why do you need zazzle to point them out to you? why can’t you manage your stores on your own? you see this as a “gift” and I see it as a way for someone else to control what I created. MY PRODUCTS. MY CREATIONS. I should decide what I want to keep or what I want to delete, or modify.
Oh, I get the darling little messages from them and ignore them because to have to address it infuriates me so much. Those hidden products will never sell unless I UNDO what zazzle has done. we have no idea what a customer is looking for or what it is they like. HOW DOES ZAZZLE magically know? their analytics? Well unless they are inside the heads of EVERY customer looking at OUR products, they should leave them alone and let US, THE CREATORS decide what we want to do with them.
and that DOES NOT MAKE IT RIGHT, or in the best interest of the CREATORS. When they make all these products hidden they GUARANTEE 100000% that it will not sell. We lose money and THEY lose money too. Just because you CAN, does not mean you SHOULD.
and I don’t have the control to make your messages disappear. zazzle is the only one who makes things disappear.
Let me say one final thing:
- we are the creators, but Zazzle is the company which owns our stores. Zazzle pays for server capacity. They as owners have an interest in getting a profit out of our creations, and we get provisions.
- we do not have to pay for listings - in difference to redbubble and society6 which have both now put up a system where creators have to pay; having an etsy shop means having to pay for the listings.
- you are free to ignore the messages; it took a while till I understood that “optimizing” not only means fixing titles, tags and such, but also promotion. I go through my products in a regular way and whenever I think that a good design is hidden I do a bit of promotion - writing a blogpost, or promoting it on X or - creating a mockup. With some hidden designs I care and with some of them I do not - that’s my decision as creator.
- We are responsible for promoting our products. I promote those I think are interesting, appealing and well done.
Just my 2 cents.
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I respect what you say but I disagree vehemently. NO ONE is making any money off of products that ZAZZLE chooses to hide.
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I totally agree, that happened to me too that some products had typos or other things that I did not know better when I first started with Zazzle, but I also noticed that I am keeping in learning, so I find mistakes even in some of my more recent designs. So, it’s good that Zazzle shows us those products that are not been viewing for one reason or another. I also fixed some and then I was able to sell them.
If somebody is so bitter and angry at Zazzle, and don’t want to listen or be reasonable at all, I believe, they should just leave the platform and try to find a “better” one. To me, I find that Zazzle is the best, it keeps my design forever and I don’t even have to pay to post them, I think I will quit the day that I will have to pay to post them, unless I make a lot, of course.
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I have 20,000 products to “optimize” 20,000!!! AND when I can only do 204 at a time and cannot see the results in REAL TIME, there is a problem with ZAZZLE!
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how would you like to have t optimize 20,000 products?
204 at a time? and no results in real time. YES, I AM VERY ANGRY about this because having been with zazzle for over 10 years, I have seen this site become LESS user friendly and more complicated making it more difficult for ANYONE to sell their products. YOU MAY BE MAKING A FORTUNE therefore why should you care? I have only made 4,000.00 in that over 10 years and I have put in hours every single day on this. There are so many glitches that I could be emailing them 2-3 times a day. MAYBE YOU ARE OK WITH THAT but I think they should spend more time making things better and NOT more complicated. The ONLY way things will change is if people stand up and demand they change. If you are happy to sit and say nothing, well that is you. I lived that way for too long and now I am done staying quiet about anything. You can bash me all you want. My self worth is not based on what YOU think of me. I am just one person trying as hard as she can to eek out a small side income from this but with over 20,000 products HIDDEN because they need “OPTIMIZATION”, how can I or anyone sell anything? I wonder if everyone on zazzle actually pays attention to that “optimization” BS. there are only so many keywords a person can use. there are only so many times they can be shared on social media. there are only so many ways you can change the description. Zazzle may be using analytics/computers to perform the task of hiding our products but we are human and how can we compete with computers when it comes to changing EVERY single product on a regular basis to they don’t need “optimization”. How many products have YOU had to alter for them? 20,000? How many of those MIGHT have sold if zazzle had not made them hidden? you can feel how you wish to feel, but zazzle is making mistakes that hurt everyone and if they are not hurting you now, they will in the future. I would send u the screenshot showing the # that need optimization but the “insert photo” feature does not work properly. it cuts the photo into a square, not a landscape which is what I want. SMH. And have u checked out FINE ART AMERICA? they are a great site!!! More products!!! easier!!! and they do not control you like zazzle does. So there IS better out there. I only stay with zazzle because I have sooooooooooooooooo much invested in my zazzle store. I do have a fine art america account too and sell there too.
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I have a bunch of products that need optimization too. I don’t pay much attention to it (if I did I probably wouldn’t have so many hidden), but every now and then I go through some of them and try to teak the tags/title You are right in saying there is only so much retagging and redoing titles that can be done, most of the time when I look at my hidden products, I don’t know what else I can do with the titles and tags.
For what it’s worth, when Zazzle first implemented optimization many didn’t like it just like you but I guess folks just got used to it.
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there is NO REASON we should have to “get used” to something that hurts our sales! Zazzle needs to STOP this stupid process. I will not livelong enough to “optimize” over 20,000 products. Who would? and the fact that I can’t seem to even do 204 at a time and see results in REAL TIME, make it extra frustrating. ZAZZLE IS WRONG ON THIS!
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You don’t have to optimize all of them, just work on the ones you like. Look at it this way, the reason they got hidden in the first place is that they didn’t get any sales so it’s not like you are losing globs of money because of it. Sure a couple of dollars here and there wouldn’t hurt but it is what it is, Zazzle is going to do what it feels is best for its business.
And by the way I don’t like that they are hiding our products, a fairer approach to this I think would be if hidden products would remain visible in stores and only hidden in the marketplace
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In my lifetime at a possible rate of 204 per click, how can I make over 16,000 products public after zazzle decided to make them hidden? So to the people who think optimizing is a good thing, try and walk in my shoes. I spend over an hour each day UNDOING or TRYING TO UNDO all zazzle has done and funny how my UNDOING is actually increasing my sales. MAYBE THEY SHOULD NOT HAVE DONE IT IN THE FIRST PLACE. if you think you are not losing sales by their “optimizing” you are wrong. YOU ARE. I emailed them on more than one occasion to ask for their justification for making over 16,000 of my products hidden and they have yet to provide me with any explanation at all. Spending time UNDOING this is a waste of time because it should have been done in the first place. And to the people who think I should just “get over it”, how many products have you had to make public because zazzle CHOSE TO hide them? This is nothing more than LOST SALES for everyone. You are free to disagree with me but I doubt you have had to undo tens of thousands of products.
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I have to unhide products daily and it is so very annoying esp. since sometimes even on the day I hit make public again they are sold. How many sells are we missing out on when something is hidden? I even find stuff I have sold being hidden at times and we were told stuff that had sold would never be hidden.
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Just checked my Optimization Needed list and the handful of products I optimized and re-set to Public back at the beginning of Nov are still Public.
ETA:
But I think if you do it in bulk and don’t actually view each product, they will go right back to being hidden, since they still don’t have views in 15 months or longer.
Since it wasn’t many I didn’t do it as a bulk action so did view each of them.
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well do you want to go thru over 16,000 products and UNDO what zazzle chose to do for no good reason?
would you like to “optimize” all my 16,000 products?
I went through mine today. There were lots, as I’ve been ignoring them for quite a while. Just over 300, all set to hidden, none that had ever sold. I nuked them all.
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If you do it as I suggested it will take approximately 20 seconds per page of 204 products, so in a minute you’ll have done 612 products, and in less than half an hour you’ll have done the 16k. If you just want to unhide them, that’s it.
would you like to “optimize” all my 16,000 products?
Well, I have a total of only 502 public products in my store and given all I’ve learned in recent months, I’ll be purging duds after the new year. I’m not a talented artist nor do I spend much if any time promoting; at this point in my life Zazzle is a enjoyable hobby that pays off in real dollars and I still get a major thrill from every sale. Even so, I am picky about what I publish, I don’t just throw everything against the wall hoping it’ll stick. If you have 16,000 products that haven’t even been viewed in the last 15 months, maybe it’s time to re-think your strategy?
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