend on the most.

[Mariholly]

Well, that would be great, but I don't think that's the case.
It's their company and their rules — if someone doesn't agree, I guess they're free to leave. In fact, I've always thought that this would eventually lead to a sort of "natural selection" among designers, and maybe at some point this was even considered.
Who knows? I don't think they are overly worried about us leaving, unfortunately.

[Lea]

I agree that I don't think anything is going to get walked back at this point. I will adapt and proceed even if I don't find it to be as good as it once was. I think it must have been unsustainable for Zazzle. But I also hope that we do see more marketing efforts since we're paying for it now.
The only thing I will continue to push back on - and I hope others will too - is the issue with digital self-referral that winds up being less than a "none" referral, which isn't how the system is supposed to function. Ideally, the digital downloads would be exempt from the ambassador and the creator gets the full royalty for those, but any situation that doesn't leave us with less than 50% would help here.

[Malissa]

Unfortunately, the amount of dissent here in the forums only represents the tiniest amount of creators.  Out of thousands, only a small number of people say anything here.  Creators either aren't bothered by the changes or don't care enough to speak out or are still making plenty of money to make it worth it.  As far as Z is concerned I would say we are just the noisy minority and nothing will change.

[Mariholly]

I also noticed that, very few people leave comments. It also caught my attention that there are still designers asking, here and in other groups, why royalties seem to have decreased and similar things. I think it is likely that they are not aware of the changes for different reasons.

[Malissa]

I have noticed that on the forums here as well about not knowing why royalties decreased.  I am not sure if they didn't get the email or just didn't really understand what those changes entailed.  How many of us get a notice of change of TOS and just think "OK" and move on with our lives.  I can tell you I do when it comes to sites I just casually use (Just did that with an Ebay email) or know that I need to use it anyway even if I don't like what it says (PayPal comes to mind).

[klstock]

Most people wait for others to take the risk of speaking up and hope someone else will fight their battles. That is people in general unfortunately. Very short term, maybe nothing will change, but even the ones remaining silent on here will talk to friends, family, colleagues. Who are also CUSTOMERS. Designers themselves are often customers. Where do you think those customers will go? Elsewhere.

[Malissa]

I agree.  I wasn't saying that it was only a small amount that felt that way, just that I am sure from Z's point of view it looks like the masses are fine with it.  I would be very curious to know now that a month has passed if some people are seeing an overall benefit or no real loss in money per sale from the self referral + royalty because we are seeing that the "none" sales are few and far between.

[klstock]

I understood you and agree! I just meant it would be ill-advised for Zazzle to interpret that since only some are speaking up about it that it means the masses are fine with it. 

About the self referrals - I have only seen one so far this month and usually I would have more than that - but to be fair, that is probably somewhat because I have not been promoting like I normally would due to not being clear on the new changes.  But on the one I did get, I received 39% instead of 35% for the self referral portion - in total I got a few cents shy of $40 for a $75 order. So that at least would seem a benefit. 

[Jadendreamer13]

So, for those folks who prefer to remain silent and wait for others to speak up for them, I’d like to remind them that if you don’t ask for what you want, you won’t get it.

[Jadendreamer13]

There is no other way out of this mess.

[kashmier]

It is like life with the US government ..... seems like there is no way out because they know what is good for us and we are going to like it. 

[tiffjamaica]

Z has totally shifted the way we earn in favor of promoting over creating. It's a real shame.

To break it down:
-The new marketing fee is taking 11.03 from your 10% royalty of 24.50.  Before the changes, you'd have earned 19.60 on a third party sale with 20% carved out (4.90), so you are losing around 31% on third party sales now. 
-To recoup the cost, you'll have to raise your royalty...  
For the same sale price of 245, you'd have to raise your royalty to 16% to make 19.60 on a third party sale (of course, the price of the pens would go up as well - i'm not sure to what, so maybe you could get away with a slightly lower royalty setting?).  But at 16%, you're royalty would be 39.20. Subtract the ER fee of 1.96 and the MF of 17.64 and that leaves you with 19.60.  Your ambassador would get 15% of the sale = 36.75   

[Malissa]

I sold some Halloween invitations yesterday (go figure) 40 of them at 24% royalty and 3rd party for a total of $90.80 and I only got 9.81 royalty.  The "ambassador" would get $13.62.  It seems like the only way to get more than the referrer is to be the referrer (as in self referred) and that is not something that I have been able to achieve even when I used to do tons of promoting on Pinterest.  The more I raise my prices the more the ambassador gets and it feels like the less I get on top of only getting maybe a 1 or 2 super small sales a week.  Yesterday's sale is considered a good one for me especially at the 14.9% rate I used to have invites set at.  Sigh.  A few single card sales a week for 9 cents or a random dollar or two is about all I can expect anymore (for months before the change even it has been bad- it's just worse now) and it makes me sad because I have been trying so hard to grow this into a business and not just a hobby for the last couple of years.  

[tiffjamaica]

I've come to the conclusion that this can't be run like a business anymore.  The amount of math we have to do now to make it make sense is insane.  Hoping for non referred sales just so you can make a decent royalty is ridiculous. All the work they expect us to do with covers, collections, and promotion - all to earn 30% less.  Blah. They've cut a lot of people off at the knees with this one.

[Jadendreamer13]

If the “Ambassador” is not me, then who is it? No matter how the math is done, my royalty should be 10% if I set it at 10%. This new model is unworkable for designers. It’s unacceptable, not transparent, and not profitable.

[tiffjamaica]

I think Z would be wise to create a new royalty calculator that shows the various scenarios of earnings at a 10% royalty (or whatever %) so designers can really tell what the breakdown is.  
So in this case it would show your 10% as
-Non Referred (No ambassador): 24.50
-3rd Party (Someone else or Zazzle is the ambassador): 13.48
-Self (You're the ambassador): 110.25

[CapriWedding]

As far as I am concerned, it seems absurd to disregard so much of the dissent and frustration that is now surfacing among all of us. What they have done again has certainly not helped us but slammed us against a wall. Our work being given 50% to third parties doesn't seem fair or right at all. And when you change such a programme I think you should take it into account and be able to propose it first to those who build this platform here with their work.

[Jadendreamer13]

At this point, I want to know who the third-party is. We all deserve transparency on this third-party issue. How do I know if Zazzle is claiming that I’m the third party and thus taking 50% of my earnings? And if Zazzle is taking 50% of my earnings, then they shouldn’t also be charging me a marketing fee.

[Cat]

If you're the third party you'd know because you'd also get the referral - either 15% if it was an RF link or 35-50% of the total price if it was a clean link. 

My assumption is that at least 90% of the 3rd party sales are Zazzle. Maybe we'll get more transparency with the promised changes to reports, but I'm not holding my breath on that one! 

[Jadendreamer13]

So, if 90% of third-party sales are from Zazzle, then they shouldn’t take both a marketing fee AND 50% of my royalty.

[Cat]

The marketing fee IS the 50% of your royalty, isn't it? Or maybe I'm confused again...

[Malissa]

The referrals are still only 15% to the 3rd party no matter if it is Z or another ambassador..  The rest of the money goes to Zazzle for the marketing fee plus if you are over 10% only your royalties, you get an excess royalty fee included as well.

[klstock]

There is an important distinction - Zazzle is claiming themselves the 3rd party even in instances when they are not. I have personally tested this with people I know and posted the results of those tests in other threads. 

Zazzle has had an entire month to explain or correct this, to answer questions, etc. but it is crickets even though they are well-aware of the chaos this has caused. That shows disregard for the designers who have put them where they are, and speaks volumes. 

[Cat]

I mostly wish we had a better idea of what (on Zazzle's end) constituted a referral. I mean for us, it's pretty clear that posting a link is what makes for a referral, but on Zazzle's end it's less clear - especially if they're using tracking pixels in addition to cookies. If someone clicks on a Zazzle ad, is that a referral? If they simply see a Zazzle ad, is that a referral? If they click on a link in a Zazzle email is that a referral? If they simply open an email from Zazzle, is that a referral? If they click on something within the Zazzle site itself is that a referral?

I dunno. I think in their minds they're legitimately the "referrer" in a huge variety of situations that I wouldn't necessarily equate to "referring" someone to Zazzle, so more transparency on that would certainly be helpful. But honestly, at this point I just have so little faith in "referral roulette" that I'm really not sure how much time and effort to put into promoting.

About a year ago I decided to do some extra referral work on a few products by creating self-made pins on Pinterest using slideshow videos instead of just a still image. I also wrote special keyword dense descriptions etc. I just wanted to see if it would make a difference or not. And I have actually sold more of those products than other similar ones where I just used the Zazzle pinning option, but the thing is, I have NEVER received a self-referral for any of them. 

I'm really not sure what to make of that. It could all just be a coincidence - it was a pretty small sample size after all. But it kinda seems to me that there's just so much noise in the referral/cookie system that even when the customer actually is coming from our clean links, the likelihood of getting credited for the referral is pretty low.

[SORS]

Can anyone explain this?  So much for self referrals AND assisting a customer on top of that. Unfortunately Zazzle Customer Service couldn't explain it either. It had to be sent through to Zazzle support and who knows how long that will take. 

[MarilynR]

Total fallible opinion follows

If you go to the box where you set your royalties, there is a link that takes you here:

https://help.zazzle.com/hc/en-us/articles/220267087-What-Royalty-Rate-Do-You-Recommend-I-Use

Here is what Zazzle says about royalties:

"What Royalty Rate Do You Recommend I Use?

When determining the ideal Royalty rate for your products, it's essential to consider both how you value your Content and what you believe Customers are willing to pay. The Standard Royalty Rates are advised to help your Products remain competitive in the marketplace while rewarding your Content. For physical Products, we recommend setting Your Royalty Rate between 5% and 10%. This range ensures that your pricing remains competitive and is in line with what Customers expect to pay for similar items. For Instant Downloads, Your Royalty Rate can be anywhere between 5%-99%. 

If you opt for a higher Royalty rate, your Products may be positioned in a more premium market—similar to high-end art or exclusive designs—where Customers expect to pay a bit more for the added value of unique, high-quality items–but sales may be less frequent. 

It’s important to note that if you set Your Royalty Rate above 10%, an "Excess Royalty Fee" of 5% (of your Gross Royalty) will be applied. This fee is an additional consideration that can impact your overall Earnings for the sale, but it’s up to you to decide which strategy serves your needs best. Ultimately, the best Royalty rate for your Content will depend on your Product’s uniqueness, the target audience, your pricing strategy and promotional efforts. "

Obviously, Zazzle is going both ways. They're saying selling low might get more customers, but selling higher may place your work on a higher quality standard level. Retailers set prices by knowing what expenses including their own salary they have to çover with the sale of that item. So what do you need and want to make with your sales on Zazzle. How much is that per $100 in sales. That is where you need to set your royalty. 

Our stores are atypical because while others were growing, ours were abandoned. So we are behind everybody else. However, we finally settled on 30% as being fair to us. The whole Ambassador program made us think about doubling our royalty. Instead, we took it up to 40%.  Around April 5th, we sold three hoodies. The customer paid $s74 a hoodie. Hoodies start at $26 each. We got $17 each. I don't know whether Zazzle or another Zazzler got the remaining $31 each, but our design is what sold the hoodies period. However, we are happy with $17 each. So it's Zazzle who has to decide whether they want to set policies that make products go from $26 to $74 when it is our $17 worth that actually sold the product.

Bottom line get what makes you happy for sharing your salable design with Zazzle.