Hi everyone, I’ve been facing a major issue with my shop lately. I haven’t made a single sale in the last two months, and I’m not sure what’s going wrong. On top of that, my zRank has been stuck at 5 for a while now. What could be the main problem, and how can I fix this to boost my visibility and sales? Any advice on optimization or strategy would be greatly appreciated!
5 Likes
Hello!
Same issue here. It dropped from 7 to 5 and one single sale in 2 months.
3 Likes
Thanks Nisuris for sharing your experience! In my case, my zRank has actually never reached 6 or 7. it has always been stuck at 5, even though I carefully organize all my products into collections. I used to make consistent sales despite that, but over the last two months, it’s been completely dead. Absolutely zero sales. It’s reassuring to know I’m not the only one facing this sudden drop, but it’s definitely frustrating
3 Likes
Hello,
A few months ago, I saw a post on the general discussion forum where someone suggested that one way to improve your Z Rank is to hide images that have 0 views and 0 sales —the ones that clearly aren’t getting any attention or sales for a while. You don’t necessarily have to delete them; just remove them from the marketplace. If you know an image is unlikely to ever sell, you could also choose to delete it.
According to their theory, Z Rank is influenced by the ratio of images with sales and views compared to those with no sales or views. So, the higher the percentage of your portfolio that’s getting engagement and sales, the better your rank may be.
I decided to give it a try. At the time, my Z Rank was around 5, and within a few days it increased to 8. It’s since dropped back to 7, but I think that’s because I uploaded a lot of new images that haven’t had any views or sales yet.
Of course, this is just my personal experience, so I can’t say for certain that’s how the ranking works—but it seemed to make a difference for me. I hope that helps.
7 Likes
Thank you for your input.
2 Likes
Thanks a lot for sharing your experience! This is very helpful
1 Like
One thing I’m working on at the moment is to improve my tags on products. You can have 10 tags, each with 5 words. Words do not have to be repeated, so you can have 50 different words in effect! I include some words as singular and plural options. I am going through my many thousands of products methodically to update the tags, and its taking some time, but I am seeing improved views on these items. ChatGPT can help suggest word options.
7 Likes
I’m dealing with the same issues—or honestly, I’ve partly given up because it’s become very demotivating. It’s getting harder to stay motivated to even understand how to react to all the changes. Being based outside the US makes it even more challenging.
What I can say is that ZRank seems to be influenced by several factors. “Dead” products definitely matter—I’ve seen improvements when I lower my royalty rate and systematically remove unavailable items. Avoiding duplicate descriptions and large batches of zero-view products (like bulk uploads) also helps.
Royalty percentage itself also seems to have a direct impact. I once accidentally set mine to 21% instead of 12%, and my rank jumped from 8 to 5.
That said, I still don’t know what really makes the biggest difference. From what I observe in the forum, visibility often seems tied to getting featured at least once. A single product placement can completely change your ranking.
I used to bring in my own traffic and sales for years, yet my rank stayed low. Then one “Editor’s Pick” changed everything overnight. I have no idea why that product was chosen—and I wish I knew how to replicate it.
What I’ve learned is that you need to stay active and keep updating your shop. Just uploading and leaving things untouched doesn’t work.
4 Likes
As we all know, what you read on the internet is not always true, this also includes what you will read in this Zazzle’s forum. For example, some people will tell you that their ranks or sales increased tremendously after deleting products and/or reducing their royalty, but when you look at their status level, you may find that they haven’t even achieved bronze level status after being with Zazzle for decades. This means they haven’t even earned $1,000 after decades. I also read that your store ranks doesn’t really make a difference in the amount of sales you get. So in short, no one knows for sure, what will help increase your sales or rank. Regardless, here are a couple of things that may be true:
- Hide product that have low views ( you can always make them public again, when you notice it didn’t make a difference).
- Lower your royalty to 10% or less. Although you will be very disappointed when you see how little you will earn, after Zazzle deducts their marketing fee.
3 Likes
Re the Zazzle status level. I had my status hidden for quite some time and may do so again. So when you see just the “pro seller” badge, it doesn’t mean that someone hasn’t achieved bronze, silver, gold, platinum, etc. status. It could just mean that the designer is hiding their status.
5 Likes
My zrank is currently 6 for my main shop and I have really less sales than when it was 5 ( probably because for the first month since a long time, I didn’t promote a lot. ) Each time my zrank increased to 6 or 7 it was after receiving self referrals.
What my recent experimentation shows me is that if I don’t promote a lot I don’t have much sales and even when I promoted a lot, I very rarely received self referrals from Zazzle, so I think their current cookie based mechanism attributing self referrals is quite unfair for us.
6 Likes
Why would you want to hide your status, if you’re at Gold level? I think it’s beneficial to you, if customers see that you achieved gold status. Also, I would’ve thought that if you do hide your status, it wouldn’t show, “Pro,” level but no level at all, as in when one hasn’t earned $100 yet.
1 Like
I’m not entirely sure whether your comment was directed at me, but just to clarify: I’m aware that displaying rank status is optional, and I personally choose not to show mine.
I’m based in Germany, where labels like Platinum, Gold, or Diamond are not widely understood by customers. Zazzle ist not so big here, no adds, it’s a niche. In some cases, they are even interpreted as an indication of higher pricing rather than quality. For that reason, I currently only display the Pro badge, although I would prefer to disable that as well if possible, as I find it somewhat misleading.
If you take a closer look at the shops you mentioned, it might be worth considering that products with over 10,000 views are unlikely to go entirely unsold at a €100 price point. If that were the case, it would point to broader structural challenges rather than individual shop performance.
More generally, it may also be helpful to keep in mind that Zazzle operates in a global market. Customer expectations, purchasing behavior, and even the interpretation of certain features can vary significantly outside the U.S., and what works well in one region does not always translate directly to another.
For context, I currently run around 15 different shops. At the moment, none of them are ranked higher than level 6, although they used to be closer to level 8. Over the past year in particular, I haven’t achieved much that significantly changed that trajectory. I have also reduced my overall product range quite substantially, removing more than 50% of my listings.
If you were referring to me personally, I don’t claim to be a strong English speaker or a top seller on the platform. My background is in cultural studies rather than anything specifically related to Zazzle. I also prefer not to focus on or disclose my sales figures. At the moment, they are lower than they have been in the past, despite the considerable amount of time and effort I have invested here.
2 Likes
If it helps, I have over 6,900 sales, but I prefer not to discuss the exact value. There are also several reasons why I do not want to display that beside each shop, and I hope you can understand that. Thank you for the feedback.
I also want to say that Zazzle is not equally easy for everyone. My niche may not have been ideal, and as an international seller, I face extra challenges with language, time, and local market expectations. Germany in particular is a different market, both legally and culturally, so what works in one country does not always translate well to another.
I do my best, but I know there is still room for improvement.
1 Like
Because I have had so so many of my designs and photos stolen and put on Amazon, ali express, other Etsy shops etc. In fact that’s one of the reasons I’m trying to move off of Etsy. The minute you get an “Etsy Pick” or top seller badge, it’s taken. My photos and designs from Zazzle have been stolen and put on AliExpress too. It’s a pain trying to get them taken down.
Edit: I don’t think customers care what level you’re at. As long as they like a design, that’s what they care about. I feel like showing your level can make you a target. It says “Zazzle Pro” if you hide the level. I’m only doing a test by showing it now wondering if it makes any difference in product ranking. As in I’m wondering if Zazzle pulls front end info for product ranking or back end info. With some of the tech glitches, I started wondering exactly how they have their “priority marketing” set up lol!
5 Likes
Hiding your status doesn’t necessarely stops anyone from stealing your designs. I only have “Pro” status and it happened to me. Someone stole my bluebells flower design to sell shower curtains at Temu. Fortunately, Temu removed it, after proofing that it was my designs.
1 Like
My post wasn’t directed at you personally. I didn’t know your status level before posting my first message. I just mentioned it because over the years, I have read many posts with people giving advice on how to increase sales or ranks, just to find out that they didn’t work for me. Since then, I had been looking at people’s status level before following anyone’s advice, as I think people with higher status level should know better than people at lower levels. Now I know that even checking the status level won’t help me in deciding whose advice I should take.
I know. I had thousands of my pictures taken down from Ali Express. Yes, they take it down, but it’s like playing whack-a-mole and it takes forever. There are tons of YouTube videos showing others which Etsy stores to copy, how to use apps that show how much and how often and estimated revenue of Etsy shops. Since Etsy lets developers hook up to their data, well, top sellers are easy to see. I feel like not showing your status might make you less of a target, but you’re right. I guess being only a gold seller after having been on Zazzle this long isn’t really a great accomplishment of mine lol! I really don’t think that it makes any difference to customers because they would have to search high and low to even see what it means to be bronze, silver, gold, or platinum. It seems like more of a badge of honor for us than meaning anything to customers. Then again, since so many customers think that we are the actual sellers/shippers, etc. maybe it does matter. That is a problem itself.
Edit: it wasn’t thousands of products, but thousands of Ali Express lisings. So so many duplicates. I had a spreadsheet going and just kept filing reports. It was mostly one seller who had many shops all selling the same products. Then there was Amazon and others. From China.
3 Likes
Sorry, I think we hijacked your post going on about showing or hiding pro seller levels.
Your products and photos look beautiful and professional! I don’t have any answers on z-rank because I don’t remember when it moved for me. I think I remember reading somewhere a long time ago that it’s not a huge thing once you hit 5, but I could be wrong and maybe that changed. What I do know is that it can take forever for products to gain momentum sometimes. You can work and work for many many months hardly seeing any gains and then all of a sudden you start to see more and more sales and more consistency. Your shop looks great! I’m not sure if it helps at all, but I would hang in there and keep doing what you’re doing.
That said, were you getting consistent sales and views before and then they both dropped off? If so, it might be worth sending Zazzle a message to see if something is up.
3 Likes
I’m just a lowly Bronze level but piping in to say that the number of unique items sold vs total number of items in your shop is absolutely a factor in Zrank.
3 Likes