"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]

I have spent YEARS trying to get zazzle to stop this and yes, I am yelling at times because it boggles my mind that so many people are ok with zazzle doing whatever they want with CREATORS stores. We the CREATORS spend time, effort, and money creating OUR stores and then zazzle decides what can and cannot be available for sale. I am not taking your post in any way other than how u r posting it. My frustrations is boiling over and YES, there are times I am yelling. it just amazes me that not enough other people are doing the same. Just a bunch of lemmings. 

[Barbara]

I seriously doubt that those who disagree with you are following the mythical Pied Piper.

Colorwash's Home

[pichick712]

i call it as i see it. u r allowing someone else to dictate what you have in your stores, what does and does not sell so why do u even bother? 

[ulla_hennig]

I very seriously ask you not to call me and others who are not following your thoughts "a bunch of lemmings". This is a way of putting things which I do not like to read and see here at this forum. 

[pichick712]

i call it as i see it. sorry if it offends u but that is how I see it. 

[Polenth]

If you want to be told how it is bluntly, okay then. You're being nasty to everyone who tries to help you, refusing to listen to anything that might help, show an inability to learn or adapt, and can't focus on anything other than how wrong everyone is (and how right you are always, because you can't be wrong). I sympathise about money. I really do. But this is not the way to solve it. You've got to listen, learn and not treat your fellow artists like dirt.

As an aside, lemmings don't follow each other off cliffs. That's a myth. If you didn't know that, consider that there's other stuff you don't know.

[pichick712]

my self worth is not based on how much u want to insult me. I know that I have worked my butt off for over 10 years on this site and everytime I turn around they make it harder and more more labor intensive. IF you want to drink the zazzle kool-aid then fine, BE MY GUEST but there are others who agree with me and IF every zazzle creator was polled, I bet there would be a lot more. Obviously u have the time to UNDO what they are doing with YOUR stores and fine but I feel this is and has been a BAD MOVE on their part and the ONLY way it will change is  by everyone who finds this hurts our stores to open their mouths and make them stop. MAYBE zazzle should give us the CHOICE???? AND u clearly have not read all the posts where people other than you have been rude to me. IT DOES NOT BOTHER ME. I have and will always be someone who speak out when I feel something is wrong or unfair to not only me but others. Put your head back in the sand, spend your time UNDOING what they have done and life your happy little life. I DO NOT CARE ABOUT YOU or what u think of me. 

[Msavad]

yeah its sort of like, you own a nice boutique, everything is arranged on the stores perfectly, color coordinated its great. then out of nowhere and for no reason because it was selling fine, management wants you to change the colors of the bottles. and then change all the labels. then hides all the wares so no one can find it.   it doesn't make sense. 

buyers want content. calling something fresh because we simply changed a few words to please the optimizer god, doesn't make it fresh.  i'm willing to bet disney etc doesn't have to deal with any of this.  i'm guessing the ones that enjoy this are the same type that like cleaning their house over and over because it gives them something to do and the satisfaction of getting something completed.  but i don't have the time for that. once its neat it just stays that way more or less, and i shouldn't have to clean it all again just because a roommate messed it all up again. it becomes annoying fast to have to do it again. 

the other day my hand went numb fixing everything. all my ties are hidden again. all the shirts, all the things i've sold all the time in the past are hidden. nothing i make has a time limit. its not based on elections etc, which i can understand should be hidden after a while.  and even having to figure out what i want hidden and activated to maintain the 100k balance is like choosing what kid is my favorite. and the answer is: it depends on the circumstance each has their own quality.  

when you sell you don't know what will be the topic that sells that day. i lose sales every day because they chose to display nothing in my store. or random items. so i am angry about this. and i know for a fact that if there was a survey everyone would want it to not expire, because redoing something i did right in the first place isn't how you run a business. making it hard to upload doesn't help give you fresh items. none of it makes sense. 

[pichick712]

THANK YOU. I am being attacked every single day simply for saying it should be UP TO US to tweak OUR stores instead of spending time UNDOING what zazzle's computers are doing. No one will work harder for OUR stores than the CREATORS of those stores but people are happy to drink the zazzle kool-aid and just spend time undoing what zazzle is doing THINKING it may make a difference. 

[Msavad]

and there is a difference between tweaking something and flat out replacing all the floors, repainting it adding new furniture every day like they want us to do. i get dusting off the shelves and moving things around now and then. but the redoing everything? no.  if i knew what i know now back then, i never would have created 400 items at a time as they rolled out new weird products. i would have kept it simple. but you never know what might sell.  i guess the people who like it are either very new to selling or have a very small store. and the ones that see the issues are the ones that's been here for a long time and have a lot of stuff. i stopped uploading when they stopped the quick create, that was the only reason i joined this place. that and how another POD stabbed us all in the back for doing almost the same thing.  i just don't get this policy at all.

[pichick712]

zazzle thinks they know what is going to sell. that's why they have DISCONTINUED hundreds of products and brought in things like TAPE MEASURE? who the heck is going to buy that? I deleted thousands of products that were discontinued. products that were much better than tape measure but then again, there are people who would tell me I am wrong. the number of GOOD sellable products is decreasing  and the number of stupid products is growing. 

[Msavad]

see i didn't even know they had a tape measure. guitar picks, cases i think, ping pong balls. i never understood the random items. never sold them. cookies that look like hockey pucks, cakes etc. no i don't get those. but i tried to sell them for a while.  but i don't get why they hide my ties but keep the other random things.  

[pichick712]

they have ridiculous stuff now that I will never work with. Unless u r doing weddings stuff, it's VERY difficult to sell anything anymore. 

[Barbara]

An algorithm is simply a set of instructions, in this case it's if-this-then-do-that. It may be related, but it's a far cry from AI. If they started kicking people off the platform who painted only cats because the company didn't like the destroyers of Christmas trees, a whole lot of us would be outraged. But trying to clean the litter pan? It's a good idea. Annoying, but good.

I suspect your shouting is falling on deaf ears

Colorwash's Home

[waterart]

 I thought products that sold would not get hidden even if the product got only one sale.

[igiftcenter]

The bottom line is: it's their website / platform and they can run it in any way they see fit.   We all now know how you feel about this.  I'm sure I speak for many of us here when I say I'm sorry this upsets you to such a degree.... it may be time to move on to doing something more productive than simply expressing yourself here over and over again?

Suggestion: Tell you what I started doing with my hidden products. I take just a few minutes a day to go through them and see why some of them may not have sold for 15 months? Maybe you can tweak them and make them more sellable? Maybe the price was too high on some of them? Maybe they were just not appealing enough and it's time to simply delete them or leave them hidden.  That... is something productive you can do. I wish you continued success.

[Msavad]

ALL of my images are sellable. tweaking the title or description won't make something more sellable, only the image can. but the fact that i have 300-400 products per image and i can only see 204 at a time, meaning that i can easily accidentally change the wrong ones because i either have to manually check off all the boxes or uncheck all the boxes to change things. that i've already butchered a number of products accidentally because i had to change titles for some of them.

the reason they aren't being seen is because they keep hiding them. that is the only reason.  because many of them have views. even right after unhiding them,  it gained views. not every product will sell within the first 15 months, some can take years but it has to be an active link to sell. and its not when its hidden away. every single product could be a huge seller if it was just seen. but most of my stuff was hidden WELL before the 15 month mark. sometimes its just a week or a few days. happens to others i know too. its just gone for no reason. 

i've been selling here for 12 years, i'm well past silver seller, i know how to sell, i know what makes good artwork sell. and having an incomplete store where i'm constantly putting things back on the shelf because my business partner thinks its fun to shake the cabinet to see it all fall to the floor, isn't fun. and isn't a way to run a business. to run a business, you make it easy to upload, easy to adjust, and not have people do back work tidying things up.  i spent A TON of time adjusting things, creating templates, layers getting things to look just right, adding the right words, descriptions etc, creating buttons, sorting things out, making it so a buyer could find my work and more importantly, find matching work. so if they wanted to get a print, and a mug, and a scarf, they could find all that in my store, where as everyone else had a few pieces in each image making it hard to buy from them...i'm now one of those stores and not by choice. and nothing i can do now will help things later. i would have to hire a team of a 100 people to adjust things - constantly because there will always be something the site doesn't like now. which means i have no time working on stores that really do make money and isn't so fussy. 

----Mike Savad

[pichick712]

tell them to stop this "optimization" that does NO ONE any good. There is no reason anyone should spend any time UNDOING their mess. 

[Msavad]

i've tried over the years, did so just today. its really annoying. and i'm super shocked this place is still in business. i've stopped uploading because they got rid of quick create. they even sent a survey asking - 

why did i stop uploading

and would i recommend this place to anyone.. 

they got a really long answer for both. everything they do makes it harder to sell. i made real money and now nothing. its like having your store set up, looks great. and your partner sets the building on fire.  and you have to start over again. and there is no reasoning behind the fire other than fire rebuilds life or something . 

i would love to contribute to the site, but even if i did things one at a time, knowing that my designs could be hidden in days after i make it - i couldn't waste my time like that.   and the pattern makes no sense. if i sell a lot of wrapped canvas prints, business cards etc - shouldn't the entire line be saved? it makes no sense how things are removed. changing the spelling on a word doesn't make it sell better.

[ColsCreations]

I think you are mixing up two different policies here.

1) If a product hasn't been edited or viewed in 15 months, it will be hidden. Products that have sold will not be hidden.

2) Accounts are limited to 100,000 products. When you go over that they start hiding your least popular unsold products to keep you under that limit.

If as you say you have 400,000 products, well, you're stuck in a loop of every time you publish something new or unhide something, something else has to then fall off to maintain the limit. With a 100k limit that means 75% of your 400k products need to be hidden. With those kinds of numbers, I would guess that it is possible that products that have sold might need to be hidden, too.

Maybe back in the day one could use QC to put out the same image on 300-400 products and meet success because there was far less competition then and as you described, things were easier. That was before my time but I can understand your frustration with all the changes that have made it harder to maintain the level of sales you were used to. But things have changed, not just on the Zazzle platform but with the rise of POD in general and now AI. Competition is steep on all fronts, not just within the Zazzle marketplace. So one either has to adapt to the changes, or sit tight and ruminate about how things used to be while sales slide.

I don't know when the 100K per account was implemented but it's a rule now so you'll have to accept that you need to be more selective about what you publish, that you can't do 300-400 products per image anymore. IMO, the Transfer this Design feature is one of the best things implemented since I've been on Zazzle. It can make wonky results sometimes but it also has on a couple occasions led to sales for me that had me in awe. Like, seriously this person transferred a design from a coaster to a cake pop???? If we embrace the Transfer feature, there's not a lot of reason to need to publish the same imagery on hundreds of different products.

Also, I can't help but note that while it's being exclaimed over & over that "what right does Zazzle have to decide what people may or may not like?!?! - let people decide for themselves ..." it's also being said by same people that poker chips and tape measures for example are STUPID and shouldn't be there clogging up the marketplace ...
You'all see the irony there right?

https://help.zazzle.com/hc/en-us/articles/223160488-Marketplace-Optimization

[Msavad]

for me its never been 15 months. its been more like a week or two.  

it never went to a 100,000.  it should have but it just kept hiding things till it was more like 5000 or less.  the rules they set, they never followed. and just because it wasn't seen now doesn't mean it won't sell later.

i stopped uploading long ago. it still hides things. its also not fair to penalize accounts that have more than a 100k, when they actually created a ton of products.  if i knew what i know now i wouldn't have posted the really weird things. but there were no rules then.  

and you basically said a paradox - sold stuff shouldn't be hidden but the limit messes that up. and what makes it worse is - they don't remove the discontinued items. they say they can't. yet they can add those words. yet can't remove them? it took me days to find them. and i still can't find them all. like i still have stamps, but there is no way to isolate them. 

there is no way to adapt to this. i would have to be the AI myself to make the changes they want. its impossible the way they set it. like i would have no other life other than this place - and no other site does this. none. 

once they removed the QC - i stopped posting. and have so for a year. there is little point posting anything one at a time. just to have them remove them all later. i feel sorry for the brides that found the perfect item only to have it snatched away because the links were removed.  only one single person to date has used the transfer to thing method. most buyers don't know how to do it,  don't have the time to do it, and i don't really want it, because i don't always want my stuff on the things they would choose. but i don't have that issue, people can't find my work because 98% is hidden. but you have to have your images on everything because the people looking for cake pops, won't find your image with the others. they may find it under those hockey puck cakes. and never find yours, you lose the sale. and its doubtful you'll be transferred over because i don't think most know how to do it. i'm not even sure how to do it. 

[Msavad]

and just to put it in a realistic perspective - by the time i finish adjusting the ones that are hidden, the first things would need to be adjusted again. 

[pichick712]

it will never end until they stop this! 

[ulla_hennig]

I think this discussion has a lot to do with expectations. In earlier years it was easier to sell on print on demand platforms, including Zazzle. Easier to sell with less work we creators had to do. Now things have changed. I must admit that everytime I see a YouTuber telling me how easy it is to earn money with Zazzle I get the creepies. No, it is not. You not only have to create, you have to create for certain products, you have to make it easy for customers to personalize the product, which means, in my humble opinion, that QC is out. It is not the number of products in your shop now which counts, it is whether they attract customers or not. 
And you have to spend a lot of time promoting your products via pinterest or Twitter. Which could mean that you spend a lot of time working without getting sales. Instead of unhiding all the hidden products I focus on the ones I think are good, create mockups for them and promote them.