General Usage Information

Our system periodically removes older work pattern files. Currently, files remain on the system for about an hour. This means that if you create a pattern and select the Make Changes option, then let your computer sit for over an hour before resending your changes, you will probably lose what you’re working on. Likewise, if you create a pattern, and wait too long before submitting it to our Free or For Sale area, it will probably get lost.

To prevent this pattern loss, there are two solutions.

1. Be sure you create and submit your pattern in less than one hour.
2. Create your pattern, save it to disk, then later use our Pattern Upload to send it with no time restrictions.

Uploading Terms and Conditions

• You must own the copyright to the item being uploaded or be an agent of the copyright owner.
• You retain copyright
• If any pattern is copyrighted by someone else, and you upload it, we will remove it, and reserve the right to terminate your account.
• You can change your mind at any time about patterns you have uploaded. You can change them from for sale to free, free to for sale, or remove them altogether.
• You understand that the more information that you supply about your patterns, the better chances you have of selling them.
• We will have a member pattern maintenance area, where you can make changes to any of your uploaded patterns.
• Before uploading patterns for sale, you will be required to supply us with information for tax purposes (described below).
• Uploads are fully moderated, meaning that your submissions for our Free or For Sale areas will only become available after we manually approve them. This can take some time but is usually less than a day. Once we approve a pattern, it immediately becomes available at our web site.

Sales Terms and Conditions

• To register to become a Stitchboard vendor and sell items through our mall, go to our Vendor Registration page.
• You retain the copyright to your work.
• All prices are currently published and transacted in U.S. Dollars.
• All calculations and payments are currently made via Paypal in U.S. Dollars.
• We make the sale and pass your amount on to you.
• All payments will be made to you automatically, approximately 2-3 hours after each sale is made. (Originally we were going to pay everyone once a month, but we realize how important cash flow is in these tough times. We want to help as much as we can!)
• Currently, all sales are processed through Paypal. If you don't have a Paypal account, we recommend you create one. (They're free). If you don't want to create a Paypal account, as sales are made, you will receive an email from Paypal, and have the option of having them mail you a check. By far the easiest payment method is to have your payments go into a Paypal account.
• We charge a flat 16% fee for patterns sold at our web site. THIS INCLUDES ALL PAYPAL FEES! (You will not pay any Paypal fees to receive your payment from us!) So on a $10 sale, you would receive $8.40 into your Paypal account, with no other fees.
• The only exception to the 16% fee is for sales below two dollars ($2.00). On sales below $2.00, we will charge an 18% fee instead of 16%. So if you sell a pattern for $1.00, you would receive 82 cents. This is because we pay all Paypal fees, both to receive the customer's payment, and to send your payment on to you. The cost to us to send your money is a fixed percentage. To send small transactions (below $2.00) would cause our fees to be greater than our cut of the sale, so we need to adjust for this. Note: This 18% fee applies only if the total of your items sold in a single order is below $2.00. For example, if you sell two $1.00 items in the same order, your fees would be 16% (since the total amount sold is at least $2.00).
• We try to be as fair as possible. When a fee would calculate to be a fraction of a penny, we round up or down to the nearest penny.
• Customers will be able to download their purchased pattern(s), only after we receive their payment. (This is normally instantaneous during the order processing.) Only when we receive Paypal's confirmation of the sale amount being transferred into our account (usually during the order processing), will we allow a download. And, as mentioned above, your portion of the sale will normally be sent to you in 2-3 hours of when we receive payment from the customer.
• You can change your mind at any time about patterns you have uploaded. You can change them from for sale to free, free to for sale, or even remove them altogether.
• You are NOT signing up for exclusive use, so you can feel free to sell your pattern(s) at other web sites or stores too. We would like to see you have every opportunity to sell your patterns, whether or not that's through our store. The purpose here is for you to make money!
• We do not withhold any taxes so it’s up to each person/company to report their income to the appropriate agencies.
• We will issue 1099s at the end of every year, and report payments to the US Internal Revenue Service, for all payments over $600 in a year made to US residents and certain businesses.
• We require either a personal social security number, or a business taxpayer ID number (i.e. FEIN number).
• The easiest way to supply us with this information is to fill in our on-line W-9 form
• We will continue to have a real-time accounting area that you can visit to see how your sales are progressing. It will list your patterns, sales, year-to-date sales, and lifetime sales.
• Due to higher PayPal fees, it's less cost effective to sell items for under $1 apiece. We therefore ask that you price no items for under $1, since the bulk of the profit to you would be used up by the cost of the PayPal fees. (If someone would sell something for much under a dollar, we'd have to set our fees at a level that would prevent us from paying anything to the seller). If you would really like to sell an item for under $1, perhaps it would be best to either make the item permanently free or, if you want to make this a special deal, make it temporarily free for people to download, perhaps as a "loss leader" to bring them into your store and get them to look around at your other items.
• These conditions may change at any time without notice.

Program Specifications

There are differences in capabilities and limitations, depending on whether or not you're a Stitchboard member. And remember, membership is free. You need only register once, and this will make new features available, and raise some limits.