Sudden Drop of Sales After 1st April

[Zainab_Baloch]

I’ve been noticing a sudden and significant drop in my sales since April 1st. Up until then, I was getting regular daily sales, but now it slowed down drastically, I wonder if it’s because of the new terms of service update? Would like to know if anyone else is going through the same thing and what would be causing this.

[inviteme2]

I have the same issue.   A 40% drop in sales and viewings.  I was already in the promoter program and supposedly my store just flowed into the new Ambassador program.  I have contacted them but not gotten any help.

[Barbara]

My sales dropped dead in their tracks on April 1 and they're still dead as of today, April 12. Not since my first six months here back in 2014 have I experienced this. I'm still getting views, so I checked some of my more popular products in the marketplace to see if maybe they were missing, but they aren't. Where have the customers gone? What's putting them off? What happened on April 1 other than that our royalty structure changed? I can't figure it out. I've stopped putting time into Zazzle because, currently, there seems no point in doing so, particularly because new products have always taken quite a while to get established.

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[inviteme2]

I have emailed them several times in this regard.  Just got the pat response from the manual about doing blah blah blah...which I'm already doing.  I think maybe they're not marketing us any more.

[Zainab_Baloch]

Seems like we’re all seeing the same drop in sales. Clearly they’re not advertising our products or they’re testing new marketing strategies. I don’t even feel like working on my store anymore, just waiting for a motivational sale. Let’s hope it’s not a permanent change.

[BKMuir]

I already have the same # of sales so far this month, as I had the total of last month. Only February was lower by half. So ... No, no DROP in sales.

[Zainab_Baloch]

That’s great! I’m glad your sales are steady. This has been my slowest month so far. It definitely doesn’t feel consistent for everyone. 

[OakAndPine]

Same here. No sales for past few days. Wonder what is happening? Royalties cut in half and declining sales. So much of hard work over the years just wasted....

[orientcourt]

Trumps Liberation day April 2nd, think people may be a bit spooked by tariffs?   

[Shar-Ken]

Similar thing on my end.

[Wesha]

Same here, sales have stopped totally after 3rd April ... I was about to write about it and just find your post!

Low royalties and declining sales ... I am losing all my motivation to create any new collection now 😞

[Zainab_Baloch]

Half the month has passed but sales still haven’t picked up like they used to. 

[CrazyMermaid]

Let's see tariffs, trade wars, sinking stock market, US taxes due April 15th, gloomy US economic reports, mass layoffs of US federal workers and federal adjacent workers. Large parts of US recovering from storms and wild fires. 

[Barbara]

Today, I went to Michael's where the sales lady and I got into a conversation about climate change. I reminded her it's been changing for all the history of the earth and that we've had global warming since the last ice age. Accepting the vicissitudes of climate rather than focusing on doom and gloom might be the answer. She was so pleased to hear something positive that she gave me her personal discount on my purchase. It's all in the attitude. I wish I could spread that sense of things around the world. (And then our sales would go up.)

Colorwash's Home

[CrazyMermaid]

Thank you for letting me know those higher prices, heating bills and taxes are all in my imagination. BTW my comments were about economics not Climate Change. 

[Barbara]

The connection between what you wrote and what I wrote was the underlying negative aura, which is what happened with the sales lady, who was bummed out by climate change just as you appear to be by the current economic state. You might think I was belittling you, but that's not the sort of thing I ever do. Sorry you saw it that way.

Colorwash's Home

[whimsywhim]

Exactly. I would amend and say the climate has been changing since day one - billions of years ago. Further, inflation is down, egg prices are down, gas prices are down. A start. There was a lot of damage done that can't be fixed overnight.

[sandycloss]

what? lol

[whimsywhim]

Reality is difficult for some.

[CrazyMermaid]

Yes it is.

[sandycloss]

Your response made me sad. Ignoring man's effects on the climate or the economy is not an answer. It is not a positive outlook to me. It's a : walking into traffic while looking at your phone mentality.   I told my senators and congress folk to do something. And surprisingly enough of them did just that. There was a bipartisan effort to end Canadian tariffs.  That's a start to turning all my "likes" into "sales" again. Its time for unity and working together

[Barbara]

I think you misunderstood the point of my little tale. It's that, regardless of what's going on around us, regardless of how bad it might seem, we need not immerse ourselves in it. We do nothing for ourselves and nothing for those with whom we live. Positive attitudes help breed the same in those around us and it causes no harm. We can try to spur both ourselves and others into doing the right thing when necessary, but we need not do it with anger or misery.

Hope I clarified my intention.

Colorwash's Home

[whimsywhim]

Barbara, your intention was clear from your first post.  Thank you for your positivity and reality check.

[Caprice]

I came to the forum to see if anyone else had noticed a drop in sales — so yep - me, too. 

[Garnet56]

Since April 1st, my sales have cratered significantly. Feb and March were both great sales months. Now crickets, I know the economy is bad, but I'm also starting to wonder if all of my affiliate links that folks shared are now broken? Just speculating, in the past my sales would go great for about 5-6 days and then stall for tge same time span, I read somewhere in the past that this was caused by companies sharing time on Amazon Web Services. My best shop caters to only business customers now maybe 2-3 sales a week. I cancelled my subscriptions to Canva and Freepik where I purchase their artist designs to create my products. I have now completely stopped loading product as at present the effort is just not worth it. So I'm on my way from ~$400/month to ???. I'm retired and mostly do this to stay busy, but enough already, and no word from the mothership just an invite to the green room to load up the new product brochures. Not in this economy.

Dwight

[LMGildersleeve]

Have you thought of using those brochures to promote your own store in the real world? Just a thought....

[Garnet56]

Hey LMGildersleeve,

You know I have distributed my business cards for years with zero sales results, so brochures are not for me, I count on my affiliate/ambassadors the most. I started my shop in late 2021 so at the start of April/25 I had about 3200 affiliate links shared after the 3 1/2 years total. So no after 6 weeks in the new ambassador program my links shared has jumped to 7473 total for a gain in a short time of 4273 links, so I'm happy with that. I will also say that about 99% of my sales come from affiliate/ambassador links, the odd customer finds my product through the seo tags. 

I just typed up a hour long response to the last poster but it all got wiped because I had a software link that the board didn't like so even though I saved it, it disappeared. My sales for May have started to return, as I have had 42 sales so far with 2 cancellations.

Jan, Feb and March were good months so I got paid a little over $530 yesterday from Zazzle. I have about $300 in pending and current balance so far so I should not do so good next month but still I'll be satisfied with what I receive. The economy has been tough many folks are struggling with day to day living. When I started the business sign shop in 2021, I just had a feeling that traditional products, tees, posters, mugs jigsaw puzzles etc would not be in demand so much. 

So I started doing business signs banners, window clings, yard signs, all kinds of signs for business and I have had a steady stream of income to supplement my pension. If any one would like me to make a YouTube video showing how I make my products let me know I'd be happy to show you how to create signs, and I'm sure that many of you would outperform me with your skills. 

Today I'm renewing my Canva and Freepik subscriptions and tomorrow I will start to post new products. Seriously, think about starting a business sign shop of some sort if your existing shop is struggling.

good luck, take care, Dwight

ps, I'm an old man if I can do it, you can too.

[Barbara]

@Garnet56  How are you counting links to your products? We do have our linkovers, but I've never quite trusted where they come from because of the sometimes odd fluctuations in the numbers.

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[Boki]

Sales seemed to be frozen, and my zRank dropped, all the previous work and effort seemed to be non-existent,... 😕

[Caprice]

Do we know if this has anything to do with us being changed to "Ambassador" program?  Can we opt out of that?

[Boki]

I hope for better times soon and much better sales. I am disappointed with the current situation, but I am optimistic despite the current situation,... I felt the need to express my opinion, share,... And maybe someone has some good advice and what they are doing at this moment,...?

[Garnet56]

I would be reluctant to opt out of tge Ambassador program now especially after all the work that was done to distribute my links, by my Ambassadors, probably a couple if thousand links since April 1, it will take a bit of time for the new links to stew in the search engines, then things should get better. 

[inviteme2]

Did you happen to raise your royalty rates when you changed over to the program?  If yes, are you above 15%?

[Caprice]

Were you asking me?  If so - i didn't do ANYTHING to change over - I simply got a notice from Zazzle.

That's why I wanted to know if we can opt out.

[inviteme2]

I have no idea. I did nothing during the change over. 

[inviteme2]

Did you raise your royalty rates?

[Caprice]

If you're asking me - no, I did nothing.  

I did buy something recently, tho' and did NOT get the 15% referral fee I used to get...even tho' Z said that would still be in place.  So....???  No idea how the whole thing works

[Tamathaa]

My sales are up from past few years. Just this past month. Doing happy dance!!

[Kelly-Marie]

Hi, yes I noticed a drop in sales and have been working frantically to try get them back up, possibly even making changes to my shop that have made things worse, I used to have everything through one shop but now am splitting it down to Hopfully increase viability… this is slow process and feels like starting again. I’ve never noticed a drop in zrank but I never really got that much off level 5 but have always had sales. I had a large sale cancelled then literally no sales Since March.

My last sale was end of February and that was not the sale cancelled, I’ve never not had a sale in 3 years of being here even on my low z rating so I do fear something must have changed in the background that has either decreased visibility or just scared off customers. 

I’ve recently started to post new products at 5% in hope to attract new customers -see if this works 

I feel that this will be affecting zazzle too because when we have a drop in sales so do they. I do hope they investigate this as it definitely sounds like there something just not right. I love selling my art, and even tho I just get pennies it’s part of who I am and really hope I don’t have to stop but this is really disheartening. For us all 😕

[mgdesigns]

I track the income and number of products sold monthly. My products sold stayed around the same as the past months but my income dropped 50%. I think about 35% is due to Zazzle's changes and the rest a combination of people purchasing lower priced items and Zazzle claiming a lot of sales that should be self referred. I'm concerned to be honest. Specially on the way Zazzle is handling things and this site becoming like Etsy where they run constant tests, you have to email them 2 or 3 times for them to actually read the message and know what you're talking about, and they making big changes without taking us into account. I hope it goes back to how it was before asap.