Add some Pizazz to your Zazzle store!
This site offers helpful advice to 'zazzlers'. Zazzle provides a unique print on demand store hosting service. Product designs are supplied by storeowners who range from enthusiastic hobbyists to large corporations. Within that mix are individuals making a serious attempt to supplement their income with earnings from a Zazzle store. This site has been created primarily with those individuals in mind but should prove useful to any zazzler wanting to add pizazz to their store. Articles range from broad discussion of business issues to detailed notes on advanced features.
Contents
Starting a Zazzle Business - set realistic goals and understand the key success factors
Setting up a Zazzle Store - start off well with useful content and a stylish appearance
Arranging Products in your Store - powerful functionality but beware of the pitfalls
Designing Stylish T-Shirts - ensure that your designs are ready to wear
Designing Neat and Tidy Binders - keeping it all together with these new products
Zazzle Stores with Pizazz - examples of stores with a little pizazz
Other Zazzling Resources - if it's not on this site it might be on one of these
Visitor Feedback - your turn to type
Starting a Zazzle Business
Realistic Goals
A frequently asked question is, "can I earn a living as a Zazzle contributor?" A more precise question would be, "what am I likely to earn as a Zazzle contributor?" and the chances are you want a realistic assessment not hype based on a few exceptional success stories.
We can get some clue from Zazzle's 'proseller' levels, which confer additional benefits on sellers who reach certain sales targets. The first level is reached once you earn $300 over a 3 month period. For simplicity let's assume this represents a steady income of $100/month, which would add up to a very modest annual income - far short of earning a living. The second proseller level requires earnings of $3000 over a 3 month period. In that case, assuming a steady $1000/month, it's closing in on the average US wage. There are proseller levels beyond that but there are also organizations using Zazzle who are most likely the beneficiaries at these levels.
So how many people make these first two proseller levels? Only Zazzle knows. Most of the participants in the Zazzle forum are not prosellers, although many of the regular participants are. One thing clear from that community is that few become prosellers without a serious time commitment to their zazzle business - they either devote most of their spare time to zazzling or make it their primary activity. At level 2 a proseller store gets a special mention in search results. This doesn't show up very frequently but interestingly can be seen for some quite unremarkable stores. Considering the affordability of benefits conferred at level 2, it would seem unlikely that this is a large group of sellers.
So in conclusion, good advice might be, 'don't give up your day job'. Conversely once you embark on a Zazzle enterprise, good advice might simply be, 'don't give up'. Of course we've only looked at averages and dealt in generalities. The situation for any individual will depend on many variables. So let's now take a look at some of the factors on which your store's commercial success depends.
Success Factors
Broadly speaking three areas determine the commercial success of your Zazzle store.
• The market segment in which your store operates
• The appeal of your designs
• The effectiveness of your marketing
Market Segment
Even if you have a clear idea which segment you wish to target it's worth considering the various characteristics of market segments, their potential impact on your sales and the implications for for the way you approach the business. Here we'll look at a few examples.
One attractive market segment with high demand is that of wedding stationery - invitations, save the date cards and so on. Of course, as might be expected, with high demand comes keen competition. Many zazzlers operate in this segment. Customers are looking for attractive designs of high quality and there are many to choose from in the marketplace. So, although you will be selling in a lucrative segment, make sure you have the design talent to match expectations and be prepared to devote a lot of effort to marketing.
Another popular market segment is that for political slogans and the like. Again demand is high and competition is keen but the design requirements are slightly different. In this segment punchy and topical text rather than pretty design is essential. You'll need a flair for catching the public mood and be prepared to refresh your designs frequently and promptly as political trends shift. A marketing priority will be to get the right design in place before anyone else so that your products are found early using the most recent popular search terms.
Alternatively you might consider pursuing a market niche. Perhaps you have a hobby or interest for which you have the expertise and enthusiasm to create relevant designs. Your specialist knowledge should give you a competitive advantage and focused marketing is often more effective. However, demand within a small niche might be too low, whereas the effort required to pursue numerous related niches might prove too onerous. Suppose, for example, your chosen field is dog breeds. If you specialize in one breed you might find the effort required to profitably sell designs for that breed to be manageable but much of that effort will need to be replicated several times over to cover all breeds.
Design Appeal
Whichever market segment you pursue, one key to success will be creating the kind of designs your customers want to buy. People occasionally overlook this, as if merely selling something via the internet is reason enough for people to buy it, no matter how it looks. Zazzle products are not cheap and buyers are still going to be discerning when making purchases - if your design is unappealing it will not sell - try to step back and assess this realistically.
Another important point here is that image dimensions / resolutions should be acceptable. Zazzle automatically warns both contributors and buyers if image resolution is too low, so review their image guidelines and make sure your images meet the recommended standards. Of course it's just as important that the underlying visual quality of the image is of a high standard - images that are out of focus, misaligned or otherwise badly formed will damage trust in your technical competence and cause visitors to scurry away from your store.
As for the artistic appeal of your designs that is obviously a subjective matter. In some segments the comic value of a design will be more important than it's aesthetic value. Similarly, purveyors of fine art may be dismayed to discover the extent to which they are outsold by basic designs that leverage populist themes. It is always worth exploring what else is being offered in your selected segment to make sure your designs remain competitive.
Marketing
Marketing is such a vast topic, including advertising, website development, social networking and more, that it would require an entirely separate module to cover effectively. I'll confine myself to making just one point here.
At the outset many zazzlers rely exclusively on the Zazzle marketplace for their marketing. If you've attended effectively to the first two areas mentioned above then this can bring in sales. However, the Zazzle marketplace is a bit like a stock market trading floor with everyone shouting to be heard above each other. Any store will benefit from looking beyond the Zazzle marketplace and marketing to people not already visiting Zazzle. There is a very lucrative affiliate program that will reward your external marketing efforts even if the visitors you attract end up buying from other stores.
Experimental Store
Here is one final recommendation to finish with. If you are still undecided how you might best succeed with a Zazzle store you might consider setting up a store just to experiment with. This store can afford to be a little disorganized and contain an eclectic mix of designs focused on a variety of market segments. Play around with a few designs to see what sells and just as importantly what you enjoy designing. This should help clarify the direction you want to take and the experience gained should make the development of your primary store(s) far more efficient and effective. What's more the test store will continue to prove useful as Zazzle rolls out new features that you'd prefer to test before applying to your flagship stores.
Setting up a Zazzle Store
So maybe after exploring a few ideas with a test store you've hit upon a winner or maybe you knew what you wanted to do right from the get go. You've settled on a store/gallery name for the venture, created a Zazzle account with that name and perhaps even reserved a matching domain name ready for an associated website. Now you're ready to set up a spiffy Zazzle store worthy of your ambitions. This module examines some aspects of store setup grouped according to three of the 'My Account' pages devoted to store setup.
Basic Information
My Account > Store > Store Settings > Basic Information
This is where you edit your store title and tags and the description that appears just below the header image on the homepage. The store title can be anything you like but one sensible approach is to match your username, which in turn appears in the store url. The store title can be re-edited at any time or even hidden so you don't need to get it right first time.
The description can contain a lot of text with some html permitted, including image links. It can therefore be used to enhance homepage appearance as well as improve store navigation. Of course there's some basic information you'll want to convey with something like:
"Welcome to MyDesigns store, where you'll find so-and-so products with such-and-such designs ideal for something-or-other. All products are customizable so you can add your own text or images to create fully personalized items."
You'll have to call upon your own writing skills to formulate a suitable version for your own store but here are four objectives you might bear in mind.
• Describe what the store contains i.e. type of products and designs.
• Create a professional impression suggestive of quality artwork and good organization.
• Convey overall store styles such as formal vs. fun or targeted vs. comprehensive.
• Facilitate navigation through the store.
It is in facilitating store navigation that the use of html and image links can prove useful. Zazzle's new default layout doesn't include links to product types on the homepage so you might want to add suitable text or image links to the description. Similarly, while links to 12 featured products are still possible on the homepage, you may prefer to display fewer or more than, which again can be accomplished by adding image links to the description. Finally, Zazzle's latest improvements allow category links to be shown on the homepage but if you want a little more flexibility you can craft your own with text or image links.
There are a few other items on this page. Tags - important to help customers find your store when searching the web, so choose carefully. 'Make this Store Private' - useful while building your store so the public can't visit something under construction. Google and Statcounter tools - very useful for analyzing traffic to your store but beyond the scope of this module.
Appearance
My Account > Store > Appearance
The first choice on this page is between a preset theme or a custom look. The preset themes will get you up and running quickly but are not the best choice if you want to stand out from the crowd with your own store style. If you select a custom look the following options are available.
You can choose whether or not to have a store header image. You sacrifice 100px or 200px of upper page space if you chose to have a header image but your visitors will appreciate something visually familiar throughout your store. Match this image to that on your own website and you are well on the way to establishing an integrated look and feel. It's best to use the specified image sizes, 900x100px or 900x200px, to be sure they're displayed as you expect.
Most of the rest of this page comprises color selections for the main and sidebar portions of your store pages. Again this is an opportunity to establish style consistency between the store and any other associated web properties. If you have not yet established a house style this is the point at which you have to make some artistic decisions. Obviously your selections are a matter of individual taste but I will offer one general suggestion. The available options are very flexible but it's often better to be restrained and stick with just one or two colors in order to create a professional and recognizable style.
Advanced Options. You'll see the opportunity to enable advanced options at the bottom of the page. These are still in beta and you will be warned that no support is available should anything go wrong. These options provide access to much of the store html and CSS and enable you to radically change the store's content and appearance. The freedom this offers to those familiar with html and CSS is refreshing but it is also possible to render your store unworkable and irretrievable. Advanced options will not be covered in this module.
Edit Content
My Account > Store > Edit Content
This page allows you to select which modules will appear in your store. The style of visitor interaction you are aiming for will influence your choices. An example of contrasting styles would be one very interative store with lots of comments, chat, fans, etc. versus another more austere approach offering only those functions necessary to find and purchase products. I tend to lean toward the latter, which will be reflected in following observations on selected page elements.
Home. If you don't select this option there will be no homepage and the store url will take visitors straight to the main products page. From there they will be able to browse categories and search for products but it will be more like a warehouse than a store. I would certainly recommend having a homepage so as to include all the introductory content mentioned earlier.
Products. While a store might be workable without a homepage it doesn't seem to be workable if 'Products' is not selected. Not only do you not get the main products page but neither will your store categories be displayable.
About. A store without an 'About' page is perfectly functional but will likely come across as less friendly and trustworthy than one that has one. However, the content for the About page is entered at My Account > Account > Profile Information and it can be a challenge to make this look professional. I doubt most visitors would expect a professional store to indicate the owner's marital status! In one store I've used artistic interests to discuss relevant design considerations in order to create an impression of expertise.
Favorites, Fan Club, Favorite Store. If you're leaning toward a more austerely functional store then these will be regarded as little more than clutter. Until recent changes these links just pushed the store categories further down the sidebar and so hindered store navigation. They are useful if you want to engage in the mutual backslapping that some believe will deliver lucrative traffic from one store to another.
Left column / Right Column. To some extent personal taste but left column is a much more common place to find navigation so why create unfamiliarity for the visitor.
Don't show Categories, etc. Determines if and how categories are shown at the top of the homepage or, separately, every other page. Categories are shown in the sidebar so it's not necessary for navigation to display them at the top of a page. If you decide to show categories then make sure you have uploaded an icon/image for each of them because the default grey folder looks ugly and unprofessional. Scrolling leaves more page space available but Full is easier to navigate if there aren't too many categories.
Don't show Products / Show Products. Determines whether or not the first 12 products appear as featured products on the home page. Individual products on the home page can be useful as examples to lure visitors further and if you want 12 then this is a convenient way to do it. The alternative way to show products is by adding some image links in the homepage description as mentioned earlier.
Arranging Products within your Store
Recent enhancements enable storekeepers to customize the order in which products are displayed in their store. This also affects how featured products are selected. This module explains how it works.
Green text indicates the relevant store administration page.
The Underlying Concepts
My Account > Products > Public
There are certain groupings of products that can be sorted (see below) and a number of different sort orders that can be applied. The preset sort orders, like 'Newest' or 'A-Z', are mostly self-explanatory so we'll focus more on the 'Custom' sort order where you can place the products in whatever sequence you choose.
The 'Products' tab always opens up on the 'Public' page showing all your public products - let's call this the 'All Products' set. This set is what store visitors see when they click on 'View all Products' and its first 12 products are featured if you choose to show products on your homepage. If you haven't created 'Store Categories' this is the only grouping of products that is sortable. There are no sortable subsets of 'All Products' - you can select just Mugs and move a mug to the front but it will be moved in front of every product not just the other mugs.
If, however, you create 'Store Categories' then those product sets can be sorted separately from each other and from the 'All Products' set. For example, if you have a Store Category called 'Apples' and a 'Golden Apple Mug' in that category then you can move that mug to the front of the 'Apples' category without changing its position within the 'All Products' set.
Let's see how sorting is accomplished while noting a few wrinkles that might trip us up.
Default Product Sort Order and Featured Products
My Account > Store > Edit Content
Toward the bottom of the 'Edit Content' page you'll see a dropdown menu setting the default product sort order. This is the product sort order that will apply to the 'All Products' set and every 'Store Category' unless you override it from the 'Products' tab (explained later). The options are Newest, Popular and A-Z. Choose the option that best displays your products in case you forget to, or decide not to, override it.
Also note at the upper right the option to 'Show Products' or 'Don't show Products' on the homepage. If you choose to show products then 12 products will be displayed on the homepage just like the featured products used to be. The 12 that will be displayed are the first 12 products of the 'All Products' set according to the sort order currently applied to it. For example, if you selected a default product sort order of Newest and didn't override it then your most recent 12 products would be displayed on the homepage. In order to display a handpicked 12 products you would have to create and apply a 'Custom' sort order to the 'All Products' set with your chosen 12 products at the front - we'll see how to do that below.
Finally don't forget to activate your selections by clicking the 'Save changes' button.
Viewing and Applying Product Sort Orders
My Account > Products > Public
The 'Products' tab is where you can override that default sort order setting. Since the procedures apply equally to 'Store Categories' as to the 'All Products' set let's just stay with the latter.
First note the 3 dropdown menus just below the 'All Products' title. The 1st menu selects which product types we view but since product types can't be sorted independently we might as well leave this set to 'All Products'. The 2nd menu specifies products/page and you'll find 100 is convenient if you have lots of products. The 3rd menu determines the order in which products are displayed here and starts out matching the order for this products set currently applied in the store.
Those 3 menus affect how products are displayed on these admin pages but to their right you'll see a 4th setting called 'Product Sort Order' (PSO), which specifies which sort order is applied when the product set is displayed in your store. You have two choices: 'Use current sort' and 'Use store default'. Let's see how the PSO works.
Suppose the default sort order is set to 'Newest'. If the PSO is set to 'Store Default' then products in your store are displayed newest first. Now if you change the 3rd menu to 'A-Z' products on this page will reorder accordingly but nothing will change in your store. However, if you now set the PSO to 'Use current Sort' it will also change to 'A-Z' and products will now also be displayed that way in your store. You can keep changing the 3rd menu without affecting your store provided you don't activate it with the PSO.
Warning: It takes up to 1 hr for a new PSO setting to be applied to the store as warnings indicate. You get used to this but it can be unhelpful while you're experimenting.
Finally a quick note on the Custom sort order to be discussed in the next section. You can set the 3rd menu to 'Custom' and fine tune a custom sort order without it affecting your store provided you leave the PSO alone. Any changes you do make to a custom sort order will be saved for later regardless of whether or not you apply them to your store.
Warning: If you create a custom order by starting with a preset order such as 'Z-A' and moving just one product you will be warned of two drastic consequences. First this new custom sort order will completely overwrite the existing custom sort order and second it will automatically be applied to your store (you will see the PSO status change). For this reason I prefer to start with the 3rd menu set to 'Custom' before rearranging any products.
Creating Custom Sort Orders
My Account > Products > Public
This section explains how to create or rearrange a 'Custom' sort order. Begin at the 'Products' tab and set the 3rd menu to 'Custom'. You may see a familiar 12 featured products at the front.
Let's start by moving up a product from a later page. Go to the second page and select a product you want to move to the front (click the check box to select it). Now click on 'Send to front' (just above the PSO setting).
Warning: There's a flaw here. First the 'Send to front' link will give no indication it has been clicked and second the product will not appear to have moved. However, if you reload the page (F5) you'll find it has gone and if you go back to the first page you'll find it exactly where it should be - in the first position on the page.
This process can be repeated for other products, even multiple products, from any of the pages and they will each be successively moved up to the #1 position. The idea is that you get all the products you want onto page one where you can use drag and drop to rearrange them as explained next. For that purpose let's just stick with moving the one product up to the #1 position.
Now let's suppose we are back at page one where we wanted this moved product but we decide we don't want it to be in the top 12 to be featured on the homepage. In that case just drag and drop the product from position #1 to, say, position #13. Easy as that!
You can drag and drop products within page one as much as you like but you cannot drag and drop products between pages, which is why it can be useful to have products/page set to 100. It is also why you might want to leaf through and 'fetch' all the products you want from later pages before doing a final rearrangement on page one.
You can drag and drop within other pages too but you cannot 'Send to front of Page #N' so gathering products you want onto pages other than page one would be a tricky process. This sounds like quite a limitation but in practice if you're wanting to custom sort more than 100 products you should probably be organizaing them into smaller store categories.
When you've finished creating or rearranging a Custom sort order you can either apply it immediately to your store (1hr delay of course) or just leave as you have it to come back to later. If the PSO is already set to 'Custom' your new Custom sort order will be automatically be applied to your store but if the PSO is set to something else you will need to select 'Use current sort' to apply the new arrangement.
Warning: Heed the following to avoid nasty unpredictable re-sorts. Do not change the number of products per page during a re-sort - best to start off with 100 per page and leave it at that. Do not drag and drop a product that has been sent to the front but is still shown on the page - do frequent page reloads to avoid this.
Store Categories
My Account > Products > Public > 'Some Category'
Store Categories can each have their own custom sort order and can each have a different sort order applied, i.e. each have their own PSO. Just go to the 'Products' tab, click on the Store Category you want to arrange and use the procedures explained above. Customizing Store Category sort orders can greatly improve the visibility of your flagship products.
Designing Stylish T-Shirts
Whites as Transparent. Beware! this setting is hidden initially and displays whites as transparent by default. Click on 'Advanced options' under the image thumbnail in the product design page to see this and change it if you wish. If you don't change it any pure white areas of your image will not be printed on dark apparel, which can be useful but for most of my images it's a disaster!
Image Resolution. Zazzle provides a very clear help page on image sizes. Pixelated or blurry images are a major source of customer dissatisfaction so it's best to stick to these recommendations. A yellow warning triangle appears if you enlarge an image beyond acceptable limits while creating or customizing a product. You can however go as low as 1500px across the longest dimension without triggering this warning and I have purchased decent looking t-shirts with such images but it's best to avoid this if possible.
Product Previews vs Actual Appearance. Zazzle used to have a preview showing your image on a flat t-shirt and it's too bad they did away with it. Previews of shirts on models are a nice touch but it can be very difficult to determined how much of the t-shirt your image is going to cover. In many cases they also look off-center and distorted on the models. Short of creating and purchasing a grid-like test image my best suggestion is as follows. For centering, assume that the design preview indicates the optimum placement. For sizing, try to find a model on which full size appears neither extremely big nor extremely small and assume that that model is representative.
Creating Private Products. The way to designate a product as private rather than public isn't obvious during the product design process but it is explained on this help page. Basically once you've finished designing the product select 'Add to cart' instead of 'Post for sale'. You can immediately remove it from the cart because it will also have been added to your private products accessible at 'My Account' > 'Products' > 'Private'.
Product Titles. It's debatable whether you should add the product type to your product titles. Should it be 'Save the World' or Save the World T-Shirt'. In Zazzle product views 'T-Shirt' is added to the title if not already there but in other instances such as uploads to Google Base it is not added. To a search engine, or even a person if there was no picture, it would not be obvious what a 'Save the World' is so just to be sure I always add the product type. Don't call it 'Apparel' though because the Zazzle product view will then show it as a 'Save the World Apparel T-Shirt'.
Subtitles and Descriptions. The Zazzle search engine pays attention to subtitles and the first couple of lines in descriptions and it is likely that external search engines do too. So make sure you have as appropriate subtitle and description using the keywords that you will help buyers find yuor products.
How Many Styles to Display. Zazzle's purchase process allows customers to chose from hundreds of style/color combinations while purchasing any t-shirt so it's not necessary to create more than one example for all options to be available. On the other hand it is precisely this large number of options that makes it beneficial for the designer to use their expertise to display some of the best alternatives for any particular design. This will not only save the customer time and effort but it will likely attract more customers than a collection of designs on basic white t-shirts. It can easily be overdone though and the customer will likely be deterred by seeing the same design repeated on more than 4-6 different examples.
Designing Neat and Tidy Binders
Zazzle's latest product is a nice addition to the office range and offers much scope for design creativity. Their configuration is a little complex so here are a few tips to keep your designs neat and tidy.
Creating and Placing Binder Images
Zazzle's recommended mininum image sizes for binders will ensure best quality and fit. There are three binder sizes (1", 1.5" and 2") and each has two recommended image sizes, one for the front face or back face and one for the spine. Alternatively, you can treat the entire outer surface of the binder as one image, in which case the recommended size is the sum of two faces and a spine.
Note that all image minimum heights are the same (3639px) - it is only the width that changes with the binder size. The important consequence of this change in aspect ratio (height/width) is that images created to be a perfect fit for one binder size will not be a perfect fit for the other two. The preferred way to handle this depends on the style of design and the extent to which you want to protect your customers from resizing errors. Here are a few options.
A straightforward approach would be to create three versions with each having the design tailor made for one of the binder sizes. This should be suit most design styles provided that a little aspect ratio adjustment is possible. This approach is also foolproof, unless a customer tries to use, say, the 1.5" version on a 2" binder. Switching to another size is not easy from the product page but the customer can do it by using the customization feature. The challenge will be to make sure the customer understands there are three versions. This approach might also be considered to involve an unnecessary triplication of work.
An alternative approach, which relies on just one version, would be to use a single image large enough to fill the entire surface of any binder and set it to fill the available area. For example, an image sized 7950x3639px will be a perfect fit for a 2" binder and will be large enough for smaller binders although it will suffer some cropping of the left and right edges in those cases. Alternatively, an image sized 7950x4146px will be a perfect fit for a 1" binder (same aspect ratio as the 6978x3639px minimum) and will be wide enough for larger binders but it will suffer cropping of the top and bottom edges in those cases. Either way the cropping means that this approach is best suited to designs where cropping can be tolerated such as repeated patterns, abstracts or designs with generous margins. For such designs this approach is foolproof since the end result will look good no matter what the customer choses.
A third approach also uses just one version but offers a little more design flexibility. In this case three images are created separately for the front, back and spine. The aspect ratio challenges remain but can be treated differently for each image. For example, a front image could comprise fixed left, right and top margins but have a larger bottom margin whose size varies depending on the binder size. To achieve this, size the image to match the 1" binder aspect ratio but with sufficient width for the 2" binder. Then set that image to fill the space, center it horizontally and align it against the top edge. As the binder size increases (gets wider) the image will expand to fill it and the top edge alignment will ensure that left, right and top margins remain proportionately the same. It is the bottom margin that gets cropped to fit the new aspect ratio. Choose the bottom margin to look nice for the 1.5" binder and it won't look too bad on the 1" or 2" sizes. This approach will work well for fixed aspect ratio designs where a margin can be added and it is foolproof against changes in binder size.
Additional Tips
Background Color The binder design tool allows a background color to be set and it is generally a good idea to do this. If your design already has a background or margin color then use the same color. In that way any slight misalignments will not create ugly and embarrassing white space. A particular customer benefit of this would be if they wanted to customize the binder by removing your entire front image with margin but still wanted to have a margin surrounding their own image. A matching background color would provide that margin for them. Otherwise they would have the challenge of figuring out which color you used in order to get an exact match.
Text along the Spine and Customization Text along the spine is a bit of a nightmare. Horizontal text on the front or back face presents few problems but text along the spine probably needs to be rotated by 90 degrees and that's where the problems begin. Rotated spine text seems to misbehave when product customization is initiated. For example, merely changing the background color causes the text to wrap into a narrow horizontal box extending beyond the spine. Reediting the text fixes this immediately but would a customer figure that out? Short of adding unprofessional looking and easily overlooked warning notes on every product I can see no way round this.
Text along the Spine in Templates Templates are a great idea for binders with titles since customers will certainly want to compose their own titles. Unfortunately a template element of rotated text along the spine can suffer from unpredictable shifts when the text is modified. This would force the customer to resort to the design tool or even customization, which defeats the purpose of setting up a template. Adhering to the following practices when setting up the template will minimize these effects for the benefit of the customer.
• Use only centered paragraph alignment - left or right paragraph alignment causes modified template text to shift off-center, which can only be rectified by using the design tool or customization. On the other hand, overall alignment of the text element using the arrows doesn't seem to cause any bad effects - so go ahead and center the element, align it with the edges or shift it anywhere you wish.
• Make your sample text as long as the longest text that you consider will fit within the design. The length of the sample text fixes the size of the text box available in the template. If the customer tries to insert longer text it will wrap around, possibly beyond the edges of the spine. Again the customer would only be able to fix this by using the design tool or customization, so help them out by making that text box as big as possible. To achieve the required length your sample text can be padded out using dots, so for example, instead of "Sample Binder Title" you could use "Sample Binder Title .............."
I hope you found these selected observations helpful - the most useful may well be the last one, so hopefully your read that far or are starting from here and working up!
Zazzle Stores with Pizazz
- Retropolis Travel
- Stylish Use of Beta Customization
Browse our selection of retro-futuristic art on custom business cards, custom greeting cards, postcards, coffee mugs and other products all designed to leave you a fond memento of your visit to the Future That Never Was.
- Write Stuff
- Elegant Style with a Clear Layout where Store Categories are aligned with Designs
Unique customizable designer stationery.......all the right stuff for Writing Stuff and more! - FlagAndMap
- Store Categories nicely aligned with Customer Segments
Gifts for Global Citizens - 1000's of products featuring flag and map designs for over 180 countries - promote your home nation or favorite destination and celebrate the diversity of humankind.
- Ars Celtica
- Another Example of what can be achieved with Beta Customization
Ars Celtica is a collection of Celtic knotwork art and design by Bradley W. Schenck, who's been making interlace or knotwork patterns since 1980. And boy, are his arms tired!
- Zia Sun
- Just Really Beautiful Designs
New Mexico's distinctive insignia is the Zia (Sun) Symbol, which originated with the Indians of Zia Pueblo (north central New Mexico) in ancient times. Its design reflects their tribal philosophy, with its wealth of pantheistic spiritualism teaching the basic harmony of all things.
- Bad Onions Cartoons
- A Collection of Humorous Greeting Cards that are actually ... Funny!
Our gallery has an exclusive collection of of funny and fun Birthday, Christmas, and all occasion greeting cards and party invitations. All work is originally penned from the creative lunacy of cartoonist David Stuart.
Other Zazzling Resources
If you didn't find it here, we suggest you try these sites
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Zazzle Store Help, Tips and Tricks for Selling Your Art Online
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Zazzle is a great place to sell your artwork, designs or photography online. You can set up an entire store for FREE and start creating your own Art Gallery right away. My Zazzle store features kitchen and gardening designs and some of my natu...
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How To Promote Your Zazzle Store
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Another lens from the fine folks at Zazzle Dazzlers. No matter if you are a seasoned lensmaster or you are looking to start your first lens, we hope to provide you with imformation that you will find valueable. On this lens we will show you how to st...
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How to succeed on Zazzle
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I don't really remember how I came across Zazzle, I think it was a random accident whilst browsing Google for "How to make money selling photos" That was over 2 years ago and I have never looked back! It took me a little while to figure zazzle out,...
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48 Ways to Advertise and Increase Traffic to Your Zazzle Gallery
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Zazzle is the print on demand t-shirt service that graphic designers use to create their own shirts and apparel, then charge their own royalty rate markup. The site has a huge marketplace, with hundreds of thousands of unique items. The Zazzle market...
Visitor Feedback
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- Timewarp Timewarp Nov 28, 2009 @ 7:40 am
- Good overview of the Zazzle basics here!
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- Jewelsofawe Jewelsofawe Nov 21, 2009 @ 5:52 pm
- Great tips!
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- BleuMoonsAttic BleuMoonsAttic Nov 20, 2009 @ 8:44 pm
- Wow! Tons of great information. Very useful stuff!!!
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- Janet-Lee Janet-Lee Nov 12, 2009 @ 12:45 am
- Thank you for all of the useful information.
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- Specialeetees Specialeetees Nov 9, 2009 @ 12:55 pm
- Thank you so much for featuring my Write Stuff store on your lens, top marks from me. This lens contains so much good quality guidance and info I'm sure many will find it an excellent souce to refer to.
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