I haven't sold anything since I made pay out which is a little over $50.00

[Sandy4899]

Anyone know if my account is frozen? I haven't felt like posting something new; what for if nothing is selling.? It's been like 3 weeks.

[MissRhoadie]

Have you tried promoting your products on social media? 

[Sandy4899]

You're missing the point of what I'm saying. I've been posting on social media all along. Sales suddenly stopped

[MissRhoadie]

I have never heard of an account being frozen on here.  Sales tend to ebb and flow, I've been weeks without sales also, you just have to keep designing and promoting. 

[Sandy4899]

Understood. Thank you Miss Rhoadie.

[MissRhoadie]

Sure you're welcome. 

[Gina]

It isn't unusual for sales to slow, and/or stop, in the first few months of a new year. A lot of people have other priorities for their money in the time leading up to Spring and some may even just be too busy with other things that are more important than hopping online to buy products that aren't a necessity.

[Sandy4899]

Thanks Gina.  I can see that as being correct.

[Gina]

You're welcome. Just keep doing what you need to do and sales will eventually pick back up.

[pjwuebker]

I, too, have never heard of a frozen account.

This is the slow season. You have to have faith. Focus on posting new designs and products and sales will take care of themselves.

[Sandy4899 · Accepted solution]

Thanks for your advice. My solution is to stop looking at my current 0 sales. I only made 78.00 last year. Apparently people don't like my art as I've heard that people make 500-1000 dollars a month. Goody for them.

[Artsiren]

Yep, one of the few things that is predictable with print-on-demand is its unpredictability. I've been working hard on my newest store, and hope to get to 1000 products on there soon. Extremely rare to get sales on there though - so maybe your designs are new? Don't know. But it can take months to show up on Google search, and Gina's right; in my experience, people can pull back on their spending in January.

(And then I get a random sale the other day from an old test store that I no longer work on with only about 20 products left visible on there.)

One of the other PODs I publish on has over 200 designs - never made a sale in a year and a half. And when I look into others claiming success (I don't have any reason not to believe them) they are making videos saying not to give up until you've got at least 20,000 designs! That might be overkill, but I picked 2 of my stores and those are the kinds of numbers I'm aiming for (for publicly visible products on Zazzle, rather than designs), because it's under my control. As long as the quality of design is still there, more sales predictability should begin to emerge.

Anyway, yeah, Miss Rhoadie is right on that; don't get discouraged - keep designing and publishing! I don't know how many prods you have published and visible, but always worth finding successful ones and adding variations.

One of the reasons I believe Zazzle to be the best POD is because they are decent about contacting Creators and keeping them up-to-date on problem issues, and fixing them without any fuss. I've had an embarrassing number of trademark infringement faux-pas. Zazzle just emails me and says, "Yoink! You can't have them designs. We're deleting them." And they're gone - but I - and my account - survive. 😅

Usually it's just a generic phrase that I couldn't believe anybody would be allowed to trademark, so I never checked. There was one I never found out why, other than thinking it maybe rhymed with a trademark. And a recent one was one where I DID check and it came back clean - but not clean. I got caught out by that one; kinda hidden under something less obvious in the TESS database.

Anyway, the point of all that was I can't believe Zazzle would just freeze your account without even a message. IP stuff is so important (and they immediately send me an email); all I hear about on other PODs is people getting their accounts banned immediately and permanently first time they infringe, accidental or not. (And to be fair, some of those sites are probably a lawyer's dream for litigation; they're built on designs that are totally and obviously not allowed!)

Chapter 37 - Conclusion

Yes this was a long one!

Chin up - keep going - keep designing - keep publishing - do more of what sells and the sales will come. 👍