With the commission model changes slated for the beginning of May, Spreadshirt Shop Partners will experience much greater Shop flexibility, a significant decrease in administrative work and new ways to earn on the global market.
We are pleased to announce phase one of the commission model change: the Affiliate Commission.
The most important information at a glance:
- With every sale, the Affiliate Commission pays you 20% of the sum of product type price and print price.
- The new Affiliate Commission will replace the previously-used Shop Product Mark-up.
- Design price will not be affected by this change.
- This change only applies to the Shop Product Mark-up of our Shop partners.
- You have the option to choose between an Affiliate Commission of either 20% or 0%. You can change this option at any time.
The implementation of the new commission model will take place at the beginning of May. You will be notified before your Shop is switched to the new model.
The following info graphic illustrates the changes by means of an example:
Important: The change in commission model will come with a new pricing structure. What used to be a mark-up on Shop articles will become a commission percentage payment based on the combined product and print price. Adjusting our prices will increase your commission earnings.
Together with the Affiliate Commission, we will be introducing a sales performance-based Volume Commission where you can earn up to an extra 40% of the product type price + print price (excluding taxes and discounts).
We will inform you in the next few weeks about the details of the Volume Commission and of upcoming improvements in payout frequency.
What you should consider through the transition
- You do not need to do anything leading up to or during the commission changeover, but you are welcome to adjust your design price, thereby changing the final purchase price for your customers.
- If you haven’t set a design price up to this point and have earned entirely from Shop Product Mark-up, you may experience a slight loss in earnings at first. Should this be the case, we recommend adjusting the design price.
- All final sales prices will end in .99 or .49 in the future, regardless of the settings you make. Customers find this pricing structure more attractive, and you won’t need to make any further adjustments.
These are the most important aspects of the Affiliate Commission. You can get even more detailed background information and a thorough explanation in our interview with Product Owner Robert Schulz.
An Affiliate Commission calculation tool has been developed to give you a hands-on way to see how the new structure will affect your product prices and income. Try the commission calculator now!
We hope this post has given you a good overview of the upcoming changes to the Shop Product Mark-up. Have any questions? Leave a comment below!
you guys are ripping us off, the base price of one of your shirts is $10.99 and once I put a design on it bumps up to $18.99 my design reads as $8 instead of $5.00. Who gave you the rights to my art that you can jack up the price. You kill our chance of even being able to compete with other brands. Secondly, that $20 Base price shirt plus our art and whatever scam you got going on turns that shirt into a $35 shirt. You are not being transparent.
So let me get this straight. Before I use to charge $20 for a basic t-shirt. $12 went to Spreadshirt and $8 when to me in the form of a commission.
Now, to get to $20 price point, that same t-shirt starts at $12.99 + $5.50 for printing + I charge $1.51 for the Design Price.
What I now take come is the Design Price ($1.51) + 20% Affliate Commision which is $3.70 ( 20% of $12.99 + $5.50 which).
So my new commission based on this model is now $5.21….
From $8.00 to $5.21 for the same design and the same basic t-shirt….
Does that sound fair?
Spreadshirt is suffering a serious case of poor communication. Yes, customer prices are increasing quite a bit, but Spreadshirt is bringing prices in line with the marketplace, where they have experience knowing how to price things. The price increases only give Spreadshirt more of a share of the product for low volume sales. If you sell lots of items, Spreadshirt’s commission model gives you possibly the most generous commission of any POD.
Spreadshirt, existing shop owners can see customer prices increasing dramatically. Until you address this directly, you’re leaving people feeling conned, especially because the calculator shows many products increasing in price while also reducing shop owner commission (at low volume).
It would also do you well to fix the illustrations. The one above says that you are keeping prices the same and reducing your share of commissions to increase ours. The reality is that prices are increasing across the board and that Spreadshirt’s share only reduces relative to its current share at high volume (and at higher commissions that the 20% shown in the illustration).
Treat your shop owners like partners. Tell them what’s going on without trying to hide anything. When we express confusion, fix the documentation. If you want us to invest a portion of our lives building big shops, you need to work hard to show that we can trust the foundation.
I only realized tonight the significant changes. What’s more significant is I have worked on my project before making it go live since April 2015. After this forum, looking at my increased prices, and the new model, I’m wondering if I will stay with Spreadshirt. Again, I’ve been working since 2015 on my shirts, learning graphic design, and diligently crafting the end result. However, the price increases are just too high for customers, and I am almost 99% sure I will be leaving. I also have a few dozen friends thinking of the same thing. As well all know, this chain reaction can lead from one to potentially thousands in lost revenue. The opposite of what I believe Spreadshirt is hoping. Is this a bad thing? Yes and no. First the yes. On reflection do I really want customers of my website being redirected through another company at margins that don’t really pay me what I could with dozens of other online shirt sellers? not really! The bad thing….Spreadshirt seems to have the most intuitive set up I’ve experience with an incredible layout for customers to view your products, especially when imbedded in your website. This is good. They also have a great return policy and I’ve ordered one product for testing, and can say the shipping was fast and the shirt looked great. I would actually prefer the latter, the intuitive set up for customers, but all of these changes, and with the prices sky rocketing high (that is not what I want my customers to see), I’m afraid it’s not looking good for my loyalty.
This is WAY over-complicated! Red Bubble use a single percentage mark up price on everything sold. Simple.
Hey josh what other options have you found?
So true Kirk! I’ve already found a few better options surprisingly enough!
This is interesting! It will definitely take some fiddling around with to get the options right and commission per item back to normal for my shops. The price of designs on the market will go up drastically since you will need to increase design price in order to keep profits the same. That being said, you can always upload one design with a higher price for your own shop and one design for the market for other folks to use. Perhaps I could make this work to my best interests but it seems that Spreadshirt is just doing what is advantageous for them. I’ll have to take a closer look at the math once it is finalized and in effect.
Odd how spreadshirt has kept quiet for the last few days while people call them out. And by call them out I mean produce actual facts that contradict their offical “blog” as to why and what they are doing as Joe Lapp has. Something is off!! Interesting indeed…………
Just stop! The “Volume Commission” is just a ploy to keep people from seeing what you are really doing. Not very many shops will hit that special volume commission. Hopefully the people who actually run spreadshirt are seriously looking at what they are doing. You can see just by looking at this blog and the spreadshirt forum, people will be taking their shops elsewhere! There is only one winner here, it’s spreadshirt! Making the shops take FAR less while increasing your profit is flat out terrible. Let’s pray spreadshirt comes to their senses….
Did Spreadshirt take into account the shop owners they would lose as a result of this? You are giving us less and earning more, while raising the prices. I’d rather they just keep the prices the same and cut the commission but doing both is a killer.
How in the world is this great for your partners? Did Spreadshirt not expect us to see this? And it seems my comments are not appearing. I don’t think I said anything rude…. just stating the facts. Lena, I’d appreciate an explanation or confirmation. Thanks!
How in any way is this a benefit to shop owners? You are making more while making it harder for us to make money. Not having the ability to put a price on our shirts is absurd!!! How greedy do you have to be. I’ve never seen such an injustice to be honest. I will be taking my shop elsewhere. So long spreadshirt, enjoy going bankrupt. Anyone with a shop, I highly advise you to begin moving your stuff to another platform. Immediately.
One solution you can do is make a duplicate of your design for the marketplace only and have that one marked at $4 per design. Since the Marketplace isn’t affected.
For your shop, you’d just drop your design fee on those products by 20% and your final price for customers would stay the same. Just an idea. Some people have too many designs to be adjusting though and duplicating.
Thank you for your response, Lena. This makes much more sense now, but I still don’t like it. If I understand this correctly, Spreadshirt is basically taking away a lot of my ability to control the prices of my products.
For example: Right now I sell t-shirts for $20 and make $9 from mark-up, with no design commission. I also sell hoodies with the same designs for $35 and make $4.20 from mark-up, with no design commission.
If I understand this correctly, under the new system, if I continue to have no design commission, then I will earn only $3.10 per t-shirt, and my shirts will cost my customers $15.49. If I want to bring the price of the shirt back up to $20.49, then I can charge $5 in design commission, and I’ll make a total of $8.10—slightly less than I’m making now. This slight loss doesn’t bother me that much.
But the bigger problem is that if I set my design commission at $5, then when someone wants to order a hoodie with that same design, the hoodie will cost them $46.49 ($41.49 + $5), correct? There’s no way my customers will pay that much for a hoodie. Please tell me whether all of my math is correct, because this all has been pretty confusing for me.
So essentially I would need to choose between (1) having no (or very low) design commission and making almost nothing off of my t-shirts, or (2) increasing the price of my hoodies, probably putting an end to those sales. Do I have that right?
I have a t-shirt design where I have agreed to only mark up the price $1.00 for that person’s design that he wanted his fellow military members to pay for the shirt. I made the design fee $1.00 and my markup zero. How will this be affected?
Are you allowed in New Jersey? Art.com and Cafe Press are not. Please advise. It is a sales tax thing.
Thanks!
Ellen
Why would you call this anything affiliate?
I want an actual affiliate program to introduce to interested parties, who’d like to be affiliate advertisers for us.
You named it poorly and you also don’t have an affiliate program for me to use and I think we’d KILL it.
Do you like apples?
How do you like them apples?
Let’s not pretend there are some great benefits for the shop owners here–we’re getting completely screwed.
I charge $20 per t-shirt, and I used to make $9 per shirt. Under your new system, that you claim benefits me so greatly, if I continue to charge $20 per shirt, I’ll get $3.90 per shirt. I’ve been loyal to Spreadshirt since I started my business 4 years ago, but I will not raise the price of my shirts to accommodate your greed. Instead, I’ll find a new platform to sell shirts.
I have not ever gotten any commission have you ever paid any to me?