Zazzle with Pizazz

Intro: Summary, Commentary, Guest Book
Page 1: Starting Out, Setting Up, Tagging and Organizing
Page 2: Designing and Arranging Products
Page 3: Exemplary Stores and Additional Resources

Read more by Squiznik at:

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
Tagging your Products - ensure that people who will like your designs can find them (wip)
Encouraging Promotion - make it easy for affiliates to promote your products

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.

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.

Summary

I'm planning to create a module about selecting tags for Zazzle products. A full discussion would inevitably involve speculation on exactly how tags are used by both Zazzle and external search engines and would take more space than is available in one module. My intention therefore is to offer a few insights that I believe will be useful. At the moment it's work in progress so here are a couple of useful links to be going on with.

The latest Zazzle Seller Newsletter, which is little more than a brief note about tagging.

The most recent tutorial (Oct 2009!) at Zazzle University, which includes some comments about tagging but more about the actual process of adding tags.

Affiliate Marketing

After a while with Zazzle you'll probably notice two things that are relevant to what follows. The first is that Zazzle has an affiliate program (they call them Associates) through which people can earn money by referring customers to Zazzle. The second is that some of your sales have been referred sales for which you received a slightly reduced royalty. These are sales that were referred by affiliates and although the reduced royalty is not so pleasing, referrals are generally a good thing. They mean that other zazzlers believe your designs will sell well and are worth their time and money to promote. Their reward will be referral fees, while yours will be additional marketing of your products to the wider marketplace at no cost to you. The best affiliates should be very effective in helping buyers to find the products they really want and you can benefit from this if your store organization facilitates their doing so. That is the topic of this module.

I should state upfront that this is not a complete review of the topic. I offer a few observations based on what works well for me when I promote other people's products in the context of a particular website. However, there is certainly more than one approach and for some affiliate strategies my observations may be less applicable. For instance, my scenario supposes a website categorized by design theme, dog breeds in the example, but if another affiliate focused, say, on design style then organizing your Zazzle store by design theme might be less helpful. So please read the following as a way of stimulating your thinking about how to make your store affiliate friendly rather than as a set of rules that will be right in every situation.

Organizational Considerations

For the purposes of illustration let's suppose that I have a website devoted to Cat and Dog designs organized by breed and that I am in the process of completing my 'Dalmatian' page by looking for Zazzle designers with excellent Dalmatian designs that I can promote.

Categories. I've noticed that you have some great Dalmatian designs and so plan A is to discover if you have a Dalmatian category in your store. If you do I can link products in that category to my website without having to laboriously and statically link individual products. But you don't have such a store category. You either have no categories at all or you have categories based on product type so I cannot use a category to isolate your Dalmatian designs. I'll have to employ plan B.

Tags. This is plan B and it's not really quite as desirable as plan A. In this case I try to link to the search term 'Dalmatian' to pull in products relevant to my webpage. But I hit another snag. You've decided to tag all you dogs with multiple breeds in the belief that someone looking for poodle designs will spot a Dalmatian and think 'Oh wait, I really didn't want a poodle design after all'. I in no way share that belief and don't want your poodle designs popping up on my Dalmatian page so I cannot use Plan B. At this point there is no plan C. I move on from your store and your designs, which I really like but can't easily use, in favor of someone else's.

Number of Products. Let's go back to plan A and suppose you do have a 'Dalmatian' category. Things are looking good but then I find you only have three products there so far. Now I'm not looking for 101 Dalmatians but I do have my webpages organized to display five products in a row from any given designer so I'll have a couple of blank spots in this case. This speaks to the 'critical mass' of products that you may read about elsewhere. If you have just a few products in each category and sales are sluggish you might want to persevere and fill out the store a little to see if you attract more affiliate promotion.

Quality Consistency. In this case I do find sufficient Dalmatian designs in your Dalmatian category or exclusively labelled with Dalmatian tags but I notice that about one in three of your products has the design carelessly placed on, say, a round product with half of the dog's head missing. I don't want that showing up on my webpage and am not hand-picking products so again I have to move on.

Store Profile. In this case your designs are looking great and your products are well organized so I'm eager to find out a little more about you. However when I check the 'About' page I get the aggravating message that 'This user's profile is currently off'. This wouldn't necessarily stop me from promoting your products but it is a shame. If I wanted to add some biographical information to my webpage I would have nothing to go on. If I was torn between two designers even a snippet of information about you could tip the balance in your favor.

Store Name. OK now we're getting quite picky but you have great designs, a well organized store and an intriguing bio but you called your store 'BCax67'. Again it's not a deal breaker but I just think our customers would be more attracted to Dalmatian designs by 'B Caxton' or 'DogCat Designs' rather than something less memorable.

Product Page Links. I add this note at the end because I have seen it suggested that hyperlinks on your product pages deter affiliates as they fear the loss of referral credits. I do not concur. It doesn't concern me if you have links to other products or even to an external website within or after your product descriptions. These are good things for you and your customers. I have links at the end of all my product descriptions and still enjoy a good proportion of referred sales from which affiliates are earning referral fees. I can't tell how many visitors use those links to check out my other Zazzle products but I can tell that the percentage who link to my website is very low, perhaps as few as 1%. Even if all of those returned to Zazzle via one of my referral links that would still represent a very small erosion of referral credits. There are enough other opportunities to link away from a Zazzle product page that this needn't be a primary concern. In fact I take the view that the more effective affiliates, the ones more likely to be bringing in qualified buyers, will be operating websites that are sufficiently helpful and well organized that visitors want to return to them rather than wandering off elsewhere. On the other hand, less adept affiliates pursuing vaguer marketing strategies might be more vulnerable. But then I would expect fewer qualified buyers from such sources and am happy to survive without that kind of affiliation if need be.

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
Arranging Products in your Store - powerful functionality but beware of the pitfalls

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.

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 recently revamped and restored the ability to customize the order in which products are displayed when visitors browse your store categories. What better time then to overhaul and simplify my explanation of how this works.
Warning: Product sort order changes get applied in stages and it can take up to 1 hour for them to be fully applied. During that time you may find, for example, that a newly featured product shows up in the management area under 'custom' sort, but not yet under 'A-Z' sort and not until much later in the public view. A little bit of patience will help avoid confusion.
Green text shows store management navigation and [StoreName] or [StoreCategory] represents the store or category that you wish to manage.

The Default Product Sort Order
My Account > Store > [StoreName] Manage > Content

At the bottom of this page your will see 'Default Product Sort Order' with a dropdown menu of options: Newest, Popular, A-Z. This will determine the order in which products are displayed in your categories unless you override it with a setting for the category itself (see next).

Category Product Sort Order - Public View Setting
My Account > Products > [StoreName] > [StoreCategory]

(Note: You may also need to click on sub-categories if you have a hierarchy of categories.) On this product management page to the right below the '[StoreCategory] Products' title you will see a 'Product Sort Order: ...' link, which determines the product sort order that will be presented to public view for that particular category. It offers just two options. The first, 'Use current sort', allows you to set the sort order in the public view to that being used right now on the management page (more on that below). The second, 'Use store default', returns the sort order to the default sort order explained above.

Category Product Sort Order - Presets
My Account > Products > [StoreName] > [StoreCategory]

On the product management page just below the '[StoreCategory] Products' title you will see three dropdown menu buttons. All three affect only how products are displayed on this management page, not in the public view. It is the third button, which selects the sort order, that is of interest here. To make what follows easier make sure that the first button is set to 'All Products' and the second is set to '100'. The third button offers five options, a custom sort and four sorts that I call 'presets'. These presets are 'Newest', 'Popular', 'A-Z' and 'Z-A', which are pretty self-explanatory, although what exactly determines 'popular' is a matter of some debate. If you decide that a preset sort order would be ideal for public display of the products in that category then you should (especially if it's not the default) set it by selecting 'Use current sort' under the 'public view setting' as explained above.

Category Product Sort Order - Custom
My Account > Products > [StoreName] > [StoreCategory]

Finally let's look at the 'Custom' sort order on the product management page. This is where things get very flexible. Basically you can move products around to be in any order you like. You can do this by either by dragging and dropping or by selecting products and clicking on 'Send to front' or 'Send to back'. Again if you end up with a product sort order that you would like to use for the public view don't forget to select 'Use current sort' under the 'public view setting' as explained earlier.
Caution: It is often best to begin with the existing custom sort order by selecting that using the third dropdown button mentioned above. If you begin with one of the preset sort orders instead and start moving products you will get a popup warning that your existing custom sort order will be replaced. In other words your custom sort order will become whatever preset you started with plus the change you are about to make. I generally find it safer / less confusing to click cancel and reset the sort order to the existing custom sort order before making changes.
Caution: If you have more than 100 products in a category you may end up tearing your hair out trying to configure a custom sort order. Drag and drop obviously does not work between pages and even 'Send to front' or 'Send to back' generates baffling results.

If you have many categories then I wish you all the best with your sort order customization as it will be one of those tedious admin tasks that no one especially enjoys. I do believe however that you will find it worthwhile as you 'put your best foot forward' presenting your most appealing or most lucrative products at the top of the page where your customers are more likely to notice them.

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