Z now isn't the only pod hitting our wallets

[Van]

Welpers, it ain't just Z slapping designers with additional fees. Standard accts on rb have had fees for awhile, but premium and pro haven't. Looks like standard will now have 50% of their commissions clawed back. Effective 9-1 Premium accts, which have had no fee, will be charged 20%. Pro accts, however, won't get charged a fee. In addition, they are also implementing some kind of excess royalty fee if commission is set over 20%. blog.redbubble DOT com/2023/04/how-account-fees-may-apply-to-you/ Another pod that pays set commissions on sales reduced those amounts a good while back. I won't be surprised to get an email about them making harsher changes as well. Guess it's about time to consider alternative ways to earn money. My bills don't go down but what I'm earning does and it stinks.

[Cat]

Wow. It's starting to sound like the POD party is over. I wonder if it's tariffs, AI, or some combination.

[Jadendreamer13]

I think they took effect Aug 1st, but I could be wrong….

[Van]

The emails I got said September 1st.  

[savanamm]

Yes, we are witnessing the end of the POD era.

[KittyValentine]

That sucks. POD seems to get harder and harder. But at least RB caps the new fees with $150 per payment period and don't charge more than that - at least for now 👀

[socialitedesign]

At least Redbubble is not charging anything or much for Pro Designers.  That is not the case now with Zazzle.  Everyone here is being hit hard.  I just hope that due to this new Program, Zazzle's 'image' won't be hurt.  CafePress did this years ago and it is not thriving now.  Instead of being very expensive, Zazzle needs to look at other forms of growth rather than just imposing high income loss on Designers, especially those that are in the ProDesigner category.  Maybe they can also branch out into the stock image business now that they also provide digital downloads.  This could provide Zazzle another income stream.  They can also set up a similar business model like Etsy and Minted to attract sellers of actual handmade products for a fee.  Zazzle needs to think outside the box instead of punishing its community of designers.  It's easy to do the cash grab but, unfortunately, word gets around and customers might start avoiding Zazzle as a result of their recent changes.  As the saying goes... "what goes around, comes around".

[Wollastonite]

My speculation is that as these POD marketplaces get uncontrollably flooded with AI-generated content, the number of images and product pages are increasing at an unnatural rate, and the PODs are realizing that it doesn't make sense to pay AI prompters as much as they had been paying designers. So they're intentionally making PODs less lucrative to drive people away and the non-AI designers are collateral damage. If it were purely financial issues, they'd raise prices or also reduce referral rates. But the PODs are all clawing back money from designers specifically, so I think there's a design reason.

[Van]

AI is advancing. Quality might not be the same as an actual designer - yet. But imagine - pay a couple dozen employees a salary to churn out ai designs instead of paying designer commissions. (That could even be "sourced out" to other countries, some of which have cost the US jobs by working so cheaply anyway.

And as how ai "creates" images, well, possibly some of our work was used to train it? Here's an interesting article that discusses some of that. https://www.cnn DOT com/2022/10/21/tech/artists-ai-images I saw someone use their own data set for chat ai  to avoid some of the "filters" the online ones sometimes have so I imagine the same could be done with images. Oh, and in the article, note the comment about "fair use."

Who knows, we're already taking a pay cut, maybe we'll soon be outright fired. 😞

[Jadendreamer13]

Some brief research that I just conducted shows that POD product demand and the POD marketplace remains strong. The issue is the rising google advertising fees.

No need to panic and scare people into believing that POD is dead. Do a little research before you make broad generalizations that may be incorrect. 🙂

[SimplyDesigned]

Very much this.

[socialitedesign]

I do believe that people still like the effort put into product design when it is quality over AI.  You can tell the difference.  Quite a few of the stock image sites are now adding lots of AI generated art to purchase.  Still not the same look.

[MadjackGG]

I'd also suggest bad management has played a role in Redbubble's current predicament.

Their share price has dropped 93% over the last five years. They hit a high point during the pandemic with mask sales and online sales in general peaking, but RB management seemed to proceed on the assumption that it was the new normal.

Of course it wasn't; mask sales crashed and RB seemingly did little to manage the huge influx of low quality accounts created during the pandemic - except perhaps to institute AI filters that have brought their own problems with arbitrary and illogical account terminations.

They bounced the previous CEO in favor of co-founder Martin Hosking, who's solution (presumably), was to shave a large proportion of RB artists of increasing amounts of their sales revenue. This in order to pad the balance sheet for shareholders - a move perhaps similar to eating your seed corn in order to stave off hunger. The last fees increase email unconvincingly claims it's for the artists' own good, but I doubt many will see it that way.

[Connie]

That article is more than TWO YEARS OLD! Look at the date in the link that you posted! RB did this LONG before Zazzle did. Sure, some of their pet designers were put into Pro accounts and don't have to pay the fees, but it really hurt smaller sellers. At least Zazzle applies everything fairly across the board.

[Van]

 I'm not pro, I'm preminum.  Preminum hasn't had to pay fees but will effective 9-1-25.  The below is copied from today's email. 

From the email I got today:  "we’re making a modest update to our fee structure effective September 1, 2025."   

Platform Fee Structure is Changing:

Platform fees are being updated and simplified to a flat percentage of a seller’s monthly earnings. This includes an updated 50% fee for Standard accounts and a new, lower 20% fee for Premium accounts that will be deducted from your monthly earnings. The platform fee helps cover administrative and operational marketplace costs, support services and investment in tools and marketing opportunities to help artists like you.

New Excess Markup Fee:

We are introducing a fee for Standard and Premium accounts that applies only to products with a markup above 20% at the point of sale and is deducted solely from earnings on the additional markup. This is a 50% fee charged on earnings above the 20% markup threshold, and reflects the additional costs required to support higher-margin items, as these products typically convert at a lower rate, and helps ensure the marketplace remains healthy and accessible to artists and customers alike. Lower markup is good for your customers and increases potential to drive higher sales."