Zazzle is getting too overwhelming for Creators

[wheresthekarma]

I know nobody likes to hear negative things, BUT I think this needs to be said.

I don't think I am alone in this feeling. It is becoming a full-time job keeping up with Zazzle's changes and all the things they want us to do to create a product.
1. The new collections, they are so hard to understand, and Zazzle said they were putting out videos to help us understand but hasn't. Nobody that I talk to gets the meaning behind the different choices like cross sell is obvious but then the rest of the choices sound pretty much the same.
2, All the different covers for everything is overwhelming.  Multiple cover photos, cover videos, collection media photos, banners and cover photos. OMG seriously, it's overwhelming, can anyone keep up? Then to tell us to do it then send us emails telling us we did it wrong and Zazzle will go in and just delete photos it doesn't like. What a waste of time for us. What about us old-timers who have been with Zazzle for over a decade who have hundreds of collections already? We can't be grandfathered in? We are going to be punished for sticking with Zazzle for so long?
3. Only cover photos on the first couple pages of Zazzle. So creators who have been on Zazzle for years helping YOU GUYS  make money, are being punished now because they have created hundreds or thousands of products that now you expect them to go back and make photo covers for. While new creators who happened to join at the time and learn they had to do this will take forefront. So this means our popular products that we worked hard on and have been selling, will no longer be featured and won't sell anymore. 
4. The Chat box for creators at the top of the page. There should not be this. This is not most people's full-time jobs and nobody leaves Zazzle on to see when they get a message 24 hours a day. There should be an "email" option, so it doesn't appear that we are on live chat 24 hours a day to answer customer's questions. Not to mention almost every question is about shipping and manufacturing, which is not our gig to begin with. Another time waster. And customers get mad when they don't get an answer right away and just get sent from one place to another to ask questions. 
I have a youtube channel where all I do is promote Zazzle and give tutorials. I have loved Zazzle for many many years, way over a decade but it's becoming so consuming. I get hammered with so many questions every day because nobody understands anything Zazzle is doing and there are just so many steps to making a product, a collection, category and all of it. Just so overwhelming. So confusing and so time consuming, only to be constantly told we are doing it wrong.

I can go on, but honestly it doesn't feel like anyone cares anymore. 

This is the first time I have thought about just walking away from it all. I have loved creating on Zazzle for years, but it has just become so frustrating like you guys are constantly knocking down us creators in one way or the other, it's become impossible to stay positive about it all.

[AirTwin]

It's not worth trying to understand, wait a few months and they will change their mind again on the must have new timewaster of the year.

[Barbara]

I ended up deciding to do something I loved doing without any hoops to jump through and am now happily sawing, cutting, hammering, and fire-painting copper while listening to music from the late sixties and early seventies.

Take time out for bliss!

Colorwash's Home

[JulieV]

Oh, sounds like so much fun...hope you are also able to make an amazing income too! That would be such a win-win. 😊

[sm_business_car]

Thank you for posting this. Well said.

[Artists4God]

I agree!  Thank you.... I posted this as a separate topic but I think it fits well into yours:

GRRRR.... I looked at one of my Zazzle stores (Cute Critters With Heart) and noticed that "the powers that be" had decimated my store....where there had been over 40 products for each "cute critter" category, there are now only 1 or 2 for almost all of them. Some category/critters have 0 products and don't even show up. I had them all "optimized" before, but went over them again a few days ago and made sure nothing was "hidden" by Zazzle...but to no avail. WTH is going on!?  Just venting here....a complete waste of hours and hours creating those products originally.

One of my categories Dog With Dragonfly (https://www.zazzle.com/store/cutecrittersheart/products?cg=196504774737151648) has 115 products in the "back end" of the store....none of them are "hidden" or in need of "optimization" or "discontinued" in the back end....but only 1 products show in the store...a water bottle.  What customer is going to want to ever come back to a store with only 1 product available in each design? Only my "Buffalo" image has all (?) of the products in it.

[JulieV]

Wow, wheresthekarmas point in her post said it feels like we are being micromanaged. Your post highlights this in the worst possible way.
I agree, what on earth is going on here?

[wheresthekarma]

Wow!! That really does suck.. I don't know what else to say. I hope Zazzle is addressing this "missing products" issue behind the scene because people are complaning about it all over the place!

[AirTwin]

I don't see the sense in making a cover photo for products that will just go out of stock, discontinued, or whatever happens to the limbo types where sizes go away never to return and so does the whole listing.

[JulieV · Accepted solution]

I have to agree and I'm a relative newcomer (created my Zazzle store in May 2022). I cannot even begin to imagine the daunting task for longtime Zazzlers who have a huge inventory of designs to edit with all the recent changes. 
Zazzle...please think of your creators...the backbone of your online presence and the source of your income. If you are going to make changes, support those changes with clear, easy to understand, direct communication. If you insist of making videos, collection collages, etc., mandatory, then perhaps provide an additional Zazzle designer program for this purpose, and a reasonable lead time so creators can ease into your new ideas. Maybe also provide some statistics that prove these changes are effective and necessary and improve the income potential for Zazzle and the creators who spend many unpaid hours to publish on your platform. There needs to be a proven benefit for all the extra time needed to comply with your changes to the system. Someone in the upper echelon of Zazzle needs to factor creators into the equation when rolling in one change after the other...it currently seems like we are merely an afterthought.  

[wheresthekarma]

I so agree with everything you just said Julie. Having programs on the site to help make cover photos and videos would be a blessing, since many people are struggling financially and can't afford all the extra programs it takes to create cover photos, videos and all the stuff Zazzle is not asking us to do. 

[Artists4God]

I just checked on my Cute Critters With Heart store...

I have 3,311 products that are SUPPOSED to be visible in my store (all of them have been "optimized" and "made public" but only about 200 products are actually showing in my Cute Critters store...it may look like a lot, but it is less then 10% of what is supposed to be showing to the public.

[Angelandspot]

I have the same problem with several things showing in the backend as public in my stores but not actually shown in my public stores when viewed on a private browser logged out of my account to see what the public actually sees.  It's very annoying because how are they going to sell if Zazzle refuses to show them publicly.

[wheresthekarma]

I have heard this from so many people! So many products are not showing up. And new products take days or weeks to show up if they do at all!

[UKVanlife]

Im new, and the whole website is awful.  

My shop is nowhere to be seen, even though I’ve had an email saying 4 products are for sale.
When I go to the create product with same design section it randomly will give me the option to sell this item, or it just saves it as a gift.

Ive emailed about this, but I’m about to give up before I’ve even started on here. So time consuming compared to others Im using 

[Barbara]

I can find your store via your profile here on the forum, however, no products are showing as yet. Indexing of products has been very slow of late, so this may be what your hitting.

Various reasons can occur for not seeing the sell-it button, one of them being trying to design what may not appear to be someone else's product, but in fact it is. Are you clicking on "Create New Product" in the back end of your store? If so, you should be able to select a product on which to place your design. Is this what you're doing, or are you clicking on the "Create" button at the bottom left? If the latter, then it's the wrong place, the one for customers. Confusing, for sure.

Colorwash's Home

[AirTwin]

It's important bookmark almost everything you want to keep track of, once you learn what pages you want to return too, because some areas are very hard to find or remember where they are after you haven't been using them everyday. Definitely bookmark your shop until you get used to things.

[TShirtfort]

I do use the cover art mock up things when zazzle provides them and I wish they did for all the products and also had better choices. Like why does the jean jacket one feature a wedding? It should be an 80's background with neon accents.

[giskard]

There is a principle that is used in many fields that is called the KISS principle that is applied (or was applied) in different areas and it basically states that clean, simple, straightforward processes, designs, procedures, guidelines, etc, are better than convoluted and complicated stuff, this applies to software development, product design, etc. Back in the early 2000s, when I became a zazzler, is what this place was, easy to use and understand, clean and simple, no fuzz, and basically the whole internet was like that. Then, they messed up, everybody, why?, the model was exhausted, and that is what is happening. Zazzle now has hundreds of products (many are quite illogical to have), promotion tools, that most of us do not understand, and probably don't work, and on top of that, they lower royalties threshold

The POD model is outdated, so instead of reformulating it, they complicated it in order to get more money out of us creators (more like modern slaves who work for pennies). Maybe is time to get back to a simpler model (less products, more logical choices, less burden for creators), and us creators move to the old mortar and brick stores enhanced with some (not all) of the social media out there. Just thinking out loud

P.S: It is not only Zazzle, other marketplaces have just messed up really badly. I have closed many of my stores in those places because it is not worth it. You get frustrated, earnings are zero or near zero, and they now expect you to pay to be there.

[Barbara]

@giskard 

Good rant!

The KISS principle: One day, my husband and I rented a dumpster, filled it, and then had replaced for a second fill-up. It was fun and it cleansed the spirit.

Colorwash's Home

[Fantabuloustef]

There are so many products in these marketplaces that it’s a huge challenge to have your artwork displayed in front of the right customers. I’m on several other POD platforms ( only since 2022 ) and one of them has a slightly different model. Since I am on it, they validate each design submitted and sometimes it is quite difficult for us, designers to have our work rejected, and to understand why.
But what I see, is that this is the only platform where I sell regularly without any promotion, because they do all the job by themselves and it’s enough.
Last year, they did something very unpopular through the designers community, they removed all the designs created more than three years before that were never sold. ( It means all the designs not sold that were submitted before the existence of  the validation rules)  

And my own sales became better after this « clean-up », because I guess my designs became more visible then. 
So, maybe, being a little more demanding and filtering content quality could lead to better results than to let products multiply indefinitely, to the point of loosing customers in the middle of too many choices.

[Barbara]

@Fantabuloustef 

I have products created in 2014 that never sold and weren't removed. And what are these validation rules you're talking about? I haven't heard about them.

Colorwash's Home

[Malissa]

The only thing I can think of that happened where products were removed was when they hid old quick create products and If I remember correctly, those products could not be made public again.  I am not sure though because I never used quick create.  That thread is probably still around somewhere. 

[Fantabuloustef]

Check my comment above. 

[Fantabuloustef]

I’m giving an example of another POD platform that is not  Zazzle, to show a different operating mode that ultimately doesn’t work so badly. I just didn’t want to mention its name here.

[Barbara]

Oh, okay. I totally missed the connection to another POD.

Colorwash's Home

[Fantabuloustef]

I’m French, so sometimes my English expression is not very good. Sorry if it was not easily understandable.