Can Zazzle Accommodate 900,000 Creators?

[gardenstyle]

Do the math. 

[Scott]

I don't see any bug being reported, so I'm moving this to General Discussion.

[idraw]

Buy more servers? Hire more coders? Hire more tech support? Hire more CSRs?

[KeegansCreation]

I think 'yes' for both sense of the word "accommodate".

1)"Accommodate" in the sense of being able to host that many designer accounts and millions of designs without breaking down? Yes, from time to time there are bugs like the current one of view counts in the back end freezing but they do get taken care of and the site remains functional despite the aggravation to designers.

2)"Accommodate" in the sense that with that many designers and millions of designs, each designer is a little fish in a very big pond? Still yes. It's competitive but not all 900K are competing for the same customer niches (and some may not be competing at all, it's quite likely that some of those designer accounts are inactive). The beauty of POD is that it can cater to hundreds of hyper specific niches. Also this is a global market so the customer base is quite large and diverse. 

[Kevi]

I play an online game which has 750,000 players -  although I know there are only 6,000 active players. The 750k are the total number who have ever registered and 744k are inactive. I suspect that there is a similar ratio here with active designers and others who have registered and given up.

Please correct me if I am wrong.

[Windy]

You are so right! I am sure it is this way with Zazzle also. Every website I have ever participated in has vastly more signups than it has active users.

[Barbara]

Back a few years ago, Zazzle announced that inactive, stagnant accounts would be slowly drained via a small charge of whatever royalty money was left until there was nothing. It seemed a bit "odd" to many of us. I just now checked an account from which I've stopped seeing anything appear, and the last time they put out a new product was in 2014. Either Zazzle dropped the idea or the person is still selling regardless of having added nothing for eight years. The designer happens to be fabulous, so maybe it doesn't apply to her.

Colorwash's Home

[PenguinPower]

I don’t think the surcharge deletes the account… the profits may be drained but the designs remain.  Of course if the account is stagnant and not viewed, eventually all of its items will end up hidden. 

[Barbara]

But what if the account continues to get sales here and there and what if the person died and what if the heirs aren't even aware of money going into a PayPal account? I'm thinking I'd better give my husband and son explicit instructions in case I go poof.

Colorwash's Home

[Windy]

I have put my Zazzle info in the Memorial Instructions page that came with my will.

[KeegansCreation]

Good idea.

[KeegansCreation]

I suppose a loop is possible whereby a popular designer dies and their heirs don't know about their Paypal account. Then sales money goes into the account and gets returned to Zazzle via inactivity fees until the designs stop being popular and sink in the algorithm.

The lesson in that is to make a list of your accounts that is accessible to your heirs in case you go poof. 

The husband of a friend of mine died unexpectedly and she discovered that his account number and password information was decentralized around their home so she had to look in every drawer and every file folder in every box in every closet to find it all. My husband and I have centralized it to a single room and a few drawers and filing cabinet. Have mercy on those who survive you and make sure they don't have to tear the house apart before they find out you have a Paypal account and what the password is.

[Barbara]

I had a definitive list on my bulletin board here in my office, but I just looked up at the board and the list isn't there. I remember thinking it should be updated, and now I don't know where... Wait a minute. There it is beneath a pile of other stuff that needs my attention.

(Funny how a thread can wander off into the weeds, isn't it?)

Colorwash's Home

[CreativeLeahG]

Zazzle DOES accommodate its current and expanding list of members.

Does it promote and advertise them all as individuals, hell no ... who would? It makes no promise to do such a thing, it isn't good business and as a free-to-use platform there is no earthly reason why they should ever feel obliged to do so. If a store isn't working there are reasons, reasons that are obvious to many of us but for those store holders who do not want help identifying those reasons and instead prefer to blame Zazzle for their lack of exposure and sales, there is no opportunity to grow.

For those store holders who reach out for assistance, there is an opportunity to make changes to their advantage. Store holders who respond with help of this kind should be applauded and thanked for the time they've taken out of their day to help what is afterall 'the competition'.

Successful sellers work hard, there are no free rides or legups as some suggest. And like all sellers, they are hit when seasons are slow, the economy crashes and people shop elsewhere. For them the situation is perhaps more challenging as a full time and only income as oppose to a side income or hobby which is the case for most of the Zazzle community ie most of the 900,000. No one likes to see sales slide though which is why generally we are all here to support and lift each other up. I hope this forum mood lightens so we can all get back to the business of being supportive of one another. Not just at Christmas! 😘

[AugieDoggyStore]

Problems crop up on Zazzle from time to time that understandably upset people, but they usually get worked out. I think if you're always unhappy and find yourself chronically complaining, then maybe Zazzle isn't for you. There are other PODs out there, as well as jobs in other industries.  

[chefcateringbiz]

At any given time there will be a sh*ton of designers with just a few designs uploaded over 6 months, wondering why they have no sales, so my answer is: Yes, they can handle X-number of designers.

[TShirtfort]

I think they should look into the accounts that seem to spit out auto-generated designs on every product instantaneously as opposed to adding more hoops for the artistic people who have designs that are clearly made by them either by hand or on a computer and took hours if not days. 

[CreativeLeahG]

Why?

Zazzle created quick create so creators can 'spit out designs on every product'. Why therfore is the implication that QC is a bad thing or the designers are doing anything wrong? They're doing exactly what Zazzle has provided for them to do.

Zazzle offers every creator the same opportunity to succeed, if people offer items that are of little to no interest to the consumer, or fail to market them so they're seen, is that Zazzle's fault? Is it the fault of the more successful sellers? No it is the store owners responsibility to create consumer worthy goods and get them seen. Blaming others for ones lack of sales is poor business and will not result in growth or success. Facing up to ones shortcomings is the only way to grow and improve and as AugieDoggie said, if one can't do that, it might not be the right platform for them.

[TShirtfort]

I'm not talking about quick create. When I try to find my own designs using some keywords sometimes I still see a lot of stuff that seems like it has to have been automated somehow. Like why the same design on the exact same style of shirt over and over? Or a slight color variation on one word on a design that says I like this or I like that in every possible font. Just now I saw a bunch of new designs with descriptions about cats but the product themselves were just plain black. This goes way beyong QC. 

[Barbara]

The only time I see those repetitive types of designs is if I set the order to "Newest." If I have it on "Popular," I don't see this. I just now tried it with "cat t-shirts," and the results were non-repetitive, but the moment I switched to Newest, up popped the repeated designs looking for all the world as if done using QC. I used to use Newest to check my own new designs to make sure they'd hit the marketplace, but I stopped doing it a long time ago because of all the less-than creative stuff to plow through.

Colorwash's Home

[CreativeLeahG]

Zazzle has confirmed many times, it is not possible to automate product design, upload outside of Zazzle's own tools. There is no 'magic tool' we/they don't know about. Whatever they're doing it takes work, time and effort. And if Zazzle feels they're violating terms, they will address it. If it is within the terms, then they're posibly attempting to accommodate a need which is providing choice for consumers and less customizing on the customers part. Something Zazzle welcomes (color variation) more text options etc. If those 'multiple choice items' are poor quality designs, irrelevant to the marketplace and as such do not sell they will sink, be hidden, eventually deleted and of course will have a knock on effect on zrank (ie lots of products, low views/sales ratio). There is no 'win' to trying to over producing what no one wants. Meanwhile focusing on ones own business model is the best way to succeed. 

[Barbara]

The idea of quick create isn't a bad one. It works just fine on another well-known platform, but there, it seems, the designers take more responsibility for the end product. That's not to say there aren't a lot of people here with the same design ethics--there are. If Zazzle were to eliminate QC, they'd be throwing the baby out with the bath water. Besides, as Leah implies, the trash generally sinks to the bottom and the perpetrators seek out another get-rich-quick scheme.

The above said, it's extremely quick to copy designs from one product to others by keeping multiple browser tabs open. The only problem is that it's boring, though less boring than QC.

Colorwash's Home

[CreativeLeahG]

Exactly right Brabrara, the poor quality items do 'sink' fairly quickly and of course are now removed altogether after a period of zero activity. Them showing in newest can be problematic, but again they're gone in a flash. Perhaps QC's could be eliminated from the newest filters?

Meanwhile how many of us now look back on our older designs and cringe while marveling at how great we thought they were at the time!! It's really baffling the tricks our minds play. The consumer is the biggest giver of reality checks.