"optimization" or recipe for failure?

[pichick712]

So I have THOUSANDS of products that ZAZZLE has decided need "optimization". ZAZZLE has made this decision which has resulted in those THOUSANDS of products NOT EVER SELLING because ZAZZLE has decided to make them hidden. HOW IS THIS HELPING ANYONE? THE CREATOR WON'TMAKE ANY MONEY, ZAZZLE WON'T MAKE ANY MONEY EITHER. 

In order to UNDO what ZAZZLE has done, YOU HAVE TO MANUALLY MAKE THE PRODUCT PUBLIC ONE AT A TIME!!!! You can't even do it in BULK. I now have to waste hours and hours UNDOING what ZAZZLE has done and in the mean time NOTHING is getting sold. 

We ALL need to raise our voices to make ZAZZLE stop this process that hurts all of us. It should be up to US, the CREATORS, to decide what products WE want to adjust and what products we want to leave. I cannot believe all the things that ZAZZLE is now doing to make it harder for all of us to sell anything. it's like they WANT to lose creators, business, and their website. THEY ARE SABOTAGING THEMSELVES and hurting us in the process. 

We have all spent thousands of hours creating products that we are proud of. What right does ZAZZLE have to decide they are not good enough to be public? Am I the only one here who is outraged???????? Do YOU like someone else hiding YOUR products? Are YOU OK with this? I am barely making sales at all and to have them do this is OUTRAGEOUS! 

[pichick712]

WHY do u think their actions are making the site better?

BY TAKING YOUR CREATIONS AND HIDING THEM?  

BY TAKING YOUR CREATIONS AND ENSURING THEY NEVER SELL?

It should be UP TO US to decide what products we delete or rework. I mean WE ARE THE CREATORS of the products. If you take no pride in your products or don't care what sells, then fine, be that way. Why are you letting THEM decide what is sellable and what is not? I can't believe all the lemmings who just go along with whatever they want even though it means less sales for you and them. AND HOW DO YOU KNOW WHAT SELLS AND WHAT DOESN'T? Oh wait, u let zazzle decide for you. 

[Krysanthe]

Oh I'm trying really hard not to laugh at this post, but are you aware how ignorant you sound? Not stupid...just ignorant of the rules and TOS that you agreed to for by posting to THIER platform. You are the guest, they are the owners.  They make the rules...you can choose to go else where if you don't like their rules. 

You have been doing this for 10 years and never realized this is how it works?  Hiding products was actually one of the best things they did for this platform, and if you can't see it's virtue, it might be time for you to branch out into your own website. 

[pichick712]

I am just speaking out for MY CREATIONS. U can call me all the names you want but arrogant is not one of them. I believe WE the CREATORS should manage our own products. When zazzle makes our hard worked on creations hidden, NO ONE can buy them and NO ONE makes any money. it does not cost zazzle anything to keep our products public AND it might result in sales. by making them hidden, they GUARANTEE they will not sell. 

[Lais]

The problem is: it does cost for them to keep them public, maybe that's what you're missing. It costs a lot to keep their website running every day, sorting all of the products every day, updating all data, etc. It's not for free.

[pichick712]

how do u know it costs them? do you work for them? how much does it cost them? INQUIRING MINDS WANT TO KNOW. 

[Lais]

I know it because I studied computer science. To keep a website like Zazzle running every day you have to pay for all the thousands of terabytes people will use to update their images every day, you have to pay for software that will do the job of sorting the products and showing them in the marketplace in a specific order to customers when they search. You have to pay for software and hackers that will protect your data and your client's data from people who want to steal it every day (your address, your credit card, important information).

[pichick712]

they DO take a piece of our profits for that purpose. yes? then it is in THEIR best interest too to allow US to manage our products, delete what WE think should be deleted, and keep what we want to keep. The choice should be OURS. Don't u understand how much $$$ u are losing by allowing AI to dictate what the public sees? 

[tnestico]

I think most of us are not losing anything at all as we keep our stores up-to-date by making our products visible and viewing those pages every time they get hidden; if I am not selling is simply because customers prefer other designs... that's all, it's not Zazzle fault.

[pichick712]

but suppose someone is looking for something, YOU HAVE IT, but zazzle has hidden it. NO SALE. They are letting AI determine what people want instead of letting people decide what they want. 

[Lais]

To keep thousands of products that haven't been viewed for a long time showing in the marketplace costs because the software that's running to sort everything will have to deal with a larger amount of data. It takes a lot more time to sort 1,000,000 products than 10,000 products, for example.

[Lais]

Just one more example. Let's say you have a small home business and you want to use Excel to understand your earnings. You have to pay Microsoft to use Excel, it's not for free. Now, maybe you're not an Excel specialist, in this case, you'll have to pay for a course to learn how to use it or you will have to hire someone to use Excel for you. Your customers may have no idea about it. They may think everything is a lot more simple, but it's not. 

[Barbara]

Some years ago, I sold my own (physical) creations in a (physical) store on commission. If any of those creations hadn't sold within a certain number of months, the owner would have me remove them and replace them with whatever I'd created to ward off becoming overstocked with non-sellers. It never dawned on me to think the owner was trying to control my work; rather, it was obvious the owner was being mindful of the store. Did it bother me that my lovingly made items hadn't sold? I wouldn't be human had it not.

Zazzle is essentially no different from that store.

Colorwash's Home

[pichick712]

it should be YOUR decision. 

[Barbara]

No, it would be my decision only if it were my store. I can fully understand your frustration, and I also understand being upset by so many hidden products, but in spite of being affected by it, we can't dictate to Zazzle how to run their business. We can choose to not participate in things that are essentially optional, which I've done periodically, but this just isn't one of them unless we decide to allow things to go hidden and remain that way.

Colorwash's Home

[pichick712]

SMH. I have been with zazzle for over 10 years and if they were like this from day 1 I NEVER would have started with them. I can't believe how everyone else is just OK with them dictating what is in OUR stores and leaving it up to THEM to say what will and will not sell. Guess i should ask them for lottery numbers since they KNOW ALL. 

[TShirtfort]

I just want them to say what we are doing wrong. Example I have a cute funny product with art that took hours to create. It gets hidden. So I try to change up the tags. No idea what's wrong with them. Let's say it's a cat. I put cat, pet, funny, kitty, etc... Stays up a while gets hidden again, so I try longer keywords, cute funny cat, love this cat etc, gets hidden again. I guess it's my fault because I didn't buy every product, get a professional studio to make a cover photo for 100s of products. I can't do that. I don't buy based on a cover photo, just if I like the design, but I have to see the design first! They need to say in English (no obscure acronyms) what we are doing wrong. Why hundreds of variations of the same meh designs are showcased while the cute sellable ones are hidden.

[pichick712]

exactly. there are only so many tag words one can use for a simple item. 

[Polenth]

If you've sold other things with that design, they have the same tags, you've checked everything is right about the placement and/or the templates, and the product has not been discontinued, nothing is wrong. Unhide it, view it, forget about it.

You can also follow the advice I gave to the original poster and make sure to view products that are getting close to the line, as it saves a lot of time over having to unhide them. You don't have to edit anything about the product. Just view it (with adblocker off) and the timer starts again.

[Cat]

Good lord, people! It's a simple algorithm. All it does is hide products that have never sold and haven't been viewed in 15 months or more. It doesn't know why, all it knows is that it hasn't been viewed. It's not a human being looking at it and making some sort of judgement about the quality of your work. 

I mean, I know it's frustrating to have to go unhide things - but if you make a practice of checking every day when you log in, it's really not a big deal. 

Just think for a moment what the marketplace would look like if Zazzle didn't do this. It's pretty easy to imagine the marketplace being clogged with utter garbage that nobody wants to buy, and if that was the case, nobody would EVER see your designs. 

Honestly, if you're going to take every computer algorithm as some sort of a personal affront, life is gonna be pretty darned difficult!

[pichick712]

do YOU want to have to unhide over 16,000 products? I know it's an algorithm but that does not mean it is right or should be utilized. Plus, unhiding all those products would be doable IF i could see the results of my "unhiding"in real time but instead I have to unhide 204 at a time and then wait till the NEXT DAY and unhide 204 more. I am 65! I won't live that long. 

[Cat]

What are you talking about? If you don't want to review them all, just go to the first page, choose "select all" and make them public, then go to the next page and do the same thing. 16000 products is 78 pages. It shouldn't take more than about 15 seconds per page, that's about 20 minutes. If you're REALLY slow it might take an hour. With all the time you've spent complaining about this on the forum, you could have solved the issue by now!

[pichick712]

I go to products in a particular store and go to store management. I click on "needs optimization" and then I choose "select 204" the max I can choose. then I click "choose non-discontinued items" and then I click "make public". of course the # does NOT go down by 204 so I have to wat till the next day to MAYBE see the 16,000 drop. and then I do the same process all over again. not 78 page, at BEST, 78 days?????? If you know how to make public ALL that is hidden in one shot, then please tell me because so far ZAZZLE has not been able to tell me. 

[pichick712]

yes, I agree with you BUT i cannot see my progress in real time, so if I did that and then tomorrow went in and saw that nothing had changed, then I wasted a lot of time for nothing. 

[Barbara]

You may not be able to see the results immediately, but the results will nevertheless occur, which is better than doing nothing with no results. Give it a try.

Colorwash's Home

[Cat]

If you make changes and don't see them reflected the next day, it generally just means that Zazzle is behind on indexing. I believe they've said that with the holiday rush indexing is lagging behind, so it might take 2-3 days for changes to be reflected, but I haven't seen any situations where they just don't stick at all.

[Lais]

You don't have to unhide 204 at a time and wait the next day to unhide more. You can unhide all of 16k on a single day. You will not see the number of unhidden products change immediately, but it doesn't mean it's not being effective - it is, it's just the number that takes a while to update.

[pichick712]

WRONG WRONG WRONG!!!!!!!! Would u like access to my account and maybe YOU can do it because the max I can do is 204 and then I don't see the progress in real time. 

[Lais]

You will not see the progress in real-time, but it does not mean that you'll have to wait to unhide more products. You have to go through the pages. After you do it for page one, scroll down and go to page two, do the same and scroll down and go to page three, and so on. 

See the green arrow in this screen capture, it's showing where you have to click to go to the next page. 

[pichick712]

instead of doing it that way. I just click on "select 204" the max that can be selected and then click "make public". the fact that u cannot see your progress in REAL TIME makes me suspect that it is even happening. So if I spent hours, undoing what zazzle chose to do and then tomorrow I see that the number did not change, I have wasted a whole lot of time. I have 656 PAGES. you have 10 pages. Why should anyone have to do any of this? 

[Lais]

This is how you can do it:

1. Copy this URL https://www.zazzle.com/store/yourstorename/products?ps=204&pg=1&vt=Apo and replace "yourstorename" with the name of your store.
2. Press Enter, you'll be on Page 1.
3. Select to unhide all non-discontinued products.
4. Now, use that URL again with your store name but replace the "pg=1" with "pg=2", and press Enter, this will send you to page 2.
5. Repeat the process.

[pichick712]

I have 656 pages. I can simply click "next page" at the bottom of the page, yes? and what guarantee do I have that the process worked? I can't see the progress in real time. 

[Lais]

When you select the Product Visibility as "hidden", it will show you only the products that are hidden, with 204 being shown per page you won't have 656 pages, instead, you'll have about 79 pages (79x204 = 16,116).

I'd do it for you if I could but I believe it's against Zazzle's TOS. 

You don't seem to want a solution for your problem, at this point it feels like you just want to complain about it...

[pichick712]

204 is the max amount of products I can make public at a time. I filtered to those that need optimization and then chose 204 and indicated that I wanted them to be public. the number of products that should now be public should have gone down by 204 BUT it does not and no matter how many times I do the same exercise, the number never goes down so I am never sure if it worked. the number should reduce by 204 but it does not. I cannot see any changed except when U go in THE NEXT DAY and do the same steps all over again. 

[Lais]

That number doesn't matter, trust me, I am a applied mathematics bachelor, I know what I'm talking about. You will not be wasting your time. 

[tnestico]

So well said... getting mad at an algorithm... my God! Honestly, I would hate to see Zazzle full with ugly old products, I love when I look at it and it's up to date with what people, me, us, like to look at... I don't want to see old ugly designs or something... Zazzle is a modern platform with beautiful art and designs that I would buy every day. And I hope they stay that way.

[pichick712]

beauty is in the eye of the beholder. PLEASE look at my stores and YOU TELL ME what products YOU think are ugly and i will delete them because you obviously know what other people want. PLEASE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I DARE YOU! and of course I will look at YOUR store and tell you what I think is ugly and you will delete what I think is ugly. here is the link to my stores. I DARE YOU TO DO THE SAME https://www.zazzle.com/mbr/238128302605251981/stores

[waterart]

I don't like some of the changes zazzle has been making which I feel are affecting my sales negatively so I now mostly add new designs on other POD's. Maybe you should do the same

[tnestico]

I was talking in general not about your products... as you said: beauty is in the eye of the beholder!

[pichick712]

Artificial intelligence is dictating to you what will and will not sell. sounds a  bit unhealthy if u ask me. what's next? 

[igiftcenter]

I can understand not liking that so many designs were hidden.  Yes let your feelings be known but using caps all over the place tells viewers you are yelling / screaming..... instead of communicating in yelling and screaming please try to make your post easy to read out of respect for your fellow designers.... it really does makes your post difficult to read and takes away some of the power of your message, IMO.

I have had thousands of designs hidden over time. I take a completely different view of this action. Why are they hidden? Trust me.... they didn't do it just to aggravate you or make you work harder. If the product is not selling and has not sold in a period of 15 months are those designs really helping you?   I can tell you from my experience that you are likely better spending your time promoting the designs that are selling and building on the success of those designs by putting that design on other products that might also be appealing to buyers.

Please don't take my post the wrong way. I'm not here telling you what to do, I'm just trying see if you can put your energy to productive use. Most of the time when I see posts with tons of caps lettering... I ignore them. But I wanted you to know there's a better way to communicate to your fellow designers and I am truly sorry your designs ended up hidden.

I wish you continued success