Firstly, you need to know what Zazzle offers before deciding if its right for you. Zazzle promotes itself on the basis that:
“You design products, people buy them, we make them and you earn $$”
Pretty simple and straightforward. So, first of all, you need to register for your own gallery. This is fairly simple. Next, how do you go about designing products? Well, let’s first look at what they mean by “products”.
Zazzle sells over 350 different kinds of products, ranging from mugs and key-rings, to T-shirts and greeting cards, as well as aprons, bags, caps and posters. The next step is to create designs that go ‘on’ the products. In essence, you upload images to your account and then add these images to whatever product you wish. You then use the tools Zazzle provides via your browser, to fine-tune your design. This can include re-sizing and rotating your image, repeating it and adding text using the tools provided. There is quite a range of fonts available for your use and you can change their size and color to your heart’s desire.
Once you are happy with your design, you then click on the ‘post for sale’ button and fill in the information on the form, choose categories for your product and tags etc. Its at this stage you get to choose your royalty level, with the minimum being 10%. The maximum could be 99.9% but that’s not advised. Without going into details, lets just say that a royalty for most stuff of between 10 – 30% is probably best, with a higher royalty for premium products, such as posters and prints. The important thing is not to price your products so high that no-one will ever buy them but at the same time to gain a decent return on your creative effort. Zazzle includes an interactive tool for seeing how the royalty you set affects the final price and I recommend using it. Once you are happy and have agreed to the Terms & Conditions your product is posted to your gallery.
That’s it basically, at least for getting started. Next time we’ll look at how to design your gallery to make it an effective sales tool.
Part two: Promote your Zazzle Gallery
Have a website or a blog? Use the tools and widgets provided by Zazzle to share products you design or find on Zazzle. Earn up to 7% referral when you refer sales. (With your royalties, you can earn 17% or more! )
You can also boost your own royalty by using the Zazzle star. This is how Zazzle explains it all:
Letting people know how to get to your galleries couldn’t be easier. Just tell your friends and family to visit zazzle.com/username to check out your home on Zazzle. Piece of cake.
Better still, when you add an asterisk (*), as in “zazzle.com/username*”, it becomes a referral link. That way, you can earn up to 7% of sales – on top of your royalty – just by using this URL. We call this feature the “Zazzle Star”. Pretty cool, eh?!
The Zazzle Star helps you share your gallery, sell more products, and earn more money. Every contributor can now have their own user-friendly gallery link that makes it incredibly easy to merchandise and promote their work to the rest of the world!
The Zazzle Star is:
- A new way to merchandise and promote your art both online and offline
- A simple way to receive up to 7% on top of your royalty for sales of your products
- Our newest and easiest to use Associates Program tool
How would I use the Zazzle Star?
The Zazzle Star can be used everywhere on the Internet and off the Internet. We thought of a few things you might try, but we’re sure you can think of more.
