Well, I promised updates on how things are going with adding Zazzle as a serious part of my online t-shirt selling ventures so here is the first one.

I’m having sort of mixed feelings about Zazzle’s service at this point. First of all, I am thrilled that Zazzle is able to actually make me money. I have uploaded 130 some odd items for them to take a crack at selling and they have sold a fair amount considering the selection that I have given them.

Kudos to them on that point. But beyond that I quite a few bones to pick with Zazzle.

First of all, I don’t know how Zazzle operates but generally when you ask someone if you can talk to them and offer up such as a possibility I think you should at least make an effort to do so. As I mentioned before, Zazzle approached me about adding my items to their data base. The first email I got was from a Mr. Robert Greenleaf.

I responded to him and told him when I was available to talk. He responded back after missing the couple dates and times that I told him I was available. So I sent him another set of dates and times. Those have come and gone without so much as a peep.

Being very busy I don’t have the ability to say “just call me whenever you get a chance”. Perhaps Mr. Greenleaf and others over at Zazzle are not used to recruiting potential contributors who actually are busy and have a business to run. I do not know. I am preparing to send him another email today to see if I can get a response because I do really have some questions, concerns, gripes, suggestions and so on that I would like to discuss with him.  And since I can’t get them on the phone, I will cover them later in this post.

If I can’t get him to give an interest after he recruited me, I’ll call Zazzle and see if I can find someone who gives a darn.

Things I don’t like about Zazzle:
Creating products: It takes too long. You have to make a t-shirt then make a mug then a whatever. This is vastly inferior to other sites which allow you select a series of products and apply a single image to them in literally one step. The faster you can create products the faster you grow. I can create vastly more new products on other PoD sites in the time it takes to create just a t-shirt and a mug on Zazzle.

Product Design “Rating”: I don’t know whose brain child this was but I hate it. What Zazzle allows you to do is rate a product with a star based system. You only have to be a contributor to rate someone’s designs.  Here’s what I have found however. People don’t actually rate the product. They either rate the “message” of the product or they use it to put up poor marks for products that compete with their own Zazzle products.

The “rating” system is what we call in the business a “point of contention” which people who might be inclined to buy a certain product might decide based on someone else’s opinion (even if it is uninformed, slanted or bogus) not to do so. That hurts me, but it also hurts Zazzle.

This feature should be kept IF they only allow people who actually purchase products to rate them. Give a link to the rating screen in the receipt they receive with their purchase or something, but allowing just anyone to rate items is bad for business especially when those doing the rating are doing it from spite or other less than pure motives.

Luckily however I have enough friends that I could ask to go over to my gallery and counter out these sorts of folks with honest opinions.

Product Comment Section: Yet another nuisance along the lines of the rating system. The comment system has already been abused and I have had to deal with deleting the weirdest and dumbest comments one can imagine. Providing such a section is yet another “point of contention” which can turn off potential buyers depending on what is said in it.

Limited Customization: Nothing ticks me off more than not being able to do serious customizing of my sites. Zazzle galleries are customizable to a very limited extent only.

Everything in one gallery: Now this is just plain bad design. On other sites you can separate your designs into individual stores. On Zazzle you can have subsections of a single gallery. Very bad especially if you are trying to keep different themes separate to avoid turning people off because they might not like or be offended by other themes you offer.

Yes, you can open up new galleries, but they are treated as separate accounts for billing purposes best I can see which means you have to reach minimum commissions in each gallery in order to get paid for that gallery. That is not a problem for me, but I don’t want to be receiving multiple (and smaller) checks each month once I get everything up and chugging along.

Sub Par Commissioning System: This one really gets my goat. If I create a shirt and set the commission at 20% I make one amount on one type of shirt and a different amount on another type of shirt with a different base cost. I would like the option of placing a straight markup ($4, $5, whatever) on those items and know how much I will make with each t-shirt sale rather than getting $3.99 for one type and maybe $3.78 for another.

Yeah, I know I’ve complained, but remember I did say that I was happy that Zazzle has actually been able to make sales for me over the past month. Problem is that these sales have only been for one category of item designs and themes which worries me a little. But I am going to keep plugging along over the next couple months, see if we can get some of Zazzle’s faults corrected and make a little more cash with them.

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J.J. Jackson is President of Land of the Free Studios, Inc. and Cafepress “Top Shopkeeper”. He has been selling t-shirts on-line since 2004 and is the owner of the T-Shirt Entrepreneur, a site dedicated to helping people get involved in the T-shirt Economy. He is also the owner of Funny When Wet T-shirts, American Infidel Tshirts, Uber Gamer T-shirts as well as many other online t-shirt and gift stores.