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!

[LMGildersleeve]

All companies are doing this slimy clause in their Agreements.

[Barbara]

Though I haven't the facts or figures to support this, I believe the top sellers are those who do weddings and have done so since practically the beginning. They've had the time to build clientele via websites and word of mouth, but I believe (again unverified) that this is how Zazzle started out, focusing mainly on stationery and then building out from there. Designers showing up afterward have had a harder row to hoe, and now it's far more difficult due to the competition and to the fact that the longer standing designers get top places on the platform.

Something I've tried to do all along is develop several niches, and I was doing better and better until my sales started dropping off starting about a year or so ago. And now it's bad enough that, in the past 8 days, I've made only a single sale.

What I'm trying to say is that those who became winners early on are likely to remain winners, while those of us pushing hard to become winners may never get there. My husband and I have discussed this and all the possible reasons for it, one them being, of course, the economy, but we both felt it was more than that, one being the constant proliferation of doodads like lip balm and overly expensive items like oven mitts. This proliferation has been expanding for quite some time, but to what end? We get attracted to the new products, but we might be better off sticking with what's more standard for a POD.

I've begun a deep dive into my offerings, discovering I should stay away from socks and topple towers. Anything that has been in my store without selling or getting much in the way of views will be axed. Will it affect my bottom line? How could it? None of it has even entered the bottom line to begin with.

Finding products we love (one of them for me is clocks) and products we believe customers might be willing to pay for (like postcards) is where I'm headed because I don't want to scatter my energy. I'll see what happens, see if it in any way affects my bottom line. If sales increase, well and good, but if I continue to have a sale only once every week or so and too much is subtracted from my royalties, then the law of diminishing returns has kicked in and I may walk away.

We're all have unique circumstances, and I can't possibly suggest anyone follow my pattern of thought, but what I would suggest is that we step back and get a broader view of things, the primary one being that, regardless of our angst, Zazzle will travel the road they've chosen. If it continues to rankle, then we're doing ourselves a disservice. What's that saying? To have the serenity to accept things we cannot change, courage to change things we can, and wisdom to know the difference. Breathe deeply.

Colorwash's Home

[Mecpublications]

I tried to use the form for my question and it doesn't work. And I spent so much time reading terms of service my brain shut down. Simple question for anyone who may have the answer. What is the punishment fee for having an excess royalty? And Is it a flat percentage or dependent on how high my royalt is? So say it's 5%. Would raising percent royalty 5% cancel it out? 

Okay. one more question. What determines the percent taken out for the the 35%-50% Zazzle referral fee? 

I've read as many replies as I have time for. And since the form doesn't work I haven't been given complete details on what I'm agreeing on. I need this information to make adjustments to my store. I don't remember seeing this in TOS. 

That's all for now. If I don't get an answer I'll put my royalty up for now and see how it goes. 

[tiffjamaica]

Excessive royalty info is in the Creator License Agreement - 3.3.2. It's 5% of your royalty. You will have to play with your numbers to see what makes sense for you. 
Look for referral info under the Ambassador Program Agreement: section 4. Here's a link.
https://help.zazzle.com/hc/en-us/articles/30810357489175-Ambassador-Referral-Commissions-Creator-Roy...

[Ashley]

I decided to increase my royalty as a result of the thread and now My zrank is back down to 4 (I was only at 5 as of yesterday). I have been selling a couple of items per month since Oct. I'm a new seller and this is very disheartening and now I don't know what I should do. I understand that increases are necessary but if I can't even be seen on Zazzle marketplace there is not much hope for me if I'm going to be punished for increasing my royalty to cover the new fees and I will not survive. I change my royalty rate back to 10%. To make less than 20 cents on a greeting card is going to be tough. 

[KLP]

I don't know if this will work for you but it did me a while back (NB I am not a guru and make sales ad hoc - i.e. not every month) but ....

I created a whole lot of AI Art and key tagged them all with the same key tag, then others who came across me also in the same field started using my keytag, but for a wee while if people searched my key tag they only saw my artwork.  This is probably not going to get you top google searches but you will rank first page for quite a wee while until others cotton on.

The other way is look at the search results and try and drill down to a not so competitive key tag, i.e. one with lower postings.

[tsikona]

After increasing royalty, My z rank dropped from 8 to 7, but it did not affect my sales. I will check sale results during April.  Z allows us to set up to 50%. While I am on other platforms too, zazzle is the only one I truly enjoy working on. 

[Fiorenzo]

All you need to know about the zRank is to hold it to 4 or above so you are listed on the marketplace. I did royalty changes quite a few times in the past and I'm now at 20% default with percentages varying by product (usually from 10 to over 20) since last Xmas. This procedure didn't affect my zRank. The only thing that affects zRanks in my experience is sales and mass deletions or publishing. The effect of zRanks has always been debated anyway. So, do what you feel is best for you and forget that whole rank thing. I will keep my default at 20% and will only adjust royalties case by case after the changes come into play, the 5% procession fee is negligible, and titles, visits, sales, and tags are more important for your marketplace listings.

[ZBug]

...here we go again...

I can't/won't lower my royalty. So, I'll experiment going up. I was never happy at 14.9, but it doesn't matter now so, why not give it a try. My sales never recovered after a bug effected in my shop for 8 weeks.

[Zorinda]

I just went to bulk change royalties and it wouldn’t allow a change exceeding 10%. It says the value has to be between 5-10%.  

[Zorinda]

[Ricaso]

Do you have anything like sanitisers or similar that are restricted to a certain markup? 
Untick those and see if it works. 

[Zorinda]

Thanks. That worked!

[DiamondWillow]

Yes thats right, in my case it was face masks.  I unchecked the 5% masks and proceeded with my increased markup.  I wrote that above 

[DiamondWillow]

I just did some updating in my niche store.  That message means something in your store has a 5% Zazzle fixed rate, in my case it was masks from Covid days.  So I clicked on my entire page and unchecked the masks and was able to set my new markup.  Take a look, I bet thats the reason.

[WBartworks]

The default royalty for some product is 5% or 10%.  Therefore you can't make bulk changes if the bulik includes one or more of those products.  I selected products per page (including 204 products per page) and then unselected product that had a 5 or 10% max before changing the royalty rate.

[Barbara]

I'm in complete agreement with @Fiorenzo . The only difference is that I've used 20% across the board. If I designed some of the more expensive products, I'd likely drop my royalty down for them, but I steer clear of things costing over $100. I know someone whose royalty is set at over 30% because her products are almost entirely greeting cards where it's difficult to make more than pennies per card.

As for zRank, it's always seemed to me to be a reflection of the ratio of sales to the number of products not sold. I could be dead wrong.

Colorwash's Home

[Fiorenzo]

I agree with the sales ratio, and it makes sense.

[Mariholly]

 

@Barbara and @Fiorenzo 

Mi wedding store has a ZRank of 8, and I assure you that it has had very few sales for over a year. I'm barely reaching $300 across all my stores—if I'm lucky. Some months, it's even half that amount. I have many products to review because I haven't decided what to do with them; most are designs from my early days on Z. So, they are hidden. That ZRank of 8 is a mystery to me.

[Fiorenzo]

I guess the sales kept your rank stable once reached, even if they diminished. I reached rank 8 (from 6) after a product testing collaboration with a fellow designer and kept that rank as long as I had constant sales. Lost it later after a miserable month with no sales at all, first to 7, then to 6, and I'm keeping now that rank for months. I must say, though, I don't have many products but a pretty decent sales-to-product ratio, and I haven't published new products since Dec 2023. I agree, the zRank moves in mysterious ways. Edit: the past 2 months were abysmal. Trying now to be productive again, will see how this affects rank and sales.

[Barbara]

Interesting. I have only one store, but I've been experiencing something very similar to you for over a year. My own zRank has remained at 7 in spite of sharply diminishing sales. However, I thought the rank was remaining as it was because of slowly reducing my number of products except for one point when I added 5 or 6 products and my rank went down to 5, and then within a day, it went back up to 7. I'll be continuing to reduce products, which might prove one way or the other if it's the ratio of sales to overall number of products. The truth is that, back when my rank was 5, I was selling far more than I do now.

Is it a similar situation for most designers? And is this perhaps the reason that Zazzle is bringing in a new user agreement? Is it something they hope will give sales a boost?

Colorwash's Home

[Mariholly]

@Barbara and @Fiorenzo 

Well, I think we're all going to spend some time experimenting with our royalties and seeing in some way how they affect our sales, positioning, Zrank, etc.

I just gave a good boost to the royalties on all my proposal cards that are sold individually—let's see if it makes a difference or not. By the way, I hadn't mentioned this before. My sales for proposal cards probably haven't dropped too much compared to the rest of the products that sell in bulk.

It's interesting—of course, you don't sell 100 invitations, but you do sell 3, 4, or more proposal cards individually, which obviously bring in just a few cents of profit. Maybe that's the reason.

[LMGildersleeve]

@Fiorenzo  and others this statement is incorrect. Your products show in the MP no matter what the store's zRank is. They just may not show in any special pop up that used to exist (maybe still do) on the side sort links to the left.

'All you need to know about the zRank is to hold it to 4 or above so you are listed on the marketplace."

[tsikona]

When my Z rank was above 8,it affected newly posted products,which were shown on the top three pages. The chance or organic sale was high and now they’re again on last pages.Im sharing my personal experience.

[Fiorenzo]

I'm pretty sure I read this somewhere in an official article/post/whatever, apart from the common consent among designers. Now that you bring it up, I'm not sure anymore if it was/is a rank of 4 or just 3. Things may also have changed in the meantime, so take this with a grain of salt. I'm personally most of the time at 6 with a spike of 8 that held quite a long time, and some rare drops to 5. Anyways, I would not give too much importance to your zRank as long as you are above 4 or 3 if I was wrong with the number. Sales, a good sales/product ratio, and good tags and texts count more, IMO, to be found.

[Barbara]

I recall something akin to what @LMGildersleeve is saying, that it had to do with promotion, that they wouldn't promote anyone under a zRank of 4. The example she gives is of one such promotion. But did they really say this? I don't know. The myriad discussions we've had on the forums about zRank have muddied the waters for all of us, mainly because Zazzle has said little to nothing about it since they first introduced it. That's when they said it was a way for designers to get an idea of how they were doing.

Colorwash's Home

[LMGildersleeve]

I opened a new store two months ago. While I was loading up the first 10 products I found them in the MP under "newest" within a day or so. At the time my zRank for that store was a 2 for that store.

[idraw]

Here is the zrank info from the help files, might want to bookmark it.

https://help.zazzle.com/hc/en-us/articles/222927048-How-zRank-Works

Why does my zRank matter?

As Zazzle's Creator community continues to grow, we are constantly looking for ways to improve our customers' experience and highlight the best stores suited to them. zRank gives us a way to showcase those stores that have put a lot of time and effort into creating a rich and engaging user experience.

There are also a few added benefits* for your store on Zazzle:

• Your store will appear, and have preference, as a suggested search result when searching.
• Your store will appear, and have preference, in the Creator Store search Filter - the links which appear in the left-hand navigation bar for narrowing results in marketplace search.

*Your store must have a zRank of 4 or above to have these features enabled 

[Laura]

I can confirm after raising my rates, my Zrank went from a solid 8 to 7 (my hghest was 9)

[Mariholly]

I just gave a good boost to the royalties on all my proposal cards that are sold individually in my store with an 8—let's see if it makes a difference or not.

[Anne]

@Laura Thanks for sharing that.
My Zrank went from 8 to 6 as a result of the Great Collection Downgrade. Views and sales went to a trickle and I've never been able to recover and get the rank up again, no matter what I do or don't do.

[giskard]

I went from 6 to 5.... I believe Zazzle is applying something like tariffs.... "you raise your royalties, we lower your visibility" Wooow!!!! 😶

[glitter]

So it took me a while to find the information and they stated there would be a "fee".... don't know why they didn't just put in the opening post what that was but for those, like myself, who missed the email initially here is the highlight for you. 

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.

This is in the Content License Agreement: https://www.zazzle.com/mk/policy/updated_creator_license_agreement

I have a thought... maybe they could shave a little off on their side rather than taking from the designers or lower the overall price so that we are more competitive in the market across the board. 

It seems like Zazzle wants more and more from it's designs for less. It's not just designing anymore. Now they also want you to have custom backgrounds, which is very time consuming.... then that wasn't enough, videos are now a thing, another very time consuming thing to do. How does anyone keep up? If anything we should get more for doing the extra's, not less. 

Sorry to vent or come across negative but I know how much work and passion so many of us have here on Zazzle and I just hate to see them be (in my personal opinion) so greedy. 

[ZBug]

Oh yeah, that needed to be in the email. The royalty change is huge and easy to miss when reading the new TOS. Why they don't have a "these are the things that changed" like all site do when updating this stuff is annoying.

[ZBug]

Calling designers ambassadors is silly, and in my opinion will confuse the 💩 out of customers. They are going to think we have all the shipping details and can cancel their orders, etc.

[Barbara]

I've been assuming they'll continue calling us creators. It's when we affiliate for them that we're Ambassadors, though more traditionally, an ambassador is someone who tries to create goodwill and perhaps partnerships, mostly in the world of government, certainly not for retail business, the latter having sales people. Fancy-schmancy words don't effect change.

Colorwash's Home

[ZBug]

Ah thank you. 

[CrazyMermaid]

I have noticed on the home shopping channel and QVC, they call the people who stand next to the hosts and explain the products - Brand Ambassadors. That is if the person talking about the product isn't the company owner. I still dislike being called a Creator, I really hate the title Ambassador. I think they both are very pompous.

[Cat]

I know this is beating a dead horse, but I really think the term "creator" is misleading - it makes people think it works like Etsy. If they're really wedded to the term (and it seems they are) it would be less misleading to call us "content creators."

[Deb]

I completely agree.. what was wrong with designer? Isnt that what we do? Design the products ?