Better than cafepress in profits, not as good as cafepress in selection.
Written: Jan 19 '05
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A few years ago I got the bright idea to start selling my art. I had never thought of it before simply because I didn’t think anyone would but it. But after I sold my first few originals on eBay I knew it was possible…
But I had no idea of the work that would have to be put into marketing my art. Finding the people who enjoy my art and making sure they know where to find it. The first step was to find other way to make money from my art – I know not everyone wants to pay $20.00 or more for an original – and I can’t pump out five originals a week just to make good money.
The first site I found was Cafepress.com. At cafepress they have lots of products – lots of clothes. Everything has a base price – you raise the base price to make a profit. The problem with cafepress is that their base prices are already high, and it is very hard to make any good profit. I have been with cafepress for nearly 2 years and have made a total profit of only about $17.00. This is with marketing it on my website and newsletter, and on all of my auctions. I realized the base prices are just too high.
After months of not making much, I continued my search for new ways to sell my art and soon I found zazzle.com
Zazzle works a lot like cafepress does without as many product choices. You take whatever pictures you want upload them and put them on products. Here is a breakdown of how zazzle works and what I thought of it.
Zazzle Accounts
There are two different kinds of accounts at zazzle, you can sign up for one or both kinds. First and most important for me is the Contributor account. A Contributor account is for the people who have the pictures they want to put on products. You must own the copyright to the work you contribute. You get 10% of every sale as the contributor of the content. Then there is the Associate account. An Associate account is simply a referral account – they give you special links to products to use on your website – to promote. If any sales of these products are made you get 7% of the sale. This is the easy was to make money without a lot of work.
Using Zazzle
Using your contributor account
The first step is to starting your zazzle contributor account is to upload your pictures. The bulk upload feature is nice, though on a dial up modem can take a while. The nice part is your pictures don’t have to be ridiculously large like on zazzle (300dpi, minimum on some products) and they accept most file types.
The next step is putting these pictures on products. Zazzle has three kinds of products – Posters/Prints – Greeting Cards/Note Cards – Clothes. All of my art is featured on the Prints and cards, because I think they fit best in these formats.
Zazzle basically walks you through the process every time you create a new product, which makes it very easy. My problem is that with a dial up modem creating one product can easily take a half an hour, not including the uploading process. I have suggested they make a quicker option for doing this.
Once your products are done you are instantly in business. After making the products you want I recommend you open an associate account.
Using your associate account
Zazzle has an area where you can generate the links you want though I find this very time consuming. I have found that simply paying attention to the URL’s they give you – you will notice the only thing that changes is the product number. The only thing you need to remember is your associate ID number, which will need to be a part of every URL if you want to make money.
You don’t have to be a contributor to have an associate account. So if you would like to make 7% of every sale made by a certain member – just sign up and start linking.
You can “Cash out” at $20.00, which isn’t so bad.
Product Prices
Prints range in sizes the cheapest being an 11” x 16” for 9.95, from there you can change your media and frame it for a bigger price. The cards are much cheaper at 2.99 for greeting cards and 2.49 not notecards. And as long as the contributor remembers to check “customizable” in the making of the product you can customize your cards and prints.
My Thoughts
It was much easier to form an opinion about zazzle after already trying cafepress. I like it a whole lot more. I have only had my Zazzle accounts for about 6 months now, and have made about double of what I made from cafepress in that time. And that is with marketing cafepress a lot more than zazzle. It is also much less of a hassle because the image files don’t have to be so ridiculously large to look good.
Zazzle is great for me because my pictures do best in the print/card format, but their selection isn’t so great. Cafepress would be the better choice if your pictures would work better on apparel or stickers and mugs.
Recommended:
Yes
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About the Author
Location: Mishawaka, Indiana
Reviews written: 65
Trusted by: 25 members
About Me: Artist
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