topic Re: Zazzle Traffic - 3351.8% lower than their leading Competitor - how might traffic be increased? in General Zazzle Discussion

Zazzle Traffic - 3351.8% lower than their leading Competitor - how might traffic be increased?

CreativeLeahG — Fri, 24 Nov 2023 18:00:23 GMT

Note sure how accurate these results are!

But according the site linked:

Zazzle stats

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Leading Competitor

Etsy

Total Visits

479.5M

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Etsy's site traffic is approximately 3351.8% greater than Zazzle's site traffic.

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As an affiliate, I've been sending thousands of customers to Zazzle each week, but I've recently started deleting my Zazzle links because of the landing page redirect issue as such the traffic to Zazzle will decline - it is inevitable. Is driving away successful affiliates from Zazzle a wise decision?

If I can send thousands of customers to Zazzle weekly I am more than capable of sending them somewhere else. Which is sad but there appears to be no value with the current situation in me sending them here.

If Zazzle can suggest a solution to the dilemma I and other affiliates face, that would be helpful, but it appears they almost want to encourage creators like me to leave the platform.

Re: Zazzle Traffic - 3351.8% lower than their leading Competitor - how might traffic be increased?

PenguinPower — Fri, 24 Nov 2023 18:21:21 GMT

Apples and oranges, if you ask me.. While there may be some perceived overlap, really Etsy and Zazzle do entirely different things. Etsy is the Amazon of handmade and vintage..

Re: Zazzle Traffic - 3351.8% lower than their leading Competitor - how might traffic be increased?

CreativeLeahG — Fri, 24 Nov 2023 19:15:41 GMT

Etsy offers an increasing number of customized goods ( as do Amazon) and a great number of digital offerings. It has changed a LOT in recent times. Competition is at an all-time high.

Re: Zazzle Traffic - 3351.8% lower than their leading Competitor - how might traffic be increased?

Polenth — Fri, 24 Nov 2023 20:24:25 GMT

Redbubble would be a better comparison, as that's another POD site. Compared to other PODs, the thing Zazzle isn't as good on is clothing choices. Which is a pity, as being able to upload vectors is great for getting clean finishes on the printing and should knock the socks off the competition (who mostly make people convert their vectors to png files). It's just most of the options were removed and we were left with a limited range of mainly t-shirts.

Not everything is about the affiliate scheme. I know this is the most important thing to you right now, but I doubt it has anything much to do with Zazzle's overall traffic and sales.

Re: Zazzle Traffic - 3351.8% lower than their leading Competitor - how might traffic be increased?

Jadendreamer13 — Fri, 24 Nov 2023 21:33:07 GMT

Etsy has a large pool of POD offerings, and since the creators there partner with POD printers (like Print on Demand and others), they can offer products not available on Zazzle. Plus the POD creators there are now offering personalization on their products, videos, and cover photo mock-ups. So, Etsy is more of a competitor than folks might think. Plus, they have several browser-based analytics tools (like Everbee), that creators can use to identify trends, niches, best sellers, and SEO info to make creators’ jobs easier. That’s why I inquired about the Zazzle browser tool, Lynn Analytics last week. It’s either a new tool, or one that hasn’t been popular. I received no replies to that question. A tool like that for use with Zazzle would be a game changer for designers.

Re: Zazzle Traffic - 3351.8% lower than their leading Competitor - how might traffic be increased?

Polenth — Fri, 24 Nov 2023 21:53:49 GMT

That's not my point. It's like comparing Amazon to a site that only sells books. Amazon will always have more traffic, because they sell a lot of stuff that isn't books. You can't really judge how a book-only site is doing by comparing it to Amazon. You'd need to compare it to other book-only sites.

Etsy does have POD stuff, but it has a whole bunch of traffic for unique handmade and small batch items from independent crafters. Zazzle won't get that traffic because it's not that sort of business. So like I say, a better comparison is Redbubble. You could also get the stats for Society6, Spring, Teepublic and Threadless and see how they all compare.

Ultimately though, the overall traffic might not matter much to an individual artist. Whether you sell or not is more complicated than how many people visit the site as a whole.

Re: Zazzle Traffic - 3351.8% lower than their leading Competitor - how might traffic be increased?

CreativeLeahG — Fri, 24 Nov 2023 22:06:20 GMT

How much traffic we affiliates bring to Zazzle is a HUGE deal. I drive several thousand customers to Zazzle each week. It's utterly ridiculous to say this 'doesn't affect traffic or sales' when it IS traffic.

Meanwhile Redbubble is not remotely comparable to Zazzle and yes Etsy has a ton of POD stuff.

Re: Zazzle Traffic - 3351.8% lower than their leading Competitor - how might traffic be increased?

PenguinPower — Fri, 24 Nov 2023 22:09:49 GMT

There may be some overlap - but as far as traffic goes, I still don't think you can compare the two... Etsy is a lot more than just a place to buy customized goods - it's a marketplace for a huge variety of handmade items - soaps, knitwear, pet products, carpentry, ceramics, jewelry and on and on.. it's also a known marketplace for vintage items - I myself have a couple of lovely vintage dresses acquired there. It should be no surprise at all that Etsy has more traffic than Z.. they have a much, much broader scope.

Re: Zazzle Traffic - 3351.8% lower than their leading Competitor - how might traffic be increased?

Polenth — Sat, 25 Nov 2023 01:45:08 GMT

I'm not saying that affiliates don't bring in traffic. It's that the landing page hasn't stopped the majority of people on Zazzle from linking to products. Which isn't to say that I like the landing page, but I don't see it as the primary issue.

Pretty much everyone I know in self-employed creative work has seen drops in sales this year, so it's not something specific to Zazzle or even to POD sites. It's happening for people with handmade soap and self-published books. It's much harder to persuade people to click a link when they know they don't have spending money. If you do persuade them, they can't buy it anyway.

As long as Zazzle can make it through this period, they might end up winning by standing still. Their nearest POD competitors are going over to subscription fees and limiting who can be seen in the marketplace. I don't count Etsy and Amazon in that, as they're in a different league with their larger focus, but they're pants to work with and I don't want their policies over here.

Re: Zazzle Traffic - 3351.8% lower than their leading Competitor - how might traffic be increased?

CreativeLeahG — Sat, 25 Nov 2023 02:23:59 GMT

You don't see it as an issue because you weren't getting 5 x 35% referrals a day, I was. That is several hundred £'s a week I am now not getting.

just because you don't see it as a problem doesn't mean it isn't a problem. Every affiliate in the P2 program like me does.

We are bringing the same amount of customers , generating sales but not seeing referrals. That is a problem and I believe redirecting our links amounts to breach of contract. YES it is a problem.

Re: Zazzle Traffic - 3351.8% lower than their leading Competitor - how might traffic be increased?

HeatherM — Sat, 25 Nov 2023 03:18:11 GMT

I think Etsy is a beast of it's own and with sellers all over the world can compete with one another on product and price. Another advantage of Etsy's POD sellers have is they are not selling identical products with a different design on it.

If you take a macro glance at the categories on the Etsy home page, it is easy to see how Etsy can bring in 34.5 times the traffic.

As far as backlinking goes Etsy dominates Pinterest - - - and that is just one platform.

Zazzle is doing fantastic in the self-fulfilling POD marketplace. I learned about Zazzle from some major POD YouTube influencers promoting the Zazzle site. I think that all the buzz about the ease of the POD business model is making POD more competitive then ever.

Re: Zazzle Traffic - 3351.8% lower than their leading Competitor - how might traffic be increased?

Anne — Sat, 25 Nov 2023 10:38:44 GMT

Thanks for sharing this, @CreativeLeahG .
It looks like CafePress, which I think is a direct competitor, is going up while Zazzle goes down:
https://www.similarweb.com/website/cafepress.com/#overview
I was looking at the Holidays home page on Zazzle and found retro imagery targeted at (in my view) children, or at best women (certainly not men!). This puzzles me, as I don't see much of attractive gifts for children on the site.
Also it is very dynamic (restless), compared to the CafePress homepage: https://www.cafepress.com/
It is clear from their homepage what is being sold. (contrary to the Zazzle homepage).
It's all the individual things that make or break a site. Sorry for the distraction. Driving away affiliates is probably the worst.

Re: Zazzle Traffic - 3351.8% lower than their leading Competitor - how might traffic be increased?

CreativeLeahG — Sat, 25 Nov 2023 11:23:49 GMT

Wow! It has had a facelift, actually looks how Zazzle used to look! Thank you for sharing this info. I have an old account with them, I might revamp it.

Re: Zazzle Traffic - 3351.8% lower than their leading Competitor - how might traffic be increased?

HeatherM — Sat, 25 Nov 2023 15:05:08 GMT

Wow! Zazzle has made some huge improvements! I had never looked at CafePress before, nor do I have more than a year experience with Zazzle, but I am blown away with the change. CafePress has a Redbubble kinda vibe.

Re: Zazzle Traffic - 3351.8% lower than their leading Competitor - how might traffic be increased?

CreativeLeahG — Sat, 25 Nov 2023 15:30:32 GMT

Personally I prefer Cafepress page view, much clearer for customers and creators what it's all about.

Re: Zazzle Traffic - 3351.8% lower than their leading Competitor - how might traffic be increased?

LMGildersleeve — Sat, 25 Nov 2023 15:49:49 GMT

😮Cafepress has templates now?!?

Re: Zazzle Traffic - 3351.8% lower than their leading Competitor - how might traffic be increased?

Connie — Sat, 25 Nov 2023 18:11:17 GMT

There's some overlap between Zazzle and Etsy, but the sites really aren't comparable. Etsy sells in a lot more categories than Zazzle does, so they are more like Amazon than Zazzle. Etsy used to be a handmade marketplace- now they mostly sell drop-shipped cheap overseas stuff and AI generated images. They have less unique, customizable designs now, and are flooded with the dime-a-dozen, mostly AI generated images on the usual mugs and tumblers. The only thing they directly compete with Zazzle is the printable downloads for wedding invitations. And even with that, Zazzle is a lot easier, because customers can add all their information directly into the invitation here. Zazzle's also not a publicly traded company like Etsy, so they can focus more on customers and designers, rather than the dry stats of driving traffic to the bottom of the barrel cheap stuff, losing sight of their original mission statement.

I do agree that the new product landing pages are directing traffic away from that product, and it is unfair for promoters.

Re: Zazzle Traffic - 3351.8% lower than their leading Competitor - how might traffic be increased?

Connie — Sat, 25 Nov 2023 18:14:24 GMT

I think was Polenth meant was not that it wasn't a problem for the affiliates that are losing money, but it's not a problem as far as influencing the traffic. Because the customers are still coming to the site, they just aren't buying your products. If you were to delete all your external links, and not drive any traffic to Zazzle, then maybe that would have an influence in that total traffic number.

Re: Zazzle Traffic - 3351.8% lower than their leading Competitor - how might traffic be increased?

HeatherM — Sat, 25 Nov 2023 20:42:17 GMT

I don't see any templates. Just the typical TeePublic, Redbubble kinda stuff.

Re: Zazzle Traffic - 3351.8% lower than their leading Competitor - how might traffic be increased?

HeatherM — Sat, 25 Nov 2023 20:43:22 GMT

Have you looked at Zazzle in an incognito window?