Zazzle Pro Level USD Royalties - It's Up To Us To Keep Track???

[Brownielocks]

According to my  Royalties total cleared, I have more than $25,000 now.  So I wrote and asked why am I not upped to "Silver" from Bronze.  This is what I got as a reply:

"Only USD on .com count towards Pro Level. You would need to download the CSV file and count all the earnings made in USD and that are cleared."

Since when does the store owner have to go through years of sales and add up the USD?  That never happened when I went from PRO to BRONZE.  The total royalties cleared  in the green are USD from what I understood. 

And, doesn't Zazzle keep track of the USD royalties from the foreign royalties for tax purposes?

Have any of you had to add up your own USD royalties in order to go up in rank?  I mean, even if you did, who would you turn that in to and would they even bother to validate it?  This seems like a cop out to me.  I've got to add up all my royalties for them!  

The message to me is that they're not even bothering to monitor this so they can raise store ranks when the amount is earned. 

[Marcia · Accepted solution]

I did add all of mine up & not too long after 25K in US royalties cleared, I was ranked up to silver.

[Brownielocks]

Really?  Who did you turn your information into?  And, how?  I've never done this before.

[Marcia]

No one. Zazzle just informed me once 25K cleared. 

And since you can see what's cleared (green) in foreign currencies, I only just added up those & did the math.

[Brownielocks]

Well, I just added it all up and it's more than $25,000  USD.  I did not count pending or cancelled USD.  So, I should be seeing Silver soon according to my calculations.  Thanks for letting me know I had to do this. 

[KeegansCreation]

It isn't that you are responsible for adding up your USD royalties and then reporting that to Zazzle before you go up a level. Rather, it's that you won't truly know how close you are to going up unless you do that sorting. You don't have to report that to anyone (as you didn't for Bronze) but you can think you have made 25K$ USD when (hypothetically) you've only made 24K$ USD and the other 1K$ are other currencies so you'd have to get to 26K$.

The green cleared column is all currencies cleared, not just USD. Look at the green column in your royalty history and you will (likely) see other currencies. My green column in royalty history has plenty of euros. 

I did it in Excel. It's a pain in the neck but it's the only way to know how close you truly are.

Off topic: I went to your store (because I always go to people's stores because I'm nosy like that) and it looks like you've carved out a niche for linemen and ham radio operators, among a few other underserved niches. That's awesome! No wonder you have done so well. I think serving the underserved niche is a great path to success. I wish new designers who are demoralized that they have few views/sales could see that and realize their own lives and the lives of those around them can be a source of design inspiration and there's no need to adhere to what's on the 1st page of a department. I have made many sales of my microbiology designs because that's a niche I know well. Everybody has multiple niches they could design for and I wish more new designers could see that when they get demoralized because their very cute baby shower invitations are invisible and outranked by 10K other cute baby shower invitations.

[Brownielocks]

I hate spreadsheets, etc. 😄  Anyway, I just added up all the "cleared"  USD sales.  I did not count the pending or the cancelled USD sales.  The total still comes to more than $25,000  😁  So, I guess I write customer service and tell them this wondrous news.  I won't live long enough to reach Gold status unfortunately, so I have to embrace my Silver-ness.  

[Sara_H]

Good luck! I won't live long enough for gold either 😂

[Sara_H]

I downloaded the CSV - opened it in LibreOffice Calc (like excel but free) and calculated all the USD's - I'm about $700 away from $25k (ish)

Would really like to reach silver before the end of the year.

Wish me luck!

[Brownielocks]

Sara,  I wish  you tons of luck.  I'm sure you'll make it, especially since Christmas is coming.  That's my biggest sales time so I'm sure it's also yours.

[Scott]

Just to clarify a bit here, you'll be graduated to Silver automatically when the time comes. No action is needed from your end.

It sounds like the instructions mentioned above are meant as a suggestion of how you can track earnings on your end, and it's purely optional.

[Brownielocks]

Thanks Scott.  It confused me that I had to find the number and turn it in.  Well, I know I'm over $25,000 so I guess it's just a matter of waiting.  But, waiting isn't my greatest skill. 😄 

[Brownielocks]

Scott,

Just an update.  I just wanted clarify about the earnings for these store colors of Bronze, Silver and Gold requirements actually being applied whether paid by check or PayPal.

After a few problems with lost checks, by July I went from being paid by Zazzle via a check to being paid via Paypal.  This is how I discovered something.  

Last week I got my PayPal 1099, which covers from July to December. Today I received my Zazzle 1099 which covers only the check payments from January to June. Together they equal my total Zazzle earnings for 2022 for my taxes.  QUESTION:  Since Zazzle's 1099 only was for 6 months of earnings via check, is that's all that's applied to my store to qualify for going up to Silver?  Or do earnings sent to Pay Pal also get applied to my store's earnings account to qualify my store to go up to Silver?  It hasn't changed yet and I'm so baffled on this.  And, now that I see Zazzle only crediting me 50% of my annual earnings on the 1099 (check payments directly to me), I thought I'd ask.   Thanks.

[Scott]

I don't believe that the method of payment changes anything.

[Brownielocks]

I just made it to SILVER!!!  I just had to share. ::happy dance:: 😄

[Sandra-]

Congratulations!!

[chefcateringbiz]

There's nothing terribly exciting about getting to silver, in any case. You get access to another forum where we don't really talk about anything more than what everybody else is talking about. There are no "benefits" outside of that. The real excitement for anyone would be how much of those earnings have been tucked away for the future. After you get to silver, they've eliminated the gold category for lack of interest or whatever the reason, so if you're young enough and you hang around for another 10-20 years you can get to platinum. I'll be dead before getting there.

[ColsCreations]

 After you get to silver, they've eliminated the gold category for lack of interest or whatever the reason ...

Huh? This page How the Pro Program Works which is clearly marked 2022 lists all 6 levels including Gold.

@chefcateringbiz 

[Brownielocks]

I see the GOLD on the page.  It's $100,000.   So you have to go from $25,000 to $100,000 in order to go up.  Then PLATINUM is $250,000.   My store isn't that phenomenal in sales and I doubt I'll live long enough to get to GOLD. But I don't sell popular items like wedding stuff, etc.  My store is a niche.  So, it'll take some unforeseen miracle for me to ever hit PLATINUM.  Congrats to those that have.

[chefcateringbiz]

I should've been gold a while back. Can't remember who it was that also should've jumped to gold but... nothing also. In any case, I imagine there would be a new, amazing forum just like this one where we talk about the same stuff everybody else talks about. It took me since 2009 to get to that $100K, can't imagine patience instead of marketing savvy is anything to brag about. Why should Zazzle take me seriously when I have an issue or an idea? I get paid, that's why I'm here.

[chefcateringbiz]

I was updating all my store banners and finally asked about going Gold in case I could get a gold-pro image for my new banners (doesn't hurt to show off to customers, not that they even know what it means or even go as far as come into my stores). Duh - don't have quite enough *U.S.* money yet *blast those Other Worlders*, which is why I haven't been, er, promoted. Yes, I guess you have to keep track yourself. I don't like to bother with such things, so there ya go. Everything else I said applies, though.

[whupsadaisy]

They eliminated the GOLD category, are you kidding me? No wonder I've never been awarded my GOLD status, I've been eligible for a while now.

That's a shame, smh. 

[Pádraig]

Hi @whupsadaisy,

Thanks for your post. Pro Gold is still part of our Pro Program. Once you reach the requirements for Pro Gold you will be automatically upgraded.

Pádraig

[CrazyMermaid]

My gold designation showed up right on schedule. I got an email and my Pro Gold badge flipped on the same day. It was quite a bit over $100,000 overall, but as soon as I reached $100,000US it happened. I smile with the notion of making $250,000US. This is the motivation more than seeing the Pro Platinum badge on my profile page. 

[julianne_A]

I know it's a badge of honor, but I will just be happy that I've been successful once I hit that mark.  🙂  I wonder how many platinum members there are?

[JimCarnicelli]

I know this is very belated. But it's relevant. I've added a free feature to Snuggle Hamster Designs that will show you your qualifying total cleared royalties and show what pro level you're eligible for based on it. You need to import your stores and upload your royalty history log for this to work. Here's what it looks like. Note the new "Summary" section:

In our case you can see our eligible cleared USD royalties stand at $1,101.49 while our total cleared royalties are $1,153.11, a bit more. The difference here is that those other cleared royalties were converted from other currencies and are thus not eligible. And being over $1k means we are now eligible for Pro Bronze status.

I'm still validating that this approach is correct. Thankfully @Brownielocks's post helps confirm what I was fairly sure was true.

There are some caveats. One of them is that this is summing up royalties associated with stores you have imported into SHD. Some Zazzlers choose not to import every store. Unfortunately those missing stores also have missing royalties. This is actually a security and privacy measure.

One other caveat is that for now this tool is only valid for Zazzlers who operate in the US domain. If your account balance with Zazzle is expressed in US dollars then you should be in that zone. That also goes for international Zazzlers who have chosen this option instead of operating in their own local currencies. For everyone else this will show $0 for now. I believe I will be able to get this working also for Zazzlers who operate in other currencies. Hopefully very soon.

[ColsCreations]

 I've added a free feature to Snuggle Hamster Designs that will show you your qualifying total cleared royalties and show what pro level you're eligible for based on it.

This is huge! I've seen whoknowshowmany posts where people 1) don't know yet that levels are based only on US earnings and 2) then trying to figure out how to easily/quickly calculate just US sales. That you've created and implemented this feature to free accounts is amazing. 👍