Thread: Anyone here who's dealt with this before?

I seemed to cap with 100-400/month with Zazzle.

Zazzle stopped their partnership with keds shoes, a product line I put VERY much of my time into marketing and by the time it was exponentially taking off they pulled the rug out from under my feet. I honestly have TOO MANY tips for zazzle and a half finished book on the subject. I changed direction and am furthering my knowledge of marketing before I hop back on the clothing train. It'd take forever to post everything I know here... feel free to ask questions

A few VERY quick tips:
The best way to make money with zazzle is to develop products for specific avatars. These are my top sellers (post-keds) and still make a few sales a week:
WASD SHIRT from Zazzle.com
Baby Stats Shirt from Zazzle.com
Police Line Tie from Zazzle.com

The first two are geared at geeks/gamers. The last one I envisioned for policemen balls and other functions cops would have to go to. The more clear the customer in your head while designing the better.

For 'artistic' stuff basically showing off a certain style of art, it's It's all about building your brand outside of zazzle. Use tumblr, twitter, youtube, facebook, and pintrest to draw traffic to your brand (always use an affiliate link) for extra money.

Some other shops I run passively:
Shop for Female Teen Artsy Peoples: ArtisticRomance: Home: Zazzle.com Store
Randomness: CherryCards: Home: Zazzle.com Store
For Comic book nerds: ComicSpirit: Home: Zazzle.com Store
Cat lovers: ThatCrazyCatLady: Home: Zazzle.com Store

I have many more designs from YEARS ago I never uploaded. I have a failed strategy in which I spent money to sell shirts that didn't work you can read about here: Experiment: Mayan+Twitter=Profit?

Many thanks for your very detailed answer. Please i'll have some questions to you soon.

Dennis, I hope you'll answer on my questions.

1.
How do you figure out about your royalty % for every product?

2.
Do you design/draw pictures yourself or buy images from somebody, somewhere else?

3.
We only have 5 different drawings to put their images on products. And I try to use these 5 ones for different zazzle's products. Should i create a category for every kind of the products or better do 5 categories for each of our drawings?

4.
How to make a new category? I don't see the option to do it in our store. I mean to say how you did it on your CherryCards.

5.
Please your suggestions on our JvdLArt: Home: Zazzle.com Store
I better re-submit the stuff now than we'll go on doing it the wrong manner. I've not yet worked on a store's design also.

Thanks.

I wrote a response to you but I keep getting database errors when I try to respond. I don't know if it's too many links or too long or what, I'll try again later

please try again or pm me.

Originally Posted by stranger

Dennis, I hope you'll answer on my questions.

1.
How do you figure out about your royalty % for every product?

2.
Do you design/draw pictures yourself or buy images from somebody, somewhere else?

3.
We only have 5 different drawings to put their images on products. And I try to use these 5 ones for different zazzle's products. Should i create a category for every kind of the products or better do 5 categories for each of our drawings?

4.
How to make a new category? I don't see the option to do it in our store. I mean to say how you did it on your CherryCards.

5.
Please your suggestions on our JvdLArt: Home: Zazzle.com Store
I better re-submit the stuff now than we'll go on doing it the wrong manner. I've not yet worked on a store's design also.

Thanks.

1) I charges as much as I felt comfortable charging to the particular audience I was targeting. I looked at what I personally felt the item was worth, what I felt comfortable charging somebody, and how much I wanted to make for my efforts, and who I was selling it to. A small tip for pricing is not to be afraid to raise the royalty %.

Default T-shirt
Cost: 18.95
Profit: 4.75
Royalty: 10%

Option 2
Cost: 25
Profit: 7.55
Royalty: 31.8%

Option 3
Cost: $30
Profit: $12.28
Royalty: 43.1%

Between option 2 and option 3, you'll see that it only costs $5 more for the customer... and nearly all of that cash goes into your pocket. If the item was intended as a gift, I'd probably go with option 3 as people are willing to pay a bit more for a gift that really 'speaks' to the recipient. If this was a lifestyle T-Shirt I'd go with option 2. $25 seems like a decent amount to charge a someone for a shirt that expresses themselves. If it were just a humorous, ironic, or poorly designed shirt I'd go with the default 10% amount.

2) Everything I sell is designed by either myself or my girlfriend Jaci. We have different skillsets. She's a talented illustrator, and I'm better with CG/effects/funny/ironic stuff. You can clearly tell our styles apart.

These are examples I thought up, designed, created, and uploaded myself:
http://www.zazzle.com/baby_stats_shi...55378422245509
http://www.zazzle.com/police_line_ti...92762918313720
http://www.zazzle.com/i_survived_the...73361932020009
http://www.zazzle.com/deep_space_pos...17982888512088
http://www.zazzle.com/small_planet_p...08248629015633
(check out the full res on the last 2 space ones, epicness!)

This is stuff she dreamed up, designed, created, and uploaded:
http://www.zazzle.com/blackberry_gir...76351660801114
http://www.zazzle.com/skull_and_cros...74648697971408
http://www.zazzle.com/bird_watch_bin...76341940632661
http://www.zazzle.com/geeks_in_glass...30391161849927
http://www.zazzle.com/locked_heart_b...79803320670231

These are examples of stuff I had ideas for, but had her ultimately design/implement based on a rough sketch. If I didn't have her around, these are things that I would have ended up outsourcing to a freelance artist:
http://www.zazzle.com/death_is_sweet...28630548473888
http://www.zazzle.com/wasd_shirt-235783907176369509
http://www.zazzle.com/princess_tee_s...62453066062349
http://www.zazzle.com/star_t_shirt-235423637272372979

3) Create a category for each item (bags, mugs, shirts.) When people are shopping, I've found they shop for specific items. they say "I want to buy a cool ipad case" or "I want to buy a funny shirt". They don't say "I want to buy something with a design of a skull on it"

4) While you're editing your store (the page with a bunch of thumbnails+checkboxes of various products) on the left hand side there's a menu bar. There should be a link that says "all categories" and from in there you can create categories. You can then check off multiple products, click 'actions' and group them all into a category.

5) Not really sure what to say just keep playing around and testing things out until it works! The items look pretty good themselves. Categories will def. help give the store some order. I'd also limit the things you put the images on. Some images just naturally look better on some products and it's up to you as the producer to decide and limit. don't worry about trying to make everybody happy.. decide what design works best on what product, and make it as appealing as possible.

If this means going into photoshop and adding a border around an image or adding creative text or something then so be it. Never be afraid of the little extra steps that create extra work, it's what separates the successes from the failures.

Thank you for your answers on every question of mine. It helped me.
Your Mayan Apocalypse shirt looks COOL.
Your mentioned you would be gonna hire a freelance artist. How can you be sure if he won’t be selling the design to someone else? It’s not like buying a logo.

Originally Posted by stranger

Thank you for your answers on every question of mine. It helped me.
Your Mayan Apocalypse shirt looks COOL.
Your mentioned you would be gonna hire a freelance artist. How can you be sure if he won’t be selling the design to someone else? It’s not like buying a logo.

First off: I'd like to remind you that I'm not a lawyer and this isn't legal advice.

I'd have them sign a contract. I'd also state this was a 'work for hire' which would give me all rights to the final work produced by them.
But the biggest thing is: I'd only work with people I trusted.

It's not always about the little tips, tricks, and skills you can learn. Part of the success an entrepreneur experiences comes from things like being well networked. Keeping contacts of people you know you can trust will be valuable to you in the future.

In my case: I went to an art college. While there, I made plenty of friends who liked and respected me. These friends went on to be producers of audio, video, graphics, videogames, and more. It gave me many contacts who I trust.

OK, I get that. Really, i run all my businesses with my friends/partners which i met online. I've never met some of them face to face. But they are my best ones.

Please another question is; Can i delete item out from 1 category and to keep it iinto another or it will be gone away from the store too?

Originally Posted by stranger

OK, I get that. Really, i run all my businesses with my friends/partners which i met online. I've never met some of them face to face. But they are my best ones.

Please another question is; Can i delete item out from 1 category and to keep it iinto another or it will be gone away from the store too?

Not really sure. I suggest uploading a junk item to your store and testing it out. I know you can remove items from categories, but I'm not sure how.

all right i go to test.

Dennis, when i create a new category, it starts working for visitors withing 20-24 hours. Have you faced with this stuff on zazzle too?

I only added 4 new categories to sidebars and wanted to do more ones there, but they aren't shown there. Only those 4 categories are shown there.

Dennis, Could you share your experience about tags/keywords on zazzle? I've read your post about youtube's keywords.