Hi everyone! Zazzle deducts a small "non-contributing account fee" for every month when we don't have sales. The fee amount changes every month; sometimes it's $2 and other times it's like 19 cents or some other small value. I don't know how they calculate the fee, so I don't know why it changes.
We have WAY more months without sales than months with sales. I looked at the history, and no one has ordered anything from our Zazzle "store" since March (stickers). And that's with me "advertising" a week ago on the email list, on the Facebook group, and on Mastodon that this is the LAST CHANCE to buy stuff before I shut down the store in August. I'll make a separate "news item" post on the www.freedos.org website. Before that, the last time someone bought something was August 2025 (tshirt). Then you have to go back to 2024 to find someone who bought something. I don't "monetize" FreeDOS so the Zazzle store is just there for people to buy stuff with the FreeDOS logo on it. I have the "profit" set to the lowest possible value; I can't make it zero. I have never transferred any "earnings" from Zazzle to my personal account. Any earnings have been sitting in the Zazzle account, slowly getting drained every month from the "non-contributing account fee." For example, the "non-contributing account fee" for February was 36 cents. The "profit" from the stickers someone ordered (March) was 35 cents. After a few months of no more sales, the next "non-contributing account fee" in May was 9 cents. Right now, the Zazzle account has about $1.30 in it. With the constant "non-contributing account fees," eventually the account funds will fall to zero anyway, probably within a few months. Since no one is ordering anything, I prefer to shut down the store before the account has a negative balance and becomes a hassle. I'll shut it down in mid or late August (probably late Aug, so it's after the next virtual get-together on Aug 16). So if anyone would like to buy stickers, tshirts, or whatever with the FreeDOS logo on it, this is your LAST CHANCE to order from Zazzle. Zazzle makes products on demand; there isn't any inventory sitting around somewhere. > On Thu, Jul 9, 2026 at 5:02 PM Eric Auer <[email protected]> wrote: > > Hi Jim, > > While I probably do not have the right payment > methods, the merch looks cute, so we could just > advertise it more? :-) Is it made on demand or do > we have piles of those things sitting somewhere? > How high is that "inactive fee"? > On Mon, Jun 29, 2026 at 1:25 PM Jim Hall via Freedos-user > <[email protected]> wrote: > > > We have a FreeDOS "store" on Zazzle that I set up years ago so people > > could order tshirts, stickers, mugs, and other items with the FreeDOS > > logo. > > > > https://www.zazzle.com/store/freedos > > > > I didn't set up the store to "monetize" FreeDOS, so everything is set > > with the lowest possible profit margin. (I can't set it to zero like I > > can with books on Lulu.com.) > > > > However, because the store doesn't get many sales (someone bought > > stickers a few months ago, and someone else bought a tshirt in 2025 .. > > and that's it until you go back to 2024) Zazzle has been deducting an > > "inactive fee" every month... > > > So I think it's time to close the store. If you want to buy anything > > from Zazzle, this is a good time to do it. I will close the store in > > mid- to late-August (depends when I remember to do it)... > _______________________________________________ Freedos-devel mailing list [email protected] https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-devel
