Sales ?

[Boki]

How are your sales these days?

[Cat]

Par for the course this time of year. It'll pick up again after Christmas.

[Jadendreamer13]

Good in November. Only 4 sales in December.

[Mariholly]

Many visits and few sales. Also some card cancellations because they were ordered too late and they don't want them anymore or maybe the chosen paper was too thin and they don't like it, but they wanted to save a little... Who knows? I need a little encouragement to see how sales and money is smaller every day...

[Barbara]

My sales died this past Saturday. Since then, I've sold one pinback button. Anyone in their right mind wouldn't order anything for Christmas right now, not online anyway, but if they're not embroiled in holiday preparations, they might order something that has nothing to do with gifts. Hence, a button. One lonely, inconsequential button. Let's hope people get money for Christmas and spend it at Zazzle in January.

Colorwash's Home

[PenguinPower]

The fall off is expected- when the date hits the point of no more delivery before Christmas, most everyone begins focusing on their other preparations. Here’s to hoping for a good post holiday gift card season. 

[WHS_Designs]

sales definitely slowed for me approaching the third week of December ... just 1 sale on the 21st but surprisingly, 9 sales on the 22nd.

pleasantly surprised to see customers are still buying and not just for Christmas.

[Deseades]

My last sale was 3 days ago, so I suppose that´s it for this year;) Let´s focus on the new one! There is always an occasion! Kudos!

[Boki]

Sales are not progressing, they are frozen,... 😞

[RMorganSnapshot]

Stagnant as of the 18th........

[SimplyDesigned]

I've had several sales Christmas week, even a referral on Christmas day for wrapping paper for next year.

[Boki]

Have you had a terrible drop in sales these days? 🤔

[RMorganSnapshot]

Yes. I'm not a large seller but what was a slow trickle has slowed to an intermittent drip. Last sale was 2/23. 😒

[Susang6]

Yes my sales have stopped, they stopped and I am on record to having the worst month in over 3 years.  I have been trying to figure it out and honestly think there may be a glitch that is hit or miss when I am signed out I can see a whole lot of other designers' products populating under my product.  I see this on other designers' products also...so many products have the potential to hurt your sales.  Maybe a nasty glitch, as it is hit or miss...I don't see it all the time...

[Boki]

Yes,... I also noticed that suggested designs appear under my design, and only then my collection,... I don't think it's fair that someone finds my design, and then just goes through the link and buys from someone else, ... I think that the collections of designers whose designs you want to buy should be shown and first of all it should be suggested to buy something else, and then the proposed designs of other designers should be displayed below. That would be a fair option.
And I assume that this also affects the drastic drop in my stores, as well as the "zRank" itself...
I hope it will improve soon, because I really put a lot of work and effort into working on Zazzle.

[Susang6]

Today I was adding my links to a discussion and Scott was checking to see if the links were in the marketplace. 

He did so by checking the title of the product and he found my product.  It was in the back of the marketplace by the broom closet...in other words, it was all by itself because of the unique titles.  

I then checked my tags and did not find this card.  So maybe it's indexing that needs to be tweaked to make products searchable in tags? 

 .

[Susang6]

I don't mind suggested designers populating directly under my product BUT I do mind "other designers products in this category" 

Know that I did write tech support as I was questioning the indexing of products in the marketplace and they replied by saying that the Zazzle index is fine that the problem lies with me and that I should work on the title and tags.

[isabelalfarrobi]

Sales have been away lately although Z is going up. Don´t know why?

[chuamishael]

only old product are getting sold, My new products are not getting enough attentions even they are more beautiful and cleaner in terms of  designs.  even have the same description, products and tags.  😅 aww common, this is like the success gets more successful, while the new ones struggles.

[Cat]

The algorithm does favor items with previous sales and those with more views and likes - so yeah, it's often hard to get newer better stuff seen. BTW, do NOT use the same titles, tags, and descriptions for newer versions of old products - that will de-rank you in the algorithm. Each product should have a unique title, description, and tags.

[KayCordingly]

Sales have slowed to a crawl on all the POD sites that I’m on. I used to get a handful of sales every day from each site; now I’m lucky if I get 1.

In my opinion it’s because of the “grind and hustle” spammers who have taken over the POD space. You know: the ones who preach to upload 100 designs every single day. I’d bet money they are why Zazzle got rid of quick create and also why another company recently halved their upload limit from 60 designs a day to 30. These people are ruining the industry.

[Barbara]

I doubt quantity-not-quality folks are affecting our sales as much as they are Zazzle's servers and indexers. This time of year has never been stellar, but combined with people tightening their belts due to horrid inflation, and sales have turned putrid. You can see signs of this in a wide variety of businesses, even the grocery stores. The only thing we can all do is wait it out and hope.

Colorwash's Home

[Susang6]

I know that google updated in 2023, not sure when have you searched for your individual products (like best sellers) in SEO..can you find your products in the SEO?   I can't.  I can only find Pinterest product pins and a listing for my store name, but 0 individual products.  I am thinking that the Google bots are not crawling our pages. 

[orientcourt]

Yes, Susang6 many of my products are still showing via google search, which were promoted by Zazzle. However this has not made a difference re Dismal Sales🙄 Perhaps Zazzle's algorithym changes to garner increased sales, has helped some designers but others have dropped of the cliff! Interesting reading here, trying to understand algorithyms meaning!  https://www.quora.com/What-are-the-disadvantages-of-algorithms  Can also view advantages of Algorithyms in business !  Jillian

[Susang6]

Yes, that could be why sales are sluggish...but also could be that time of the year, spring break, inflation, money tightness and customers only buying what they absolutely need...I don't know. 

[Boki]

So much work, effort and promotion, and sales dropped so drastically,... 😞

[ArtOnWear]

I have been hearing from many people that sales are dropping considerably. Inflation might be the reason, or print-on-demand might be saturated.

[Susang6]

Inflation hurts the middle class and the poor incomes, but the others are still shopping, inflation does not affect them.  I suspect that the Zazzle clientele has money since our prices are higher than other POD's.   

I honestly think the lack of traffic and sales is due to the lag in products being added to the marketplace and might be due to the Z updates. My sales went south when the download was updated to Z.  It seemed like all of my invitations and other popular products were deleted from the marketplace. 

[Boki]

I noticed that: "Linkover History" is at a terribly low level,... Which probably affects the sales itself,... ?

[whimsywhim]

Apologies for the extremely ignorant question - what is linkover history and how do I find it?

[Barbara]

Zazzle Account > Associates tab. You'll see Linkover History near the top. When you click on it, you'll see an explanation. It's only ignorant until someone points you to it. I, too, was once asking the same question.

Colorwash's Home

[whimsywhim]

Thank you so much!  You are always so incredibly helpful.  You are the best!

[Westerngirl2]

So many factors are pushing sales down...down...down. Too often I search in the MP for a theme, and get way too many "quantity over quality" t-shirts, mugs, etc....any product that the "get rich quick" crowd can throw a slogan or a purchased design on quickly and run on to the next one without any real creative effort. And the computer generated tag spamming! They are flooding the MP.  Too many creative designs that used to be seen and then get traction, are being pushed out. And I fear too many customers get frustrated with the tag spamming and subsequent difficulty in finding a product for a particular theme, and leave.

I have products that were very good sellers in the past that don't even come up in the 13 pages of popular results when I search keywords in their title. Some of those products have sold dozens, or hundreds of times in the past. Some of the keyword searches result in only 4 or 5 pages, yet my best sellers don't even appear. They are still in the MP, but for whatever reason, they are invisible to a customer, unless they find it based on marketing I have done. Keyword searches don't bring them up.

So yeah, right now it's pretty discouraging.

[Caprice]

@Westerngirl2  are you finding the products you can locate via search in the MP have just had cover photos added?  I've had that issue. 😠 

[Westerngirl2]

Not necessarily. I found most of mine not being found in search prior to adding cover photos to them. I actually thought adding cover photos would help, but no go. Here's just one example of what I've found. I have many golf balls that have political themes. One of them is this one (although I will assure everyone that I'm an equal opportunity offender, and also have many "good lie" golf balls for democrats, too.)

https://www.zazzle.com/trump_good_lie_golf_balls-256560257090401210 

That particular ball has 1695 views, with 118 sold, and the most recent sale on 3/20/2023. I have a site where I advertise my political golf balls.

So...it would seem that it would be found somewhere in the 9 pages when I search Trump Golf Balls. Trump is in the title, and in several key word sequences. But if you can find it by that search, let me know, because I can't. I find several other of my Trump golf balls in the search results, and one of them is a top seller, too, but two of them have not sold very well and have much fewer views. Yet they are there when the other one is not.

This is just one example that I've found in the limited time I've searched for my best sellers. I can think of at least 5 other instances that are similar. The Biden counterpart to this ball has over 4,500 views, 168 sales, with 3 being in the last 30 days, a cover photo & 2 likes. Yet, searching for Biden golf ball does not find it in the 6 pages returned, although the matching hat clip and ball markers, which have NEVER sold, do come up. Go figure.

Both of these golf balls, as is the case with the other bestsellers that search no longer finds, used to come up on the 1st page, or very near the 1st page.

[amazingstuff01]

@Westerngirl2 I found something which you may want to investigate.

1 The Trump good lie golf ball has a photograph of trump which you have also used on "make golf great again" also 8 of the 10 tags on both the products are same. The latter one is easily found in search.

2 Same with Biden lie golf ball, the same photo of Biden is used on "Let's go Brandon" also 7 of the 10 tags are common. Brandon one is easily found.

May be somehow the algorithm things these two products are too similar to show or "not different enough"

I know this sounds absurd but seems like a recent update has impacted products which the system considers as duplicate in some sense. Though they are not.

This is just a speculation so may well be something else but this is what I could notice.

[Caprice]

True enough.  You can find your golf ball if you seach "political"  or "good lie" or "cute joke humor" - but not if you use Trump Golf Balls.  Before we start a civil war 😝, using "Trump" isn't the problem - bc other people's Trump golf balls show.  Have you tried changing the order of the tags and re-saving?  Sounds crazy - but maybe it was caught up in some weird twilight zone algorithm problem and just needs a reset.  Worth a shot.

[Westerngirl2]

Well, you all are awesome! I think you spent more time researching this problem than Z has, even though I've reported this to them and got the "we're looking into it" standard reply.

I will try some of those change suggestions. Golfing season is coming up, and I did rely on some of those sales to carry me through the doldrums of summer sales. That's why I started a golf themed website.

I'll let you know if anything worked! Thank you!

[Barbara]

Not until I used their image categories at the top and landed on "trump golf ball politics president funny" did your golf ball show up on the front page at the top. I don't even know what to make of this because I doubt anyone would type this in, and I also wonder if anyone would do the kind of drill-down I used.

Colorwash's Home

[Barbara]

I've begun having a difficult time justifying all the work I'm doing while sales are not only not rising, but they're going down miserably. It's not worth it and so I'll halt after completing my Pinterest pins.

Colorwash's Home