I need HELP

[Sunshine]

Could someone take a look at my store, and tell me, what looks wrong? or what is wrong!?! and could you tell me what I need to do to make money. I've been with zazzle since 2020 and I've never made any money. I NEED HELP

[TAngelone · Accepted solution]

Sunshine You may want to paste a link to your Zazzle store. There are many on this forum who are very experienced with Zazzle and how to profit from selling on Zazzle. There are many very friendly and helpful people on this forum who can and will steer you in the right direction. Please don't lose hope. I myself am NOT qualified to give your store a critique but there are others here on the Zazzle forum who are and will happily give you some suggestions so you can get your questions answered such as what is and is NOT working for your store. Hope this will give you some hope. 

[Sunshine]

Thanks everyone! 🙏🏽

[TAngelone]

Hey is there anyone on the forum who can offer Sunshine some help? Looks like she has a little longevity here on Zazzle but is NOT making any profits. I suggested she post a link to her shop. 

POSSIBLE REASONS FOR WHAT IS NOT WORKING: 

• DESIGNS and DESIGN QUALITY 

• NO CUSTOMIZATION ON THE DESIGNS 
• TOO FEW DESIGNS 
• STORE ORGANISATION (NO CATEGORIES, COLLECTIONS)

• FEW OR NO TAGS AND DESCRIPTIONS FOR PRODUCTS and PRODUCT COLLECTIONS
• NOT ADVERTISING ON SOCIAL MEDIA or anywhere outside of the Zazzle Marketplace 
  These are just a few reasons why Sunshine's store may NOT be making her any profits. Would anyone else care to offer Sunshine some suggestions?
  Thanks. 

[KeegansCreation]

I went to your store. You have what I will call "T" problems: titles, tags and templates.

• Titles- most of your titles are just the name of the product. For example, there is a baby bib that is black with a white letter just called "Baby Bib". It could be called "Black and White Monogrammed Baby Bib" (you don't have to add "baby bib", Zazzle does that automatically). Every product should have a title that is a little bit descriptive. You can change titles by going into the Edit Details section of a product.
• Templates- the baby bib again (and anything where the customer should be able to change something), when you add text or photos the customer needs to change, you need to go to the right side of the design tool when the text or photo is selected and scroll down to "Make this a template". I noticed you made a memorial photo mug for a dog. That photo needs to be set to template and set the option to Fill. Unfortunately you can't change this via Edit Details. You have to remake the product. Go onto the product page of the product and Edit to change text or photo to template. This creates a new product so you will see the sell button. Publish this new product and delete the old one.
• Tags- you get 10 tags per product and should use all of them. Don't use the name of the product as a tag because Zazzle auto adds that. Also don't use "gift" or "personalize" because the search algorithm doesn't recognize those. Your baby bib is tagged "letter" but it could also be tagged "monogram","simple" and "minimalist. That dog photo mug could be tagged "dog", "pet memorial" and "photo". These can be edited the same as titles.

Also you don't have very many products but I recommend applying these fixes before you make more. And promote on social media. Hope this helps.

[TAngelone]

KeeganCreations as always you give such detailed and thorough responses to questions posed on this forum. Thank you. Your response was very insightful and will be very beneficial to anyone who is in the process of building a Zazzle store. I too am in the process of building a Zazzle store and being armed with the information you just provided in your critique is needed and appreciated. 

[CreativeLeahG]

I saw less than 30 products?

As a priority you need to equip yourself with some basic design skills, compare your products to others in the same niche, do you feel they're competitive and would win over a customer based on the design?

When you have some basic design skills, find a niche, something new that you are passionate about.

Add text templates for a customer to add a name/ greeting.

And as others have said, tags, descriptions are all important to help your product be found.

Then you self-market across social media, blogs, websites.

Your media images need to be product images rather than 'selfies' as gorgeous as they are 🙂

[TAngelone]

CreativeDesign Thank you for your response as well. I am so glad to have Zazzle contributors and creators like you who are willing to take time to offer support and guidance to those like Sunshine who feel deflated and discouraged. Your critique was also very insightful and will benefit others who visit and read this thread. Thank you. 

[TAngelone]

Hey Everyone. I too need some help please.  

Store Categories and Category Trees 

I am so confused. How many subcategories should one have under the main categories within their store. 

How any clicks should it take for customers to get to the products they are looking for? 

Meaning. 

MAIN CATEGORY: CLOTHING - how many VISIBLE SUBCATEGORIES should we create to help customers find what they are looking for with in our shops?

I have posted questions about this topic several times. 

Are there Store Category best practices? 

Thanks in advance to all who can give me some guidance.

Some category tree examples would be helpful. 

[KeegansCreation]

You probably haven't gotten answers because most stores only have one subcategory level down, if they have any at all. I don't have any subcategories. When I looked at front page top sellers, I didn't see any that had more than one subcategory level in my random sample. For example, one top seller had a category of Recipients and subcategories of types of recipients but it didn't go any deeper than that.

The best way to get examples is just to go to the MP and look at the stores of front page sellers. I think they tend to have either no or only one subcategory because customers in your store can also navigate by Zazzle's category tree so replicating that with categories of your own isn't necessary. 

[chefcateringbiz]

Not a lot of people are going to go into your store and float around. I've been here since 2009 and still don't get a lot of store traffic and I absolutely despise social marketing, so if you don't have an audience yourself or know how to get one, you have to rely on the Zazzle search at the moment. So what you're looking at are people doing Zazzle searches, and maybe one of your products might show up on page 33 or 103 even with good tags and titles. However, when they get to the search pages, what they might get is a picture of you instead of the product they're looking for. This isn't going to attract anyone or make anyone curious, even if you end up on one of the first 10 pages. People came to find what they're looking for, not to join a fan club. The other thing is - and I understand you're learning here - I have no idea what your store is trying to be. What is your design concept there? Who is your audience? I would give this some concentrated thought. The more you can focus your designs and the people you want to attract, the better chance you have of being able to simplify your marketing strategy. "Everyone" and "Everything" is not a good strategy; nor is "people who like cool stuff"; my basic tenet is to be able to describe my store and describe my audience pretty accurately. Next, the few designs you have after 2-3 years isn't going to be considered an "active" account by Zazzle. You have to be more prolific and get new designs in regularly so it looks like you're making an effort. Lastly, the text you have in your header about being new and learning and please leave me some hints what you want and how to make more money - remove that. You're a designer now, not later. Fake the confidence until you make it.

[angelafuller729]

Hi Sunshine

I took a brief look at your store and saw several areas that need improvement - here's just a few thoughts that will hopefully help you to become a successful creator on Zazzle:

1.  If you add a cover photo to your listing - it needs to be of the product, not you.

2.  Your items need SPECIFIC titles/tags/descriptions related to a design.  None of your designs had those.  An excellent resource for that can be found here:  https://help.zazzle.com/hc/en-us/articles/115000373127-Title-Description-Tagging-Best-Practices

3.  You need HUNDREDS of products in your store in at least 6-10 categories (my opinion only)

4.  Create well curated collections from your products (there's a help guide for that too)  https://help.zazzle.com/hc/en-us/articles/227835067-Curate-and-Share-Your-Favorites-with-Zazzle-Coll...

5.  PROMOTE!  Instagram, Pinterest, etc.

6.  Be INTENTIONAL.  In other words, create a design first, them sketch out a brief idea of general descriptive text and research some keywords.  Make a list of items to add your design to... and go!  You'll find that once you get a routine going, it will go much faster.

Good luck 😊