I am writing because I have a question: is there still room on Zazzle for newcomers? After a little over 2 months of experience on Zazzle and about 1900 products created, we have noticed that our products are very rarely visited. We are aware that we are not yet using social media and that this puts us at a disadvantage, but it seems to us that everything is saturated. Experienced Zazzlers who have achieved a certain sales volume apparently have the advantage on all keywords, and it appears that everything is blocked or inaccessible for newcomers. For example, we have created 152 products for Mother’s Day (https://www.zazzle.com/collections/mothers_day-119067503293206354), but when we search for ‘Mother’s Day card,’ none of our products appear. I would like to know if there is a turnover on Zazzle’s marketplace to give new products a chance to be seen and thus be able to test their CTR/sales, or if our only alternative is to search for non-competitive niches until we hope to make enough sales for our products to climb in the ranking.
Despite everything, we have made a few sales, which leads us to believe that our products are not that bad, but without proper exposure, it is difficult to judge whether our products are up to par or not and thus whether we have a future on Zazzle.
Aside from social media, would you have any advice for newcomers trying to carve out a small space on Zazzle?
There’s still room on POD’s for new designers, but it’s extremely crowded when it comes to what you might call traditional motifs. Consider your personal interests. Maybe you like working in wood, or you make origami, or you’ve a thing for archeology, or… well, whatever. Other people are likely interested in the same pastimes. Design for yourself and thus for them. Some people here enjoy doing travel postcards, but not general ones. They use photos of where they live and where they’ve traveled. There are customers who collect postcards. I’ve done some for my own locale, and they’ve sold to both people in my area and those who once lived here. I love cooking, but only specific types of food, and I started selling products for them several years ago.
Find areas on Zazzle that have low representation.
Also, remember that your tags can make you or break you. Look at your design and imagine what a customer might type into the search field and thus find your product. Don’t use the product type in your tags. If, for instance, a customer is seeking a poster for their kitchen, Zazzle finds the posters without any help from you, but adding tags relating to a kitchen and activities in a kitchen and precisely what’s in your design will get you a lot closer to being found.
Instead of looking straight ahead, start looking to the left and the right.
Whoa… 152 products for Mother’s Day?!? That seems like a heavy investment in time and energy for one category - especially one where people usually just buy one card at a time netting you only a few pennies. I guess my advice would be to spread it out a bit. Don’t jump in with things that have big markets and focus on that, rather, it’s better to throw a lot of (um…) “stuff” at the wall and see what sticks.
When you make a sale, jump on it! Meaning, if something sells, make more things like it - more products using the same artwork, make versions with the same artwork and different colors, make more products focused on the same theme, more designs of that particular product, etc. A good place to start is to try to expand on the products that have already sold - as you do that, you’ll likely figure out why that product sold and your others didn’t - maybe you happened upon a niche that’s underrepresented in the marketplace… maybe the color, or the style, or something - but once you get a few clues, you won’t just be fumbling in the dark.
As you correctly point out, the market is very saturated, so you have to find a place where you can get a toe hold and build from there. If you keep trying to break into areas where there are zillions of products in the marketplace (like Mother’s Day cards) you’ll probably just be bashing your head against a wall. Maybe try to be more specific - like Mother’s Day cards for pet parents of Pomeranian dogs, or something where you have a prayer of showing up in the search even if there aren’t a lot of folks searching for it. You’ll likely have more success by finding a few areas that aren’t as saturated - then once you get established, you can work toward the more saturated markets. That’s what’s worked for me!
Products that have been on Zazzle for a long time are indeed saturated. People have been designing for them for years. However, newer products have only been accumulating designs for months rather than years. In this forum, go to Creator News which is the launch space for new products. You’ll see things that were recently introduced such as illuminated signs, pennants, hot sauce favors and foil posters. They are simply too new to have been saturated and your odds of being visible when people look at them are far better.
Z is so saturated, I think to even have a prayer of getting visibility, you have to do everything nearly perfectly: tagging, titles, now cover photos - and even then it’s not a guarantee. Weakness in any of these areas = not seen. Just my (realistic) opinion.
That’s great! Still - I’m working on a theory (LOL) that platinum and diamond folks owe a HUGE debt to simply being early in the MP (tho’ of course they have to have good designs, or they wouldn’t have sold). Just saying I think early entry is more of a factor than people give it credit for…
I think you are correct. I was an early Kindle writer and made a lot of money before it became saturated. Even though I do little there now, my early entry assured that some of my old titles still show up high in searches.
Zazzle is a tough nut to crack today; however, I think it is possible, but only for those willing to pay a very high price in time, experimentation and dissapointment. Having said that: in Zazzle’s favor, it does offer a great presentation for my products, bar none. It also has a good interface and the company is always trying to impove and look alive, rather than sinking into yesterday. Whether I will prevail here, remains to be seen.
If they’re not properly executed, cover photos can hinder folks’ sales. I’ve seen many poorly executed cover photos. In these cases, the Zazzle generated product mock-ups may be a better choice. Do cover mock-ups go through a Zazzle approval process?
The covers can’t possibly go into review. Too many are being produced and would have already overwhelmed the very real humans trying to look at all of them. The poor folks would go blind.
You have to do your own marketing. Your products won’t be seen unless you have some products selected as an Editor’s Choice or you are a Featured Creator. It doesn’t matter how well you create them or how well you title and tag them. If you want your products to be seen, market them on your website and social media.
Make believe your store is in a retail shopping mall and ask… how many stores in the mall already have what you are selling? Now ask how am I going to differentiate myself from the other stores in this mall because if I don’t each time they walk in one of the stores and see the same old stuff by the time they walk in your door they will have had enough
So the trick sometimes is: do what the others are not doing and do it REALLY WELL. If you can’t do what they are doing better, move on to something else you can do better. The other trick is if you do have all the same stuff as the others stores in our imaginary shopping mall…You’d better have a unique and enticing window display that will make them want to enter your store and spend some time looking. Put it this way: you walk around the mall and there are 17 pizza places. You’re in the pizza business?
Last but not least: if you ARE selling the same thing the other stores are selling maybe you can advertise your stuff better than they can. Maybe you can find an enticement (price? design? uniqueness?)
Example of better advertising: someone copied one of my designs. At the time they were better at promoting then I was so… their exact copy of my product was on page one of search and selling while my original fell to page 7. Why? well first they are copycats lol and second they found a way to promote my design in a way that brought traffic to my design on their product
I uploaded 35 products for mother’s day, but visibility is really low. my products is probably under 10 - 20 pages 😅
If you type the word “mother” “mom” or “mommy” in search, you will get 3.9 Million results.
If you type the word “mothers day” and you scroll down, you will see 1.2 Million Results.
But I will give you my personal advice that I got from these veteran zazzle sellers, they told me to promote, promote and promote. Infact you don’t have to design anything at all at these rate. you can just promote other people’s products using your referal links.
But I look at your designs, they’re pretty good. so another suggestion is to find another affiliate marketer around here and let them do the promoting for you. 😎 (if you’re lucky, you’ll find someone with high social network)
Hint for all of you guys : Good Art Don’t Sell itself… But a person with high social skills can selling anything…
Thank you all so much for your answers, there are some great tips to follow. So we will continue to work trying to apply all of this, hoping that it can bear fruit
Some questions:
How could we find marketters who would be interested in selling our products? And above all how to be interesting for them? We can obviously lower our commissions if needed or even create on demand.
How to get products in Editor’s pick? Is it a question of luck (that the person who awards the stars sees our products and decides to put them forward)?
Your products won’t be seen unless you have some products selected as an Editor’s Choice or you are a Featured Creator. It doesn’t matter how well you create them or how well you title and tag them.
You’re wrong. It would mean the majority of designers will have never sold anything at all. It’s rare to nonexistent that I’ve had an editor’s pick, and yet I’ve sold any number of products over the years I’ve been here.
I appreciate your answer. But you are talking about “over the years”, and I was talking about designers who start right now. It’s a different game now. I know both sides of stories.
So, I looked at your new Mother’s Day products, and I’ll give you a couple of design tips: (1) A lot of the fonts you are using are hard to read in the product thumbnails, the style doesn’t complement the style of the artwork, and adding text like, “add your title here,” doesn’t help customers determine the best way they can personalize your products. (2) Some of the graphics you are using are beautiful, but stylistically they are all over the map. Even if you are using purchased or vintage graphics (I don’t know if you are), you need to choose those elements wisely so that your collection has a specific style and your store has a specific brand—similar colors, subjects, style of artwork, etc. (3) Avoid over designing anything. Don’t add everything plus the kitchen sink in an effort to improve a design. Too many fonts, design elements, colors, special effects, and styles on one product don’t improve designs, they actually do the opposite. If you look at the editor’s picks, a lot of those designs are surprisingly simple. That’s done for a reason. Simple designs appeal to the masses (like builder’s beige appeals to the masses of home buyers). Legendary fashion designer, Coco Channel, used to say, “put on your outfit and accessories, then remove three items.” In art school, designers are taught that same rule, it’s called the art of restraint. Put a design together, and before you hit the Sell button, ask yourself, “can I simplify this design by removing some elements?”
