Kate Loving 's Zazzle Gallery Showcase

Giant Squid Open Mike was full of fun on 8/31 when we had Susan52 and Stargazer00 aka Diane on the show. The topic was all things Zazzle and Squidoo!

I learned so much and was so inspired by this show that within days, put up my own
Zazzle store, which is a real joy to create and nurture. After all, I don't have to arrive
to a store everyday and co-exist with fluorescent lighting!

Diane was first on the line and Susan joined us soon after. As usual, the conversation turned to the chat window, and many of our friends had already joined us, AJ, JJ and Drifter.

Susan's store is called the Green Eyed Cat with her cat Dandy's green eyes pictured across the top of her page! And it looks beautiful!

Where do they promote their stores? Blogs and Squidoo were the main promotional platforms for both Susan and Diane. They said they do not post their Zazzle store on every lens.

A false belief immediately arose about Zazzle that you have to be artistic to create your inventory. It was stressed that you don't have to be artistic, but you do have to be creative.

The ease of creation was emphasized, and having put together a few products in my own store, I can testify to the truth of this. I probably could use a tutorial to answer some of my questions, but so far, by trial and error, I find or do what I need to accomplish.

A question arose about CopyRight issues. If you use your own photography or write your own original sayings, no problems will arise to haunt you in the future. You can do a Google search on free Vecter images. You can use free clip art. Be sure to use EPS files for best results.

How much time a week do Susan and Diane spend on Zazzle? The answer here was: when inspiration moved Susan or Diane to create a product. they go and and create. No set time, no hastle, just inspired action based on an inspired idea!

Susan has had some success with a pair of Ked shoes with patriotic images on them. She assured us that Zazzle allows you to create your product and move things around until you are satisfied. You can leave it as a work in progress. Go back and add or subtract until you are satisfied with what you have.

You can make the item private or public, depending on your preference at the time.

If you create a lens, you can also create a Zazzle product to correspond with the Lens theme. Or just become a Zazzle associate and any thing you use on the Zazzle market place will bring you a royalty if someone happens to buy it from your lens. Zazzle allows you to copy the html of your chosen product, and you just copy it into a text module, and Viola!!

Bonnie in the chat room told us that she makes $250-300 dollars a month on her Zazzle product sales.

Here the concept of multiple streams of income arose. Diane had a successful store on Cafe Press. Policy changes there made it impossible to make money there, so many folks from Cafe Press are now migrating to Zazzle.

Bonnie said she only promotes Zazzle on her Squidoo lenses. Find your niche and go to town! Diane's niche is Navy Nuke Submarines. Her son is a "nuke", and his Navy friends all want tees and mugs and letterheads with pics of these submarines on them. So she is garnering success in this arena!

The key advice here was: Jump In And Do It!! Start experimenting. Yes, there is a learning curve! But go to the Community link on Zazzle and take some tutorials. Read some of the blogs!

You can open your store and feature other people's products. I did this with Gypsy Owl's promo items for Giant Squid Open Mike and for Moon, Moo & You: The Collective Wisdom. And it looks great!! If someone buys from my link, I will get a 15% royalty.

Be sure to title and tag your sales items. That way people will find your store on Google. Use the search item words : cute, funny, gift. Or use the word Offensive Tee-shirts! Those are big ticket sellers!

Go to the Zazzle front page and see what is most popular. Diane and Susan don't know what the top 10 zazzle sellers are. Apparently this info is buried somewhere on Zazzle Blogs, or information pages.

The Zazzle editor is user friendly, once you get the hang of it! I wouldn't write this if I hadn't experienced this myself.

Bonnie said in the chat room that she has great success with postage stamps.

A great conversations arose here. Postage stamps? Really?

Zazzle will post your stamp idea to the US Postage Service and with in 24 hours or less, it is either approved, or not.

I made a stamp and it was approved very quickly. However, over the holiday weekend, approval may slow down. I will put this to the test.

You can make stamps and matching stationary. People do this for special occasions, like marriage, Christmas, Thanksgiving or Halloween.

But haven't people stopped writing letters?

Yes and no. People over 60 years of age are still writing letters. And face it, the choice of stamps is very disappointing. I decry this every time I go to the Post Office.

Hallmark is still doing a multi-million dollar business.

Stamps is a big Zazzle seller! Generally, the Postal Service will reject stamps with pictures of famous people on them. And I am sure CopyRight issues also come into play with these ideas: Unless one of your dead relatives happened to take a pic of the famous person who died within the allowable amount of time for the pic to be accepted, by Zazzle.

I do not have the answer for this.

Stamps generally cost one dollar each.

You can create stamps for postcards, too. And the postcards are sold through Zazzle, as well.

The time is NOW to get your Holiday items up for sale. Go for it! Have some fun! Make some money! And make some more
lenses to promote your store!!

http://www.zazzle.com/susan52z
http://www.zazzle.com/stargazer00
http://www.zazzle.com/moonvine44
http://www.zazzle.com/kateloving