Lower Base Prices? Makes sense to me...

[mcmxmas]

Well, they had the Terms Agreement change - which forced us to lower our royalties... I wonder if Zazzle would ever force the printers and substrate providers to lower the original price of the goods? That would be effective in selling my products more than me sacrificing a few percentage points off my markup. 

For instance a Placemat (1) $12.67? Lamp $43 - $87? Pillows $28 - $78... BEFORE any markup? How about it Zazzle?? Give us some wiggle room to add our markup. LOVE to hear your thoughts... 

 

 

[ColsCreations]

I am missing something here - where in the Terms did they force us to lower our royalties?

[JerryLambert]

From the Creator License Agreement

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.

[ColsCreations]

Thank you. I am aware of the Excess Royalty Fee. But we still have the option to set our royalty to anything from 5-50% (down from the previous max of 99%). Nowhere are we being forced to lower our royalties. Terminology matters here as there are still many who aren't familiar with the new structure/terms and it's unintentionally misleading to say they forced us to lower royalties. Forced would mean we didn't have a choice. But the choice is still ours. Anyone who lowered their royalties did so voluntarily. (Unless their royalties were over 50%, in which case, yeah, Zazzle must have auto-lowered them to the new max.)

[Van]

I believe the 10% was "suggested" by Z.  You can still set your royalty higher BUT any royalty set over the "suggested" 10% will incur a 5% excess royalty fee.  You may be in for a shock if you view the changes that took effect on 4-1-25 such as the new marketing royalty fee which will cut deeply into your royalty earned on 3rd party sales - anywhere from 35% to 50% of it, depending on the product category.  There are a lot of discussions about that on the forums.  

[mcmxmas]

Yes, royalties over 50% were automatically revised. The added fees to any royalties over 10% were an incentive to make me lower my royalties. 🔥 Please don’t miss my point. To make more overall sales on Zazzle the base costs could be lowered, allowing the consumer a better cost at check out AND allow us to make a royalty worthy of our contribution of the artwork that makes the substrate desirable.

[Jadendreamer13]

I totally agree that Zazzle’s new marketing and excess royalty fees are excessive, and that they have devastated designer’s already meager royalties. However, if Zazzle reduces the cost of their base products and, therefore, the newly imposed fees, their profits will decrease accordingly.

If Zazzle’s main struggle is keeping up with Google’s advertising fees, the money to pay for advertising has to come from somewhere.

As I said above, Zazzle’s new fee structure  is excessive, and I agree with you that designers should not be the only ones being penalized, but lowering the cost of Zazzle’s products won’t work.

A more equitable solution would be to reduce affiliate (third-party) and designer fees equally. That could reduce the approximately 50% clawback on designers’ royalties that we’re experiencing now.

[Barbara]

---

@mcmxmas wrote:

I wonder if Zazzle would ever force the printers and substrate providers to lower the original price of the goods?

 Zazzle has suppliers they buy the base products from because Zazzle isn't a manufacturer. (As for printing, they do a lot of that themselves.) Can they request a reduction in suppliers' prices? Sure, but the outcome would likely be a refusal, or if sufficiently irritated, the supplier might even stop selling to Zazzle. A good part of Zazzle's job is to negotiate terms with a supplier. I assume some kind of contract is involved, and when the contract ends, it might be renegotiated or, if a deal can't be made, the product is dropped and maybe another supplier is found.

We aren't privy to the inner workings of Zazzle, or really, any private company. The costs of the few businesses whose affairs I've known rather intimately have been quite intricate and even surprising, everything from all the government entities and insurances down to paperclips. Are Zazzle's products expensive? Yes. Are there good reasons for this? Most probably.

My only problem with the new royalty structure is that Zazzle hardly even hinted of what lies beneath it, though I found it easy to surmise. Of course, regardless of what we do or do not know, we'd still be disgruntled.

Colorwash's Home    Colorwash on Benable   Benable invite link