Sales down ?

[Peter222]

My sales have not been on par with what is the norm. They were down over Xmas for sure. Is anyone else seeing this ?

TY much Peter 222

[sanainvi]

I literally don't know what to do know . I have got a few sales at the very start of this month and then it suddenly stopped at all . I just don't know if i should continue posting new products or not . I have started think about switching to other plateforms (hoping it would help me) . I am a student and i don't have that much time to create products , then post , then do little bit of marketing , and then optimizing the products . It's just super tiring for me 

[Silvara]

No sales lately, but for some reason I had a BUNCH of favorites pop up on various listings yesterday and today. I'm hoping it's like a bookmark for the people to come back to and purchase. I've gotten a few favorites on occasion, but usually it's like 1-2 things a day.

[mrdoodle]

This was originally in reply to @sanainvi but I think applies to all who are feeling the pain of the current Zazzle flu.

Zazzle is experiencing the POD flu. Other PODs have been going through it these past 2-3 years.
@sanainvi First, you have an eye for design. You might have entered the POD world at the "not the best" time. Don't give up though.

To everyone else... here's my 2 cents.

1. Continue to post, but if you need to, scale down so you don't burn out. I used to post 30 designs per week to 7 PODs. Got burned out. Decided to scale back to 10 designs. Once I had catalog on all 7 PODs, I now post 5 designs per week. I used to juggle a full time business with my POD life, but since retiring, POD is my full time thing. If you need to, scale back to keep in tune with your life/school/whatever.

2. YES to posting to other platforms. I learnt early on that if you depend on only one POD, you are putting all your eggs in one basket and WILL pay the price. Zazzle's downturn IS affecting me right now (I still feel the pinch), but not as much because I have 6 other PODs that are still going steady. Wasn't always like that though. Took a LOT OF HARD WORK to post to other PODs one by one - each POD taking up to 3-5 months of late nights and hard work to get my catalog up to date. Amazon took me a whole year to get up to date.

3. Don't switch platforms. ADD to your portfolio. Multiple streams of income (even if they bring in $10 - $100) per POD adds up. Once you do the hard work and get  your catalog on multiple platforms, it then takes consistency to keep them up to date. Again biggest mistake in POD is to depend on one platform.

4. Streamline your workflow. Don't jump from one thing to another without having a plan or schedule. Even if it's a loose schedule, HAVE one and stick to it. Even if it's just 1 or 2 designs per week, stick to a schedule. Whether it's half an hour or one hour or 2 hours a day, commit to that schedule. PODs looooooove consistency. Slowly add or modify to your workflow as and when necessary. Nothing kills your progress more than haphazard rules aka "I'll do it if I feel like it". POD takes WORK - consistent work.

5. Have designs in the pipeline. That requires having some sort of plan or structure in your process. This  means that you only need to worry about the nitty gritty of work (uploading, keywords, description etc - the boring i hate to do stuff). I always have at least 2 months worth of ready-to-go-live designs uploaded to the PODs. This way, I can take a break or do research or go chase POD rabbits down a rabbit hole if I need to and not have it affect my POD schedule. Your mileage may vary - do what's comfortable to you.

6. Explore POD rabbit holes. Don't stay stuck in one mode, one design style, one niche. There are all sorts of rabbits - big ones, small ones, fat ones, scrawny ones, spotty ones, serious ones, weird ones.

7. Discipline, discipline, discipline. Consistency is the key. When Redbubble and TeePublic went through their "flu" the last 2 years, I was affected for a few months, just like I'm affected now. However, at that time, Zazzle was the one that was bringing in the bucks. But I pushed on. After things got steady again, my earnings steadied and even grew.

8. Look on the bright side. What's happening to Zazzle now may be a blessing in disguise. Why? Because the design thieves and "I'm in this to the quick money" rats are the first ones to jump off the boat and look elsewhere to steal and flood the market with crap. What happened to RB and TP the past 2 years cleaned up the marketplace real good. So what's happening to Zazzle right now is a good thing. A cleansing. I choose to believe it will make us stronger, if we let it. I believe Zazzle is working things out.

I just realized once again I have been rambled on for too long. Old folks are like that. Please forgive me. I hope at least one person is encouraged.

[MOM]

@mrdoodle You encouraged me - thank you!!

[CreativeLeahG]

Excellent and very sound advice! Thank you for taking the time to share.

[MissPaperFarm]

Extremely encouraging! Thank you @mrdoodle 🙏

[SkullPilot]

Thanks for this post! Like others, I also found it encouraging. And although I'm fairly bad at consistency, that is despite knowing how important it is. My loose method is: list tasks, group tasks, prioritize tasks, timetable tasks, get started. And usually I try to batch things these days, although sometimes a design, or a blogpost can take a whole day to write - so batches of 'one'.

In case it's helpful for others, here's my loose task list with assigned priorities and 'whys':

• Own website product design, creation, publishing (High Priority)
• Blog articles (Traffic gen - High)
• News Blog articles (Internal linking, Zazzle links, affiliate links, offers - High)
• Pinterest Pin Loading (Not useful for traffic gen - Low)
• Facebook Posts (Testing - Low/Medium)
• Book Writing, Editing, Publishing (High)
• Substack Blog articles (for affiliate marketers rather than product buyers - Low/Medium)
• Zazzle Products (optimize sold items, provision of print option of Own Site digital downloads - Medium/High)
• Own Site Product linking (to corresponding Zazzle print products - Medium/High)

Basically boils down to which tasks are going to make money (ie having products!) and how is anybody finding the products (traffic gen). Age-old advice, really. Have a product and send people to the sales page!

[Bepina]

Thanks a lot for the list, it's really helpful

Zhirafa store

[sanainvi]

I literally needed motivation at this point .. thankyou soo much for encouraging me @mrdoodle 

[GraphicAllusion]

Wonderful post! Thanks so much. I experienced burn-out back in June, so haven't done much since, but am feeling a bit more refreshed these days so am ready to start creating and uploading again. Fortunately for me though, (and to my great surprise) my sales have still been consistent even without creating anything new. Not bringing in a fortune (and never have really, lol) but still enough to be of use to me and to motivate me. Thanks again for your great advice. 👏

[Joco]

One thing I noticed today that is very troubling to me is that I see that I have many views and clicks on my Pinterest pins. The clicks leading to my other two other POD sites all add up as it should, but when I look at my product views and the dates last viewed on Zazzle it is completely different. Example:  On Pinterest a certain Zazzle product might show 8 views from last week and yet, my Zazzle product page ( same product) not only shows 0 views but no views since July. 

[Wesha]

I too having the same problem, since last week am noticing a considerable decline in 'last viewed' ( excluding my own views )... its quite unusual for me

[KayCordingly]

I have had no sales since the 10th. Not even 3rd party sales, which I typically get every day. In fact I usually get multiple sales every day. Did something happen on the 11th that I'm unaware of? Is there a bug in the sales report? Or is it just some really strange dry spell?

[GabiwArt]

Same here. My sales have been improving for a while, but I haven't had a single one since 9/11. And I'm wondering if there's something wrong.

[Boki]

Unfortunately, there are no sales for days... 😞

[ColsCreations]

I only had three sales in August, each occurring in the last few days of the month, but they were a surprise - a mens tie, poker chips, and a random post card. Now in mid September, I've had three sales - tissue paper, address labels (two orders by same customer personalized differently) and a phone case which is not something I normally design on so that was a fun sale to see. So cool, this is the old normal for me, no flood of sales I can retire on LOL, but some regularness of random sales.

[Barbara]

My sales started to pick up at the tail end of August, and now I'm selling every few days. Nothing huge nor extra special, but making any sale feels a whole lot better than what I was having.

Colorwash's Home

[Wesha]

Hello everyone, how is September so far ? It started with hopes and small sales, but for me it got stuck again after 20th ....

The only notifications i got recently and rushed to check out hoping of sales were by Zazzle creators guides 😋

[chuamishael]

don't worry, we have a forecast, sales will come back at around mid of October, besides, the Fed has already cut interest rates, this will have significant impact on the market, but we have to wait just a little bit more. 

Our Estimate is Mid October, we will have our sales back

[Wesha]

@chuamishael we all are hoping for it 🙂

[MissPaperFarm]

I've only had sales of my calendars which I sold to my own mother 😂 But, it proved that the Zazzle website still "works" haha nothing is broken. I also recently discovered a possible solution to the Facebook share links that don't bring up images with the link. If you take the share link and put it into a link shorter, then take the shortened link and post it on Facebook, it works! It brings up the images and it appeared to retain the affiliate ID as well. If anyone else tries this, let me know if it works for you. 

[MadjackGG]

My Zazzle sales have collapsed; I've gone from a sale every day to maybe one every two to three days, sometimes longer. People are saying it's the economy, but this feels like something's happened at Zazzle's end.

[Wesha]

When Zazzle used to give more ads I used to get more sales (3rd party) also in Google Analytics I used to found more traffic from paid sources. But since Zazzle reduced their ads may be from May - June my sales have declined so much ... 2 months gone by with no payment 😞

[Laura-LiseWong]

Zazzle's revenue for July 2024 was approximately $28.3 million, with a slight decline over the past three months. While this data indicates a robust revenue stream, it doesn't provide specific information about profit projections for 2024. However, given its leading position in revenue among customizable product marketplaces, Zazzle appears to be maintaining strong performance compared to competitors​.  zazzle.com ecommerce revenue, sales and traffic | Grips (gripsintelligence.com)

[Boki]

When sales stand for days, it's one thing, but even when something is sold and a small change is collected, I think it's worse when they give up... Regrettably.

[Wesha]

Whine fairy .... please come back .... after 20th Sept am not having any sale ...it feels scary at times 

[Wesha]

I know this is purely a co-incidence ( this is the third time) but little incidences like this really helps to get back the lost hopes!

I finally had a sale ! Sold 2 packs of business cards after 20 days ... the longest dry phase in these days and I was feeling so hopeless and awful...

Thank you Whine fairy from the bottom of my heart ... may be she does not exists, but it feels comforting to know when we come to cry at forum, some one or something unknown listens to it and helps with some luck from time to time ! ❤️

[JocelynMB]

Have not had a sale for 1 1/2 months now, that is unheard of for me on Zazzle the last 8-10 yrs 😞

[BPBPRACQUEL53E]

RIGHT, I HAD BEEN HERE FOR 5 MONTHS . NO SALES ZERO😓

[JocelynMB]

Still no sales and very little linkover traffic

[jackynet]

I've managed to make a few sales here and there, but this is the time of year when holiday sales start to pick up, or are supposed to historically speaking.  The problems actually started with last year's holiday season.  A real shock, as I've been a Zazzle shop owner for quite a few years and have never seen anything like this.  I really don't think it's the economy though natural disasters, like Hurricane Helene can make some difference.  Was there an algorithym change?  I've never missed a monthly payment for years, until late last year and continuing through this year.  If it was a change with Zazzle, I wish they'd put it back the way it was.  Zazzle's success depends on its sales and it seems like a number of shop owners have been having the same problem as myself.  I am sure political stuff is selling well but what about everything else?  I liked contributing to Zazzle's success but it seems there's a problem here.  Explanation maybe?

[Barbara]

@jackynet  I just now took a moment to look at the holiday season last year, which I figured would be reflected in payment history for November through January, given the two-month lag, thus September through November. You're right, that's when my slowdown began and has only gotten worse.

I can't imagine Zazzle would shoot itself in the foot, so my vote still goes to the economy. Given that most of my sales have always been in the more Western part of the U.S., it sure couldn't be hurricanes for me. One thing I've definitely noticed is that my foreign sales have all but dropped off the map.

Colorwash's Home

[whimsywhim]

It's definitely the economy.  Huge spending bills skyrocketed inflation, and other economy destructive policies have nailed home buying, discretionary spending, etc.  A ton of people live off of credit cards.  That's the short list.

[kashmier]

Sale ..... What's that ?  I have not had anything much more than pink for the last couple of days. It is scaring me to see. Seems like all the Print sites have new set ups and it is like starting from scratch. Seems to be getting harder to do instead of easier. I guess if you are starting out it is easy. I also stopped getting messages because they want a cell phone number and I don't have text so I can not update that to be able to help customers. I had quite a few requests when it first started and there was no need for number. If anyone knows how to get the message area to work with email address or phone line please let me know.    Thanks 

[JocelynMB]

The message system on Zazzle is not an internal inbox anymore? We need to accept text messages to our mobile phone? No way. I guess that's why I had that pop up for months asking me to add my ph#? I ignored it and even questioned if it was legit. Hmmmm, wonder if That's why I have no sales anymore.

[ColsCreations]

NO.

To continue using the chat/instant messaging system on Zazzle, they are asking for a mobile number you can receive texts on so they can text a ONE TIME code to you, that you then enter on Zazzle to verify it's you. After that step is completed, you can continue using the chat as normal on Zazzle, it has nothing to do with your phone or text messages. It's a one-time numeric code sent by text, used to verify you somehow as a legit user. After that, it never comes into play. If you don't have a mobile phone that can accept that texted code, it seems from reading these forums that you can reach out to tech support for help getting verified for chat without it.

@JocelynMB 

[JocelynMB]

Ohhhh. It never was clear in the pop up asking for it when I logged in to Zazzle. Thank you.

[kashmier]

Joyce I sent a message through the help link on the site. I nearly fell over when I got a reply saying they connected my message area on their end. I just told them I have no way to verify it and they were able to verify it there. I did miss a few messages but at least it is working now.  This is the message I got. 

Thank you for contacting Zazzle Customer Care!

I am very sorry that you had trouble verifying your account. We have now verified it for you so the issue should be fixed. Please don't hesitate to contact me again if you have any other questions or concerns!

Kind regards

---

Let us know how we did

 
Grace 
Customer Care
Zazzle Inc.

 

[JocelynMB]

I can't recall if I did finally enter my cell phone# in but I no longer am getting that pop up request.

[MissPaperFarm]

It's second week of October 2024, and I have made 2 sales this month! I was pleasantly surprised. I hope this is the beginning of the end of this mysterious dry spell. Both came from third party so that means they came through maybe a Zazzle ad, or social media. I don't use paid ads myself, but I do post on social media. These sales have come through after 0 sales in June, 3 sales in July, 1 sale in August and again 0 sales in September.