Society6 new tiered plans
The end of Society6 as we know it?
What is Society6?
Society6 is a Print-On-Demand platform allowing artists to upload their work to be applied and printed on various products. This was a great place for artists to get paid for their art on commission. Upload your art, it gets printed on a t-shirt, you earn 10% of the sale. Like myself, this is a good form of passive income for creatives. If you had a large following or got promoted on the site, you could be earning a decent amount.
Until now, Society6 was free for artists to upload and build their online presence - while earning a small commission. You could showcase your work, use it to sell custom designs to clients, we made it our own mini-website inside the Society6 umbrella.
what are the new tiered plans?
Starting November 30, 2023 every account will have to choose between three plans.
The Free Plan: Cost: $0. Its free but limited to only 10 designs. Your commission rate can only be 10% of the net sales.
The Basic Plan: $4.99/month with 100 design limit. You can set your own prices here. Want to price a $3,000 mug with your face on it? Go ahead!
The Pro Plan: $12.99/month with 10,000 design limit. 10,000 designs is a lot of designs. This plan also provides you with a dashboard for trends and analytics. For many of us, it’ll show us the analytics for 0 sales.
What if you don’t choose your plan before November 30, 2023?
Fortunately, Society6 will choose the free plan for you. Unfortunately, they remove all but your ten (10) best selling designs. Once deleted, you can’t get them back. Don’t even ask. This could be a huge blow to your portfolio. Choose the correct plan wisely.
why the change?
According to Society6: As an open platform Society6 has seen a significant increase in the number of designs uploaded to our platform in recent years. Many of these designs are non-selling or low quality and impact the visibility of high quality content from our artist community. We believe that a curated marketplace that highlights and drives sales of high-quality designs created by independent artists will ultimately deliver the best results for our artists, customers, and partners.
In other words, the platform is saturated with terrible designs. Terrible designs create problems with printing and leads to more returns.
The Good: Less designers means less competition. Less designs means less competition. This seems like a good situation for anyone who wants to keep using Society6 in any way. The market is saturated, and perhaps why you haven’t been getting a lot of sales (if you had them before).
The Bad: It will displace many of you and you may lose a lot of designs if you don’t choose at least the Basic Plan. This will also prompt many designers to close their stores completely with Society6, even good ones. You’ll have to find where they are selling their designs on a different site.
What would Gringoface Do?
I understand why Society6 is making this change. I have been on Society6 since September 2016, and was a gateway for my professional creative career. My store became an eclectic collection of styles and trials as I identified who I was as an online creative. So, I thank Society6 (and all Print-On-Demand platforms) for giving me the opportunity to monetize my creativity. Does this mean I will pay $12.99/month to keep my 155 designs alive? I believe so. I am willing to see what the new tiers will do as a competitive advantage. Also, its holiday season and this is the time of the year that sales are 5-10X from normal months. We’ll ride this out for a few months and see what happens.
Recommendations:
You need to evaluate if a Society6 plan is worth it for you. It is now becoming a business expense. Are you making enough sales on Society6 to justify paying for it?
Society6 should be a portion of your passive income streams. Find other print-on-demand platforms that don’t have fees and allow you to keep the rights to your work. Keep your best 10 designs on Society6 and roam around to the others. Redbubble, TeePublic, TeeSpring, Design by Humans, Threadless.. are just a few others to explore.
If you have a large following on social media, open up your own store using a dropshipping method such as Printful or Spocket and link it to your Squarespace website (support our content by clicking our affiliate link).
I hope this helps you understand why Society6 is making this change. Do what works for you. Diversify your creative streams. Don’t let one platform get you down. Keep on Creating.
[If you have any questions about Society6, Print-On-Demand, creating your own website at a low charge, or anything creative - follow me on Instagram at @Gringoface.Designs -> https://instagram.com/gringoface.designs]
