Many of you may have never had anything to do with Zazzle, but it has started a dangerous practice since September 2019.

As you may or may not know, Zazzle now charges a $2 monthly fee from your existing earning if you stop feeding it new contents.

On September 5, 2019, after receiving the "policy updates", I requested payout of the balance of my earning and termination of my account, because I could not accept their "updated" policy.

With all kinds of excuses, it still has not paid me after 7 months. Some agents said that I had to log in and request the payment myself. It was actually not possible if your balance is below US$50.

Two days ago, I talked with a supervisor on the phone, who promised a solution. While he tried to request the payment on my behalf, it was not impossible to pay, even from his end.

Today he got back to me, even though I have never accepted their policy, he said that Zazzle would only pay me the amount after deductions.

I will now take this matter to the Better Business Bureau and rate the company honestly in appropriate rating websites.

It can happen to you and your family, in case you become ill or for whatever reason, you cannot feed the agencies anymore.

Think about it and please support me. Because it may affect you, if other agencies follow this bad example. Thanks.

...Think about it and please support me. Because it may affect you, if other agencies follow this bad example. Thanks.

What are you looking for in the way of support from others?

I'm not all that worried about stock image agencies implementing this, especially if a contributor was generating sales for them, but if it did happen, I'd take my money and leave the site. I'm not with Zazzle and I'm not aware of anyone else who has done this. I did, for example, leave 123rf when their drop in sales eventually resulted in a cut in my royalty rate (seemed like a perverse incentive system I didn't want to support), so I am willing to put my money where my mouth is.

I would rather see a high fee to let you upload. In this case there wouldn't be so many files online and your content could sell better.

This is the initial email from Zazzle on September 15, 2019. Even though I stopped contributing, I had sales in June 2019.

Hello,
 
You�re receiving this email because we�ve noticed you haven�t created any new Products or had any Referral Sales on Zazzle for at least 15 months. To keep the marketplace fresh and engaging, we urge Designers and Associates to stay actively contributing on the site.

To address this minimum level of activity in the marketplace, we made a change to our User Agreement. As of April 1, 2019, accounts that are �non-contributing� � that is, haven�t either (1) published a public Product, or (2) had a Referral Sale attributed to that account for the previous 15-month period � will be charged a small monthly �Non-Contributing Account Fee.� (You can check your region�s fee by clicking here.)

To be clear, Zazzle will NEVER charge your debit/credit card or PayPal account for these fees. Non-Contributing Account Fees can only be deducted from existing Earnings you may have in your Zazzle account (that is, royalties, Referral Fees, volume bonus and any other compensation owed to Designers and/or Associates). You will be charged until your account becomes contributing, or until your Earnings balance reaches zero. You can never have a negative balance because of Non-Contributing Account Fees.

We�d much rather have you adding Products to the marketplace again or growing your business with Referral Sales rather than incurring a fee, but you can avoid it by becoming a contributor again. How? Upload new Content and publish it to the marketplace as a public Product or have a Referral Sale attributed to your account before the start of next month. Your account will then be deemed contributing again for the next 15 months and your Earnings will not be affected by a Non-Contributing Account Fee. Continuing to contribute Content and Products to the marketplace is the best way to grow your business on Zazzle and avoid any future Non-Contributing Account Fees. If you�re unable to change your account to contributing status before the beginning of next month, we�ll deduct a Non-Contributing Account Fee, if your Earnings balance is greater than zero. This is in accordance with our new User Agreement, which is published here. For more details on these changes, we encourage you to check out this help article on the issue.

We look forward to having you back!!

Thank you,
The Zazzle Team

 
 
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Quote from: k_t_g on March 11, 2020, 22:14

Hummm well I can't imagine "stock sites really doing that. 🤔However there was this German stock site that did charge me a small fee when I first joined. It was only a one time fee for foreigners mostly.  But for a company like Zazzle and their reasoning to me is a bit twisted, but they do mostly your images on their provided products. So maybe it has to do more with maintaining all those functions with the site its self and less on the service of selling your image on your behalf. In other words they do so much more then stock sites do. One service compared to many different services. 🤷

For me it doesn't really affect me that much right now but I really still don't like that policy.

Envato Elements is doing basically the same - they call it the content upload bonus.  When I qualify for it, I get about $300 of monthly bonus, when I don't upload and don't qualify - 75$. So the difference is $225.

If you are ok with it, it's your choice.

As soon as I received the email, I requested the payout and termination on the same day. I have never agreed to be any part of it.

That was 7 months ago.

or upload a "boycott zazzle" bumpersticker or magnet or something enough to keep from incurring the fee.

pretty lame though.

Pete, thank you!

Just a minor thing, I did have sales within the 15 months. Actually, one sale was in June 2019.

After they started to make deductions, I had one more sales, because they would not close my account.

They have neither paid me nor closed my account.

Now I am going to complain to the Redwood Better Business Bureau next week. Don't want to start a complaint on Friday.

I had no idea about this. If you miss the email, they take your money. I'll have a look now. If they take any money from me, I'll terminate my account. Lucky I didn't waste much time with them.

I had no idea about this. If you miss the email, they take your money. I'll have a look now. If they take any money from me, I'll terminate my account. Lucky I didn't waste much time with them.

Just be careful, because you will not be able to cash out from their website if your balance is below $50. Let's know how it goes.

Got a confirmation that my account will be deactivated in the next 2 days. As I only had $4 left, I doubt I'll see that. So much for passive income