I couldn't make any sales!

[Creative_Paper]

Hello Everyone,

I am a new member, I have created over 400 Wedding Invitation and Business Card templates in my shop for the last three months but I haven't made any sales. https://www.zazzle.com/store/creative_paper/collections

My motivation is gone now and I can't work on new designs. I see that no one sees my products and no new followers come. 😞 Is this site really working? I'm not sure! Or what should I do to make sales? If you have any ideas, I would be glad if you share them with me.

[Barbara]

You signed up here just be chance during a sales slump. You've also chosen the wedding niche, which is likely the largest one with the highest number of people designing for it. This means you're competing with a slew of people who've been here and who've been selling for a long time. This means there's no room for your products on the all-important first several pages in the marketplace. It could take quite a while to rise up and into those critical pages.

I went to your store to see if there's anything else that might be stopping your sales and noticed you aren't setting text to templates, forcing a customer to go to the design tool to edit the text. You might want to change this from now on when you design a product so the customer can change the text right on the product's display page. (The design tool is very likely confusing to a lot of customers.)

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[Creative_Paper]

Firstly, thank you for the detailed information!

Yes, there may be a lot of competition in these categories, but waiting for months to make a few sales is a demotivating situation. Actually, with the right advertising policy, everyone can be happy. I will probably quit until I see the light.

By the way, all invitation and business card templates have texts that customers can easily personalize.
Did you mean the texts on the category covers like on your site? I didn't fully understand.

[tiffjamaica]

You have to set all editable text in your invites, etc. as templates. This is an option in the editor when creating your designs and will show a "personalize" button on the product page (so your customers don't have to enter the editor to personalize. They can do it easily right there on the product page).  Read the link Sara posted for more details on it. It's easy once you figure it out.  Unfortunately, it probably means you'll have to re-publish all of your listings because Zazzle doesn't have a way to fix mistakes after publishing (a select number of people have a republish option, but I think those products still have to go through a review process. I'm not sure, I'm not one of them).   Your products are lovely though and Barbara was right - wedding niche is huge here and you have a LOT of competition. I'd say niche down to something with less saturation. And it can take a long long time for new sellers to actually gain traction. This is a long-game situation here!

[Creative_Paper]

Until now I thought all my products could be easily customized. This is something I didn't know about! Thank you, you've been very helpful. I will definitely look into this and write to the support team.

[Jadendreamer13]

You don’t need to contact the support team. You need to make the changes yourself and repost those products.

[Malissa]

@Jadendreamer13 is right.  The support team will not fix those for you.  You will have to make the edits and republish.  All of your metadata will still be on the page after you hit "sell it" so you just need to hit publish again and then delete the old one.  Even if you were one of the ones that has the edit option that has to be reviewed, YOU have to be the one to make the edits and submit them, but one of the rules is that you can not submit products that have never sold.  There is no easy way out of fixing it, you'll just have to bite the bullet and do it a little at a time. You got this!

[Creative_Paper]

Of course I don't expect the support team to fix it for me. I have to do these fixes myself but there are so many templates and maybe they can make the system easier instead of deleting and republishing.

I think they did this for some designers. "I mean I want to hope they can make my job easier."

[Malissa]

I guess I am not quite sure what you are wanting then.  You may already know this, but it is hard to tell from this limited conversation, if you open your product and then hit edit, toggle the templates on, and then click done>sell it, the page opens with all the metadata information still on there and you only have to check the box that you have the right to publish and hit publish.  That is the fastest way to do it.  I don't quite understand what else you were hoping that support could do to make it faster.  Anyway, hope you get if figured out.

[Barbara]

Go to the link Sara provided because it will explain what a text template is and how to create one. The way you're doing it is to allow the text to be altered but not on the product page. If customers want to change the text, they have to click the edit button, which places them inside the design tool with all its layers. With text set up as a template, they don't have to do this. They can edit the text directly on the product's page.

A lot of people have waited months for sales and then started to sell. Given you're in the basic pro category, it means you've already sold products, which is a good thing, a sign you've pleased people enough to buy.

As for an advertising policy, Zazzle relies more on the designers themselves to do their own advertising, be it on social media or their own web sites.

Don't quit, but if a pause helps, then by all means do it. I'm in the middle of my own pause with an eye to changing what and how I design, so I fully understand. I've already cut my products in half, deleting things that haven't sold during the years they've been in my store. That's years, mind you, not months. A tiny cautionary tale is that I sold something the other day, didn't know I'd sold it, and I deleted it. The sale was cancelled. So, don't start deleting anything while you're on pause.

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[Creative_Paper]

Firstly, thank you for the detailed information you gave me! Yes, I looked at the link Sara gave me and managed to make a sample. There is no problem with that! 

My only concern is that when I publish my new product, I will have reset everything and I will have to wait for months again. ''That's the bad part!''

The reason I am in the professional category is not because of the new templates I have been working on in recent months! I opened my store on the site in the past, but I was not active. I uploaded a few products last year and I noticed that these were sold suddenly. 

I have made many new products for this reason but I see that they are not getting any reviews or followers. I just don't know how the process works and I have a hard time understanding it.

Finally, I will definitely take your advice into consideration! Thank you, Barbara 🙂

[KeegansCreation]

It seems daunting but it can be broken down into simple steps. There is little that you have to actually change and your re-published products will be in the marketplace in days rather than months.

1. Choose a product with text the customer needs to edit.
2. Go into the design tool and click on a layer with text>go to the right side of the screen and scroll down to "make this a template".
3. Repeat for all text layers that customers should edit.
4. Leave design tool and click Sell button.
5. Your title, description and tags are preserved. But you will need to re-add to the appropriate Collection.
6. After publishing, delete the original product.

It is well worth doing because the products will not sell if you don't make all editable text into templates.

[Creative_Paper]

Thank you for the detailed information and advice! 🙂

I went through the link Sara shared and was able to make a few products. I don't think I'll have any problems with this.

[Sara_H]

@Creative_Paper 

https://help.zazzle.com/hc/en-us/articles/219145288-Creating-a-Product-Template if you need any help creating text templates - the help files are very helpful

@Barbarais spot on as usual

[Creative_Paper]

Thanks for the info! 🙂

[KeegansCreation]

The invites and business cards need to be re-made with text templates per Sara H info link. But I also have an additional suggestion to get sales. It is very true that business cards and weddings are very saturated niches. But they get less saturated if you niche down. For example, LGBTQ or goth weddings. Or business cards for businesses that you see in your neighborhood but that don't have thousands of cards here.

[Creative_Paper]

It's a nightmare to re-personalize and publish all the templates! I will report this issue to the support team.

Also thank you for your advice, this may be the right method.

[calartcreations]

Well, I take the main points for all the things people recommend to "Creative Paper," all really nice pieces of advice!

1. Re-made template

2. Allow customers to edit the text directly on the product page

3. Niche down saturated niches

4. Pay attention to product publication time

5. Don't quit, but if a pause helps, "do so."

6. Don't act out of desperation and start deleting things from your store.

7. Cleaning the store is important, but don't do it when you are down.

[Barbara]

Perhaps the most important advice given here was what @tiffjamaica said about niches. When I first came here, I saw all the floral and cute types of designs consistently hitting the first and second pages in the marketplace, so I thought it was what I should do. It wasn't. Not until I dug around in my disparate collection of things that even temporarily fascinate me did I start selling in earnest.

It's best to design what you love and what's not well represented in the marketplace.

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