Logged in creators and customers who are members can see your profile, activity, your badges (unless you hide/ them), and any products you’ve shared in Show Me. And honestly, I don’t know maybe if a customer liked your comment, they might click into your profile, see a product you shared in Show Me, and then click that link. That’s an organic view, and possibly even a sale. I always click onto the creator’s name to see what they’ve shared or commented on that’s how I find good conversations and discover their Show Me shares. But when the profile is blocked, I just click away and move to the next person. It’s really hard to view discussion / activity products when the profile is hidden. It removes that whole discovery path. That’s why I’m curious why so many creators choose to hide their profiles. The Community isn’t public, and only logged in creators and customers can see anything here, so it seems safe enough to keep profiles visible.
It IS public though. One does not need a Zazzle account or a forum account to browse topics, read posts, or view profiles. An account is only necessary if one wants to post/reply.
And even it it were private, why would I want other members seeing all those stats and why would they want to look at them? I don’t and they wouldn’t. The only thing I was interested in having on my forum profile was a link back to my Zazzle member profile, and that’s all I ever had an interest in looking at on others. Since the one thing that ought be accessible from one’s profile isn’t, I am one who chose to make their profile private.
Thank you for letting me know the Community is public that’s actually really good information for creators who share their products in Show Me. Everything we share shows up in our activity on our profile, so it becomes another pathway for our products to be viewed, and hopefully it leads to a sale.
Most of us have really good badges, and that overall helps with our online reputation. Customers might enjoy seeing those badges, and they might click through to our stores by way of our activity feed, where my Show Me shares appear along with all the love hearts I’ve given to other creators. In an indirect way, that can help other creators too someone browsing my activity might click through to their products as well.
So for me, having a public profile is a positive thing for product discovery. I still doubt many customers find the Community through Google search, but for the ones who do browse around, being visible gives them more ways to discover our work.
I appreciate you pointing out the public visibility it definitely helps clarify how everything connects.