My month has been terrible. I guess I never had such an awful month in terms of earnings. I already know I won't be paid in april.
I'm slowly restructuring my entire store but even though I deleted non-selling products, improved a lot of the existing ones, organized my store and had two products featured as Editors' Pick, I got only THREE sales. I'm reviewing every title, every copy, every keyword...
I must be really missing something. People are speaking about the new personalized cover photos. If that's really the case, it's really unfair to prioritize showing products because someone can buy their own products and do a professional photoshoot while many of us struggle with money issues and work so hard to create high quality designs.
I don't have many products, but with the few I have, I was able to achieve Pro Bronze status, so I believe I have good designs, that people like, and suddenly I feel they're not even being shown. At least Zazzle could be honest to us about the algorithm so we know how to adjust.
Right now I'm so sad.
Catherine Marie Narézi
With all the new things being implemented and worked into however the placement algorithms work (for search results or when simply navigating around browsing), I feel at this point that something in the works is broken. I've come across a number of my own products (that have sold and do have covers now) in the last week or three that are entirely AWOL from the MP. You can see them in my store directly and in the "Other Products from this Collection" scrolls", but they don't exist in the MP whether by searching or by navigating & filtering. They're just gone. One of these products was coming up in the #1 spot for multiple keyword + product type searches, signed in or out, both before and after adding a cover. Now it's invisible. It's not a matter of it having been "bumped down" - it's simply gone from the MP. There's no way for people to see this product to View or Buy unless they are browsing my store, come in from a direct link, or happen to see it in a "other products from the collection" scroll under another product. I'm going to ask about this in the Tech forum but meanwhile it's had me concerned, how many other products have just stopped existing in the MP? There's no way to know unless you happen to be trying to search-up a specific one for whatever reasons and realize it's not there. If you're like me and rely mostly on organic sales from the MP rather than your own promoting, sales are obviously going to tank, as mine have, if products aren't visible in the MP.
I have been wondering if this is something personal but on seeing so many high-level designers reporting tanking sales, I think something is broken. Z had to work products with Covers (which they said no bones about it would get preferential treatment) into their algorithms. They had to work products with Instant Download option into their algorithms (we can see without being told that also boosts "ranking"). And they changed something else so that pages are simply hemorrhaging EP's, intentionally or not. And somewhere in all these "tweaks" to their algorithms, a black hole opened up that is swallowing innocent products.
So end point - if your sales are suffering, it may not just be because of all the Covers and EP stuff bumping placement, it could be products falling into the black hole, invisible in the MP.
Well, HUH! I don't need to ask about this in the Tech forum. I just saw the thread @Scott started today asking for links to MIA products. So they are aware there's a black hole swallowing products.
No, it's not a matter of not being able to find them in a bunch of other results, they're just not there now matter how specific the search and how few results. This tissue paper for example (which last sold on the 12th, I added a Cover on the 15th, and it was Liked on the 18th & 21st) is a part of this Collection of 17 products with same design and therefore all have [Harlequin Tie-Dye] as the first part of the title. An exact search for "[Harlequin Tie-Dye]" returns 16 of those 17 products and nothing else. The tissue paper is MIA. I can search six ways from Sunday, with other tags, tag strings, title parts, quotes, no quotes, signed in or signed out, etc ... and the tissue paper is never there. It's in a black hole.
I do sometimes search for my own products, just to see what other things are using the same tags, and because I am not in a highly saturated market, like wedding invites where there could be thousands of results for say "rustic roses" or something, it's generally not difficult for me to narrow search results down to find my own. This is how I happened on my products that are MIA. Of the three products that were MIA for the last week or three, two were returned to search results as of last night. The tissue paper is still MIA as of writing this though.
ETA the search link
FYI, this is a screenshot of how it came up on Google.
Wow, that's super interesting. I haven't tried searching Google for one of my products in ages because the times I did, nothing from Zazzle ever turned up, it would be mostly links to Pins. Neat that 10 days after adding a cover the image is already showing on Google. And yes, odd that Google can find the tissue paper but Z's own search isn't.
