Benefits of creating many products?

[Lensman]

Newbie question here: Do most people create multiple products from one design, or just the one product? The reason I ask is because (as I understand it how Zazzle works) if a buyer can take the design you made for a wall clock and then make a button from it, what is the point in taking so much time as a creator to make your design available on many products?

Am I missing something?

[PenguinPower · Accepted solution]

While yes, this is possible there are are pitfalls to attempting to create just a single representative product for each your designs. 
1) Items come in all shapes, size ratios and print area requirements. Some things are double sided, some single... It's usually a lucky thing when a design transfer is truly seamless between products. If you have a savvy enough customer who's willing to go into the design tool and tweak things, you'll do OK, but if it's someone who doesn't know how or simply doesn't want to bother, that's a lost sale.
2) While it's a feature, Zazzle doesn't really market things that way. Products are more at the forefront than designs. And it makes sense too - there's a limited number of designs that a person is willing to actually page through.. a general search including all products is going to return way more results and duplicate results of the same design than a search within a product. It behooves you to put your designs on things that you think people will really be looking for them on if you want them to have a better chance of being seen. If you only put designs on clocks, but your potential clients are only looking at buttons you are missing out.. 

To give you an example I did a search for the first thing that popped into my head "bird of paradise"  - a general search turns up 19,384 results... but say I was actually looking for a tie with a bird of paradise pattern. Search for "bird of paradise tie" and I only get 153 results - much more manageable and if you have a design on a tie, I'll likely see your product. If you'd put it only on a pillow, with the idea that I could simply transfer it to a tie if I liked it, the chances are that I'd never even see it at all in amongst those 19,384 other things. 

Personally I don't believe in a scattershot approach either.. I don't make use of "Quick Create" to blast designs onto as many products as possible all at once.. I prefer to curate designs to the specific items I think the audience for the design might be interested in and I tailor and tweak the designs to best fit the items, which may mean altering the layout, even if still maintaining the theme. 

[Lensman]

Some excellent points there. Thanks for the in depth reply. I agree about the scattershot approach, too. I was on Zazzle back in the really, really early days, when postage stamps became a new product they added after ( I see they dropped that product) and things seemed a bit simpler. May be my imagination about the "simple" aspect. Closed my account in 2019 after not using it for years and now created a new account again. Good to be back.