I’m wondering if I’m alone in feeling like my store and products are getting less visibility on the Zazzle marketplace? I recently had several of my editor picks removed from my store and I haven’t had any of my products featured or promoted in quite awhile. It seems as though Zazzle has taken a different approach to marketing their designers and it doesn’t seem to favor the lower level (bronze or basic pro) stores. I’m feeling quite discouraged by this, especially because I have recently have had several of my designs replicated by these higher level stores. Their designs seem to be showing up higher in the search already, even though they are new to the marketplace and mine have been selling for months.
Can anyone relate to this? I’m wondering it’s best to just walk away from the platform at this point.
I agree with you completely, except it would take a great deal of improvement for me to get up to just “discouraged”. If you rely on Zazzle’s marketplace alone for sales, you will be very disappointed. Their search engine is… less than ideal. If you want to do well here, you need to be one of about a half dozen greeting card sellers. Zazzle convinced itself that greeting cards are the way forward a few years ago, and designers whose shops had cards as a focus benefitted from that. Even their shirts with card designs on them rank higher. It’s the way their algorithm works.
It’s always a good idea to have your eggs in multiple baskets. My designs perform much better at other sites than here. If any POD is giving you an emotion other than happiness, then step back for a while and focus your efforts elsewhere.
I started with getting a sale or two every month or two and was happy to get more in December. However, it’s been more than two months now since I got even one sale. I’ve been on Zazzle since July 2020 which I think is a long time for not getting regular sells. DM mentioned that Zazzle focuses their attention on greeting cards which doesn’t help me because I have few to sell. I think creating attractive cards takes a lot of time and then you get little in return. Therefore, I am not willing to put in the effort. And then again, maybe what I have to sell isn’t something many people are interested in.
Just my advice (and I’m no pro), evaluate all of your designs and see if there is a way to add more ability for the customer to personalize the items for gifts. Focus on gifting if you haven’t already. Really focus on getting rid of products that are hidden and updating tags and descriptions. Every little thing helps.
I feel like my sales have slowed but things were really good when the pandemic started and for me personally it’s slowed down.
I have spent so much time on this site already updating and deleting discontinued product, updating tags and descriptions (I don’t have any hidden product). I’m no longer willing to spend more time on that since it brought me little return. Luckily I don’t have to rely on Zazzle to make a living.
Yes, it can be a bit disheartening, but I think a lot of stuff over the last two years has been kinda weird. During 2020, with “coofie” everybody was bored at home and my KDP book sales went through the roof, for me at least, from anywhere in the 2-figures per month up to well into the high 3- and even 4-figures per month. Now normality is more or less back, I’m back down to 2 figure months. I can only imagine Zazzle will have been similar, and we also have the January effect, with everybody “spent out” after Christmas. Apart from bargain hunters, I never expect much in January. Maybe things will pick up a little this month.
If you’ve done your keyword research, last I read it takes about 8 months to rank in Google, so that’s your lead time I guess, to start seeing more traffic from search. (Being on the Zazzle domain might accelerate things a little bit.) In the meantime, you have to hammer social media (hopefully without annoying the heck out of everybody!)
With my new store, I see fairly low competition for the kinds of designs I’ve been doing, but a Google keyword analysis shows zero searches per month. So I might have picked duds. Low competition because nobody’s looking for those designs! We’ll see in 8 months, I guess. In the meantime, I’m still just learning how to use Inkscape, so it’s all kind of experimental at this stage for me.
In any case (IMO), I don’t think I’d be “unhiding” products that have been hidden unless you can make a really good case for it. In one of my other stores I got to about 2000 products (I think). Now it’s down to about 200 and the rest hidden due to lack of interest. They don’t sell or even get views, so leave 'em - find the ones that do sell, and make other designs similar to them. Maybe that’s a little better in terms of return on time invested.
But anyway, I hope things improve for everyone here. Mine’s slow as well, but I’m in the building phase ATM so only time will tell, once I’ve honed my new software skills and dug out some doozy niches!
Wait, what? @Artsiren have you tested this idea that our products eventually come up in a Google search? How do you do it? This is in response to your comment that " last I read it takes about 8 months to rank in Google".
I have tested this and not found my products ranking in Google. Except for one card, that never sells. I have been here since 2005. Therefore I have quite a few products older than eight months. Much older.
I’ve had a number of “editor’s picks” that I received last year removed from my products as well. I thought once you got an “editor’s pick”, it never went away & was thinking maybe it was just my store for some reason. So although I’m sorry to hear that about you, “tjohnshoy”, I’m glad that it’s not just me. Has anyone else had that experience?
There was a thread in the old forum that said editors picks were all erased after a certain time frame ( I think 6 months) and that is the way it was always supposed to have been, but not enforced.
I haven’t tested it with Zazzle products. Just seen the 8 month guideline mentioned quite a lot on affiliate tutorial videos and blogs - and mainly talking about ranking blogposts for their primary keywords. To be fair, I’ve almost never seen Zazzle products on Google search results (although i haven’t used Google for my own searches for years); more usual to see the Redbubble or Amazon merch stuff on there. But when I deliberately search for specifically Zazzle products, I can find them sometimes. Usually, they are Google results pointing to Zazzle search result pages, not single product pages, so you want to be in REALLY low competition niches; otherwise your prods just get bumped down amongst all the other Creators’ offerings.
I’m guessing now that the better way would be to rank your own blog pages on Google, and have those blog pages point to Zazzle products. You can then at least get some extra longtail keywords into your blog to rank on G - and point perhaps to several Zazzle products and hope visitors pick one rather than just getting a Yes/No choice to buy a single product.
Yes, I’ve been here since 2008 myself. I seem to remember back in the day there were LOADS of Zazzle results in G, but then big change when they all disappeared. I guess a lot of the multiple-contributor domains lost out with the Panda/Penguin Updates (I seem to recall same happening with Hubpages). Probably why Zazzle reduced the number of tags allowed and became zero-tolerance on tag-spamming. If it hurts them in Google, it hurts all of us.
It’s a tough old game, these days - I still remember the days of setting up a 5-post blog, getting its main keyword to number one in Google search in under a month and then cash-milking until somebody else came along with a 6-post blog targeting the same keyword. Funny days. Easy days!! Although I can’t say I miss the insane work of setting up 6 to 10 new blogs at a time.
I can’t agree with the 8 month time period to rank with Google. I had a brand new niche store that was less than a few months old and I was (and still am) able to find some of my products from that store in Google shopping pages up near the top when I do an incognito Google search. I also have to tell you that Zazzle does advertise with Google. You can confirm it by checking your tracking codes on some of your 3rd party sales, the long chaotic letter sequence codes are Google ads. While they may not advertise our exact specific products, we get sales from people who come to Zazzle clicking on those paid advertisment searches and they have the ad campaign referral tracking code attached to them.
I have been working away at Zazzle for over 10 years! If you feel discouraged now spare a thought for me!!!
I do all my own artwork too… but that is life… There are a lot of designers on here and yes many of the same ones get the lion share of the opportunities, but they have worked very hard to get to that position and often are much better than me at marketing and pushing. Most importantly they know what sells!
Sadly you have to keep pushing all the time non stop and do some of your own promotion, work out what the customer needs and just keep working at it. Come up with new ideas and hope other s don’t follow too quickly so you get a good seller in the mix. That is the most frustrating thing, particularly when you thought of something good and a top seller get the promo on their version of your idea. But again that is life!
Being an artist it comes with the territory unfortunately. Keep posting on the forums, social media, tell your friends, wear your art etc. Everyday do something. Look at your products update refresh and delete if need be regularly. Keep posting new items and new ideas and new designs as often as you can I do at least try to post at least one item everyday. Keep discovering all the wonderful other promoters out there, help them to promote you, no one has the time to find the items they need unless you assist them. The promoters and affiliates do amazing work getting us third party sales and I can not thank them enough. I have a few I am friends with and that has helped no end they know me now and have me on their radar well did until this new forum so it is a good chance for newer members to get in there amongst us long haulers.
But most of all you have to believe in yourself! I am still here still trying to get seen and I will never give up ever! Love zazzling too much!
Question is have you got what it takes? Will you keep going? I hope so the more the merrier.
I don’t know. I do a lot of greeting cards and I’ve never had an Editor’s pick. The only cards that come up high in searches are ones that are purchased in high quantities like the Christmas card I have with the alligators and christmas tree. So I’m not sure that having a store with a lot of greeting cards gives me any advantage.
