Mod Tip: Quick Product Create (QPC) Products in Search Results

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Sometimes there will be a valuable gem of general information in a Mod’s response to a specific issue/person and as such it goes unnoticed by the wider audience who might not be interested in the thread title it’s buried in. I thought it might be a good idea to save such info in it’s own post so it can be more easily found.

Here’s one such gem from Scott which originally appeared here on Feb 28, 2024:
general-zazzle-discussion/grrrr-why-have-you-decimated-my-stores 

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Note: If you search this forum for “mod tip” you’ll find a couple of others.

Mod Tip: Why Templates Sometimes Don’t Appear on Product Page Until After Publishing The Product
Mod Tip: Reasons for Cancellations
Mod Tip: Why Your High-Res Image Might Look Blurry/Pixelated
Mod Tip: Royalty on Value Phone Cases
Mod Tip: Quick Product Create (QPC) Products in Search Results

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@ColsCreations  Thank you for posting this, I completely missed it.

Very interesting. To a certain extent I can understand it and I can see the benefits of it. I started here almost 14 years ago, and at the time Quick Create was a thing, a big thing. Maybe not everyone was using it, but many, many people were. My first store and several stores created after that are filled with QC products. Many of them are truly really awful designs, but many of them have sold (hard to believe!) and while I haven’t added to those now hidden stores in many years, things do sell on occasion. The thing is, while products still sell occasionally, it may be more than 15 months between sales on some products. So, here are my questions:

  1. If a QC product sold in the past, but hasn’t sold again within 15 months, will it be hidden too or stay public?

  2. Does this mean that even if a QC product has been viewed within 15 months (but not sold to a customer) it will be hidden?

3. What exactly does it mean to “optimize” a QC product? Does it mean that we need to make a new product and delete the old one and lose all the sales stats?

  1. Can QC products be made public again by modifying the keywords, etc. or do we have to re-publish them as new products?

  2. If we can modify them to make them public, how long will they stay public before they are hidden again simply because they are QC products and haven’t sold? In other words, is this just a onetime hiding of QC products and once modified and made public it goes back to regular optimization or will there be ongoing sweeps of hiding QC products on a regular basis?  

It seems as though QC products are being hidden under the assumption (maybe rightfully so) that they are less desirable simply because they were made with quick create, so this essentially changes the original optimization rule that anything viewed within 15 months stays in the marketplace and stores.  

For those of us that have been here for many years and used the sanctioned QC, it could make a difference, essentially wiping out most of a store. It appears to have already done that to the person who started the thread that Scott responded to. 

I’d also like to bring up again, a request to allow us to move products to a different store without losing the stats and sales. With this new process hiding QC products from the marketplace and stores, there will likely be many stores with very few public products left in them. It would be really nice to move those products to a different store that is currently active and being maintained and delete the old store. This has been requested over and over again for many years, but the ability to do so seems even more important if more and more stores are going to have very few products in them. It seems like a win-win for us to keep viable products and consolidate stores, saving Zazzle server space as well.

Thanks again, Colleen, for pointing this out, it’s really good to know.  

@Scott  if you could provide answers to my questions, I’d really appreciate it. Many thanks in advance. 

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I feel there should have been an announcement re this one?

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@ColsCreation

Thank you for the alert.

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Wow, why didn’t they announce this publicly instead of burying it in the reply to another thread? Thank you so much for flagging this. Most of my early designs will be hidden now. But the ones that had previous sales I’ll repost,

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My guess is that they were planning on/will be making an official announcement, but since there are far more of us than them it often happens that we notice changes and new products before they’re able to officially announce it.

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Nice of Zazzle to bury the lede.  I agree with other comments that this definitely should have been a big announcement.  It’s a pretty major change.

I posted questions to a thread in Technical Issues before seeing Scott’s comment that he wanted that particular thread to focus on a narrower (but related) issue that was brought up, so I’m reposting here:

Heather and Scott, once a product has been locked up in the new QPC jail, how does one bust out? What are the rules for this new leper class of listings?  If you refresh, how long before QPC police lock you up again?  What new hoops do we need to jump through? FYI I refreshed a bunch of listings not long ago that were 4+ years old and that had never sold.  Several sold in the past few days. Two of the refreshed invitation listings sold just this morning.  Moral of the story: they may not all be lepers. Please provide guidance.

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Can someone please share a bit further - what are you doing with a QC item that sold over 15 months ago?

  • It sounds like we have to recreate these and lose all past sales impact, any inbound links, etc..
  • Is that how everyone is reading the change?

It seems to not be in line with the prior Optimization Rules

" Based on our definition of successful public products in our marketplace, a public product will fulfill one or more of the following criteria:
• Has been sold at least once
• Has been published, edited or viewed within the last 15 months
• Is a product type which was added to the Zazzle site within the past 2 years
Q: Does my product need to meet all criteria to remain in the marketplace? No. A product must meet at least 1 of the 3 criteria to remain in the marketplace. As long as it meets at least one, it will not be hidden."

https://help.zazzle.com/hc/en-us/articles/223160488-Marketplace-Optimization

Are you re-creating your QC items that sold over 15 mos ago?
*thank you

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I was recently made aware that another member heard about this change via an email response in November 2023, So it’s not that new.

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Interesting. It seems, then, that an announcement about this major change was never planned and will not happen. It appears, too, that all of our questions will likely not be answered either. Extremely disappointing. 

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I don’t know what I’m doing yet. I was hoping for more information from Zazzle, but since some Creators were told about this several months ago, it appears there won’t be an announcement or any more information. It appears to me based on the limited information we’ve seen, that if a QC product hasn’t sold in the last 15 months, it’s gone from the marketplace and store. It seems it doesn’t matter if it’s been viewed in the last 15 months or if it’s sold in the past. So, based on that assumption, we either re-publish and lose all the sales, views, etc. or just forget about them.

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Oh wow! I guess they have no intention of telling us anything about it? So will we not get any answers about whether it’s an ongoing rolling thing, or a one-time sweep? I don’t have a lot of QC products, but it would be nice to know what to do with them!

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@Scott  Please can you let us know how to optimize our Quick Create products to make them visible again in the marketplace?  

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@Scott  Some response would be nice.

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@Scott  we really really need a confirmation or clarification of what is happening.  Some people are saying their products are getting deleted on the backend, not just being hidden from the marketplace.  Is that actually happening, or a fluke?  That is what is really freaking me out - are you going to be actually DELETING them from our accounts?  And if so, when, because we need time to ‘save’ some of our designs.

I spent several months in October/November on e-mail with Zazzle support trying to ask why my old products were never put back on the marketplace once I ‘made visible’ and even optimized titles, tags, etc.  They never gave me a solution or explanation. I still have 10,000+ items not showing publicly.

Then on top of that, I recently had an item sell via a pinterest referral, that product STILL is not showing on the marketplace search (only on my store front).

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**All comments/thoughts are my experiences/observations - nothing official**

You have an interesting interpretation of Scott’s comment, as it feels like you interpreted that if an item has not sold in 15 mos but then sells again -> it will return to the marketplace.

  • I don’t think that’s how it’s working (even if it is supposed to work that way). It feels like there was a 15month cut and that’s final. Meaning that if you had not sold in the last 15mos whenever the “cut date” took place, your product is out and needs to be recreated.

Adding to the confusion is his comment on “if we want to optimize…” because if there was a strict “cut date,” then optimizing also has no impact on returning to Marketplace search.

  • Optimizing will help the products show as alternative choices on product pages. Our products are only out of Marketplace SEARCH. Every time I recreate a QC product, when I view it, I see my old one as an alternative (before I delete the old).
    ---- but that being said, if the “cut” was strict at some 15month date, then even if it sells, it doesn’t pop back in

Also, it seems we’re told this is only for QC products, but I’ve experienced it on non-QC items like calendars.

I’m slowly recreating across accounts & stores. If it was a 1 sale product that took place years ago I delete the old. If it’s an item with xxx sales that I think are significant AND MAYBE IT HAS inbound PINS or BLOG LINKS, I will leave it so it can show as an alternative, at least until the newly created begins making sales and/or I have time to re-link the pins/update blog posts etc. Bottom line - goal will be to have no QC items in my account (but that will take time)

*Edit to add: some of my QC products are in search even when not sold in last 15 mos, but I assume that just means the server hasn’t caught them yet

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Yeah, it’s pretty ridiculous if that is the case, because why would they ‘warn’ us that a product needs to be optimized.  Like sure let me take time to optimize it, but if it doesn’t sell in the next 2 weeks I’m screwed?

Oh and yes, I have seen some pop up in the ‘recommended’ items, so strange - I was actually incredibly confused yesterday about that, and then your comment just made that make sense.  If it happens to sell because of that, why wouldn’t it be deserving to get back in search, because SOMEONE clearly wanted it then haha.  Part of me feels like I’d rather just delete all of my old items so I have a manageable backend, but then I guess I could be losing a sale on a recommended item?

I just want clarity either way.  I hate unknowns hanging over my head.  Just tell me what the rules and parameters are going to be, and I will deal with it.  What concerns me the most is that someone had mentioned their products were fully disappearing from their backend.  That’s what I REALLY need to know.

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I was brought over to Zazzle when CP had its commission fun time, way back when. I signed a contract with Zazzle that I would make designs only for them, and in return they would take the designs I sent them and use quick create to set up my shops.

This means that Zazzle is hiding my products made with quick create, when I wasn’t even the one who made them that way. Great. Thanks, Zazzle.

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