Hello all,
Is anyone else having abysmal sales, like way out of the ordinary this month? I am just very confused as to why I only have two sales for this entire month so far. I feel like I maybe missed something?
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Cover photos possibly. Products with cover photos are getting boosted so those without are falling.
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Oh wow, thank you. I had no idea. This doesn’t seem fair? Anyway, thank you so much for your reply!
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I’ve been having what I consider to be a good month so far.. especially for February, which is typically slow, and not because of editors picks or cover photos.. About 1/2 of my sales so far are products that don’t have a cover and 1/2 were consistent sellers pre covers..
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They changed up the search algorithm. As Keegan mentioned it now favors products with covers, but there were other changes as well. Apparently editor’s picks are now more heavily weighted than before. I’m sure there were other changes too, but I don’t know what they were.
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January was an amazing month. February is being slow… I have quite a few products with cover photos and also some editor’s picks that are not on the first pages (about 500 cover photos, maybe 4 or 5 well positioned products) I have had many cancellations, many more than in past months, or that’s my feeling. Very slow sales, really.
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Thank you all for the replies and info. I’ve been so busy lately with family stuff that I didn’t get the memo about the cover photos. I will have to go in and check that out.
thanks again guys!
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I agree with Cat. I think it’s the changes to the site in search, low to high/new and old designs that are shown. I also think Zazzle is promoting a lot more people. In the past, designs that were featured on the popularity pages didn’t change as much as they change now.
I’ve created and uploaded over 1,200 cover photos and my sales are down, so it’s not that. I have designs without covers that sell too. I also don’t think it’s the Editor’s picks. I had about 3 last year, and the past few months, I’ve been getting more, but it hasn’t affected the sales of those designs. Some of the editors picks I got were designs that sold well in the past, and those also haven’t increased. One EP that was featured a few years ago was posted at the top of the page, and it didn’t sell at all. It just depends on what customers want and if they see you. Visibility, I think has a lot to do with it, if you had more sales last year. That is the thing that has changed for me.
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I also wonder if there are bigger picture issues at play here. It would be interesting to know if Zazzle’s sales overall are down, of if it’s just that the sales are going to different designers. My sales are about the same as they were this time last year, but I have a LOT more designs now than I did then. Most of my stuff is for weddings though, and it’s certainly true that last year there was a HUGE pent-up demand in that market. Not sure if that’s evened itself out now or what. I think there are also probably changing shopping habits in general as people start to go back to more brick & mortar stores. I guess we’ll see what happens…
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My month has been terrible. I guess I never had such an awful month in terms of earnings. I already know I won’t be paid in april.
I’m slowly restructuring my entire store but even though I deleted non-selling products, improved a lot of the existing ones, organized my store and had two products featured as Editors’ Pick, I got only THREE sales. I’m reviewing every title, every copy, every keyword…
I must be really missing something. People are speaking about the new personalized cover photos. If that’s really the case, it’s really unfair to prioritize showing products because someone can buy their own products and do a professional photoshoot while many of us struggle with money issues and work so hard to create high quality designs.
I don’t have many products, but with the few I have, I was able to achieve Pro Bronze status, so I believe I have good designs, that people like, and suddenly I feel they’re not even being shown. At least Zazzle could be honest to us about the algorithm so we know how to adjust.
Right now I’m so sad.
Catherine Marie Narézi
Art in Card - Creative Design
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You don’t need to buy the products and do your own photoshoot. On the product page go to More Options (top bar) and choose Download Artwork to get what’s on the design tool to put in a mockup. Or choose Download Product Mockup, remove Zazzle’s background and put in a new background.
I believe only the second option works, because on the first option I would be applying the artwork to some random product of an external site mockup. For me it doesn’t make sense.
And the second option for me seems like working to have almost the same result. So I get Zazzle’s mockup and change the background? I’ll just spend time I should spend on creating products and improving my store to make a cover. I shouldn’t have to. No one should…
This should be an option for people who have better pictures of their products and want to be able to display them, but not a differential to have priority in searches.
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I’m still selling stuff without doing cover photos. I’m working on stuff I feel is more important, like redoing my keychains for the new double-sided format. When Zazzle suggests something, you have to consider whether it’s really a good idea for you as a designer. I can see doing covers for a few bestsellers, but not thousands of them. That’s a lot of wasted time that could go on making new art and more products.
Deleting all your products that haven’t sold is another piece of advice Zazzle will give you, but it’s not good for the designer. If the design is fine and the keywords are fine, leave the product alone. I’d have made a lot less if it wasn’t for the weird random sales of the thing I made two years ago that nobody had viewed until last week and then I sold ten of them.
If you’re not convinced, never forget that Zazzle was telling designers to design cheeseboards for special occasions for years. Those cheeseboards had never been in stock during my entire time on Zazzle and were eventually discontinued. Zazzle does not always get it right.
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You don’t have to buy anything to make cover photos. It is acceptable to create them digitally.
But won’t they drop our Zrank? I believe that Zrank helps somehow on the searches, because mine reached 8, then I had a boom of sales, so I decided to raise prices because it made sense to me. Then they dropped me to 7 and my sales instantly dropped too. I’m still not recovered. And it seems no matter how I improve my store, Zrank doesn’t come back up. Had two products chosen as editors’ pick and Zranks keeps on 7 and selling almost nothing. From $300 in october to $9.95 in February. I understand sale can oscilate, but I think that’s too extreme. I don’t get what I’m doing so wrong because my prices are not abusive or even higher than the average I see on similar products.
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It’s currently unknowable if cover photos factor into the zrank algorithm. It has only been a few weeks since we found out that cover photos get a placement boost- and going to any product page shows this is now true. Top line products now have cover photos more often than not with the tippy-top going to products that are both editor’s picks and have cover photos. It is guessed that better placement will in time lead to better sales and better sales could boost zrank, though they are not the only factor.
But do cover photos now affect zrank independent of sales? We’ll only be able to tell that if:
- people report that their sales have remained steady but they made few or no cover photos and dropped a zrank point despite not dropping in sales. This would most likely apply to people who have great success from off site promotion (perhaps have their own popular website) and so don’t depend on MP placement to make sales.
- people report that their sales have remained steady (including low but steady sales) but their zrank has gone up after making large amounts of cover photos. This one will be pretty hard to disentangle from MP placement unless their steady sales include plenty of products that don’t (yet) have a cover photo.
I haven’t seen any anecdotes in the forum yet about zrank drops from no/few cover photos or zrank climbs from many cover photos (with sales rate unchanging) but it’s early days. Or maybe the anecdotes will never come. Or maybe cover photos have no effect on zrank by themselves but can affect a product’s placement which can affect sales which can affect zrank.
It’s just unknown.
I personally have been making cover photos as much as I can. Some I made by isolating the product mockup from its’ background and giving it a new background. This can be done faster by making a mask that will work for any instance of the product and then just swapping in new backgrounds, but even then it is slow. Some I I did commercially because I just don’t have the Photoshop skills to turn Zazzle’s duvet cover and shower curtain mockups into anything that looks reasonable. But paper that can be put on a flatlay (many available free) or models who can be put in front of a new background (many new backgrounds for those models available free from Pixabay, Pexels etc.) has been my go-to. But it does take a lot of work. My sales have been slow but steady throughout a February of doing this and designing only a couple new products. No rise in zrank. I’ll post in the forum if I ever get a rise. But maybe my sales would have fallen off a cliff if I hadn’t made any cover photos. I sold some things with cover photos but also my old reliable products without.
I’m following this discussion about cover photos for a while now and their is one thing that bothers me. If I look at a random product image which is clearly a not a Zazzle mockup, i.e. a mockup from a third party, I notice differences in the product itself. For instance a mug in a cover photo is different in build than the one in accompanying standard Zazzle photos. An example from the Marvel store: https://www.zazzle.com/time_variance_authority_crest_mug-168295016509370460
The size and position of the mug handle is clearly different. Where I come from (EU) that would be awfully close to misleading the buyer. Details, but still. And that’s my problem. how close will those third party mockup photos be to the original Zazzle product?
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@Polenth , I totally agree
I don’t think covers are affecting Z Rank. I’ve made a number of them across my variously ranked stores and haven’t seen any changes in that regard. Sales and views seem to be the only things that make that budge..
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My sales have slowed a bit compared to January. Luckily I am not seeing a total drop yet. Cover photos may have an impact, but I believe they will be a pain for Zazzle sooner rather than later, as I don’t see people using them responsibly.
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