Upcoming Changes To Zazzle’s Terms of Use

[Heather]

Hello Creators,

We’re making updates to Zazzle's Terms of Use, including the Creator License Agreement, and introducing our new Ambassador Program Agreement, which replaces our Associates Program Agreement. While the onsite experience will not be updated until April 1st, you can preview the updated Terms of Use here. 

We understand you might have additional questions or feedback. Please use this form to share them directly with us. While we may not be able to respond individually at this stage, we’ll review all submissions and address frequently asked questions after the Terms of Use go into effect.

To keep the conversation organized, all community discussions on this topic will be redirected to this thread.

Thank you for your understanding and for helping us make Zazzle a thriving community for all Creators!

Best,

The Zazzle Team

UPDATE 3/24/25: 

Hi Creators - Thank you all so much for your valuable feedback and for taking the time to submit your questions through our form. We truly appreciate your engagement and insights. Rest assured, we are carefully reviewing each question and will address the most commonly asked ones soon.

Timely Update Regarding Royalty Rates: We understand your concerns about adjusting royalty rates, and to support you through this transition, we will be processing royalty rate changes daily from now through April 15th, allowing creators time to make any necessary adjustments. Please note that updates may take 24–48 hours to appear. After April 15th, we’ll return to our regular schedule, with royalty updates processed on the 20th of each month. 

*To clarify: Setting your royalty to 10% exactly will not trigger the Excess Royalty Fee. Royalties above 10%, will trigger the Excess Royalty Fee when changes go into effect 4/1. 

UPDATE 4/7/25

This forum post is now closed for new replies. Please see our most recent update for information about the Terms of Use Changes and information about the new Ambassador Program. Thank you!

[Angela]

Perhaps staff can add an extra change date earlier in the month for people that want to make a single royalty setting price change.

[SixSphinx]

I'm a little confused about why it makes sense to change royalty rates. The 5% is on the royalty, not the total product cost. Lowering my royalty rate from 15% to 10% would be giving myself a 33% pay cut, whereas Zazzle is only imposing a 5% pay cut. What am I missing?

[ClareS]

I think this is why we need some number examples - there are so many moving pieces it's hard to work out what the exact financial impact is.

It's also been really eye-opening to see how many designers have their royalty set at higher than 10% - I often wonder if the customers are confused as to why the same product has so many different prices on the platform - I think it adds to their thinking that we're sitting here at our kitchen tables printing and shipping the items ourselves as independent sellers!

[PlayfulPixel]

Couldn't agree with you more, ClareS, in everything you say here.

[PlayfulPixel]

I'm sorry but not to highlight the key points that have changed and make this easy to read and understand, is so unprofessional. And to change some of the key terminology to muddy the waters even more?? Not impressive.

[Jadendreamer13]

This is not good news, although I thought changes were coming to Zazzle based on recent changes on Etsy and Amazon Merch. It’s a lot of work to create designs and run a shop. Now, I’ll have to reevaluate whether the Zazzle business model works for me.

[idraw]

Agreed, reeval in progress here, brain in pain.

[AirTwin]

Seems like the PoD party is over, across the whole web, and the ship is going down. Hope it's not a sign of a larger crash coming.

[ClareS]

Heather - any chance someone from Zazzle can document in user friendly terms what exactly is changing on April 1? To expect us all to read and decipher the terms and conditions is a bit much, and as you can see from this thread it's already causing questions - which I guess you expected given the form.

[Cat]

Yes, that would be SUPER helpful. Maybe some examples of how the royalties/referrals work out under this new system. I'm sorta feeling like I need a PhD in math to understand this all!

[Laura]

Yes. I'm hoping @ColsCreations can decipher it enough to update her earnings calculators. Thank you so much Colleen for helping me understand Zazzle math thus far!

[idraw]

Mods probably won't reply to any of these posts till Monday,  That's their standard behavior 🙂 Never know for sure if they will even respond to most of the posts here.

[Laura]

I imagine that's why they provided the form, little or no response for us here. Thankful for this community to help puzzle things out.

[idraw]

@LauraPossible reasons why they always seem to post changes and then leave on Friday, read my reply that I just posted to @Jadendreamer13

[Amanda23]

It just occurred to me that this announcement came the day AFTER we would have had the opportunity to update our royalties based on these changes. 

Though to be honest, there are so many interpretations below of what it all means I’m not sure I’d know what to change them to anyway!

[LMGildersleeve]

No doubt @Amanda that Z will give us time to change royalty rates before next April 15th or after. They want you to lower your rates, it's in their best intere$t.

[Connie]

Yes, it's like they want a chance to grab all those extra fees for a month before we can do anything about it! And that's IF the royalty changes even take effect on the 20th of next month! Usually, it takes a few cycles before all my products update.

[Cat]

Has anyone been able to determine what impact this has on volume bonuses? I can't find any reference to it in the new terms. It used to be that you had a choice - either you could join the promoter program or you could get volume bonuses. It looks like this new system sorta puts everyone in the promoter program - does that mean that volume bonuses are going away?

[mmbny]

I have the same questions. This looks very unfortunate.

[Cat]

OK. Here's my interpretation of what this means in terms of sales referred by Zazzle. On a scale of 1-10, my confidence in these numbers is about negative 7, so I'm mostly posting this to see if others are interpreting this the same way.

Sample sale assuming a $100 price and 10% royalty

For a sale referred by Zazzle in the existing system
$100 - Sale price
-$15 - Zazzle referral (15%)
------
=$85 - net price
x .10 - royalty rate
------
= $8.50 to designer

For a sale referred by Zazzle in the new program
$100 - Sale price
x .10 - royalty rate
-----
= $10 designer gross royalty
- $3.50-$5 fee depending on department (35-50% of royalty)
------
= $5-$6.50 to designer depending on department

If I'm understanding correctly (and I REALLY don't know if I am or not) the upshot is that our royalties for Zazzle referred sales would go down by 25 to 35 percent depending on the department.

Is this how y'all are interpreting this? 

[Laura]

Cols calc had a 20% carve-out fee deducted if sale was referred along with the 5% amount for the "excessive royalty rate"/transaction fee when applicable, etc. That's part of the Zazzle math which always puzzled me, not sure what to make of it now either; as in, at what point will these percentages be calculated? Will user options and secondary content affect the gross or net royalty amount? And sales also need to be considered. At what royalty and in which department do we need to stay consistent with/scale our earnings?

[Cat]

Do you have a link to the calculations that @ColsCreations did?

[Laura]

I'm sure she'll chime in at one point. They won't be much help after the 1st. She's probably as overwhelmed as we are. I'd rather she choose to share her info than speculate what she intends to do going forward. Again, I'm thankful for her assistance in the past and am hopeful she'll be able to help us understand the new Z-math.

[Amanda23]

She's been looking at it and I think will help us with a new calculator once some things are clarified. @ColsCreations 

[idraw]

@Cat This might be what you need:
<https://community.zazzle.com/t5/external-tools-materials/earnings-calculator-no-math-required/m-p/87...>

If not, go to external tools materials, then search for Colscreations, and scan thru those posts.

[Cat]

Thanks! I fear even the "no math required" version has my head spinning math-wise! 

[Leeze]

It's on the first page of this forum.

[jophb]

well that would stink... since it seems like 95% of all sales these days have '3rd party' on them

[Connie]

Yes, the vast majority of my sales are 3rd party, and I'm in the wedding market, so basically I'm expecting to lose half my income.

[Cat]

OK, I'm trying again. Apparently I don't even understand how the royalties are currently calculated! Gah! But @idraw was gracious enough to point me to this thread Earnings Calculator - No Math Required 🙂 - Zazzle which details the current system. So... assuming I understand both @ColsCreations calculations and the new agreement (both of those are pretty big IFs - so take these numbers with a big grain of salt) here's the updated comparison.

$100 Sale with 10% royalty referred by Zazzle

Current System:
$100 x .10 = $10 gross royalty minus $2 (20% carveout fee) = $8 to the designer

New System:
$100 x.10 = $10 gross royalty minus $3.50-$5 (35-50% fee depending on department) = $5-$6.50 to the designer. 

Sooo... the good news is that it's not as big of a hit as I thought - the bad news is that it's only less of a hit because we're currently getting less than I thought we were! 

I think (not sure by any means) that the same would apply to 3rd party referrals in terms of how much the designer makes. So in the above example the referrer would make $15 and the designer would make $5-$6.50 - I think.

Honestly, I'm still not sure if those numbers are accurate, but that's my best guess. I'm hoping the math minds will weigh in here and tell me if I'm even close to understanding this or not! And I'm still utterly baffled by the self-referral numbers so I'm gonna hope that brighter minds can explain that part.

[SandyMDesigns]

You would have to go with a 9.9% royalty because Zazzle would put a transaction fee if it were 10%. Otherwise, that it what I read from it.

[LJ]

Yes, I’ve read that, but at this point I’m like: So what?! They put around 50% other fees, that 5 wouldn’t hurt that much, and I included that in my calculations, so it’s covered.

[Mariholly]

That's what I thought, it must be 9.9.

[LJ]

Maybe I’m missing something. What happens if I set it to 26%?

[Mariholly]

Well, your price will be out of the market, that’s the first thing. Normally, we’re quite similar when setting royalties, and prices vary very little. If you inflate your royalty and, therefore, the price, your items will be more expensive compared to others, right?

I think we’re all very worried about this, and I don’t know when we’ll get clear answers. So for now, I’m not going to adjust any royalties—neither up nor down—while waiting to see what happens. Dealing with that now would also create extra work for those with many products.

[PrintablePretty]

My logic is this I set it to 9.9 for the next changeover. I don't want to price myself out of the marketplace and I want to show up in search and hopefully get the algorithm and promotional boosts from it. Lower royalty sales in volume are better than no sales, or sprinkled sales because the prices are too high.  They do not feature products with a high royalty rate. 

[Mariholly]

I think we could even go with 9.99. It seems ridiculous that we would be penalized over 0.01 or 0.10.

[klstock]

This depends, in my opinion.

If the item is unique with original artwork and can't be found elsewhere that should command a higher price than something using the same clipart 500 other designers are using.

In the latter case, if there are several invitations (for example) that look similar, then sure the customer might compare prices and go with the cheaper option. But if it is unique and can't be found elsewhere, the customer would pay a higher price for it. 

I would caution against people panicking and setting their prices too low, particularly for those creating original artwork. Not all customers are looking for bargain basement prices, and there are already a million other places a customer could buy cookie cutter stuff at a cheap price. 

[JimCarnicelli]

I agree with your point here. I don't think anyone shops on Zazzle for bargains per se. Zazzle designs are boutique. People are paying a premium for unique art and/or customization.

[SheaPrints]

I don't think the 'Excess Royalty Fee' will apply if your royalty rate is set at 10%.

3.3.2. Excess Royalty Fee: Zazzle will retain an excess Royalty fee of five percent (5%) of your Gross Royalty for sales of Products for which you select a Royalty rate that is greater than ten percent (10%) (“Excess Royalty Fee”), in order to cover expenses such as payment processing.