UPDATE: Royalty Rate Adjustments Update: Until the End of April

[Heather]

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 the end of April, allowing creators time to make any necessary adjustments. Please note that updates may take 24–48 hours to appear. After April 30th, 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. 

Please feel free to continue submitting any additional questions. We’re here to help and want to ensure you have all the information you need.

Thank you again for your contributions to our Community.

The Creator Team

[RjFxx-Creations]

what is this about? Zazzle Timely Update Regarding Royalty Rates what is this?

[Heather]

Hi @RjFxx-Creations - This is response to the forum post we announced to Creators that you can find here. 

[Dizzybutterfly]

Perhaps it has been deemed that some designers are pricing too high or the product makers (& distributors) in possession of the items we put designs onto charge what they charge because production costs (and the receiving of transported goods, gas, etc.) are what they are. Taking a teensy sliver of the profits we earn when we set a royalty (desired amount of profit tacked onto the cost of our prospective buyer's selection(s), may be, (*and this is pure speculation) a way to keep costs in an apparently affordable perspective to the buyers. It's a market they aren't fools about, otherwise we wouldn't have them as a platform on which to design. I too am not entirely clear on the entirety of changes, this one included. Something seems a little amiss or unclear, and I am not certain I'm reading into it correctly. It does appear to me that costs of imported items may be going up, so maybe it's a way for them too offset their extra costs. That stated, I know that a good number of their items are made in the USA.

As they do sell in other countries, different countries have tariffs, transport costs, and more with other countries. I don't speak for Zazzle, I'm just expressing thoughts and further inviting a knowledged source to clarify. We can work with the change or choose not to. Am sure that ultimately, most people have good feelings about the lucrativeness of the company's decisions and believe 10% royalty can be worked with and profited from if decided to remain that low with our settings, which there isn't a forcing to do, and I'm sure some will profit well regardless if they set a royalty higher. Meh, maybe there's a bigger picture - they don't want to be wiggled out of the market by cheaper shopping sites (some obvious names withheld), and we don't want to be outed in an ability to make more income. I'm not stating that I like it if I understand it properly, I'm stating that perhaps there's a reason for the changes potentially resulting (but not likely) in running designers off and retaining lawyers to rewrite the agreements and all. If I am entirely off with my conception of what I read, please mention.

[MyDigiDesigns]

Thank you!

[jparrottmerrell]

Does this mean that we will be charged a fee if our royalty rates are set above 10%? And this applies to printed items only - not instant downloads, correct?  Thanks for the clarification.

[Andrea]

Can we have a clear explanation on what the Excess Royalty Fee is, and how it's applied please. I can't see anywhere, how this fee is applied exactly. So, I cannot work out the impact of keeping my royalty the same. @ 14.9%. 

For example: say I set my royalty to 10.1% do I then earn less than if I had set it to 10%?

[NCS]

I think it rather cheap for Zazzle to take away an artist's meager earnings of 14.9% when it is them who do all the work designing and placing products on blank merchandise. Their designs make the website's products appealing and without the artists hard work what would Zazzle sell? Blank white merchandise? To call an additional 4.9% excessive is excessive exaggeration. I guess I will be taking my items off Zazzle to another print on demand site, where at least I can get some compensation for hours spent designing merchandise. 😞

[osea]

I think Zazzle is operating some marketing strategy for making things going better for everyone. However, also in this case designers can still do what they want to do.

Talking about this topic I remember my usual knowledges. A design can be complex or require much time to be created. However, even if it was complex it does not necessarly match a higher sales potential. Moreover, this can be reflected while setting prices, and thinking about the design matching that is more suitable for the market. It's also important to underline this process start from the original idea of the designer. Hope you understand.

[joniwarden]

I submitted a form to clear up, who is responsible for this extra fee, if our stores are charging over 10%

[Danieljm]

      It is disappointing that once again Zazzle is taking more profits away from the artists who make Zazzle great. The reason I raised my royalty percentage was that Zazzle took away the 7 percent bonus for artists selling over $100 per month and raised the threshold to $1000 per month. Now Zazzle is coming after our artist profits. That's like a restaurant reducing the cook's salary. Quality is worth paying for. If you don't keep the artists, someone else will scoop them up and take away your market share. Zazzle should work to make things better for artists, not worse. Increased incentives to create are what makes Zazzle great.

[HeatherMarie]

I'm really curious as to why a percentage is being taken away from digital downloads now. I use to get $8.32 per purchase and now I get $5.00 per purchase. It doesn't cost Zazzle hardly anything. Those are our designs being sold digitally. I love Zazzle and I've been so appreciative of everything they do, but this is very upsetting. Along with lowering my rates to 10% for printed products, getting 50% of that taken away for any 3rd party sales.... and now this.

[xBrie]

The marketing royalty fees on an item that we referred seems insane. Like....you didn't market it? That makes no sense to me. This feels as if they are essentially making sellers pay for their marketing costs and trying to spin it as a good thing. If I set a 12% royalty, the ONLY thing that should take from that is your new "Excess Royalty Fee" and any discount coupons the customers used. Now I have to worry about other people's referrals and a marketing royalty fee nonmatter if I referred it.

You are making this way too complicated for sellers to figure out what their royalties should be for each product. I will be turning off the digital download option for all of my invitations for now since I am no longer getting $5-8 per digital sale, but $3.89 when they pay $9.50.  I will now only be selling my digital designs on Etsy and shopify, it's no longer worth it here! No customer wants to pay more than $10 for a digital design unless it's a wedding invite when Etsy has 100's of similar options for $6. And I am not going to up my royalty even further up to make up for the difference. 

This was framed as a good change, and it may be for those who have massive amounts of time to promote for 50%. But the fact that they are taking money out from under us in every sale now to pay for their marketing to stay competitive.... feels scummy 😞

[RG]

Wow.... I dont make much, but now I am making scraps.

[EDDA]

What does “Excess Royalty Fee” mean? Is that a penalty because you want to earn accordingly for your designs and work?
How much of a penalty do you have to expect if you charge 14.9%, for example? And I would really like to have this question answered!!!

[Mistica]

How does the so popular  "3rd Party" get to cut my earnings in about half?
I ended up getting $3.04.
The excess royalty fee is said to be pennies. It always existed for years..but it was not pennies. It would end up, before, getting about 17% of the 22.2%.

[giskard]

I am not an economy expert, but I have to say that even though some blank products say MADE IN THE USA, the process and machinery used to make them have parts or come entirely from other parts of the world, so there is an added cost thanks to tariff, that also impact Zazzle. The printing process ,I believe uses a lot of asian made technology, so more increased costs that you should add. And all of that is charged to us the designers by making us lower our royalties and charging us with excess fees and marketing fees. All of these is the outcome of not well thought policies and not understanding at all how connected is the planet nowdays. Just my two cents people 😉

[Brownielocks]

What's going on?  I had a $9.10 sale and I get $1.03 in royalty fee?

4/8/2025 7:16:37 AM

2

$9.10 $0.34

25.0%+ 5.0%

$1.03 USD

$1.03

I've been 25% royalty fee since I joined 9 years ago.  Never changed.  Now I'm getting 10% royalty forced on me?
Not right.  This is excessive.

[StinkPad]

I should probably clarify that this 10% max commission doesn't apply to digital downloads, does it? I left all those as they are which is at like 25% or something.

10% of a single card doesnt make sense for a digital download commission, so I just assumed.. but now I'm kind of panicking that maybe I assumed wrong

[erinrwolf]

This new update has been disappointing. Zazzle is taking way too much from their artist. We should be getting rewarded for our time and our art. I think Zazzle needs to reconsider how they are treating their artist before we all leave and go to other POD sites. I know I drive a lot of traffic from Pinterest to my own designs and yet most of them say it is "3rd party" and not a self sale. Why put time into designing and marketing if we aren't going to see any rewards. 

[Brownielocks]

Excess = Ridiculous!   
I  just  made a $1,200 sale.   I got $110 in royalty?
Normally, I'd have made $400.  OK, so penalize
The $400 by 10% = $40.  So I should get $360
as a royalty.  

This is totally disrespecting the designers/sellers.

[James]

Hi Creators, 

We have extended our daily royalty rate change to the end of April. 

Thank you. 

[Elaine]

Hi James,

What is happening with royalty rates that was changed way before the 30th April that still hasn't gone over. I know lots of creators that this has happened to, which is very frustrating!

[RascalSplat345]

I'm not surprised at all.  Streamers and Netflix give their participants peanuts for what they bring in.  Millions of streams or downloads could be only $1000.

The royalty scheme was already skewed. I sell elsewhere (not designs) and I made $1.08 on $50 of my hard earned work (WHICH TOOK YEARS).  I'm sorry for everyone here.  As a newcomer, I figured this would happen eventually. 

[avid_x]

Can someone explain why we don't get 10% of the sale price. What is the penalty?