Cafepress, Zazzle and Printfection Shopkeeper woes and strategy

Since my move from Cafepress I have spent countless days (from the time I get up to the time I go to bed in the wee hours…literally days!) uploading designs, reworking designs to fit the new Zazzle interface, working on my new Zazzle store, adding keywords, etc. It’s not easy work. It’s frustrating to have to start all over again after sitting comfortably at Cafepress for 7 years and reaping the benefits of all the hard work I put into getting started, but I told myself it would be worth it…eventually.

First of all, I have to say that for the most part the community at Zazzle is fantastic! There are a lot of people that hang out in the forums that will go out of their way to offer any help you might need. There are entire community websites built around tutorials and offered help. The product building interface is fantastic. There are so many more options (adding text, moving the design around the page, adding more than one design per product, etc) than Cafepress offers! Store customization just recently became available to the masses, and if I had a clue as to how to work with CSS I’d jump right in there…the possibilities are nearly endless, but so far I’ve just dipped my toe in the pool and kept it safe (the option is still in beta, and you can breakyour store!). There are a lot of positives in going with Zazzle that I may go into further later, but right now I want to talk more about the big negative…the marketplace, or lack thereof! It really does stink.

I spent a lot of time in the forums when I first started the move, and I try to read all the posts right before bed daily..and it’s a general consensus. The marketplace is bad. To illustrate, click this link to go to Zazzle (it will open in a new window) and in the search box at the top of the page, type boston terrier. The first 3 products are always the same

I’m not saying anything against these designs…but they are always right at the top of the search with the highest exposure, and I’ve seen better….I’ve seen better on Zazzle! I’ve seen brand new designers (CP refugees) with better, but they don’t show up in the results at all! Go a few pages in (the search does vary a bit so the page may not be the same for you) and you’ll find things like this (page 3 on my search). Again…I’m not saying anything bad about this design, but for crying out loud, they didn’t even take the time to rotate the product to fit the design!! Then you’ll see page after page of the Boston Terrier Chick . Clever, but do I need to see it represented on every shirt and every button, etc. before seeing another design??  After that comes more stuff that doesn’t fit . Keep going….around page 13 for me I found this Now, I really LIKE this design, but it’s listed in many variations, all products, all colors, etc (which if someone liked it and clicked on it Zazzle would do for you). How far do you have to go before you see some really nice designs?? Are they consistent? Best designs show up first (best sellers, or highest rated) with a good representation of designs following? I think you’ll agree no, they do not.

Like I said, it’s griped about in the forums…but the powers that be don’t hang out in the forums (it’s peer to peer) so after selling 4 sheets of stamps bearing one of my most popular designs and not even seeing it represented in the marketplace, I decided to send an email to support. Ya I know, but it made ME feel better The response I got back was

 Thank you for your email. First off, I love your galleries! (and no, this isn’t a stock reply – I have a BT related galleries myself LINK REMOVED). Ok, so how does a new artist/store owner at Zazzle get that “boost” of visibility? Well, “top picks” (for example) on our site are generated by number of views, purchases, ratings, etc. We really have no bias in how these are shown. Since it’s obvious that promotion is key, I thought you might be interested in a couple of links providing information on generating interest in your gallery. They may also help lead you to an eventual Top Pick or Today’s Best Award: http://www.squidoo.com/zazzle101.

http://blog.zazzle.com/2008/01/15/10-ways-to-make-money-on-zazzle/

We are always grateful for feedback and ideas that will make Zazzle.com a better business for its members in the future. I will forward your ideas on to the content development staff for their ongoing consideration in development of our search tools.

Best of luck and welcome to Zazzle!

If you have any further questions or comments, we are available to assist you by email, or by phone. For frequently asked questions, or to email us, please visit www.zazzle.com/support.

Well now that was a big help wasn’t it? Okay, I’m done whining about it. You get the idea (hang in there with me, there’s a point to all of this).

This weekend, I made a few sales at Cafepress. The only designs I still have there in the way of t shirts and things are the really old stuff that still sells once in awhile but I don’t like well enough to move, and all of my designs are still offered on tiles, bibs, calendar prints, yard signs and pet bowls. These things sold well for me and Zazzle doesn’t offer them. I did remove keywords on all designs I’ve added to Zazzle so that these designs cannot be sold via the marketplace. Well, with the disgusting system they have set up, they can be sold there, but they won’t show up in the search. Anyway, I sold over $200 worth of merchandise at Cafepress over the weekend (all old designs) and made $15. Let me explain why this infuriates me. A bib’s base price is $5.99. Said bib probably cost Cafepress $1.50, if that so they make at least $4 on each bib sold. My normal markup on a bib is $4. Now…Cafepress provides a blank bib. I provide the design that’s going to make a person want that bib and under the new marketplace pricing I made 59cents for a bib I sold over the weekend. I sold 2 baseball jersys at $25 each and made $2.50 (that’s half of what my markup is in my shop).  This burns me…bad. Cafepress has made a lot of money off my designs over the years, and now they’re stealing my portion of the profits…literally. And Zazzle is not promoting my designs (at least Cafepress was good at that!). I’m not doing too bad on my own…my shop is indexed already, I’ve opened up a store on my website, have this blog, am coming up pretty high in search engine results, but that is NOT converting to sales. Oh..and did I mention that my husband (who tells me not to opt out of the marketplace because some money is better than no money even though he has nothing to do with the business really except for providing an occasional picture that I work from) opened up a Zazzle store this weekend and is uploading Boston Terrier and Boxer pics?

Ok…I’m getting there. I opened a Printfection store a few months ago, around the same time I opened the Zazzle shop and didn’t do much with it either because again, I was doing really well at Cafepress! I thought about using Printfection as my new POD source, but didn’t for 3 big reasons. First of all, they don’t offer prints or cards. They offer no way to change pricing throughout your store (you have to change each PRODUCT separately!), and last but not least, I don’t like their product design interface. It’s confusing. If you make a mistake in the description or pricing you have to go in and change on each product separately. BUT!! With only the 4 or 5 product designs I had sitting there all this time, they promote them near if not at the top of search results, and they actually feature my store! Whoa! Can you say major marketing??

So…I spent some time this weekend uploading more designs to my Printfection store. I’ m adding links to all my website pages right next to my Zazzle links, and I’m going to let them duke it out. I don’t like competing with myself like that. I don’t like confusing the customer. I LOVE what I do, and would probably do it just for the fun of it, but it has revolved into a successful small business (by my standards anyway) and since I became disabled, not only is it my only means for artistic expression, but a boost to my limited income as well. I really can’t just stand by and watch Cafepress flush it down the toilet without kicking and screaming.

If you’ve made it to the end of this post (I tend to ramble I know…I wish I were a better writer!) and you find yourself in the same spot, what strategies have you implimented? I’d love to hear from you.

Zazzle coupons at Dealtaker.com

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Tags: cafepress, marketing, Merchandise, POD, Printfection, products, shop, shopping, stamps, Zazzle