In the past few days i have been swimming with comments and DMs about the FW changes. Some have been venting and frustrated, some have been positive, and some have been pure lashing out at me for not describing this paid model a year ago (when it didn’t exist).
People say that suddenly they decided to switch to target mostly content creators. People are frustrated for not getting sales after a year of uploading products- and now having to remove products.
I am placing my take on this here.
The change- a paid premium plan for 20$ a month, or 15$ billed annually.
Free option still applies with a limit of products.
Pro option limits 500 products.
Pro option grants users 10$ a month for merch, and 0 fees for digital downloads.
There were never fees for POD items, and still there are none.
1. FW moved to a Freemium model
there is the free service and a premium one.
The Premium is 15$ a month if billed yearly and it gives you back 10$ each month as credit for merch + you do not pay any fees on digital items.
This move was planned for January 2024, I mentioned in the first video I made about them in 2023- that they will move to a paid option , but they have delayed it to work on bettering other features first.
Now that they have done that- They turned on the paid model as an option.
2. FW product limit VS audience
I have seen comments and have received messages saying it looks like they now decided to make the switch to focusing on merch shops for for content creators.
YES and NO.
Fourthwall were always a tool mostly used by Content creators.
They were branded as such, from the people who came out of TeeSpring which was also branded for that. They connect to Youtube shelf, and have memberships- they were always targeting creators. Even upon creating a new shop- the flow is through connecting it to a Youtube channel or another Social Media account.
Most creators I know have 5-20 products, I have had messages from about 10 in the past week asking how this change will affect them- it won’t.
3. FW structure and UI/UX
Fourthwall has a terrible user experience if you have too many items and too many niches or categories. You'd have to go one by one to each product page and edit the "suggested" items, and each collection page and edit for optimization.
Because- they were not designed to be Shopify.
Since I started making videos about them I have had roughly 20 people telling me they want to have a massive shop- with 100-200 products, for all I have recommended to use a different builder like Shopify.
4. They are NOT free?
They are, partially, But also- guys, they do customer support for our shops, and the commission they made from the items, which is margined very nicely - perhaps wasn't enough to support that. I know they didn't want to "hire" AI bots for support, and didn't want to fire anyone from their support staff.
Also- they pay for storage for all of the files we upload to our shops, and if those items are big- those files are heavy.
5. Marketing
FW is not a marketplace. The products all need to be marketed.
I have been receiving an insane amount of DMs and emails from people in the past year saying that they have 500 products but no sales- and none of them does marketing, or does it in an insufficient manner.
There is no logical reason in spending months or a year just on creating products- without any audience, or the attempt to get an audience.
I understand a first burst of creation, but without a marketplace - it is always recommended to do extensive marketing and build a true brand when you’re operating your own independant shop.
The other products, that will be added over time- come from feedback from buyers or potential buyers. For example- with my first shop I had a client DM me on a white tshirt with text he ordered- asking if I could make a black one with the text being white. In another case - a client DMd me asking if I could place a design that was on joggers- on socks as well.
On a personal note:
I understand the frustration.
I have seen this wave of it before with S6, with their paid plans, and even later- kicking off sellers who paid for these plans.
At the end of the day- when we "marry" our business to a certain app or tool- we are bound to their decisions.
I know several people who LOVE this pro switch, as they were paying more than 15$ a month on fees for selling their digital items- which now- they will save so much money + get money back to test out merch.
For other people - this is not a good fit anymore, and when discussing them - they have come to see that this was never the optimal tool for them. They have spent months uploading products- but these products were just sitting there with zero marketing at play.
FW isn't perfect. No tool is.
Perhaps if you could have the full Shopify package for free-
we will have achieved perfection.
Any thoughts you wanna share on this- feel free to do so in the comments:)
Feel free to share if you have been using FW, or not, and how you feel this change affects you.
Despite my overwhelming appearance of "oh, well, they changed, move on"
which I have had with S6, RB, and Etsy over the years,
the one that comes from a stoic- "we can't control everything" mentality,
I still believe that venting is valuable.
I apologize if my need to re-direct or educate sometimes seems to be "dismissive", I often forget to look at the pain and go straight to "why this went wrong" and "how to fix it".
Feel free to discuss this with me in the comments»
And as always- have a beautiful Friday/weekend!
Love, Mey.
Hi, Mey. About a year and a half ago I opened my account on FW, but I was immediately disappointed because, honestly, it took forever to load products. I never knew if it was the platform or the fact that I live in the Central American jungle and the internet here is terrible, but anyway. This year I saw one of your videos talking about FW and I thought, let’s give it a try. But I did what I hadn’t done a year and a half ago: I checked the payment options and, surprise, I don’t have access to that type of payment. Unfortunately, because—hello!—I live in the Central American jungle and that service isn’t available here. That was my experience with FW.
Anyway, I’m grateful I got to know that platform thanks to you because, you know what? Two years ago something similar happened to me with Amazon KDP and I got discouraged because I wanted to publish a book. But thanks to your videos about the book you published, I went back to Amazon KDP to see if anything had changed, and to my surprise, they now make deposits to my country. Time goes by, platforms also change, we have to keep ourselves updated and take advantage of opportunities—that’s how I see it. And your role is to keep us informed about this, a role you’ve embraced yourself, and for that, thank you very much.
I totally agree with your perspective on this, Mey. Thank you for this post. I have removed some designs to make room for others. I am working on becoming a better content creator because I know that drives sales, plus I want to create content. But my struggle is still getting it seen, and my weakness is organic marketing. And I know it takes time and consistency plus I have been fluctuating between anger and optimism in my work (besides health issues), but just recently realized how to bring them together with a Yin and Yang type of approach. So NOT giving up!