My Unique Zazzle Art And Goals To Sell More

The reasoning behind starting a Zazzle store was to showcase my traditional art because at the time I didn't know much about doing digital artwork until I learned quite a bit through books quite recently. And of course the money aspect appealed to me especially with the Zazzle affiliate program, because the percentages were quite high. So I started out learning about Zazzle and what designs to use by trial and error really, trying different designs on different products to see what they looked like.

Of course when you first start any online venture, the enthusiasm is there and your motivation is high because you expect to make sales almost straight away. And that can be your downfall as it happened to me a lot when starting out this online business. You build your expectations up and then you become disappointed that you aren't making any money so you start to lag and then interest wanes and you move onto the next thing to try and make money out of.

Like anything however, you have to wait for the money. Because it's best to plan things out before you rush into it. I remember reading somewhere when first signing up to Zazzle way back in 2007, that you start to make money when you have at least 10,000 products and I was like "oh no!". Diversification is the buzzword you need to remember with creating Zazzle products. Just imagine for one moment, if you can draw designs in different art styles like Cartoon, realistic, manga, comic art and so on. Within each of those art styles you could find lots of different things to draw that people will actually be searching for and want. The power of the phrase "supply and demand" really explains it in simple terms.

Early on I recognized the potential of Zazzle. Even though I originally thought Cafepress was the one to settle down with. (Their affiliate program is a joke and their site just isn't as good as Zazzle now!) With Zazzle now you can have integrated stores all under one account and manage all images and earnings all under the same log in which I find a time saver now as I have a few accounts that I wanted to link together. Let's just skip back to that! You mean I have to have more than one store? Well to start with no, but you should be planning to create new ones to build on your Zazzle business and increase potential earnings.

So what are my goals for my own Zazzle business?

Well, my goals are ever changing, but they remain forever marked down on my individual business plan and here they are:-

• To diversify even further. Draw manga art and more cartoon art and mix in lots of digital artwork too. If I can learn to draw other stuff, earnings will increase.
• To promote Zazzle products by blogging about them more.
• Promoting others Zazzle art more to be a generally good guy and to make me and them so extra cash too.
• To brand my Zazzle stores with a great banner for each of them. This is something that I've been meaning to do for awhile now and you should think about doing it sooner as it really does make a difference to your branded product awareness.
• A good goal to aim for is creating new products regularly. I've tried and failed in the past to create products daily. So I need to stick to a schedule for my product creation. Weekly sounds more manageable.
• Set up social marketing accounts for each Zazzle store. Takes some time, but having your own Facebook page and Twitter account for each usually is the best plan of action. Or to save time maybe have a universal Facebook page and Twitter account because if you are working for yourself, then there is simply not enough time of the day if you have other online or offline commitments.
• Top goal is to create some quality digital designs on t-shirts, buy them myself and approach brick and mortar stores with a view to selling them. You just never know if you don't try. They could get a cut of the profits as some deal could be worked out.
• Alternatively, you could buy the merchandise yourself at the lowest price bracket and sell them at Car Boot Sales, markets or art shows. This is something that I was thinking heavily about.

Being a Photographer now is a lot easier than it used to be what with Digital Cameras which make it far easier to take photos on the go whilst out and about. Since buying my Kodak zi8 (Which was mainly to create drawing videos on YouTube) I have took loads of photographs of unusual subjects and trees which are fascinating to look at.

Although another of my goals is to purchase a top of the range digital camera and take more precise and professional looking photos. Consider taking your own stock photos and applying them to individual products like mouse mats (See below) Then think about taking photos of interesting stuff that you can upload and create some unique Zazzle products. Be careful with some landmarks though as some could be protected by copyright if they appear in promotional marketable material such as Disneyland.

Unique amazing photos always are a good choice to buy and if they can be customized by the customer then even better.