My First Steps With Zazzle

I am going to show how dumb I am!

I know that the size of images are often measured in pixels and prints in inches, and they have something called a resolution ( measured in dpi) which inextricably links the two together. However I take photographs which do not meet the resolution requirements of Zazzle and scan my artwork at higher resolution than Zazzle requires.

My problem is that I have difficulty knowing what the printed images will look like when Zazzle prints them on a tee-shirt, mug, card or cap.
I end up using larger images than necessary which means that a lot of my early art, is not available for Zazzle. Simply because in the early days, I only stored images at low size and resolution to save disc space. Yes I am that old!!! And it was a difficult habit to get over.

This photo of a pastel painting is an exception, although it is still only 850 x 1400 pixels. I have just re-discovered it looking for an image for this module.

I have been thinking about this issue and now believe that I have got it sorted. Unfortunately the scans that I have uploaded to Zazzle of my artwork do seem to be a little on the small side. Although I thought that they were adequate when scanned at 300 ppi (pixels per inch), they are converted to 200 dpi (dots per inch) when printing greeting cards, for example. This leaves them a little too small. On the other hand, the photos which I thought were a problem (at 96PPI) are in fact fine. The following table will hopefully make this clear. I may have to go back and re-load some of the images to make sure that the products are of sufficient quality.

 

zazzle req't

scanned

photo

resolution

200ppi

300ppi

96ppi

height(pixels)

1400min

1050

2500

width (pixels)

1000min

750

1800

print size

7X5inch

5X3

12X9

The print size is determined from the Zazzle process which in this example is printinge at 200 dpi. Total pixels divided by the print resolution. In other words the print of a scanned image is smaller than the scanned image. The print of a photographed image is larger than the original.

I was just trying Google Chrome out and noticed that this table does not display properly in that browser, I will be sorting it out asap - sorry for the inconvenience in the meantime.

Table courtesy of SquidUtils

Today I have added about 40 items to my store, which I will count as the starting point for this "journey".

Not a lot when I find by browsing that some Stores have thousands, and no doubt some die-hard Zazzlers will have many more, probably tens of thousands. I will try to log the actions that I am taking to promote and advertise the store. That is apart from this lens.

I will try to update the list of actions and their results at least once per week. This will include additional products for sale, links and mentions and other promotional activities ( I need to read another lens I haven't listed yet) and hopefully the resulting sales. As with most on-line endeavours, I do not expect immediate results but will be satisfied to see some small return in the first instance. This should grow if I do things right.

These abstract images representing the four seasons will be the basis for the next batch of Zazzle products.

Well I wasn't expecting to be back quite so soon. This is day two. I posted 52 products on my store ranging feom Ties and Tee-shirts to hats and aprons. From greeting cards and post cards to coasters and key rings. I made each one seperately so that I could show the art work off to its best advantage and added humerous text to a large prportion of them to add a little zing.

Here is my first sale:

I have something to tell you by artyfax
Create a full color post card on Zazzle

Here's a ladies tee-shirt:-


wisdom, It's Priceless by artyfax
View more Vintage T-Shirts

Here's a mug:-


wisdom by artyfax
More Vintage Mugs

And finally, a greeting card


wisdom by artyfax
See more Wisdom Cards

all with the same collaged art work.

Despite the aparently bright start, I have not seen any further sales. But am I depressed? Of course not. It can't simply be about the numbers game, but of course it must have some influence. With probably millions of items (?) my few are going to be difficult to notice. Mmmm, how to get them noticed ( apart from here at squidoo, of course). Will pop over to the zazzle forum after this edit.

I now have over 100 items for sale, I have been adding at a rate of 4-5 per day on average. I am still finding the fast create button to be a pain. I delete most of the automatically added products and need to edit the rest singly anyway.

New examples are tee-shirts:-


all mixed up by artyfax
See other Digital T-Shirts


Don't even ask ! by artyfax
Browse other Digital T-Shirts

and mugs

beachbabe by artyfax
Design custom steins at Zazzle


an odd bird by artyfax
Create cheap personalized beer mugs on zazzle.com

I am still quietly adding products and waiting to see results, however I have found one or two issues which I am going to have to address before too long.



The first is that I am far to eager to jump-in with new ideas and run with them to see how they go. This lens is one example. I have decided to change its format. I will be writing a blog (off-squidoo) to showcase the new products and discuss the issues. I think if I continue to do this on the lens I will soon be generating a very large lens. I will add an RSS feed to the lens and just discuss the issues and the ways around them. I will also hopefully be able to report on sales and successes. This will happen shortly BUT I am going to think this through before I do anything drastic. I intend to get it right this time.

The format of the store was also not clearly thought out at first. I am going to need to decide on a number and structure for the store categories. Otherwise the store will get unmanageable. Most of the products were going into the default "new products" category and I have had to spend some time adding categories. I have based these very much on the zazzle categories and am now wondering wether this was a good idea. I need to research what other stores do! I see some basing categories on an image; I guess these are using the quick create button, which I still dislike.

On a lot of my products, I am adding humerous text to complement the images and the potential use of the product. I am making sure that I allow the "customise" button so that potential buyers can alter the text ( or delete it) if they so desire. I wonder if buyers do ever use this facility.

Also, should I post several versions of T-shirts, etc, with the same image. I.e. Male, Female, child, infant, colours, sleeves. The buyer can select any of these from one item but do they bother, do they know how?. If they want a T-shirt for a female, will they look at an image on a male T-shirt and think, " I can select another style!".

I am going to have to try and get some feedback from Zazzle on these issues. Hope to get some answers to be able to report back.

I have not updated this lens for a little while as I have been rationing my time at the PC. I underwent a major operation in December - a complete knee replacement - and this has limited the time I can comfortably sit at the desk. I have not therefore added any more products to my Zazzle store and unfortunately have no more sales to report.

I hope to get back to this task in a couple of weeks. I will be rethinking my approach to this lens, it seems that it could become quite large if I treat it as a blog and therefore I will probably open a blog to write progress notes and save the lens for useful information that I uncover (always the optimist). I will be likely to just connect the lens to my blog via an RSS feed.

Just a quick update.... I have now found that although you will not be paid at the end of the year ( jan 31st) if your balance is less than $25, you can either use it for purchases or elect to get paid via Paypal. You do not loose the cash, I feel better now!

I also have to report that I have made a couple of referrals which has taken my balance up to $4. Still not a lot but as I said, I have not been spending time adding to the products on my store or in promoting links via my Zazzle associate account. My operation is now 15 weeks ago and although I am told that it may take 8-12 months for a full recovery, I am beginning to get back to normal and hoping to start earning "big money". LOL ever the optimist.

First of all, where is the quick create button - I seem to see this question on the forums quite often. Not very easy to find it when you want it if you haven't made a mental note. It is in fact on the Products Page. Obvious when you know - or is it?

As I said above, I found at first that the automatically produced designs were awful and needed customising, well OK, I accept that and now am using it more and more. But with a number of provisos. It does mean that you avoid having to repeat the descriptions / tags and so on when posting for sale.

Whe I do use Quick Creat (QC), I am very selective about which products I proceed with.No duplicates for example (with fit and fill for example)

1. I delete products which do not seem appropriate to an image, e.g. rectangular images which don't sit well on round products or images on childrens clothing that doesn't seem appropriate.


2. After that my next step is to customise each product so that the design and any text are well positioned as appropriate to provide a pleasing design. I may delete more products during this stage if I am not satified with a design.


3. Only then do I click on Post For Sale and fill in the boring bits. But I only have to do this once for several products.


4. It sometimes is necessary to edit the description and title of products after this. I double check the need after products are in the store.

I also find that customising a product and then posting the new design for sale works well, when I have a "series" of products. E.g. I may create a number of cards with the same image but different text or sentiments. Again this cuts down on the amount of form filling such as the description / tags / etc. But do be careful that any changes are reflected in these by judicious editing before hitting the Post For Sale button.

So there you have it, horses for courses. Makes sense really!

Have just read that if you do not have at least 100 products you are unlikely to make sales in a Zazzle store. Well my experience so far belies that but I can imagine that it is a truism. With the billions of products on Zazzle you can find that it is difficult to be found. And on this topic I have also read that tags are important on Zazzle. for some strange reason I had imagined that people went to Zazzle and then searched for products. Zazzle itself says that most of their buyers actually come from Google. So here we are again - SEO research before posting a product to the Zazzle store. At least after being on Squidoo for a couple of months I think I know what I am doing here, but even here I am continually learning. For example GreekGeek has just posted a lens called, The New Long Tail of SEO which I shall be reading very carefully for the useful ideas contained therein.

Anyway, lots of work to do adding tags to my products, as well as adding more new products. I have beem letting my attention slip from Zazzle as I have been concentrating on creating new lenses to try and achieve enough lenses to make the Giant Squid cut by 31st March. I need to schedule my time effectively to do both.

I have also found out a very pleasing piece of information. I had read that if you do not earn a minimum level ( $25 I think) by the end of the year on Zazzle your account is reset to zero. Now I find that if you are payed by Paypal, as I will be, there is no minimum. So I will get my $3.00 even if I do not earn any more this year. It was something that had bothered me and I had wondered if it was going to be worth putting effort into my Zazzle store. needlessly as it turns out. Of course you can use the cash earned against the purchase of Zazzle products.

The only issue here is that you cannot use money from your account on one domain to pay for goods on another. For instance, I have sold a few things from Zazzle.com. However I cannot use the earnings to buy goods from Zazzle.co.uk. A real bummer if you live in the UK.

Must spend more time on the Zazzle forum.

I have been neglecting this store - lots of things happening at home and no time for on-line work. I have however made two referrals which have earned me several times more than the two products I have sold. £2.6 compared to $0.4. Is this a lesson I should be taking to heart?

Today I added a new product with an image that I used to write a tutorial for editing digital photographs using layers. I haven't yet added more products using the image but will be very soon. And it has given me new inspiration for what I could be doing with my photos.. Here it is:-

Delightful dahlias by artyfax
See more Red T-Shirts

HOT NEWS
I have just sold another item, a postcard which earned me $0.07 from a sale to Japan. Yeah!! I love it when a plan comes together. Here is the item.

A message for you by "owl post" by artyfax
See more Owl Postcards

I guess this again shows the benefits of referrals as an associate. And of course you can make money referring to any ( even branded) merchandise. Taking this to heart having just read a lens "How To Make Money As A Zazzle Affiliate".

I had a piece of advice that I should edit the store category buttons to show graphics instead of the blank default tags. I felt that this was a great idea and went straight in to do this, I changed six category tags and some of these had up to three sub-categories. When I had finished I noticed that the wording on the blank tags ( the title of the category) was not carried across to appear over the new image.

Great! I had now store categories which were not identified to the customer. I very quickly decided that I had to re-edit the images to go back to the tags. I guess I will have to create a range of new images with the titles already written across the photo. Ah me, more work but it still sound ike a great idea. And I do have to get myself together and start to put up more products. A small but regular amount of time needs to be spent on this task everyday.

PANIC OVER; in the SETTINGS section of MANAGE MY SHOP, you can choose several ways for the categories to appear to the buyer. I now have images and titles. The work now will entail putting images which carry through the content of the categories and contain a certain element of branding. I am seriously working on this aspect. Watch this space!

No new sales or referrals to report since the last time. But here is a new product that I did manage to create.

axeman by artyfax
View other Guitar Keychains

I have been thinking about a couple of comments about the appearance of my Zazzle store, and I have also started to notice other stores - yes, I know I should have done this already.

To cut a long story short I am going to experiment with a new store. It will also allow me to start listing niche products rather than putting everything in one place. I will start putting cards into a new store ArtyfaxCards, I will start to play with the options and build this store whilst the other stays unmolested. I will use what I learn here to open more stores with niche product lines. Lots of reading and editing to do.

My first new card uses a photo of my grandparents and their first child ( of six) as a basis for a birthday card:-

Vintage family by ArtyfaxCards
More Vintage Cards

Update: I have now opened four Zazzle stores but my advice is if you are going to have more than one store, make sure that you know what it is for. I have not stuck to my initial iddea of sticking to a niche for each store and although each has a main focus the product line up has become a little messy. Unfortunately there appears to be no easy way to change a products store. You can edit and repost, and then if needed delete the original. I have simply left the original so that I have some products ( with a slight difference) in more than one store - might even be a good thing. But I would still suggest that you keep to a clear vision of what you want in each store,

Your niche may be product led, or design led and I have seen advocates for both ways. Personally, I feel that if a non-zazzle member is searching for a product, they will prefer a product led store. However, advice suggests that if someone likes a design, they may want it on more than one product. For example a gift (or two) and a greeting card.

This is going to increase the need for a separate blog to write about my experiences which I will include below, via an RSS feed and then only include in this lens significant learning / issues.

I have been adding some postcards recently to my Zazzle store and I believe I have learnt another important lesson. I have been adding text to these cards and mainly it is a brief message which the image suggests to me. Knowing that buyers can personalise these messages I have taken the view that If they don't like my message they can change it easily. BUT... why should they? If they don't like the message will they even stop to view the image? I think that I will be going back to change the text to something more general in the hope that this will help to get buyers to stop and look at the images which I am told are very good paintings.

The question is, Which sells the card? A clever message or the image? I will leave the current crop but start to add similar cards with generalised messages and see if it helps to improve sales. If I draw any clear conclusions I will of course post them as an addendum here.

another beautiful day by ArtyfaxCards
See more Orange Postcards

After some consideration, I am going to make two sort of products. The first will just be an image of my artwork or photography. If the customer likes the image, then it is up to him/her to customise the product. I will also offer products which have examples of my sense of humour. Again the customer can change the text if necessary.

Other learning points I have started to wonder about are:-
1. Am I using tags well enough to get my products found. This is something I have difficulty with here on Squidoo. I try to use only tags which are specific to the lenses but I don't find that I am using very many, and often these are orphans as defined by the squidutils workshop add-on.
2. I am not sure that I am using the correct titles for my products.

I am going to have to seek help on these two points. I guess they are both important to help the products to be found, again any conclusions will be posted here.

This is crucial. You can actually earn more money by promoting other peoples' products. Why would you do this? If you need an image to spruce up a page then why not use the Zazzle affiliate program. It is unlikely that you will be in direct competition for a particular image and if you don't have the right one, then use another from someone else. It is a fact that this can earn you more cash than the royalty from selling your own product.

money, TIME IS MONEY by dvantemcafee2
View other Money T-Shirts

Even if you don't buy this top, and buy something else a slice of your money comes my way. This seems a great idea. For referring a customer you can get 15% of the sale price, whereas the royalty payments start at 10%. Make a start with the associate/affiliate program. You know it makes sense!

I was pleasantly surprised that I was specifically asked to produce a tee-shirt for my Zazzle store containing a mixed media collage art work which I had recently posted on-line. I don't know if I am being especially careful but this is the first product which has not been identified as a "G" (for general viewing). I gave it a PG-13 rating. just in case. This does not mean that I will be changing the policy of the store as it was as I said by special request.

That's all ladies by artyfax
Use Zazzle's shirt designer

Quick update I have had two orders for this Tee which was purchased via one of my links. THis of course means twosets of royalty payments and also two referral fees. This has significantly increased my earning on Zazzle so far. Still a long way to go however. I am beginning to realise that SEO is a requirement on Zazzle just as much as her on Squidoo. I have got to get down and become familiar with it and do the boring bits that I have tried to avoid. C'est la vie!

I would just like to take a moment to mention that I have now opened another new store, making three in total. I am aiming to target the stores at specific products. That is to say one for clothes,etc; a second for cards and stationery and a third for gifts, etc. I believe that this will help buyers who are searching for particular items. I have not yet decided how many stores to open but will review the number as I incease the stocks in each.

I am not happy with the names and design of the stores at the moment but I am trying to develop a strategy and brand image - something new to fret over, LOL. I will of course post any learning here in due course. I will be hoping to learn a little from the Zazzle forum, something I have not yet been very active on. A big mistake I am thinking.

After some small success with my first few weeks of trading on Zazzle, I have had a disappointing experience. I need more promotion, I guess - or perhaps my designs are not really saleable. But the first step was to create the new "branded" store front, which I shall carry across all my stores, Although I have created an individual appearance for each of the stores by using an individual banner related to an image map (see below) and selected colours for the store to complement the banners.

The image map for the first three stores is given here, this appears in the description to these three stores:-

It appears that this does not work in Squidoo, as the MAP tag has been stripped out by the editor, but you can see the working image map in the store ARTYFAX.

Alternatively, If more convenient please visit my UK Zazzle Store, Artyfax

I was reading a page here on Squidoo, How to make money from your poetry when I started to sit up and take notice. One of the suggestions, was to create posters with poems on them. Why not I thought? So here is my first attempt at doing this. I selected a photograph (public domain of course) that complemented the poem and this is what it looked like.

A Poem: The Waterfall by artyfax
Get the best in online poster printing at zazzle.com

Off now to create more examples of this product type.