MicrostockGroup
Other ways of making money => Print on Demand Forum => Topic started by: fieldsphotos on June 07, 2013, 16:44
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And not for the better. They are removing the volume bonus program for sellers and moving it to affiliates only. Also, they are now encouraging folks to lower their royalty rates to the new lower limit of 5%.
http://forum.zazzle.com/news/important_news (http://forum.zazzle.com/news/important_news)
The news not mentioned in this announcement but was announced in the Town Hall forum "meeting" was that any royalties set at 15% or greater will now be subject to their 5% transaction fee. The transaction fee comes out of the royalty you made. So if your royalty rate is set at 15% and you sell a shirt for $20, your royalty would have been $3.00. They will then take the 5% transaction fee out of that and you will get $2.85 instead. (assuming my math is correct).
Town Hall discussion: http://forum.zazzle.com/townhall/town_hall_iv (http://forum.zazzle.com/townhall/town_hall_iv)
The volume bonus thing won't affect me too much, since my port is still small there, but it was a nice incentive for growing my port there that is now gone. Some more established sellers were making 30% of their income from the volume bonus amounts, so it will be a kick in the teeth for them.
The new lower limit on royalties just doesn't bode well for the future IMHO. I fully expect we will see the new royalty "cutoff" for promoting etc lower to 10% in the near future (down from the 15% it is now).
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I am going to wait until I get my payout and delete my store. Made 45 dollar in 13 months. Not worth my time. I am doing better on FAA, which suits my images better. Thanks for the update.
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A while ago I figured out zazzle is not worth my time spent. I see no reason, however, to delete my store (i.e. devalue my time spent there). My stuff still averages a whooping $5 per month ;D
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so its time to raise them 5% ;D
anyway was there a fee before at 20%? if so I had no idea, they need to start emailing us, not posting on the forum ::)
(https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/8294845/zazzle.JPG)
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As if Zazzle could be a bigger waste of time than it already is. :-(
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As if Zazzle could be a bigger waste of time than it already is. :-(
you can say they aren't worth your time (not surprised!) but they are certainly worth for other, too bad we don't know exactly how much money Zazzle is doing, I would say a ton more than most middle tier
actually I have one for you (don't tell anybody) but I do more $$$ there than in all agencies beside SS ;)
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As if Zazzle could be a bigger waste of time than it already is. :-(
you can say they aren't worth your time (not surprised!) but they are certainly worth for other, too bad we don't know exactly how much money Zazzle is doing, I would say a ton more than most middle tier
actually I have one for you (don't tell anybody) but I do more $$$ there than in all agencies beside SS ;)
I am the same, they are my second best agency and worth my time. (i am not a big player in any of this, though). They did e-mail this to sellers, but you have to have emails turned on in your profile to get them.
Based on the comments in their Proseller forums, some folks will be losing $1500 to $2000 a month from the VB change, which implies they are doing as well there as some of the bigger players at the micros. Mostly designers seem to do well with lots of illustrations. You can also do very well selling the various niche markets, ie wedding invitations and stuff. Design all matching themes invitations, envelopes, thank you cards, stamps, etc and buyers often buy the whole kit.
EDIT: wait, what am I saying? Zazzle is a waste of time, don't bother. ;)
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Hi Sarah!
was there a fee before this last change? (see my picture above)
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Hi Sarah!
was there a fee before this last change? (see my picture above)
Yes, the fee has traditionally been set at twice zazzles default royalty rate. Up until these new changes, the fee kicked in at 20% which was twice the default 10%. I believe you can see that info on one of the royalty screens in your account, but I am not sure where. I think it used to kick in at 25% when I first started there.
Edit: found it in the FAQ under the question about recommended royalty rates.
http://www.zazzle.com/sell/designers/nameyourroyalty (http://www.zazzle.com/sell/designers/nameyourroyalty)
Now the default rate is 5%, but zazzle is giving us a "break" by setting the new fee royalty cut off at 15% instead of 10% (which would be twice the new default)
That's part of the problem with zazzle- keeping up with all the changes. You leauve it for a month or two and 15 new products are out or these type of things have gone down. And it gets hard to catch back up since so much of the details are buried in the forums. I only caught this change because of the email they sent out.
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There must be an oversupply of designers/photographers which gives the agencies leverage, as usual presented as a positive change.
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Feildsphotos thanks for posting this. I don't have the e-mail option turned on so I wouldn't have known what was going on. I don't understand why they don't automatically send e-mails out that are as important as major changes. It upsets me because I make extra money off that volume bonus. I guess another site on its way into the greed and feed world.
And not for the better. They are removing the volume bonus program for sellers and moving it to affiliates only. Also, they are now encouraging folks to lower their royalty rates to the new lower limit of 5%.
[url]http://forum.zazzle.com/news/important_news[/url] ([url]http://forum.zazzle.com/news/important_news[/url])
The news not mentioned in this announcement but was announced in the Town Hall forum "meeting" was that any royalties set at 15% or greater will now be subject to their 5% transaction fee. The transaction fee comes out of the royalty you made. So if your royalty rate is set at 15% and you sell a shirt for $20, your royalty would have been $3.00. They will then take the 5% transaction fee out of that and you will get $2.85 instead. (assuming my math is correct).
Town Hall discussion: [url]http://forum.zazzle.com/townhall/town_hall_iv[/url] ([url]http://forum.zazzle.com/townhall/town_hall_iv[/url])
The volume bonus thing won't affect me too much, since my port is still small there, but it was a nice incentive for growing my port there that is now gone. Some more established sellers were making 30% of their income from the volume bonus amounts, so it will be a kick in the teeth for them.
The new lower limit on royalties just doesn't bode well for the future IMHO. I fully expect we will see the new royalty "cutoff" for promoting etc lower to 10% in the near future (down from the 15% it is now).
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Hmmmm.....what's the deal???? Did they get lessons from iStock or what??
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Hmmmm.....what's the deal???? Did they get lessons from iStock or what??
LOL. Sad, but true. Many submitters are comparing this move to what Cafe Press did. I was never there, but apparently they forced all royalties from their marketplace to 10%. After that designers fled to Zazzle in droves (which helped Zazzle grow tremendously). So many folks feel pretty betrayed.
Now I suppose folks will start looking for the next POD site to migrate to.
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It is certainly a worrisome trend.
For those items which I set at 15%, I will change my rate to 14.99%.
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I have not receive any announcement from their side, thanks for posting.
If there was a change in volume bonus, I wished it was putting all the currencies together. It would make sense since there aren't really separate sites for each of them. I would understand if they had different offices with separate account management. Oh well, it doesn't have any importance anymore. :(
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I have not receive any announcement from their side, thanks for posting.
If there was a change in volume bonus, I wished it was putting all the currencies together. It would make sense since there aren't really separate sites for each of them. I would understand if they had different offices with separate account management. Oh well, it doesn't have any importance anymore. :(
I didn't get one either. It was like a bombshell. The volume bonus is gone as of July. The 5% default royalty is kicking in on June 17. It just sounds fishy to me. I've tried so many different referral links and not with much success. It really doesn't do much good when most of the sites strip the codes. I'm not going to hold my breath where this is concerned because I got a feeling it's going to blow up in their face. Hopefully I'm wrong.
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It is certainly a worrisome trend.
For those items which I set at 15%, I will change my rate to 14.99%.
No I will not!
I'll change from 39% to 44%... Will be enough....
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It is certainly a worrisome trend.
For those items which I set at 15%, I will change my rate to 14.99%.
No I will not!
I'll change from 39% to 44%... Will be enough....
Good for you! I am still new to Zazzle and can use their promotion for a while. ;)
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Is there a way to globally change my royalty on business cards? I want them all to be 14.9% but too lazy to go into them one by one.
edit: oops, never mind, found it.
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Is there a way to globally change my royalty on business cards? I want them all to be 14.9% but too lazy to go into them one by one.
edit: oops, never mind, found it.
I think we only have the options to a) apply the change to all previous products or b) all subsequent products.
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Is there a way to globally change my royalty on business cards? I want them all to be 14.9% but too lazy to go into them one by one.
edit: oops, never mind, found it.
I think you can select them and then edit royalty only.
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As if Zazzle could be a bigger waste of time than it already is.
There are people who do better at Zazzle than they do at SS. I'm not one of them, but some people do extremely well there.
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I do better at Zazzle than at any microstock site, even after over a year without creating new material.
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Is there a way to globally change my royalty on business cards? I want them all to be 14.9% but too lazy to go into them one by one.
edit: oops, never mind, found it.
I think you can select them and then edit royalty only.
Great to know! Thanks.
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I have been with Zazzle since 2005 in fact many of us were recruited from Cafepress by Zazzle and many of us ended up making a good living there. We also referred hundreds of people to Zazzle. Many of us now are banned from the forums at Zazzle as of last May we saw some disturbing changes coming about. When we posted about these we were banned some of us even threatened to have our stores closed and our earnings pending ceased.
From what we have all observed first the referral system was changed. Those of us who were making referrals were now unable to get them almost 90 percent of the times we tried no matter what we have done. Zazzle refused as it has to date that there were any changes, but blames it on our browsers , time outs, cookies but nothing wrong even though we know how to refer our efforts no longer work, In fact people that do not refer are now sometimes getting referrals which we have figured to be a glitch on the changes they made this system.
The affiliates came in around this same time frame and pretty much told us who they will and will not promote. Since that time the game changes every few months. And yes now the affiliates get it all and all and that is ALL of our incentives have been taken away, or we are punished if we set our royalties above 15 percent and now urged to 5 percent which is just a matter of time that will be set in stone for everyone.
In the town meeting we were also told that it is now at Zazzle's discretion whether they promote our self referrals or even us at the MP sales.
At this same time last May 2012 the groupings were changed at the MP and many of us lost our best selling rankings and were replaced with stores with little inventory we have never heard of. Some say these are employee's that is speculation but employee's are allowed to have a store. Zazzle also has their own affiliate marketing team which we also feel is a conflict of interest. They have run ads for a Affiliate marketing specialist last year, and have a person which ironically has the same name as the affiliate who came into the forums claiming to make well into the high six figures a year with Zazzle. They claim the two are not the same person but the person employed at Zazzle is their affiliate specialist.
Just a few months ago we were told that the royalty range should be at 10 to 25 percent then changed to 10-15 to be included in sales now again changed. This has levied a ton of work on us sellers changing our royalties which is not easy and only allowed one time per month, just to have it again now twice changed in one year. Almost like a smokescreen to keep us from seeing what is really going on.
Now we are blindsided with little notice that our VB is going to the affiliates and yes some of us will lose thousands, but that is not the worst part.The VB would not matter anymore as the MP , the rankings, the tag gaming going on all makes it impossible for our best selling items to get the due we worked so hard for, and replaces with vendors, create your own, and now who knows stores for the purpose of Affiliates benefit.
Something is fishy in San Jose California and since we have been over night ruined and banned so we have no voice just like Cafepress did and now the forums are a ghost town we were fooled once but not again. We will continue to try and find out what happened as we have been told they will NEVER tell us how they do their affiliate program yet they are telling someone and that is not the people that made them what they are today.
The sad thing is that many still are in shock and denial and even though we tried to warn these people over a year ago, they still think Zazzle has their best interest at hand. Time to wake up and everyone raise your royalties back up so affiliates get nothing like you will be getting if you do not. If that does not work then you lose nothing and then close all your stores. Take pride in your work and self its never going back to the way it was.
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I always had my royalties at 30% but lowered it to 15% when I found out it would make a diff for promotion. After reading that, I will set it at 50%. I dont sell anything on Zazzle anyway. Since a few months its dead. I only had 2 sales a month anyway. Once I hit payout I am closing my store.
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I always had my royalties at 30% but lowered it to 15% when I found out it would make a diff for promotion. After reading that, I will set it at 50%. I dont sell anything on Zazzle anyway. Since a few months its dead. I only had 2 sales a month anyway. Once I hit payout I am closing my store.
Cafepress proved you can never make it up and that is the line we are fed with each knife wound,
I have my stuff at 35 percent have all along accept high end stuff like Canvases or Messenger Bags. I did not make Elite by selling at 5 10 or 15 percent. Or from Affiliates , sales or bulk which does not happen on POD's.
At least at CP they do not cut into when a product is referred.
If everyone would take a stand which at this point unless you still believe anything Zazzle says we lose anyway. I read also some people are writing the CEO and there is a address posted at the forums for the Beaver brothers. If it was not deleted. I will not post anything from there here as people have lost their accounts and money for doing that, But I sure hope this time CP taught us that enough is enough and I am so sorry for so many of my disabled friends who now are in big trouble for believing these people.
Sad days for many
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You can only change your royalty once a month before the 20th. I assume you are trying to go 14.9 to avoid the 5 percent penalty.
To the person responding
I have shops at other POD's that are a lot less expensive than Zazzle that do not sell nearly as well as I have, (same designs) than I have with Zazzle. Just because another is cheaper does not mean you will sell better at that place. My same designs sell better at the higher rate. So that is probably why the original OP asked.
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Is there a way to globally change my royalty on business cards? I want them all to be 14.9% but too lazy to go into them one by one.
edit: oops, never mind, found it.
sorry but I have to laugh a little. You want to have a royalty rate lower than 15%? Aren't you always saying how bad istock is and you get better than that there.
Do you really think a 15% of the final price of a printed product featuring your image, with its production costs and all that, is the same as 20% of a license of an unmodified download of the image you created?
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Tony, thanks for the detailed history of what's going on at Zazzle. Sounds all to familiar to those of us in microstock.
I appreciate this thread very much, because my next project was slated to be creating a store and stocking it with products in Zazzle. I have been procrastinating because it is such a huge undertaking. Now I don't have to bother.
Sad to see POD following down the path of cr@pping on creatives.
I have been with Zazzle since 2005 in fact many of us were recruited from Cafepress by Zazzle and many of us ended up making a good living there. We also referred hundreds of people to Zazzle. Many of us now are banned from the forums at Zazzle as of last May we saw some disturbing changes coming about. When we posted about these we were banned some of us even threatened to have our stores closed and our earnings pending ceased.
From what we have all observed first the referral system was changed. Those of us who were making referrals were now unable to get them almost 90 percent of the times we tried no matter what we have done. Zazzle refused as it has to date that there were any changes, but blames it on our browsers , time outs, cookies but nothing wrong even though we know how to refer our efforts no longer work, In fact people that do not refer are now sometimes getting referrals which we have figured to be a glitch on the changes they made this system.
The affiliates came in around this same time frame and pretty much told us who they will and will not promote. Since that time the game changes every few months. And yes now the affiliates get it all and all and that is ALL of our incentives have been taken away, or we are punished if we set our royalties above 15 percent and now urged to 5 percent which is just a matter of time that will be set in stone for everyone.
In the town meeting we were also told that it is now at Zazzle's discretion whether they promote our self referrals or even us at the MP sales.
At this same time last May 2012 the groupings were changed at the MP and many of us lost our best selling rankings and were replaced with stores with little inventory we have never heard of. Some say these are employee's that is speculation but employee's are allowed to have a store. Zazzle also has their own affiliate marketing team which we also feel is a conflict of interest. They have run ads for a Affiliate marketing specialist last year, and have a person which ironically has the same name as the affiliate who came into the forums claiming to make well into the high six figures a year with Zazzle. They claim the two are not the same person but the person employed at Zazzle is their affiliate specialist.
Just a few months ago we were told that the royalty range should be at 10 to 25 percent then changed to 10-15 to be included in sales now again changed. This has levied a ton of work on us sellers changing our royalties which is not easy and only allowed one time per month, just to have it again now twice changed in one year. Almost like a smokescreen to keep us from seeing what is really going on.
Now we are blindsided with little notice that our VB is going to the affiliates and yes some of us will lose thousands, but that is not the worst part.The VB would not matter anymore as the MP , the rankings, the tag gaming going on all makes it impossible for our best selling items to get the due we worked so hard for, and replaces with vendors, create your own, and now who knows stores for the purpose of Affiliates benefit.
Something is fishy in San Jose California and since we have been over night ruined and banned so we have no voice just like Cafepress did and now the forums are a ghost town we were fooled once but not again. We will continue to try and find out what happened as we have been told they will NEVER tell us how they do their affiliate program yet they are telling someone and that is not the people that made them what they are today.
The sad thing is that many still are in shock and denial and even though we tried to warn these people over a year ago, they still think Zazzle has their best interest at hand. Time to wake up and everyone raise your royalties back up so affiliates get nothing like you will be getting if you do not. If that does not work then you lose nothing and then close all your stores. Take pride in your work and self its never going back to the way it was.
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its never nice to get a cut but I believe that Z is still ahead being "fair" comparing to stock agencies, first we can put our products at the price we wish, you can set your royalties at 99%
secondly, a t shirt selling at 20$:
- 4$ (20%) (contributor share)
- 4$ (5%) = 0.2$ (zazzle fee)
- 3.8$ (contributor final share)
which means they are actually cutting 1%
in microstock it would mean
- 20$ x 15% = 3$ (real 5% cut)
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its never nice to get a cut but I believe that Z is still ahead being "fair" comparing to stock agencies, first we can put our products at the price we wish, you can set your royalties at 99%
secondly, a t shirt selling at 20$:
- 4$ (20%) (contributor share)
- 4$ (5%) = 0.2$ (zazzle fee)
- 3.8$ (contributor final share)
which means they are actually cutting 1%
in microstock it would mean
- 20$ x 15% = 3$ (real 5% cut)
Fair enough, but in microstock, you don't have to do any designing. Just upload pictures. It is only natural you should get paid more for taking the time to design products and set up an online store. I would expect to get considerably more than $3-4 for all that extra work.
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I would expect to get considerably more than $3-4 for all that extra work.
indeed, a few months I don't upload there but I usually take around 6 minutes to create a product, pretty much put the picture in the right place and metadata because they don't import it automatically ::)
I usually get over 6$, I guess I never had them below 30%, anyway unique design and pictures allow you to increase royalties % and still have buyers interested
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I would expect to get considerably more than $3-4 for all that extra work.
indeed, a few months I don't upload there but I usually take around 6 minutes to create a product, pretty much put the picture in the right place and metadata because they don't import it automatically ::)
I usually get over 6$, I guess I never had them below 30%, anyway unique design and pictures allow you to increase royalties % and still have buyers interested
Very helpful info, Luis. Thanks :)
I'm still gonna keep them on the back burner though, until I see how this shakes out.
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its never nice to get a cut but I believe that Z is still ahead being "fair" comparing to stock agencies, first we can put our products at the price we wish, you can set your royalties at 99%
secondly, a t shirt selling at 20$:
- 4$ (20%) (contributor share)
- 4$ (5%) = 0.2$ (zazzle fee)
- 3.8$ (contributor final share)
which means they are actually cutting 1%
in microstock it would mean
- 20$ x 15% = 3$ (real 5% cut)
You can mark your products 150 percent what good is it going to do? Zazzle has made it clear that they will not promote anyone over 15 percent, and also reserve the right to include or not include you in their sales campaigns regardless of what you mark your products.
Cafepress has proven that over 97 percent of all sales come from the MP and since 2009 not one big seller prior their decision to only show products at the MP at 10 percent has recouped their loses.
Unless you have a very popular Niche and have marketing skills you lose big time as you also are not going to sell 4 times or more products to make what you were before these changes.
There is nothing fair about Zazzle anymore. Many however still are like the little boy whistling in the dark believing anything they say. Many of us saw this coming over a year ago and that is when all the forum bans begun no one wanted to believe us then and even with the writing on the wall will not see it now.
I don't compare between sites anymore as I have my stuff on all of them. Zazzle is good in promoting and yes expensive but go figure no other site made me thousands a month before or after joining Zazzle. They are good just not for the artist anymore that has pride not to give away their hard work..
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Tony, thanks for the detailed history of what's going on at Zazzle. Sounds all to familiar to those of us in microstock.
I appreciate this thread very much, because my next project was slated to be creating a store and stocking it with products in Zazzle. I have been procrastinating because it is such a huge undertaking. Now I don't have to bother.
Sad to see POD following down the path of cr@pping on creatives.
I have been with Zazzle since 2005 in fact many of us were recruited from Cafepress by Zazzle and many of us ended up making a good living there. We also referred hundreds of people to Zazzle. Many of us now are banned from the forums at Zazzle as of last May we saw some disturbing changes coming about. When we posted about these we were banned some of us even threatened to have our stores closed and our earnings pending ceased.
From what we have all observed first the referral system was changed. Those of us who were making referrals were now unable to get them almost 90 percent of the times we tried no matter what we have done. Zazzle refused as it has to date that there were any changes, but blames it on our browsers , time outs, cookies but nothing wrong even though we know how to refer our efforts no longer work, In fact people that do not refer are now sometimes getting referrals which we have figured to be a glitch on the changes they made this system.
The affiliates came in around this same time frame and pretty much told us who they will and will not promote. Since that time the game changes every few months. And yes now the affiliates get it all and all and that is ALL of our incentives have been taken away, or we are punished if we set our royalties above 15 percent and now urged to 5 percent which is just a matter of time that will be set in stone for everyone.
In the town meeting we were also told that it is now at Zazzle's discretion whether they promote our self referrals or even us at the MP sales.
At this same time last May 2012 the groupings were changed at the MP and many of us lost our best selling rankings and were replaced with stores with little inventory we have never heard of. Some say these are employee's that is speculation but employee's are allowed to have a store. Zazzle also has their own affiliate marketing team which we also feel is a conflict of interest. They have run ads for a Affiliate marketing specialist last year, and have a person which ironically has the same name as the affiliate who came into the forums claiming to make well into the high six figures a year with Zazzle. They claim the two are not the same person but the person employed at Zazzle is their affiliate specialist.
Just a few months ago we were told that the royalty range should be at 10 to 25 percent then changed to 10-15 to be included in sales now again changed. This has levied a ton of work on us sellers changing our royalties which is not easy and only allowed one time per month, just to have it again now twice changed in one year. Almost like a smokescreen to keep us from seeing what is really going on.
Now we are blindsided with little notice that our VB is going to the affiliates and yes some of us will lose thousands, but that is not the worst part.The VB would not matter anymore as the MP , the rankings, the tag gaming going on all makes it impossible for our best selling items to get the due we worked so hard for, and replaces with vendors, create your own, and now who knows stores for the purpose of Affiliates benefit.
Something is fishy in San Jose California and since we have been over night ruined and banned so we have no voice just like Cafepress did and now the forums are a ghost town we were fooled once but not again. We will continue to try and find out what happened as we have been told they will NEVER tell us how they do their affiliate program yet they are telling someone and that is not the people that made them what they are today.
The sad thing is that many still are in shock and denial and even though we tried to warn these people over a year ago, they still think Zazzle has their best interest at hand. Time to wake up and everyone raise your royalties back up so affiliates get nothing like you will be getting if you do not. If that does not work then you lose nothing and then close all your stores. Take pride in your work and self its never going back to the way it was.
You are very welcome great forum got lost in the other rooms this morning..LOL Amazing artists out there and helpful kind people...
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its never nice to get a cut but I believe that Z is still ahead being "fair" comparing to stock agencies, first we can put our products at the price we wish, you can set your royalties at 99%
secondly, a t shirt selling at 20$:
- 4$ (20%) (contributor share)
- 4$ (5%) = 0.2$ (zazzle fee)
- 3.8$ (contributor final share)
which means they are actually cutting 1%
in microstock it would mean
- 20$ x 15% = 3$ (real 5% cut)
You can mark your products 150 percent what good is it going to do? Zazzle has made it clear that they will not promote anyone over 15 percent, and also reserve the right to include or not include you in their sales campaigns regardless of what you mark your products.
Cafepress has proven that over 97 percent of all sales come from the MP and since 2009 not one big seller prior their decision to only show products at the MP at 10 percent has recouped their loses.
Unless you have a very popular Niche and have marketing skills you lose big time as you also are not going to sell 4 times or more products to make what you were before these changes.
There is nothing fair about Zazzle anymore. Many however still are like the little boy whistling in the dark believing anything they say. Many of us saw this coming over a year ago and that is when all the forum bans begun no one wanted to believe us then and even with the writing on the wall will not see it now.
Tony like I have said I don't really mind if they promote or not my work if I have higher than 15% (which I have) because I am selling every month and very consistent so I don't think that promotions do that much anyway, its my case yours can be different
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Thanks Tony Ray . I was also considering zazzle.
Did you ever find a better alternative and better experience else where?
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I am going to wait until I get my payout and delete my store. Made 45 dollar in 13 months. Not worth my time. I am doing better on FAA, which suits my images better. Thanks for the update.
What does FAA stand for?
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its never nice to get a cut but I believe that Z is still ahead being "fair" comparing to stock agencies, first we can put our products at the price we wish, you can set your royalties at 99%
secondly, a t shirt selling at 20$:
- 4$ (20%) (contributor share)
- 4$ (5%) = 0.2$ (zazzle fee)
- 3.8$ (contributor final share)
which means they are actually cutting 1%
in microstock it would mean
- 20$ x 15% = 3$ (real 5% cut)
You can mark your products 150 percent what good is it going to do? Zazzle has made it clear that they will not promote anyone over 15 percent, and also reserve the right to include or not include you in their sales campaigns regardless of what you mark your products.
Cafepress has proven that over 97 percent of all sales come from the MP and since 2009 not one big seller prior their decision to only show products at the MP at 10 percent has recouped their loses.
Unless you have a very popular Niche and have marketing skills you lose big time as you also are not going to sell 4 times or more products to make what you were before these changes.
There is nothing fair about Zazzle anymore. Many however still are like the little boy whistling in the dark believing anything they say. Many of us saw this coming over a year ago and that is when all the forum bans begun no one wanted to believe us then and even with the writing on the wall will not see it now.
Tony like I have said I don't really mind if they promote or not my work if I have higher than 15% (which I have) because I am selling every month and very consistent so I don't think that promotions do that much anyway, its my case yours can be different
I understand.. losing thousands a month over the last year with the very well planned system they finally admitted to and speaking for many of the Elites we do care but know we are powerless over what they do. It does not affect everyone and I still get sales but they too will be declining starting July 1st when this all goes into affect. Thankfully there is another POD I was invited to join that I have made money from the 1st month and growing fast that promotes us like crazy and has a wholesale program we are also included in at a lower royalty but worth it as I just sold 200 mouse pads to a wholesaler through them so its promising. Seems when one door closes another opens. I am on disability and do need this as extra income but thankfully not my only income like many who just got blindsided.
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please share with us or just PM me ;D
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I am going to wait until I get my payout and delete my store. Made 45 dollar in 13 months. Not worth my time. I am doing better on FAA, which suits my images better. Thanks for the update.
What does FAA stand for?
Fine Art America
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Thanks Tony Ray . I was also considering zazzle.
Did you ever find a better alternative and better experience else where?
You are welcome, yes I did but it was through a invite it is called 3Drose. It is not your typical POD, you upload all your art in one size format and they put it on their products and sell at Amazon, Sears, and 38 other networks so far. No posters and their system is kinda limited for designing different items properly but I have faith they will be expanding and its nice to see over 5,000 of my designs when I go to Amazon and all over the search engines. And volume is the key with them a different concept but I will take the money!!
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Thank you Ron. FAA looks interesting!
Thank you Tony I will check out that site
Awesome. Some researching to do!
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the site looks terrible, don't even know where to start, the search doesn't work, it looks like 1800 :o
just lost the +1 hahahah sure it was the webmaster ;D
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the site looks terrible, don't even know where to start, the search doesn't work, it looks like 1800 :o
Man Im laughing so hard here right now... I have tears running down my face... funniest thing I have read in while. ;D ;D
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the site looks terrible, don't even know where to start, the search doesn't work, it looks like 1800 :o
Man Im laughing so hard here right now... I have tears running down my face... funniest thing I have read in while. ;D ;D
man ain't that the worst website you ever seen?
honestly I wish I got the usual pop out window spam with a guy saying: "Hi there! My name is Richard and I am going to tell you a way to do 500$ in a day" LOL
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the site looks terrible, don't even know where to start, the search doesn't work, it looks like 1800 :o
I'm coming in late here - are you talking about FAA?
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the site looks terrible, don't even know where to start, the search doesn't work, it looks like 1800 :o
I'm coming in late here - are you talking about FAA?
You are welcome, yes I did but it was through a invite it is called 3Drose. It is not your typical POD, you upload all your art in one size format and they put it on their products and sell at Amazon, Sears, and 38 other networks so far. No posters and their system is kinda limited for designing different items properly but I have faith they will be expanding and its nice to see over 5,000 of my designs when I go to Amazon and all over the search engines. And volume is the key with them a different concept but I will take the money!!
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Ok I just looked at 3Drose.com. OW OW OW that hurts! I wouldn't say 1800, more like 1993, which is worse :-)
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Ok I just looked at 3Drose.com. OW OW OW that hurts! I wouldn't say 1800, more like 1993, which is worse :-)
OK you made me look. Yikes. They need help.
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Is there a way to globally change my royalty on business cards? I want them all to be 14.9% but too lazy to go into them one by one.
edit: oops, never mind, found it.
sorry but I have to laugh a little. You want to have a royalty rate lower than 15%? Aren't you always saying how bad istock is and you get better than that there.
14.99% of x amount of dollars that I actually sell on zazzle is better than the 20% of nothing that I was getting on istock. So yes, a lower royalty rate from a site that I actually sell something at is better than it was for me at istock. And in case you havent noticed, I have been slowly closing my accounts just about everywhere because they are all basically greedy ba$tards. So go ahead and laugh. ::)
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There is a bar against all information that leaves man in everlasting ignorance and that bar is "Contempt prior to investigation".
They are not a POD Market Place they sell on other networks I don't think they care what the site looks like nor does it matter at all.
Type in 3Drose on Amazon or just in the search engines, go to image etc.. and I don;t see Zazzle or any other POD with this much exposure, To each his own just trying to help out. I am sold but then again I see the resut in cash every month, I also said they were growing .... to funny,
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we aren't blind mate, yeah I see they have 187,839 Results @ amazon.com (http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=bl_sr_hi?_encoding=UTF8&field-brandtextbin=3dRose&node=228013 (http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=bl_sr_hi?_encoding=UTF8&field-brandtextbin=3dRose&node=228013))
don't minus me anymore or I will be very sad ok? :(
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Minus you? Sorry not sure what you mean however was replying to the laughing at and comments about the company. Here is a good friend of mine that has over 72,000 results of her designs.
Again was just responding to someone wanting to know if there was a place to make money that works. We are use to seeing POD's its a strange page for sure but it works for what I need it.. we all have just learned to let them do what they do and collect our pay.. maybe should of warned ya but never thought of it ... :D
http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss_1?url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keywords=3drose+Dooni+Designs&rh=i%3Aaps%2Ck%3A3drose+Dooni+Designs (http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss_1?url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keywords=3drose+Dooni+Designs&rh=i%3Aaps%2Ck%3A3drose+Dooni+Designs)
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I always had my royalties at 30% but lowered it to 15% when I found out it would make a diff for promotion. After reading that, I will set it at 50%. I dont sell anything on Zazzle anyway. Since a few months its dead. I only had 2 sales a month anyway. Once I hit payout I am closing my store.
I agree with you. I lowered mine to the 10-15% range last month to see if my VB would make up the difference but its no contest. Now with the VB gone, I'm pushing everything back up. The commissions I've had this month are worse than the subs I use to get. I'd rather get no sales than pennies which is why I got out of microstock.
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Now come to think about it, 14.9% probably won't make any difference to get my products into promotions. They are likely to promote whatever at 5% level. I have adjusted my percentage to higher levels.
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Now come to think about it, 14.9% probably won't make any difference to get my products into promotions. They are likely to promote whatever at 5% level. I have adjusted my percentage to higher levels.
Exactly and they pretty much elluded to that already. I opened a store under a different addy and did it all at 10 percent 5 months ago as I saw this coming when the affiliate Surprise came in and said who she would promote and that was only the default royalties. Guess what I have sold 3 things..LOL and not one referred and not one from a sale they had going on. So even if you knuckle down to these pretty much threats of exposure they are going to pick who they want, and I believe the ones picked live in San Jose California , vendors, create your own, and a few High up Elites. But the MP will start at 5 percent in rankings and I refuse to go there EVER....
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Regardless of royalties - the site is so buggy and slow, how do you guys even use it? I played around with it a bit, and it either freezes on me after I spend 15 minutes creating a series of products, or crashes, or some products or categories just disappear into thin air... it takes at least a few days to update my "store", so I can never be sure what I've done already... tons of time wasted! should have concentrated on FAA - at least the uploads there are straightforward.
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Well if one site has a buggy upload system its FAA. In the year that I am submitting there, it hasnt worked once without failing. Unless you upload one image at a time, and that does produce errors as well at times. No need to report it though, they ignore it as they do with a lot of problems.
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Well if one site has a buggy upload system its FAA. In the year that I am submitting there, it hasnt worked once without failing. Unless you upload one image at a time, and that does produce errors as well at times. No need to report it though, they ignore it as they do with a lot of problems.
I had issues uploading sometimes but overall it works well I guess, usually I upload 5 pictures and then submit 1 and only when it says done I click on the second, etc
you got a point when you say they don't listen or explain much ::)
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Well if one site has a buggy upload system its FAA. In the year that I am submitting there, it hasnt worked once without failing. Unless you upload one image at a time, and that does produce errors as well at times. No need to report it though, they ignore it as they do with a lot of problems.
That is interesting as I have been there many years and have no problem other than using the Qucik Create feature which sucks and I like designing each product individually. I have over 200,000 products on my stores and half of that uploaded there in designs and although its a learning curve I can pretty much kick butt there by using pre made templates for everything,
There is a entire section of tutorials, and if you got to Youtube hundreds of videos for creating, designing you stores, and more.
Edit... talking about Zazzle sorry see we got into FAA but Zazzle for me is far superior than any other POD and it takes up to72 hours to appear in your store some have to be approved so if they seem to dissapear go to your in progress file they are probably there.
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I'm on FAA (never sold anything) and have a few things on Zazzle (a sale now and then). I have to say, after hearing about these latest changes, I'm really glad I didn't spend a lot of time on Zazzle, only to have the rug pulled out from under me.
These 2 sites have something in common; things never get any better. When they were new, they were hot; but nothing significant has changed in years, no major updates or improvements; the only thing that changes is that things steadily get worse for contributors.
Basically they're cash cows, not getting any new investment or development. They're begging for new competition, but it's hard to go up against a well established name that buyers know, like Zazzle.
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I'm on FAA (never sold anything) and have a few things on Zazzle (a sale now and then). I have to say, after hearing about these latest changes, I'm really glad I didn't spend a lot of time on Zazzle, only to have the rug pulled out from under me.
These 2 sites have something in common; things never get any better. When they were new, they were hot; but nothing significant has changed in years, no major updates or improvements; the only thing that changes is that things steadily get worse for contributors.
Basically they're cash cows, not getting any new investment or development. They're begging for new competition, but it's hard to go up against a well established name that buyers know, like Zazzle.
sorry but were you EVER happy with an agency? maybe the problem resides on you, time to work on that perhaps, it is never late!
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Regardless of royalties - the site is so buggy and slow, how do you guys even use it? I played around with it a bit, and it either freezes on me after I spend 15 minutes creating a series of products, or crashes, or some products or categories just disappear into thin air... it takes at least a few days to update my "store", so I can never be sure what I've done already... tons of time wasted! should have concentrated on FAA - at least the uploads there are straightforward.
Yes, Zazzle can be very frustrating. When I joined, they were in the midst of several major site bugs where everything was taking well over 24 hours to post to your account and even adding things to store categories took over 24 hours (and each time you clicked on it, you reset that counter - ugh!). I thought I was going crazy clicking on links and then not having it work, but reading the forums confirmed it wasn't just me. It seems to be running a little better now - although I have been having quick create problems yesterday.
I did set up my templates for quick create, but then a bunch of them broke when they updated some of the products, so I haven't taken the time to re-do them. And if you have your own templates, I never figured out a good way to go back and add my old designs to the new products via a quick create - it seems like you need to have huge amounts of organization skills outside of Zazzle to keep track of it all. I wish there were easier ways to see which design I have where, which one needs to be added to the new iPhone 5 cases for example, etc.
My biggest complaint about Zazzle is the lack of metadata import function. At least FAA can read your keywords, which saves a ton of time. Hmmm... maybe someone needs to create a "Deep Meta" for Zazzle. Then again, with the negative site changes, maybe not.
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Regardless of royalties - the site is so buggy and slow, how do you guys even use it? I played around with it a bit, and it either freezes on me after I spend 15 minutes creating a series of products, or crashes, or some products or categories just disappear into thin air... it takes at least a few days to update my "store", so I can never be sure what I've done already... tons of time wasted! should have concentrated on FAA - at least the uploads there are straightforward.
Yes, Zazzle can be very frustrating. When I joined, they were in the midst of several major site bugs where everything was taking well over 24 hours to post to your account and even adding things to store categories took over 24 hours (and each time you clicked on it, you reset that counter - ugh!). I thought I was going crazy clicking on links and then not having it work, but reading the forums confirmed it wasn't just me. It seems to be running a little better now - although I have been having quick create problems yesterday.
I did set up my templates for quick create, but then a bunch of them broke when they updated some of the products, so I haven't taken the time to re-do them. And if you have your own templates, I never figured out a good way to go back and add my old designs to the new products via a quick create - it seems like you need to have huge amounts of organization skills outside of Zazzle to keep track of it all. I wish there were easier ways to see which design I have where, which one needs to be added to the new iPhone 5 cases for example, etc.
My biggest complaint about Zazzle is the lack of metadata import function. At least FAA can read your keywords, which saves a ton of time. Hmmm... maybe someone needs to create a "Deep Meta" for Zazzle. Then again, with the negative site changes, maybe not.
I have to agree that they change things so often there are bugs all the time or some sort. Latest F U flash is they are stopping our ability to design our stores and will be making them all the same. Many people have spent momey having their stores customized, and now will be taken down.
I seldom us QC what I do is have categories...for instance "Abstract" so when I want to say make phone cases all I have to do is just go to a already made design add the new one and tweak a tag word of so hit publish. So if you have your stuff in catagories and sub categories it should not be difficult making new products. I seldom make anything from scratch or with the QC just have my new images ready and add them to similar images and do a little editing.
As far as the speed of the site again I have no issues its usually working just fine for me.
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I spotted the e-mail today about the store customizations. I agree, there are some folks who paid to have their Zazzle stores prettied up and now they are SOL. (As well as the small sub market of folks who were designing store fronts for other sellers). It isn't going to affect me much, as I already use a category sorting system, and had virtually no customizations on my store. It always seemed my store was pretty pointless, I don't think anyone browsed it. I would guess most of my sales traffic was from the marketplace or affiliates.
I do like that they will unify the storefront look - I think it will give buyers a better experience - especially on mobile devices. For every well designed and beautiful storefront there were 10 that were almost unreadable with crazy colored text on the wrong color background. My own storefront was definitely not something I am proud of, and I am a bit relieved that I won't have to worry about it anymore.
I hate that we don't know WHEN this will happen. Only "soon".
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Hmmm, interesting developments. Changed my royalty to 15% and had 4 sales since. However, before the 20th of June I changed it to 50% but the last 2 sales of the 4 sales, were on 21 and 23 june, at 15% still.
Wrote support about it, but maybe the 15% does work in getting more sales.
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Hmmm, interesting developments. Changed my royalty to 15% and had 4 sales since. However, before the 20th of June I changed it to 50% but the last 2 sales of the 4 sales, were on 21 and 23 june, at 15% still.
Wrote support about it, but maybe the 15% does work in getting more sales.
It will be interesting to see how your sales compare with the higher rate going forward. I have heard some people get more sales at the 15%, but not enough to cover the higher royalties they had been getting at their previous rate.
I just hope Zazzle gives us better royalty management tools like they have mentioned on the forums. I would like to set my royalty rate by product more easily so that for the really expensive items on the site I can set a lower rate than the cheap stickers and stuff. I figure people are probably more price sensitive when buying a $180 laptop bag or a $40 iPhone case than they are with $1.00 postcards, etc. I can change royalites by product now, but only 100 items at a time, and it is still clunky and time consuming. My ideal would be a system more like FAA where you can set a default rate for the different products on a single screen.
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Many of us now are banned from the forums at Zazzle as of last May we saw some disturbing changes coming about. When we posted about these we were banned some of us even threatened to have our stores closed and our earnings pending ceased.
I had trouble getting on the forum awhile back. I contacted customer support about it and was informed I was banned for spamming and making negative statements. All I ask was rather anyone was seeing an increase or decrease in their sales at the 10% level. Now after hearing what you just said, I doubt I was banned for spamming. I was never even on the forum that often. Maybe 10 posts total. They banned my IP address but after I had problems with my internet and the company reset my IP address, I was able to get back on....I'm just careful what I say these days.
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As far as creating products on Zazzle, I have only used quick create a couple of times and I never liked it. The products always look terrible after they do it and I always have to go back and redo them. I do like TonyRay..I use already uploaded templates and customize to create another one. It's much faster and easier than doing each one separately. Just do a few tweaks on the Title, Description and Keywords and your done.