Society6 Sold My Deleted Art for 5 Months - Why I Left Society6
If you’re an artist thinking about selling on Society6, or you’re considering removing your artwork from the platform, OR you’re someone wanting to buy cool art for your home and think you’re supporting indie artists – I want to share my experience. I deleted my artwork from Society6 and spent months trying to get them to stop selling it. Society6 exploits artists and everyone needs to stop supporting this awful scammy company.
Why I Left Society6
I was a loyal user of Society6 for 13 years, since 2013. I loved being able to make my art readily available for people to adorn their homes and wardrobes. I loved seeing my work in their Artist Quarterly magazines and making connections with other artists. But long gone are those days.
For years now, Society6 has been a sinking ship. When they attempted to charge artists an additional subscription fee in order to sell on their platform, there was obviously a mass exodus. Still I stayed because my account was immune from the fees. When they started deleting artists except for an elite few, I was among their ✨chosen ones✨. So still I stayed. When they slashed artist royalties to a measly <5%, even still I stayed. I was too jaded to abandon ship. Getting a couple hundred dollars of passive income a month was worth the abuse, I guess. But when I started noticing those $500 payouts turning into $2 payouts, I knew it was finally time to pack up and leave.
To put that 5% in perspective, I could sell 15 products in December and only get $30. For every $116 duvet cover Society6 sold with my art, I got $8.34. For every $48 shower curtain, I’d get a pocket lint payout of $2.42. That was no longer passive income – that was charity work. I could no longer stomach exploiting my art like this.
So on May 9th, during an extra low season where I knew they wouldn’t be making as many sales off my Halloween and Krampus themed art, I finally took the plunge and deleted everything.
Or so I thought.
My Artist Studio showing no designs after deletion.
Society6 Continued Selling My Art After I Deleted It
Targeted ads with my designs over a month after deletion.
Over a month later, on June 18th, I got a targeted ad with my own artwork, which should have been deleted. Despite the backend of my account now showing zero active designs, my public artist profile was still live with all of my art, my work was still appearing in Google Shopping results, still being promoted through Pinterest, and still fully able to be purchased.
I immediately contacted Society6 Support, requesting my designs be removed and a complete accounting for the months since deletion. I figured this would be a quick support ticket. I was very, very wrong.
Thus began the most insanely incompetent back and forth I have ever had with a support team. I’m not entirely sure any real persons actually works at Society6 anymore based on the way my case has been handled.
New Artist Portal locked my designs so I could not delete or manage them.
Repeatedly, they would claim they were “looking into it,” it was “escalated to the Artist Team,” they would “update me as soon as they knew more.” A week would pass and I would get no update. So I would follow up, and get the same generic responses, the same requests for the same information I had already sent. Over and over.
Meanwhile, they continued selling my artwork. For 5 MONTHS! All through May, June, July, August, and September – MY ART I removed and attempted to reclaim, Society6 continued to profit from without my permission.
During this time, they launched their new Artist Portal. I was finally able to see my designs in the backend of my account again as if they had never been deleted. So I thought maybe I’ll just be able to remove them myself again. Instead, every design was marked locked, meaning it was still available for sale but I was blocked from deleting or managing them myself.
All the while, my Earnings dashboard continued to show designs being sold almost weekly against my will for 5 months.
Society6 Stopped Paying Me For Designs Sold
To make matters worse, the Artist Portal showed payout reports marked Completed, even though I never received those payments. At this point, tracking what Society6 actually paid me became almost impossible.
Before deleting my artwork, I had never gone a month without at least receiving a small royalty payment. Sometimes it was only a couple of dollars, but the payments were consistent. After I removed my artwork in May, I also lost access to my regular Earnings history. The only sales I could still see were Wholesale orders, which showed purchases continuing after I’d removed my artwork.
Months later, with the launch of the new Artist Portal, I finally had access to my earnings history again. But that’s when things got even stranger. The new portal shows payouts for August and September as Completed. I never received either payment. Instead, on September 14, I received a completely different PayPal payment labeled: “Jun+Jul 2026 artist commission”. The amount doesn’t match the completed payouts shown in the portal, and the payment memo references different months entirely.
Even more confusing, May has disappeared altogether. Despite Wholesale orders occurring in May, and despite May being the only month in years that I apparently received no payout whatsoever, there is now no May earnings record in the new Artist Portal. I genuinely cannot reconcile Society6’s own records with the payments that actually reached my PayPal account.
Society6 still selling My designs months after deletion.
Artists Have the Right to Control Their Artwork
At this point, the continued sale of my artwork is causing harm that extends far beyond unpaid commissions. I am a professional illustrator who licenses artwork commercially. I removed my artwork because I no longer wanted Society6 selling it or making money from it. By continuing to sell and distribute artwork that I intentionally withdrew from the platform, Society6 has deprived me of exclusive control over those works for nearly five months. During that time, I have been unable to represent those designs as exclusively available for licensing or otherwise exercise full control over their commercial use while Society6 continued profiting from them.
If another company wants to license one of my designs exclusively, I need to be able to honestly say: No one else is selling this. I couldn’t do that. Society6 robbed me of 5 months of exclusive licensing.
Nearly 5 Months Later…
As of writing this on September 28th, 2026:
My artwork is still being sold.
Society6 has continued accepting and fulfilling customer orders with my artwork.
My payout records don’t match the payments I’ve actually received.
Support continues telling me the matter is being investigated.
My formal demand to their legal team has gone unanswered.
I’ve been forced to leave comments and reviews on social media, BBB complaints, contact support and legal multiple times, and write this blog post just to get some form of acknowledgment. Society6 still has done nothing to resolve the issue since first reporting it June 18th, 2026. Society6 genuinely does not care about the artists they exploit.
If You’re A Society6 Artist
If you deleted your work during one of the many artist purges, I strongly recommend checking if it’s actually gone. Don’t assume deleting a design from your artist portal means it’s been removed from sale. Check your public profile, search your work, review your payout history.
If I had known Society6 would have held my artwork hostage and abused my intellectual property for 5 months, I would have jumped ship long ago when all the other artists did. I severely regret waiting this long and I strongly warn any new artist considering selling their work on Society6 to avoid at all costs.
If you’ve experienced something similar with Society6, I’d genuinely like to hear from you.
Update (September 29, 2026): After nearly five months and repeated support requests, Society6 has finally removed the artwork from public sale. The questions surrounding the months-long delay, continued sales during that period, and the unresolved payout discrepancies remain outstanding
