Zazzle Blog

Here are the ten most important things you can do this holiday season to increase your Zazzle sales. Many of them are quick and easy “to do’s”. Do them all and you’ll be way ahead of most sellers.

Create 2010 Calendar and Photocard Templates

Get a head start on the holiday season now! Most of your competition has not yet created these key sellers. Be the first on your block to have a whole array of 2010 calendar and photo card templates ready for the season’s rush.

Start Creating Holiday Hot Gift Products

We expect the following items to be hot gifts this holiday: Cards, mugs, apparel, bags, shoes, pet apparel and skateboards. However, always be true to yourself. If you are a specialist in something else, like business cards, create these. Make sure you offer some designs or templates that are easily turned into gifts.

Get Your Products Featured on Our Landing Pages

When you have a product featured on one of our landing pages, your page traffic goes up exponentially. We would love to feature your products and give you this potential sales boost. We are looking for quality designs on the following product types: Photo cards, Holiday Cards, Christmas Cards, Christmas Gifts, 2010 Calendars, Holiday Invitations, Embroidered Sweatshirts. We scour the site for great designs that fit our most popular search terms and hopefully you’ll soon be featured.

Merchandise your Products with our New Category Sorting Feature

Our new merchandising tool allows you to create categories (formerly called product lines) and display them with personalized icons on your store front. It’s also easy to set the display order of products and categories within your store so your best sellers are seen first. If you haven’t begun using this powerful new feature, now’s the time.

Learn more here.

Optimize Your Pricing

Our extensive analysis has shown that the sweet spot for mark-ups is 12-15%. At this price point, your profits will be maximized. Up to 12% your profits go up with little affect on sales. However, above 15%, the increase in profits does not compensate for the typical fall in sales. As always, at Zazzle, you are free to price products anywhere you want, but using our findings as a guide, you’ll maximize your profits.

Market Your Own Products

Successful sellers market their own stores. It’s surprisingly easy, particularly during the holiday season. Start with family and friends. They are all looking for unique gifts and you’ve got them! Email gift ideas and new product designs to your fan list. They’re already fans, so they love it when you come up with something new.

Click here for more promotion ideas.

Use Zazzle Products to Showcase Your Talents

Send out your own holiday cards in mid-November using one of your templates and a link to your store so people can buy their own holiday cards. Carry business cards everywhere you go and hand them out when you meet new people. Chubby Cards or Skinny Cards make the unique impression you’re looking for. You can also print rack cards and photo cards showcasing your different designs.

Make an additional 15% on Associate Sales

Here’s a little known secret. Any time you refer someone to our site via an Associate Sales Link, you make an additional 15%, above your normal mark-up. But it gets even better. If that person buys products from other sellers during the same session, you make 15% on all those sales as well. We also have volume bonuses, so this 15% referral fee can go as high as 32%. Promoting Zazzle through an Associate Sales Link can be done on your website or blog or on Facebook, Twitter, Squidoo or any forum you participate in. For more detailed information on the Associate Referral program, click here.

Overuse Tags and Find Yourself at the Bottom of Search

This is our hand-slapping tip. If you’re not guilty of this, ignore it. Some people load up their product pages with tags which have nothing to do with the product itself just to attract Zazzle searches to their page. We consider this SPAM. When someone does a search, we want the results to be relevant. Over-tagging produces non-relevant search results which frustrates the customer and hurts our entire community. If you over-tag products with non-relevant tags, you risk dropping all your products to the bottom of search.

Enjoy the Holiday Season with Your Friends and Family

Black Friday is November 27.

Cyber Monday (which beat Black Friday in US online purchases in 2008) is November 30.

Thanksgiving, which has a surprising high level of online purchases is November 26.

This all adds up to, It’s Beginning to Look a lot like Christmas.