So my sales at Zazzle aren’t so hot this month. As in zero. Sales at Cafepress are steady but with the piddly 10% I’ve only made $38.00.
I have plans to take down my CPShop website and replace it with a site with my own shirt images that links to Zazzle. That way if at some point in the future I have to switch PODs again, I will only have to change the links. Need to work on some SEO too.
I’m trying to figure out why my sales at Zazzle and traffic to my CPshop are so sucky.
When I type in my main keyword phrase into Google (blankity blank shirt), The #1 result is my main competitor, who’s website links to CP.
#2 goes to the Cafepress marketplace showing “blankity blank shirts”
#3 goes to a custom screen printing t-shirt site (?)
#4 goes to the link page of a major website in my niche
#5 goes to my affiliate CP site
#6 goes to the Zazzle marketplace, somehow with the name of my shop plugged in, so it only shows mostly my products.
After that there are a bunch of random results related to blankity blank, but dont’ have much to do with shirts. My cpshop site is result #48. So I’m hoping a complete redesign will help.
My other issue with Zazzle is that some shops are able to flood the marketplace by putting their designs on every single shirt, and there can be three or four pages in a row of the same design. I usually put mine on a couple shirts, (male/female & dark/light), but it’s really annoying and I hope Zazzle can come up with a fix, or I will have to start doing the same thing.
Tags: cafepress sucks, earnings
Hi there!
I always enjoy reading your posts.
I am currently in a similar situation as you and am looking at moving my products to Zazzle (which I had started already before the CP announcement).
However, I have always had the question in the back of my mind about the selling potential of Zazzle. Despite getting several TBAs and some designs showing up high in the marketplace in my niche, sales have been very few.
Granted, I am not expecting to build a business solely reliant on the marketplace. However, in comparison to when I began uploading my designs to CP in the beginning (which isn’t that long ago either) sales are very sparse on Zazzle.
Now I am somewhat hesitant about replacing CP with Zazzle when selling from my website.
What do you think is the main problem when selling through Zazzle?
Looking at it from a customer’s point of view, I find the checkout process less user-friendly than CP’s. They are not open with shipping charges until later in the checkout, and combining certain types of products incur much higher shipping charges than comparable purchases on CP.
Another thing is that Zazzle buries a lot of things in the FAQ that should be immediately visible to customers, like the Satisfaction Guarantee and the toll-free customer service.
Also, on the shopkeeper’s side there are some small things I enjoy at CP. The redirection after the sale is important to battle buyer remorse while improving branding.
Mine has been the opposite. My Zazzle sales have picked up some, and my Cafepress sales have thanked. I’ve made one sale this month. First they stabbed me in the eye with the bonus tier knife, now they’re stabbing me in the other eye with the marketplace changes. All of my sales are marketplace sales. Period.
I’m not sure what the problem with Zazzle is. Some people seem to have great success, but that may be through their own offsite promotion. Also, I think maybe the fancy flash/javascript stuff may not work for some people, I always had trouble with Zazzle using the crappy computers at my job. If someone clicks on a shirt and the image loads slow or hangs up the browser, they’re likely to go somewhere else. And I think Cafepress, like Ebay, is still the 800 lb gorilla whether people like it or not and it may take time for things to balance out.
Since your sales are down, how come you don’t post your shop(s)?
My sales have increased. I sold tees that i forgot i had designed! (hidden sections)
Still, the commission SUCKS! (almost $100)
My zazzle sales don’t seem to get going… Ive tried zazzle a year ago. Im adding shirts every month but nothing kicks my sales … ($20-$40 per month!)
I tried skreened a couple of weeks ago, still nothing :S
I love your blog. keep it up!