Making money at Zazzle ?

[baggieboyblue]

Hi

I would like to ask the question if any fellow warriors are making any serious money on Zazzle ?

I've just started selling on zazzle as another income stream but to be perfectly honest I'm not expecting a lot from it. The reason being that there are literally thousands of each product selling on there and the chance of your design being purchased is very remote.

Even if you have the best design on there, you just get lost in the masses.

I am interested in hear other warriors views and if they use other tactics for selling on here.

[Mike McAleer]

I tried CafePress for a while and no success you really must commit yourself to it.

[Gail_Curran]

With Zazzle, Cafepress, and similar sites, it's all about marketing. You can't just put up your designs and expect to get sales. You need to make an effort to drive traffic. This can be done the same way you would drive traffic to your own websites: backlinks, social bookmarking, article marketing, PPC, videos, Twitter, Facebook, etc.

I get regular sales with a Cafepress shop even though I haven't touched it in two years. If I gave it more attention I'm pretty sure it could do very well.

[ButterflyGarden]

Originally Posted by Gail_Curran

With Zazzle, Cafepress, and similar sites, it's all about marketing. You can't just put up your designs and expect to get sales. You need to make an effort to drive traffic. This can be done the same way you would drive traffic to your own websites: backlinks, social bookmarking, article marketing, PPC, videos, Twitter, Facebook, etc.

I get regular sales with a Cafepress shop even though I haven't touched it in two years. If I gave it more attention I'm pretty sure it could do very well.

I agree you need to make an effort to market the sites in order to generate any serious revenue.

[Success With Dany]

Originally Posted by Gail_Curran

With Zazzle, Cafepress, and similar sites, it's all about marketing. You can't just put up your designs and expect to get sales. You need to make an effort to drive traffic. This can be done the same way you would drive traffic to your own websites: backlinks, social bookmarking, article marketing, PPC, videos, Twitter, Facebook, etc.

I get regular sales with a Cafepress shop even though I haven't touched it in two years. If I gave it more attention I'm pretty sure it could do very well.

Extremely true.

More often than not, it's fun to write articles, making videos, build info-blogs, etc. I would even say that it's 25% of the IM game.

The 75% remaining?

Unfortunately, the most boring and difficult part of said IM game: getting the targeted traffic.

It's simply not enough to put your content online, period.

[jamjar919]

Have a look at the zazzle forum - Ideas and sites used to promote your store - Zazzle Forum

Its pretty well hidden, so some people don't spot it. I linked to the "Promote" section where people ask for products to promote.

[CShark]

Great knowledge again. I think it all depends on how well you market your product.

Thanks

[baggieboyblue]

Thanks for all the replies.

However, I don,t agree with your comments. The difference between marketing your own website and marketing zazzle products is that when you send traffic to your own website if they buy something you get the sale. With zazzle you are only driving traffic to Zazzle, not to your product. If someone goes to Zazzle via your marketing efforts, as soon as they get on the site they will start looking at all the other designs on there. So not the same as driving traffic to your own website.
Zazzle is a very good business model, get other people to design items and for them to drive the traffic.
However, alas its not for other people. With so much choice and quite high prices my conclusion is that its not an area someone will make a lot of money.

[galka]

I am looking into selling products on zazzle too. The way I understand it is that you don't totally lose out if they buy someone elses product. You still get 15% commission from the sale (if you use the correct referral link). But if they do buy your product then you get the 15% plus another 10% or more depending on how high you set your commission rate.

[vbond]

I'm sure Zazzle is making money ! ;P

[Hydroxide]

I have seen my sister do this before. I am not sure she is still doing it now or not.
But I could see that it's a really hard work. Getting traffic is kinda hard. And theres a lot of work to be done. Setting up your store etc2. Plus, I don't think the commission is that high.
It would be much easier to create an Amazon review site and build some quality links to your site. Just my suggestion.

Kevin

[sappacis13]

That's the first time I heard about zazzle...

better go and check that out!

[AFI]

I think you really have to have a brand name before you can make money at CafePress, Zazzle. Like "The Oatmeal" or "The Onion". People who actually want to buy your merch because you have a cult following.

Otherwise like you said, you get lost in the masses.

[MarkWrites]

Making a full time income off of Zazzle would seem hard/near impossible to me. Setting it up and using it as one of the many streams of income for some of your existing other sites though is very doable.

[niffybranco]

You can make quite a bit of money on zazzle, but it is advisable not to make it your only source of income. Having all your online income dependant on 1 website or stream is suicidal in my opinion just ask the people who were relying on adsense only to wake up one morning and find that their account has been shut down.

With zazzle there are 2 ways to get images to use either
1. create them yourself or
2.use royalty free stock photos or public domain images

i am not an artist or designer so can only talk about the second one

My key to selling on zazzle is to use images that are currently selling. I do not try to reinvent the wheel.

To find what sort of public domain pics are trending i to go to a major site like AllPosters.com - The World's Largest Poster and Print Store! or Art.com - Posters, Art Prints, and Framed Art Leader. and browse their vintage and fine art section and sort by bestseller. With all posters determining if an image is public domain it is quite easy as they display the copyright date for the art with art.com you need to be diligent.

Once you find the images you want to use just use TinEye Reverse Image Search or GazoPa similar image search to perform a reverse search , this will fetch results of websites that you might be able to download the image from. Sort by size to find a high resolution image you can use to create products on zazzle.

The key is to have multiple themed stores. Do not just have one store with all sorts of images , instead open multiple accounts 1 account per niche, e.g you can have a store selling products created from Japanese art , another selling products with Leonardo da Vinci artwork etc.

You will need to do some marketing , you can build backlinks to your store use a zazzle referral link so you can earn a commission from whatever you are selling.

Also when building your store include keywords in your title, tags and description use long tail keywords.

marketing really depends on your niche but the principles are the same, say i was selling Van Gogh posters i would write articles about him and submit to directories, try and find art blogs to guest post on and let readers know they can VIEW don't say buy his works online at my zazzle store or even better on my blog.

Another way to market is to use photo sharing sites likeFlickr - Photo Sharing upload medium sized images and if the site allows it link back to your blog or zazzle store in the description let people know they can have it as a poster or printed on a t-shirt e.t.c You can find a lot of groups on zazzle join the ones related to your niche and add value add you blog or store url to your profile.

Create video slide shows from your images add appropriate text and music and submit to video sites. Add your store Url inside the video and in the description if allowed .

You can use a free software like http://pdfill.com to compile you images into a pdf file , you can add text pages with short descriptions and links to your store or blog and voilla you have got a a photo ebook you can submit to Scribd and all major document sharing sites.

With every money making method you will have those that are telling you it can't work but if you look closely you will find a lot of people banking big with that method.

Go forth and prosper

[HorseStall]

Originally Posted by baggieboyblue

However, I don,t agree with your comments. The difference between marketing your own website and marketing zazzle products is that when you send traffic to your own website if they buy something you get the sale. With zazzle you are only driving traffic to Zazzle, not to your product.

Not true. You can drive traffic to your site. You can display zazzle products that you make on your site (look at my sig for some samples of what can be done). Then you get a referral fee and the fee if you made the item.

[galka]

Thanks HorseStall. Your sites are exactly the type of thing I was looking at doing (different niches though).

[Preston T.]

I wouldn't say that I have made serious money at Zazzle, but I bet that if I scaled my efforts that I could easily make a nice payday there.

In order to be successful there - you gotta have a knack for designing or you can hire some designers on Odesk to do some batch jobs for you.

Obviously people like STATEMENT shrits, plus creating nice looking T-shirt text will cost you less when you are having the designs outsourced then having someone render you a fire-breathing dragon that looks rad. Does that make sense?

Here is a method that I used to generate some decent dollars on Zazzle.

People love celebrities - TV show actors - Movie Stars

STEP 1
Search for actors that are popular (go to perez hilton, or any celeb blog and find out who his hot)

STEP 2
Then search those people on YouTube, HULU, etc and find videos that summarize their funniest moments or TOP 10 best clips, etc.

EXAMPLE:
Ari Gold from Entourage
w w w .youtube.com/watch?v=sErn58DIpFk

Now go through those clips and look for wildly funny statements. If you are an Entourage fan then you know that Ari always screams, "LLOYD!!" or he makes fun of "e" - Ari says TONS of funny stuff and this show is an HBO Hit.

write down those funny statements and then check against Google and Twitter and see if people are talking about it. If they are or if people are using the statements in everyday chatter - you got a winner. Undoubtedly people are talking/buzzing about it.

Another example - Recently THE OFFICE debuted - Michael Scott's movie "Threat Level Midnight" It was hilarious and in that micro movie Michael had his own dance called "Do The Scarn" - Tons of people were chattering about this after the show.

Easy for an outsourced designer to make a HOT looking text that will print well on a shirt that says

DO THE SCARN! ( the office)

or

LLYOOOODDDDD!!!! (entourage)


Next step is to gather several of these sayings and send over a bulk order to your designer.

------

Now to make money.

Find the feeds in twitter of people talking about these sayings and join in the conversation and then drip a link to your shirt.

"do the scarn was awesome!! Michael Scott cracks me up. Check out this Do the Scarn shirt = EPIC (link)

-----

" gosh I wish Entourage would hurry up and come back on! I need to break out my Lloyyyd shirt (link)"

------

make sense?

so yes, you can make money with Zazzle. Above is a recipe that has brought me success. Hopefully you can make some extra dough doing what I just shared. Let me know how it goes

Cheers,
Preston

[mailey]

it Internet Marketing most people don't make a decent return. It looks like with Zazzle, the returns are even worse.

[Preston T.]

@mailey

well - aren't you negative. jeeze. i just outlined a blueprint for you to make some money with zazzle.

get out there and do it.

if you want some more help - let me know.

[dezchamps]

Thanks Preston and Branco- both great answers! I wouldn't put all my eggs in the Zazzle or CafePress basket, but use them as an upsell.

[BruceWood]

The Academy Awards are on tonight! What great T-shirt material will emerge?

[MCDavies]

I'm an artist myself and have sold many original paintings before on ebay. I'm just starting to get back into it and looking for different ways to market myself.

I've been experimenting with videos and seeing if I can create a buzz this way. maybe I'll incorporate zazzle with this. I've made some sales on redbubble.com which is similar.

Cheers,
Michael

[Helenaliyn]

My advice? As with anything else in IM, offer a really good product. If you're not that good at art or design, you'd better market the heck out of the stuff you end up making. There's not just thousands of each product, there's billions. I'm not kidding. I think it's up to 32 billion right now.

Anyhow, I started in November and didn't promote. I stopped actively adding products sometime in December. I've made 13 sales and $33. It's not too bad. Like I said though, don't expect much unless you're an excellent artist/designer or a godlike marketer.

[bigjara]

I have dabbled with zazzle, but i've yet to make a sale. I don't think it is worth putting hour of time into though.

[neoo28]

I just read in another tread that people making quite a money on zazzle with public domain pictures. I was thinking to make a zazzle store but after this tread I am disappointed in zazzle.

[celente]

I would not go swapping around!

Its misdirection, find something that makes you money or has already made you money and keep going with that.

The more time you deviate from your plan the more time you will face not making sales or money.

[GrandmaMarilyn]

I don't make a fortune with Zazzle, but it does supplement my income. I put up my Zazzle stores and then forgot them. If I had put more effort into them, I would be making more. I know some people that make quite a good income from Zazzle but they put effort into it with creating Squidoo lenses, websites, etc.

[DoubleOhDave]

These two posts are probably the best advice on the whole forum re: Zazzle. I particularly like the second idea - I never went down the textual t-shirt route but this idea has made me rethink that. Also - the Flickr idea is a totally new one to me and one i will def be using from now on. Thanks for that!!

Originally Posted by niffybranco

You can make quite a bit of money on zazzle, but it is advisable not to make it your only source of income. Having all your online income dependant on 1 website or stream is suicidal in my opinion just ask the people who were relying on adsense only to wake up one morning and find that their account has been shut down.

With zazzle there are 2 ways to get images to use either
1. create them yourself or
2.use royalty free stock photos or public domain images

i am not an artist or designer so can only talk about the second one

My key to selling on zazzle is to use images that are currently selling. I do not try to reinvent the wheel.

To find what sort of public domain pics are trending i to go to a major site like AllPosters.com - The World's Largest Poster and Print Store! or Art.com - Posters, Art Prints, and Framed Art Leader. and browse their vintage and fine art section and sort by bestseller. With all posters determining if an image is public domain it is quite easy as they display the copyright date for the art with art.com you need to be diligent.

Once you find the images you want to use just use TinEye Reverse Image Search or GazoPa similar image search to perform a reverse search , this will fetch results of websites that you might be able to download the image from. Sort by size to find a high resolution image you can use to create products on zazzle.

The key is to have multiple themed stores. Do not just have one store with all sorts of images , instead open multiple accounts 1 account per niche, e.g you can have a store selling products created from Japanese art , another selling products with Leonardo da Vinci artwork etc.

You will need to do some marketing , you can build backlinks to your store use a zazzle referral link so you can earn a commission from whatever you are selling.

Also when building your store include keywords in your title, tags and description use long tail keywords.

marketing really depends on your niche but the principles are the same, say i was selling Van Gogh posters i would write articles about him and submit to directories, try and find art blogs to guest post on and let readers know they can VIEW don't say buy his works online at my zazzle store or even better on my blog.

Another way to market is to use photo sharing sites likeFlickr - Photo Sharing upload medium sized images and if the site allows it link back to your blog or zazzle store in the description let people know they can have it as a poster or printed on a t-shirt e.t.c You can find a lot of groups on zazzle join the ones related to your niche and add value add you blog or store url to your profile.

Create video slide shows from your images add appropriate text and music and submit to video sites. Add your store Url inside the video and in the description if allowed .

You can use a free software like PDFill PDF Editor with FREE PDF Writer and FREE PDF Tools to compile you images into a pdf file , you can add text pages with short descriptions and links to your store or blog and voilla you have got a a photo ebook you can submit to Scribd and all major document sharing sites.

With every money making method you will have those that are telling you it can't work but if you look closely you will find a lot of people banking big with that method.

Go forth and prosper

Originally Posted by Preston T.

I wouldn't say that I have made serious money at Zazzle, but I bet that if I scaled my efforts that I could easily make a nice payday there.

In order to be successful there - you gotta have a knack for designing or you can hire some designers on Odesk to do some batch jobs for you.

Obviously people like STATEMENT shrits, plus creating nice looking T-shirt text will cost you less when you are having the designs outsourced then having someone render you a fire-breathing dragon that looks rad. Does that make sense?

Here is a method that I used to generate some decent dollars on Zazzle.

People love celebrities - TV show actors - Movie Stars

STEP 1
Search for actors that are popular (go to perez hilton, or any celeb blog and find out who his hot)

STEP 2
Then search those people on YouTube, HULU, etc and find videos that summarize their funniest moments or TOP 10 best clips, etc.

EXAMPLE:
Ari Gold from Entourage
w w w .youtube.com/watch?v=sErn58DIpFk

Now go through those clips and look for wildly funny statements. If you are an Entourage fan then you know that Ari always screams, "LLOYD!!" or he makes fun of "e" - Ari says TONS of funny stuff and this show is an HBO Hit.

write down those funny statements and then check against Google and Twitter and see if people are talking about it. If they are or if people are using the statements in everyday chatter - you got a winner. Undoubtedly people are talking/buzzing about it.

Another example - Recently THE OFFICE debuted - Michael Scott's movie "Threat Level Midnight" It was hilarious and in that micro movie Michael had his own dance called "Do The Scarn" - Tons of people were chattering about this after the show.

Easy for an outsourced designer to make a HOT looking text that will print well on a shirt that says

DO THE SCARN! ( the office)

or

LLYOOOODDDDD!!!! (entourage)


Next step is to gather several of these sayings and send over a bulk order to your designer.

------

Now to make money.

Find the feeds in twitter of people talking about these sayings and join in the conversation and then drip a link to your shirt.

"do the scarn was awesome!! Michael Scott cracks me up. Check out this Do the Scarn shirt = EPIC (link)

-----

" gosh I wish Entourage would hurry up and come back on! I need to break out my Lloyyyd shirt (link)"

------

make sense?

so yes, you can make money with Zazzle. Above is a recipe that has brought me success. Hopefully you can make some extra dough doing what I just shared. Let me know how it goes

Cheers,
Preston

[service provider]

i will start selling so that i may let you know !!!!!!

regads
sam

[Michael Ten]

I would not considering investing any sweat equity into Zazzle right now...
Maybe at a later time though.
It's Alexa ranking (around 1,100) indicates that it probably receives a significant amount of traffic.

[DoubleOhDave]

Originally Posted by Michael Ten

I would not considering investing any sweat equity into Zazzle right now...
Maybe at a later time though.
It's Alexa ranking (around 1,100) indicates that it probably receives a significant amount of traffic.

I understand what you mean (sweat equity) but if you go about it the right way it can be afun extra income and quote passive at that

[SeoDemon]

i tried it guys, it's not easy to make a sale there with thousands of products around, it's a miracle when a buyer finds you there, seriously!

[jgetsmoneyy]

I tried cafe press and I believe zazzle as well. I never made much if anything. You really have to put a lot of effort into promoting your store and even then I don't think most people are gonna buy from a site like that because personally I think the tshirt quality is low quality and prices are high for what you get. You can't count on people to find you and buy through searches you really need to promote your store. One thing I would say is that if you want to try to be found by searches do current events, current fad type stuff. For example leading up to the election make shirts for Romney, Obama, Tea Party, Conservatives, Libertarians, Don't Tread On Me, etc. That type of stuff is popular searches.

[missmystery]

I've made about $60 out of zazzle over the past couple of years with no promotion, and I've only put a half arsed effort into actually doing the products and stores etc.

You either treat it as a quantity thing - and not many people have the time for it, or a quality thing, and submit epic designs.

Or you could promote.

It is possible if you make a full effort and optimise your tags properly, and promote it.

[blur]

I make about $100 a month on Zazzle. It's really about the diversity and quantity of products you have in the store.

[blillard]

I've an OK amount of sales through them with little promo; It is tough though.

[LanceS2k]

I created a Zazzle account back in '08 and put in about an hour of work back then and currently I have had 3 sales and $6.50 in my account. I'm thinking about putting some real effort in to it and giving it another shot.

[KabirC]

I used Zazzle in 2010 for the Giants WS Run, made like $50 wasn't worth it. But it did set the foundation I needed for my clothing line now which is doing quite a bit more than that to say the least haha

[minisitetycoon]

I tried Zazzle, made $20 then I went stale as I got back into hunting and photoshop designing again, I like the features and ease of use of the store and such, but I found something better that is earning me $100 into my Paypal a day easily and it was absolutely FREE didn't cost me on thin penny, lol. I am thinking about going back to Zazzle after reading these posts, awsome stuff guys.

[Lena Williams]

These type of sites are not very easy place for the newbies. To make money, I personally avoid them.

[missmystery]

Originally Posted by minisitetycoon

I tried Zazzle, made $20 then I went stale as I got back into hunting and photoshop designing again, I like the features and ease of use of the store and such, but I found something better that is earning me $100 into my Paypal a day easily and it was absolutely FREE didn't cost me on thin penny, lol. I am thinking about going back to Zazzle after reading these posts, awsome stuff guys.

Care to share your method?

[missmystery]

Originally Posted by Lena Williams

These type of sites are not very easy place for the newbies. To make money, I personally avoid them.

They're good if you have something to offer - it's amazing what people buy.

[jack9850127]

Originally Posted by HorseStall

Not true. You can drive traffic to your site. You can display zazzle products that you make on your site (look at my sig for some samples of what can be done). Then you get a referral fee and the fee if you made the item.

checked your site, really great, how much could you make from these sites and the template is bought from webmaster-template.net? appreciate in advance

[eman2011]

To make money with Zazzle and similar sites you will need two things: the products you sell and promotion. To promote you can use Facebook, Youtube, PPC...

[Tony Wells]

I hate Zazzle. I designed some Rebecca Black/Friday tshirts when that song was all the rage and was going to donate all the profits to the Japan Earthquake.

Got 40 some orders over the weekend. On Monday, I find out they pulled my T-shirts because of "copyright issues"

Zazzle sucks.

[HorseStall]

Originally Posted by galka

Thanks HorseStall. Your sites are exactly the type of thing I was looking at doing (different niches though).

Try to find an untapped niche on Zazzle, there are still some with little competition.

HTH

[blueonblue]

Does Zazzle list your items on ebay? I had an idea for a line of T shirts for Hanukkah and I did an ebay search and what did I find? Several of the T-Shirts listed had Cafe press as their seller on their ebay cafe press store. So it looks like Cafe Press sells the shirts for you and you get the commission. NOt as cool as if you listed them on ebay, but you don't have to worry about selling them in smaller amounts, since with their power seller status they can sell unlimited quantities of your design.

I did not see anything from Zazzle on ebay, so maybe CafePress, in that regards, may be a better way to go! Anything that helps you drive traffic is a sweet deal to me!

[Syzygy999]

I started my Zazzle store in 2009. I currently have around 2,500 products there (with the same designs used across different products -- so I have around 900 different designs, and many of them are just simple variants on one another).

So, in 4 years I've made almost $2,000. Better than what a lot of people report, for sure, but not anywhere near "making a living" money. I often wonder if I just buckled down and committed to churning out designs/products if the money would rise with it. What if I had 50,000 products, or 100,000, instead of just 2,500?

[arranrice]

I spent about one hour with zazzle in 2011. I now have about $7 worth of sales. In december 2011, I got some sales as it was christmas.