New to Zazzle and need some guidance

[ARTZEE_FARTZEE]

Hi all!!! My name is Don and I just joined Zazzle today! My store is called ARTZEEFARTZEE.

I'm finding the process of creating my products to be grueling and time consuming. I could be doing this wrong. But it seems like I have to create every item one at a time? Let me explain, on other sites similar to Zazzle I can select pillows, bedding, t shirts, backpacks, socks, etc. ALL AT ONCE, upload my image, tweak the products a bit and submit for 90 products at a time. Here on Zazzle it seems I have to create a round pillow, sell it. Create another square pillow, sell it. And on and on. At this rate it'll take me months to get all my designs created.

I "think" buyers can choose to apply my designs on products that are not in my shop? But I like to have the designs and products already showing, It catches the buyers attention and doesn't make them work to get the product they want.

Also... I find the reCAPTCHA identity thing MADDENING!!! The creation process is already grueling and now I have to go thru reCaptcha on EVERY single new creation and sometimes even 4-5 times per item.

I MUST be doing this wrong. I cannot believe what a process this is so far.

Appreciate any pointers you can offer.

[CreativeLeahG]

Welcome to Zazzle!

There is a thing here called 'Quick Create' where you can indeed create up to 100 products at a time BUT they do not publish instantly, they are manually reviewed and can take anything from a day to couple weeks (during busy periods) fot them to be processed and published.

This feature is currently switched OFF as Zazzle team focusing on getting their holidays orders out. No time for reviewing QC's. But hopefully it will be reinstated after Christmas.

In the meantime you can use 'copy' and 'paste' or the transfer tool (after your product is published) to create new products with the same design. Avoid creating as many of everything as you can as you won't benefit from it. Consider what the consumer is likely to want that carries that specific design and ensure it has template fields. This is a site for consumers to customize items, so not including text or image templates, makes the products less desirable at Zazzle's price points. As an example you can get a slogan mug on Amazon for less than $6 BUT can you add a name or a photo? No, that is where Zazzle comes in and the price reflects that. Always keep consumers wants and needs front of your mind.

Good luck!

ps. Yes captcha is a pain, you're not the first to mention it! Pop along to the 'technical issues' forum for updates on existing bugs.

[Signa]

Nice! I didn't know that!

[Windy]

The nice thing about creating products one by one is that this results in much less unintentional tag spam, and results in a marketplace full of products with images that make sense on the product. 

[Polenth]

The transfer tool can speed things up, as it'll take all the tags and other info over to the new product. Then just check in design view that it all fits and publish it. The captcha thing goes wrong sometimes and hits different people (I'm surprised it's left me alone this time).

On the note of tags, Zazzle gets a lot of sales from people finding things using search. It's worth taking some time to figure out the tags and use the maximum (ten tags and they can be multiple words).

[Barbara]

I looked at what you have so far and then at the tags you've used. You're in the realm of non-representational abstract art where many of us struggle with tags. I've no advice here because I've yet to figure it out myself other than to add text templates.

Using Quick Create (when it returns) will help your production speed, but you might nevertheless do better with representational art where a customer would recognize an object in it, an object you can describe and tag for and that might be found when a customer runs a search.

I'm not being hit with the current Captcha attack but have been in the past. Tech is working on it just as they did back then, and so it's likely to be solved. Hang in there because I'm sure it'll be fixed.

Colorwash's Home

[Signa]

I feel you man

[LMGildersleeve]

More newbie advice.... "Quality not quantity" works on this platform. Quick Create may sound like a life saver however, your designs/art won't look the same on each individual product. People fall into the pitfall of the QC tool and slap designs/art on every product. The results are images that don't fit, tag spam and many other non-happy seo camper issues. You will still have to manually check each product (or create templates for each product) to make sure everything is well placed. Zazzle's marketplace will sink your products like a stone if you abuse the QC.