Zazzle giving 50% off of your listings

[TerryW]

Hi, so what happens to your royalty when Zazzle marks your item down by 50%?  Example of a current calendar I have listed -

$13.48

Original Price$26.95 per calendar

50% Off with code 100DAYXMAS23

In past earnings say I sold three of the same listing and got my full royalty of say $1.47 on the first one and the next two are like .34 cents with no explanation, so I assumed they marked them down.  That's not a real incentive to keep creating.  I've been with Zazzle for many years but have not bothered with it for some time now for this reason.  I really like Zazzle and would like to get back into it but would like to get my full royalty. 

[Barbara]

You should be getting your royalty based on the price at which a customer purchases the product, not the full price of the product. However, if the sale is through a third party, your royalty will be reduced by the amount the affiliate is owed. But that's not all. Perhaps the customer has a special coupon that further reduces the price. Beyond that, if the customer transferred your design to another product, then they may be paying even less if the new product costs less, and so your royalty will be on this product, not the original one. There are likely even more variables I'm not thinking of.

It's complicated, to say the least.

Colorwash's Home

[TerryW]

The calendar I posted in my comment was what is shown to me as a customer.  Not through a 3rd party or an affiliate.  The coupon was offered to me on the calendar's page.  Too many variables on Zazzle, no explanations for any of them when they affect your listing.  I almost deleted my account because of this, after seeing the 50% discount on that one calendar I may still.  I get emails from Zazzle offering me big discounts - use this code, use that code, that's Zazzle, not a 3rd party and not an affiliate.  It's not that it's complicated, it's that it's wrong.  

[KeegansCreation]

Frequent sales are a marketing technique to get and keep customers. Today random item X is 50% off. Tomorrow a different random item Y is 50% off. This keeps them coming back to see which random item will go on sale next.

Rewards at random, unpredictable intervals keep people more invested than if they are predictable ("everyday low, low prices"). This was studied back in the day of pay phones when it was found that many, many people checked the coin return to see if anybody forgot to retrieve their change. Since I'm old, I grew up around pay phones and checked the coin return every time despite only occasionally finding change. Likewise, customers will keep coming back despite only occasionally having the exact thing they wanted be 50% off.

tl:dr Low royalty is better than no royalty. When Zazzle gets less $ because it's on sale, that applies to us too.

[Jadendreamer13]

If you delete your account, then you will receive no royalties. Which scenario benefits you the most?

[alissag]

Will just say that as someone who also sells stuff on other POD sites, sales and discounts are the norm, and yes, when someone buys a product at a discount I get less in royalties, but the flipside is that a lot more stuff sells when there's a sale running so, I tend to make more royalties overall than I do if there's no sale going. Zazzle at least allows us to set our own royalty rate, and I always keep in mind that items maybe be discounted as much as 50 percent when setting my royalty.

[PenguinPower]

🤷‍ A sale with less royalty is better than no sale… As someone who tends to not make a lot of frivolous purchases myself, I just figure the person likely wouldn’t have bought anything at all at the full price, so I’m still ahead no matter what. Plus it’s exposure for my product, so it may be quite helpful at producing more sales, at the full price, for said product.. I mean seriously.. I’m not putting anything but time into my stores- so it’s not like I’m taking a monetary loss -Z is taking that risk by being the one who has to put actual $$ into stock, supplies, warehousing, employees, etc. 

[xzendor7]

I understand your pain; part of the way to deal with this is to structure your pricing around what the typical daily sales price the is offered by Zazzle.  Unlike other platforms, Zazzles sales are daily so you need to figure out what commissions you are looking to earn per sale, factor in the discount and then set your percentage per sale.

Also try to focus on the higher end products that are popular on the platform to increase your commission, if you are not a volume seller. The belief that a sale is better then no sale is not a smart approach to selling on any platform; you need to work out a strategy that is going to make you as much money as possible within the scheme that the platform uses.

If need be go to other platforms like etsy and study what the top sellers are doing, and see how you can implement some of those things on your account.  Also try to recruit affiliates to promote your products on social networks or other online places that you frequent.

The more people that see your work the better it is for you to generate sales.

If you don't have a website get one.  There are plenty of platforms (free and paid) that you can use if you lack the knowledge on setting one up yourself.  I use Wordpress on my own domain and this allows my to promote my artwork, discuss the artwork, show videos of how I create the artwork and connect to the various POD shops where the artwork can be purchased, all form one location.

Which brings me to another point; and your artwork to as many POD sites as you can handle.  This will help find the right site that works for you and that will generate the largest amount of sales. Not all sites work for an individual, and different people visit different sites for what they are looking to purchase.

Lastly always remember, no matter what site you are on; "YOUR COMMISSION IS BASED ON THE FINAL SALE PRICE".  For Zazzle you must also include or should I say subtract from your commission any affiliate payout, penalty fee if your royalty is to high, and bulk discount rate that is offered if a customer buys multiple products from your shop or the shops of others.