Custom Design Incentive: A Win-Win for Designers and Customers

[lena77678]

Zazzle should offer an additional 35% on top of our base royalty when we create custom designs for customers. To streamline this process, there should be a separate product visibility option under the “Additional Information” section—alongside Public, Hidden, and Direct-Only, there should be a new option: CUSTOM.

The 35% incentive aligns with the commission Zazzle already provides for self-referrals, making it a fair and motivating structure. Custom work varies in complexity—sometimes it's just a simple color change, but other times, I spend days refining a design to ensure my customer is satisfied, yet the financial return is minimal. An additional 35% compensation would help cover the extra effort, allowing designers to continue offering customization without needing to charge an upfront fee that could deter customers.

Currently, I receive 5–10 custom requests every day, which is extremely time-consuming without proper incentive. By implementing this custom pricing structure, Zazzle can empower designers to better serve customers while ensuring our time and skills are fairly compensated.

Let me hear your thoughts. Hopefully, someone from Zazzle will chime in as well.

[Jadendreamer13]

The Artist’s Handbook explains how to handle compensation for custom orders. If you agree to creating custom orders, then the agreement is between you and the customer—not Zazzle. How will you get compensated for the hours you spend creating custom designs when a customer walks away without paying? Essentially, you enter into a contract that defines how many hours you will spend on the project, how many revisions you will make, and your required “kill fee” (an amount you collect before work begins so if the customer ultimately doesn’t purchase your work, you keep). 

[jophb]

I feel like they should at least give us a way to ensure our 'referral fee' with some kind of direct link.  

[Connie]

Yes, I totally agree that we need a CUSTOM setting! At least so we can get the self-referral commission to offset the Marketing Fees!

[Cat]

I agree that having some system to compensate designers for custom work would be a big plus. I've always seen it as an investment that doesn't necessarily pay off immediately, but will pay off in that it generates sales which will boost product placement in the marketplace. However, with royalties being slashed, it's starting to make less and less sense to invest time in helping customers. Honestly, my desire to help people so that I might make a dollar or two is waning. 

I don't know what the best mechanism would be, but I am personally unwilling to venture into the business of creating "side deals" outside of Zazzle - it just opens up so many opportunities for fraudsters to scam us in one way or another. If Zazzle created a system where designers could charge extra for their work, it would be one thing, but no way I'm doing that sort of thing on my own.

The only thing I can think of at the moment would be to publish custom designs as private products with 50% royalties or something like that - but that still leaves the possibility that you do the work and the customer doesn't buy it, so I dunno.

For a while Zazzle had a program where customers could get paired with a designer to assist them. I can't remember the name of the program but it went away, so I have to assume that for one reason or another it was not successful. But I do wonder how those designers where compensated - perhaps whatever system was used there could be modified to work.

But whatever the system, I think they really need to come up with something, because I'm tiring of working for 50 cents an hour.