When Your Zazzle Products Are Not Selling

Do you think you have the potential to make money at Zazzle? 

This was the question I asked on my Wizzley page about "Running a Zazzle Business" and a large percentage of people have answered as being discouraged by their lack of sales.

This article is intended to encourage you to keep trying.  I have been designing and selling at Zazzle since August 2007 and I recently reached Gold ProSeller status.

My hope is that after reading this page, you may have some good ideas as to why your products are not selling, and how to improve your chances of making money online. 

Each person has varying talents and knowledge, but the more you learn, the better the possibilities of success.

Just about anyone who makes money online will tell you that it took them a while to get there.  It took a lot of long hours and hard work to be successful and they have to keep at it to ensure continued success.

It's not possible to make money by filling your Zazzle store with products and then just sitting back and waiting for the paychecks to roll in.

If you open a Zazzle store and don't work on it all the time, or are sloppy when it comes to posting products, you probably won't see much income. 

Whenever I visit a Zazzle store and see these types of issues, I assume the shop-owner is quite new to the site. 

Are you an obvious newbie?

• Images that don't fit correctly on products (like the card shown).  Square art and / or photos that don't cover all the white area of the product.  Greeting cards, posters, stickers, and many other products should make use of the entire space and not have a chopped off look.   
• Make templates.  Customers want to be able to have a hand in designing.  Zazzle is known for offering custom products, so make templates for text and photos.

If you wanted to buy some bananas at the store pictured here, how long would it take you to find them?

If a customer wanted to find a banana t-shirt in your Zazzle store (lets say you have one for sale), how long would it take them to find it?

Many times customers enter Zazzle by searching for a product, so they may not see your store front, but if they are searching specifically at your store, how long would it take for them to find that banana t-shirt?  I've read that three clicks should get them there, or else they give up and leave.

If your Zazzle online store is a mess, get it organized.

Throwing up a bunch of products is not as important as describing them correctly.  Give it an appropriate title and describe it well in the description area.   Add appropriate tags so it can be found by customers.  Zazzle gives us room to use 10 power tags and you really shouldn't need to use many more than those.  Add words that are only appropriate for that item.  Tag spam includes wording that has nothing to do with what you've made.  It is frowned upon, big time.

If people sell items that are similar to what I sell at Zazzle, but  my description contains better keywords, and my tags are more appropriate, I may sell more.

Zazzle lets you set a default percentage for items and you can leave every item you create priced at that percent, but I suggest that you don't.

In my opinion, many products Zazzle offers are expensive enough without me adding a high markup on top of that.  We have to add at least 5%, and we can choose any amount, but keeping the markup reasonable will help with selling.

In my wedding stores I set my invitations at a higher markup than the coordinating RSVP cards, postage, stickers and other items that match because I feel that if the customer buys the invitations they will be more likely to choose the matching items if they are reasonably priced.

Your markup will depend on how much work you put into the design, how original it is, and how much in demand it will be.  At the present time, our price changes will go into effect around the 20th of each month, no matter when you make the changes, so be careful when setting prices.   Also, once a product is made (or a bunch if you use Quick Create) you have 24 hours to set your prices that will have to stick of a month.

I admit that I am never at a loss for something to create, but I do sometimes feel that I can be repetitious in my designs.  Then it is time to go look at what is out there in relation to what I am selling.

When I began selling wedding invitations I had to look around at what is selling these days.  I was married many years ago when there were no "save the date" cards or other more modern products having to do with wedding stationery, so I had to learn about what to sell.

Very few people are totally unique.  If you look at the wedding items (for example) sold at Zazzle, many do copy ideas that are found all over the internet.  Our ideas as designers usually come from other things we've seen, and no matter what you are making, this is true.  So viewing online wedding stores and flipping through wedding magazines can give me new ideas - not direct copies! -  for creating when I need to branch out a bit.

You can do the same for your field of creating. 

(Photo credit: Pixabay)

Except for the seashells, product image snip, and cat photo, which are all my own images, all other pictures on this page came from Pixabay.  It's a site which offers photos found in the public domain and they can be used for free, even on commercial items (stuff we sell).    If your mind is drawing a blank when it comes to being creative, just browse the Pixabay site, or any other site like it, for inspiration.

Please note:  Just because an image is free to use, does not mean it is always okay to use to SELL (commercial use).  Examples would be; certain famous buildings, people, or makes of cars (as examples).  If you find an image, first make sure it has a Creative Commons license or is in the Public Domain, or find the owner and ask for permission to use it!

I love WordPress, but their free blogs are not meant to sell products.  I have four WP blogs and I use them to write about the subjects I am interested in which go along with what I create and sell in my Zazzle stores.

For instance, I blog about seashells and Florida and beaches on my Seashells by Millhill blog which coincides with my Zazzle store that is filled with products containing beach shell images.

I also write here at Wizzley and they do let you write to sell as long as there is plenty of useful written content to go along with it.  It's a great place to be niche specific.

Waiting for the sales to come rolling in takes patience, but you must realize that most products you create will take time to sell as well. 

One time I sold something the day after I made it, but usually it takes months before great products begin to sell regularly.

Keep promoting yourself by writing on your blog, tweeting, adding products to FaceBook and Pinterest.   Update your store regularly and and keep learning and researching for good tag words.  Visit the forum and join in the conversations.  You can ask for help and advice there and maybe learn something new.

Being creative and selling online is not for everyone.  If you don't enjoy what you are doing, or find it difficult to be unique and offer quality products, maybe you should consider doing something else. 

I love that Zazzle now lets us read comments made by our own customers. A lot can be learned by reading these reviews. Sometimes a product should be re-done if there is an obvious design flaw and when customers see them first hand (as we cannot) it's good to know about any issues. But the best thing about the reviews is seeing how pleased a customer was with something I created! It's nice to hear.

To find out if anyone has reviewed your products go to "My Account" at the top of your page (once you are logged in) and then click "account". At the bottom left side you will see "My Reviews".  In the "Reviews Received" area you will find a list of customer comments on products they have purchased.

You may need to fix or change something if a customer was unhappy with a product.  Unfortunately we can't reply, and that can be frustrating if the problem was not related to the design. If we get less than a 5-Star rating it is sometimes due to a shipping problem, that we have no control over as designers.