Busy Work Blues

[DM]

I'm in the midst of doing my quarterly "red" review in my stores. The intensely annoying thing Z has us do so that our products aren't hidden without warning. I was curious as to what others did while doing this to keep themselves from tearing their hair out, screaming profanities, giving up and joining the circus, or any combination of these.

[gardenstyle]

I do it everyday.

[KeegansCreation]

I also do it every day so it ranges from 0-3 products. I can bang that out in 0-15 minutes.

[DM]

Every day? I would go mad. Er. Madder. I've gone through 15 pages of products so far, so just over 3,000 products. That's about a third of one of my smaller shops. In doing this, I've discovered that even more shirts have been discontinued, so there's another level of annoyance added to this process.

I couldn't do this every day. I'd chew through my monitor.

[gardenstyle]

Some of you are making it much harder than it is. On your products work page go to Product Visibility which is selected for all, then you get a drop down to click "Hidden." Everything red flag is there and all you have to do is select all and delete. One step. If you do it every day, there will be just a few things which have expired. I don't see the point of clinging to designs that no one sees or is attracted too so if something makes the red flag list it goes. Usually my unpopular things I don't like that well either. Also, this gives you a realistic idea of how many products you actually have active in the search engine.  What I would like to know is where to make 3x-5x more bucks. 

[Cat]

Wow! The "no mercy" approach. Well, that's one way to do it. Guess you've got more confidence than I do that you didn't make some sort of mistake when you listed it or that your keywords were already good. I always give them at least a few chances before I give them the axe.

[gardenstyle]

Ha ha! You nailed it! If they don't like it, it's toast. For instance, if you have a small retail shop, you have to change your stock and front window or pretty soon people will stop coming back. 

[DM]

In my experience, every time I've done what Zazzle has suggested we do, I end up with fewer sales. Every time. So, I'm at the point where I'll just ignore their recommendations and suggestions. If my sales were down everywhere, I'd absolutely look in the mirror. They aren't, so I don't. Again, that's what's happened with me. Your mileage may vary.

As for where you can make more, look into other PODs. Never have all of your eggs in one basket. It depends on what your designs are like, and the products you prefer. Any POD could make a change tomorrow that devastates your business. If you're spread out, it will hopefully hurt less.

[BKMuir]

I scan all threads every day.  When I see something that sparks a creative vibe, I search one/all of my stores for that product. As I scan my products, I note the Red Triangle and usually make the edits as I go through. Probably about 5-10 per browse session.

If there are a larger quantity, I set aside time to work on those without reference to the forums.

[Cat]

Yup. You've just got to whittle away at it every day. And try to think of it as an opportunity rather than punishment. Zazzle's letting you know that nobody's looking at that product, so try to figure out a way to change that. Better title, description & key words - check to be sure you don't have any typos or that you didn't make any cut and paste errors when listing it. Maybe it's in the wrong department or you need to promote it. Whatever it is, if nobody's even looked at it for 15 months or whatever the time is, the chances of it selling are extremely low. Or maybe it just isn't that good of a design. Sometimes I'll make a better version of the thing that isn't getting traction and delete the original.

[DM]

What you say is good advice, especially for someone just starting. This is year 17 for me, and my sales elsewhere are 3 to 5 times better than here. (This is my job, not a hobby.) Same designs, same descriptions, same tags, same titles. Zazzle is also the only place that gives me busy work like this just to stay visible. Other places just let my designs be seen regardless of the last time someone else looked at them.

If others do the red check every day, then I'm happy for them. I'd lose my mind trying to sift through everything every day.

[Cat]

Well, I'm impressed that you have the fortitude to make yourself do it all in one chunk. That would make me totally crazy! Of course, I am a tad bit ADHD so turning things into a project that I have to sit down and make myself tackle is sort of a recipe for disaster for me. I can only handle small chunks of anything at one time! Doing a little bit here and there is a much better approach for me. 😁

[KeegansCreation]

I'm on some other places too and none of them ever put "hidden" flags on my old products. But then I always wonder....are they hidden and they just aren't telling me? They all seem to allow an infinite number of designs and never flag any as hidden.

I worry that visibility on those places could be an illusion. Clearly anything that sells isn't hidden but it seems like sales are the only way to know for sure. Maybe these other places never hide anything. But if they do and just don't tell the designer, I prefer Zazzle's way. I have no evidence that they hide. It just seems to me that they'd have to eventually since they don't have upload limits (which Zazzle does although their limit of 100,000 might as well be infinite for me).

[Harmony]

Given the indexing issues and issue with items appear and disappearing from store search and marketplace, I am always cautious regarding deleting anything Zazzle notes needs optimizing. It could be due to site issues. Also, my hidden products never shows me anything that has had zero views

[KeegansCreation]

One thing that's worth doing on a frequent basis for products that haven't been viewed in a long time is checking the product merchandising. You can't catch this with the Hidden filter. You can only catch it by sorting by Last Viewed and going to the last page. It's why I started doing this back-of-the-pack review on a daily basis.

Zazzle has things go in and out of stock constantly. The only way to catch this is to notice it yourself in the MP, read about it in the forum (if somebody asks "when will X be back in stock?") or do a back-of-the-pack frequent review. Zazzle will hide things that have been out of stock for awhile but those won't flag as hidden even though they aren't seen in the MP. With things that come in multiple sizes/variants, unhiding is as easy and as necessary as choosing a different variant. The most common culprits are clothes and phone cases. Because things that have sold will never flag as hidden, you can really get tripped up by this. I discovered many of my phone cases that had sold back in the day but were hidden in the MP (but not flagged as such) simply because the case style was out of stock. Sorting by Discontinued is helpful but inconsistent. I do it as a starter to catch some things but other things that are discontinued pass through that filter somehow and it also only sometimes catches things that have been out of stock so long they might as well be discontinued.

In the previous forum there was a list maintained by the moderators (and with frequent updates!) of things that went out of stock and came back into stock. But this list hasn't been ported over to the new forum. 😞

[Windy]

Good info! I used to look at the back of the pack, and have not done it in a long while. I think I'll go take a look!