I know there has been a lot of discussion recently about designs that are just solid black appearing in the marketplace. It’s pretty clear that these are not allowed because most of them were also full of tag spam.
But now I’m seeing a lot of designs that are just a solid color that isn’t black. The tags are sorta relevant, but it’s not really a design, just a color. Should I report these, or are these allowable designs?
I’m not gonna call anyone out on the forum, but if you want to see what I mean, check out this query: Solid Color | Zazzle (Some of the products in that query have an actual design on a solid background - that’s not what I’m referring to. The ones I’m puzzling over are just one solid color with no other design elements.)
I noticed two of my envelope liners at that link. The reason I created them was because I wanted to make sure they were the exact color to match the rest of the wedding collection they’re attached to. Hopefully it’s ok for us to use solid colors in these circumstances, but I definitely do see what you mean about the issue of solid colors just thrown on items all over the marketplace!
Yes, there are definitely legitimate uses for solid colors, and the context really matters. Besides weddings, I have a few solid color pillows that coordinate with my patterns, and I sure would hope that someone doesn’t go reporting them willy-nilly.
I think if an entire store is just a solid color, listing on every imaginable product — many of which make no sense — and are stuffed with spam, that store is a problem. However there are individual products that lend themselves to solid colors as a legitimate design and may coordinate with other products within a seller’s store. Those make sense. I think it’s a case by case thing, but the egregious offenders seem pretty obvious.
They’re not SUPPOSED to be allowed, but apparently these sellers have been getting away with it for a long time. One of them is even Silver Pro. The funny thing is they put no effort into the “designs,” but then they went to the trouble of making cover photos!
I haven’t been here nearly as long as some of ya’ll, but last I checked you couldn’t publish a product if you didn’t add any actual elements to it. So you couldn’t just use the DT to apply a background color and go. Now, I see solid color only designs in the MP all the time, even whole stores that are nothing but every product Zazzle has available, published as different solid colors. And if I look at them in the DT, they are using a solid color png/jpg to fill the canvas. That means they know what the “rules” are and are intentionally going out of their way to skirt them and that’s what riles me.
There are legit reasons to publish a solid color. A wedding suite or home decor collection including an exact coordinating solid color for a belly-band or throw pillow is sensible; prints + a solid is Design/Decorating 101. I don’t know how an algorithm could know the difference between a legit accessory product vs all the no-effort spam ones clogging up the MP, but hears hoping they figure something out.
I may just start promoting some of these bad boys in my Facebook feed. I found someone who has achieved Silver status in just a few months. Maybe I will get a referral.
I think it’s probably pretty easy for an algorithm to differentiate. Just have an one that focuses on products that make NO sense with a stand alone solid color fill. T shirts would look silly with a block of color and nothing else. Wax Seals require text or images or they’ll look blank and would be useless. I looked up newest wax seals and blanks immediately came up in what appear to be dedicated color only stores. Take a look: Newest wax seals
I have no idea why any customer on the site would in general pay a premium to a designer for a solid color… (excepting matching products) unless they really can’t figure out how to do it themselves. I am assuming that a DIY product from a Zazzle blank would be less as it’s minus the royalty..
Well, judging by the questions I get from my customers, I think the majority of people (or at least a good chunk of them) have no idea that they can do things like change the background color of a design. Yet another reason I wish Zazzle would create some ultra-simple tutorials that we could point people to for assistance.
Actually Wax Seals seem like perfect products to catch at least some of the spammers. It’s a relatively new product line with only 28,500ish listings. The spammers look like they add the color block image to all product lines and there are fewer new listings / day in the wax seal category so there’s a better chance they’ll stand out quickly. Scroll back a bunch of pages and you’ll see lots of blanks from the spammer type stores.
@Cat It used to be a no-brainer for customers to change the background color because the ability was right there on the product’s display page. Zazzle removed this ability ages ago for reasons unknown, and so I deleted all my products that boasted this ability, which took time until, eventually, I tripped across the last of them. But why did they do this? Did it take up too much room on the page? Were customers choosing badly and so returning products? Who knows? Like with everything else, Z never explained.
Maybe they were trying to consolidate everything into the design tool? I think the only product where the background feature is on the product page is envelopes - which actually tripped me up at first because I didn’t see it on the product page and thought there was no way to change the background! So I have a bunch of envelopes designed with a colored layer because I couldn’t figure out any other way to change the background!
I continue to think that Zazzle would be well served by providing some super simple popup guides or tutorials geared toward customers to assist them with these sorts of issues. I think it’s a big challenge when there’s already SOOO much stuff on the screen, but I do think it would be helpful, especially for folks who aren’t big into the mess around until you figure things out approach.
