It’s Seller Wednesday! Since today is all about our fabulous sellers, we figured it would be great to share ideas on how to promote your stores from other sellers. So let’s trade tips! Here are 5 tips that come from sellers that have been featured (or will be very soon).
- Most of all, love what you are doing! – sneak peak (check tomorrow’s featured seller interview to see who this tip comes from)
- Try new things, there’s always the delete button if it doesn’t work out! – MHamiltonDesigns
- Make sure you carefully choose your user name. It will hopefully become your brand and it will be very difficult to change it once you set up the store and have already created hundreds of products. And you wouldn’t want your store to be promoted as joe6389, would you? – BluePlanet
- Marketing marketing marketing! It’s terribly important. At least 80% of my time is spent marketing in one way or another. Start a blog, join Facebook, Twitter away. But be subtle about it, please. I find that I’m enjoying communicating with others and have discovered many talented people through my marketing efforts so that’s an inspirational incentive. – FloatingLemons
- One great tip is to visit the Zazzle forums. No matter what you are looking for, you will most likely find your answer there. – N1kiShop
- Tag your items with some smarts. Describe (in tags) everything there is to your design. Think like a customer. What specific search terms would you use if you were looking for your item? – BeezKneez
- One of the ways to succeed is to sell yourself and not your shops. People like to buy from someone they feel they have a connection with and so I promote the strange quirks that make up who I am. In my blogs, twitter, facebook and on my stand-alone websites I promote my politics, my world view, my dreams and hopes. I do this kind of work because I don’t have to compromise the essential me for a boss and so why not make that work for me? I have nothing to lose by sharing who I am with people and a whole lot to gain when people buy from ME and not some faceless corporation. And I really like the whole idea of that too. It’s a small way to create community in a very large world. – Orsobear
- Offer a wide variety of products. A buyer may love the design but not love what it’s on. Give buyers the choice. Be an accessible seller. Make sure your contact info is easy to find in case a customer has a question or wants a custom design. Keep your storefront clean. Flashing gifs were once cool, but these days many find them distracting. Buyers browse longer in a well organized shop. – Reflections06
- Don’t be afraid to ask questions, I remember the best answers came from the pros and I redid the whole store and it worked. Zazzle is a wonderful community! Everyone is here to help, so just ask what you are confused about, you never know what you might discover – BlessedWedding
- Don’t be afraid to promote your store and yourself! Look for promotional opportunities everywhere. From leaving you business card with the tip at a restaurant, to sending greeting cards to school for teachers’ birthdays. Every person and everywhere you go is a potential sale. Remember that, and your store will be hopping in no time! – GothicToggs
- When creating a design, I always ask myself if it’s something I would want to wear/use. If not, I scrap it and start over. – MonkeyJenn
- Buy and wear/use your own products. You are your best sales person! I can’t tell you how many times I’ve been asked “where did you get that (awesome, fantastic, amazing, sick, hideous) t-shirt?” Oh, and be sure to have business cards ready when people do ask! – PurpleGifts
- Wear it, ride it, photograph it and get some business cards. Be your own best billboard! – SoftProduct
- Advertise! I have advertisements on youtube, my podcast, website, myspace, vehicles, people, etc. It pays to advertise, when the product you’re selling is more than just the merchandise. Think of the merchandise as an extension of your actual product. Granted, my merchandise is targeted more to a specific group. However, it has been selling all over the world. Be ingenuous. Create something that no one has seen before, and grabs their attention. – ftorc1
- Promote your own products, have happy customers send you a shot of what they bought and how they are using/wearing it! – jfarrell12
- I like to hold contests for my Facebook Fans. They not only get to shop at my store for free, but they have a physical reminder of my products. This has been a powerful branding tool as well as a reason for fans to invite their friends. – Rozine
- Learn how to use Adobe Illustrator or InDesign, even maybe the vector abilities within Photoshop. It can be challenging at first but the images you create from it will be TONS cleaner and sharper, especially with text. – mydezyns
- Find unique ways to advertise your store. I put my info on the back of my running singlet (people had to see it for 13.1 miles!) – kyderbydva
- Make to do lists and set aside time to work on your shops, websites, promoting and to create designs. You will soon find that your list is longer than the hours in the day but if you organize your time properly you will find yourself knocking that list down pretty fast, but keep adding to the list. Everything you do from surfing the web to hanging out downtown with your friends to playing with your kids at the park to watching the news can be an opportunity for a great design idea, pay attention to the world around you and look at everything as a potential product, put it on your list. -JerryLambert
- Buy some products of yours, take a picture and create a slideshow, a picture is worth a thousand words! Show it at Zazzle too! - Occitania
- Don’t give up! Even when sales seem to be no more than a trickle, just keep at it and eventually you will start to see results. It takes time to build up a business presence on-line (and to build a store full of designs that will catch anyone and everyone’s attention). Stick with it! - MoonDuster
Do you have a seller tip you’d like to share? Tweet us, leave us a note on our Facebook wall, or leave a comment here. At the end of the day your tips will be added to the very list you see above. Be sure to include your store URL when you leave your tip!
April 28, 2010 at 10:59 am |
Tag your items with some smarts. Describe (in tags) everything there is to your design. Think like a customer. What specific search terms would you use if you were looking for your item?
April 28, 2010 at 11:24 am |
One of the ways to succeed is to sell yourself and not your shops. People like to buy from someone they feel they have a connection with and so I promote the strange quirks that make up who I am. In my blogs, twitter, facebook and on my stand-alone websites I promote my politics, my world view, my dreams and hopes. I do this kind of work because I don’t have to compromise the essential me for a boss and so why not make that work for me? I have nothing to lose by sharing who I am with people and a whole lot to gain when people buy from ME and not some faceless corporation. And I really like the whole idea of that too. It’s a small way to create community in a very large world.
April 28, 2010 at 12:59 pm |
You’ve made a really important point here Kate. Creating and selling a brand has its positives too, however ‘selling yourself and not your shops’ too presents a very interesting take on marketing and selling goods / art.
April 28, 2010 at 11:45 am |
• Offer a wide variety of products. A buyer may love the design but not love what it’s on. Give buyers the choice.
• Be an accessible seller. Make sure your contact info is easy to find in case a customer has a question or wants a custom design.
• Keep your storefront clean. Flashing gifs were once cool, but these days many find them distracting. Buyers browse longer in a well organized shop.
• Spelling matters. Be careful with naming products, descriptions and storefront info. It may seem like a small thing but a shop full of spelling errors is a huge turn off.
• Offer free chocolate. Oh wait… well, hmmm. Scratch that last one.
Just a few off the top of my head
Looking forward to a great list!
Carla
Reflections Family Friendly Apparel & Gifts
http://www.zazzle.com/reflections06
April 28, 2010 at 12:20 pm |
Thank you! This is really helpful. I’m just starting out and have no clue what I’m doing so it’s nice to read a few great tips!
April 28, 2010 at 12:32 pm |
tip: don’t be afraid to ask questions, I remember the best answers came from the pros and I redid the whole store and it worked, zazzle is a wonderful community everyone is here to help , so just ask what you are confused about, you never know what you might discover
April 28, 2010 at 12:53 pm |
Don’t be afraid to promote your store and yourself! Look for promotional opportunities everywhere. From leaving you business card with the tip at a restaurant, to sending greeting cards to school for teachers’ birthdays. Every person and everywhere you go is a potential sale. Remember that, and your store will be hopping in no time!
April 28, 2010 at 1:03 pm |
Thanks for the great post, i’ll try stick around tomorrow for more info! Can’t wait to repay this wonderful advice someday
April 28, 2010 at 8:14 pm |
you don’t need to repay :0) You are already doing that by being a part of this community
April 28, 2010 at 1:18 pm |
Thanks for all those great tips!!!
April 28, 2010 at 2:19 pm |
When creating a design, I always ask myself if it’s something I would want to wear/use. If not, I scrap it and start over.
http://www.zazzle.com/monkeyjenn
April 28, 2010 at 3:44 pm |
Buy and wear/use your own products. You are your best sales person! I can’t tell you how many times I’ve been asked “where did you get that (awesome, fantastic, amazing, sick, hideous) t-shirt?” Oh, and be sure to have business cards ready when people do ask!
April 28, 2010 at 4:21 pm |
Wear it, ride it, photograph it and get some business cards. Be your own best billboard!
[IMG]http://i365.photobucket.com/albums/oo95/sixaxis66/boardsmallest.png[/IMG]
April 28, 2010 at 4:33 pm |
Advertise! I have advertisements on youtube, my podcast, website, myspace, vehicles, people, etc. It pays to advertise, when the product you’re selling is more than just the merchandise. Think of the merchandise as an extension of your actual product. Granted, my merchandise is targeted more to a specific group. However, it has been selling all over the world. Be ingenuous. Create something that no one has seen before, and grabs their attention.
April 28, 2010 at 5:48 pm |
great ideas!
April 28, 2010 at 6:36 pm |
Make to do lists and set aside time to work on your shops, websites, promoting and to create designs. You will soon find that your list is longer than the hours in the day but if you organize your time properly you will find yourself knocking that list down pretty fast, but keep adding to the list. Everything you do from surfing the web to hanging out downtown with your friends to playing with your kids at the park to watching the news can be an opportunity for a great design idea, pay attention to the world around you and look at everything as a potential product, put it on your list. I use my iPhone notes app for such things but an old fashioned paper note pad worked well for me for years. Keep your store organized with good navigation and proper sections. Don’t create hundreds of products with the same design just to flood the marketplace, it only hurts you in the end. A neat and navigable store is key to keeping shoppers in your store and persuading them to return. A few products for a good design is OK as long as it fits your stores navigation system, one adult mens tee, one ladies, one kids, etc. When you flood the marketplace you also flood your store. Come join us in the forums, it’s a great place to learn new tricks and old methods that have worked well for seasoned shopkeepers. There are people with lots of expertise in the forums and it is also a place to share ideas of what you would like to see added to our experience and it is also a great place to vent. After all, things aren’t always going to work out like we want them to, but the Zazzle team does listen and they are a great bunch of peeps. Last but not least, as many others have already stated, have fun. If you don’t enjoy what you are doing then you are not going to be very successful. Of course this isn’t an easy gig, but it can be fun if you organize your time and make it a personal project that you really love.
SSL, I’m not into the whole brevity thing.
Jerry
http://jerryssweetstore.com
http://wondiferous.com
http://taxpayertees.com
http://freakaloo.com
April 28, 2010 at 8:10 pm |
oh and this one Tip: never ever delete a product because you think its just “OK” you never know who come sup looking for what in your stores, I have sold many products, I have thought of deleting at times, but resisted the urge, zazzle does not limit your product count or image storage, so just let it stay there, and something you did not think was important might become your best seller,(happened to me)
http://www.zazzle.com/blessedwedding
April 28, 2010 at 8:13 pm |
I ‘ve got another one!
Tip: leave your links everywhere online, a blog you visit, a forum, at twitter, facebook, in the long run it helps in
google position ,how many linkbacks you have to your store
http://www.zazzle.com/mg_businesscards
April 28, 2010 at 8:23 pm |
lol another one, my mind is pretty active, I can’t wait to share my experience with you guys
If you are just starting out don’t get disheartened, I made just a few cents my first month and then nothing for so many months, now I am silver pro , don’t get discouraged,try new stuff, new ideas, it takes time and energy to get discovered and the older and regularly updated your store is the better ranking it has with google (google thinks older and frequently updated the link, reliable it is that it won’t get deleted)
http://www.zazzle.com/blessedwedding <—leave links like I did here the basic html for leaving text link is
http://www.zazzle.com/blessedwedding (<—remove any spaces here, I gave space to avoid them turning into link so u can see the code)
April 29, 2010 at 10:23 am |
ugh trying to leave the text link code trying again ” http://www.zazzle.com/blessedwedding like this remove ” from < in the beginning
April 29, 2010 at 3:01 am |
Thank you all for the amazing tips, you’re all wonderful. Thank you!
April 29, 2010 at 11:38 am |
Check out Squidoo and create a lens about your products! (www.squidoo.com) It may take a bit of time to figure out and put together, but in the long run it really helps boost your Google ranking. Not just as a backlink but also because my stores get consistent traffic flow every week through Squidoo. Good lenses usually make the first page of Google, just depending on the search term, and mine are no exception. It’s been one of my favorite tools for promoting my stuff! Check out this lens as an example: http://www.squidoo.com/greentshirts
April 29, 2010 at 6:25 pm |
Make Templates!!!
Very easy to do if you follow the Tutorials. This eases the time spent putting your designs on items, especially with Quck Create.
Make sure all your Merchandise is resized to the right item. There is nothing worse than white space around an image if it’s not supposed to be there.
A template will make sure this never happens again.
Jen
April 29, 2010 at 7:26 pm |
Tip number 2, Carefully choose your user name, is a good tip. Even better is if that was shown in bold when a new user signs up. It should be right next to where you enter your user name. It seem most find out after they sign up. Many people enter a name they would use in a forum or other online community.
I remember looking all over for a place to name my store after signing up. It was a big surprise to see my shop named tjustleft
April 29, 2010 at 11:53 pm |
I have two pieces of advice to make your Zazzle store a success and your items/products popular. First you must use the term MARKETING literally and do a lot of marketing as well as pushing your products as many times as you can. I took a business marketing some time ago at a local community college and the instructor told us straight in the eye that you must be a JERK and/or obnoxious when you push and market your products, even though people will remember you in a negative manner THEY WILL REMEMBER YOU and you might sell them your products and/or items in the future. The second thing is to maintain your integrity and principles and stay honest, even if you are a little bit of a turkey at selling if you are there when your customer has a problem and you help them resolve the problem, you are opening the doors for more customers like the disgruntled customers friends and/or family after he tells what a wonderful person that Zazzle store web-site owner is.
May 5, 2010 at 12:33 am |
Find your niches. Everyone has interests and groups they belong to. I sell designs for woodturners, Balkan music and dance lovers, and drummers, for example, because those are all parts of my life. You can relate to your potential customers, you know what’s funny to them, sometimes you can fill a need for them. If I want a whimsical Balkan band shirt, I can design one, offer it for sale, AND wear and enjoy it. Opa! –Alina (who now feels like dancing instead of working! ha ha)
May 5, 2010 at 2:41 am |
Make to do lists and set aside time to work on your shops, websites, promoting and to create designs. You will soon find that your list is longer than the hours in the day but if you organize your time properly you will find yourself knocking that list down pretty fast, but keep adding to the list. Everything you do from surfing the web to hanging out downtown with your friends to playing with your kids at the park to watching the news can be an opportunity for a great design idea, pay attention to the world around you and look at everything as a potential product,
May 7, 2010 at 9:19 pm |
If you speak languages then use it when tagging your product . I looked up the word necktie in several languages and added to most of my neckties . As a result I get customers from many different countries !
May 7, 2010 at 11:44 pm |
Designing your own store banners will grab your viewer’s attention and improve your chances of success with an air of professionalism
May 7, 2010 at 11:54 pm |
Pleasant color schemes and an organized presentation are appealing. Sometimes you have to look at your shop as though it were a physical shop, especially if your presenting apparel. You wouldn’t see one color on display if you were walking into a retail shop. Sometimes a visitor may have a certain color in mind and if it’s all on display they will have an “at a glance perspective.
May 7, 2010 at 11:59 pm |
Pleasant color schemes and an organized presentation are appealing. Sometimes you have to look at your shop as though it were a physical shop, especially if you’re presenting apparel. You wouldn’t see one color on display if you were walking into a retail shop. Sometimes a visitor may have a certain color in mind and if it’s all on display they will have an “at a glance” perspective.
May 8, 2010 at 2:25 am |
Welcome to ArtShirt’s Store at Zazzle!
May 8, 2010 at 7:41 am |
This is great! Thanks everyone for the tips. I have another full time job now, but plan to retire in a year or two and plan to make Zazzle my new full time job then. So I’m just gradually learning and building my ‘business’ ,and being a rookie, I need all the help I can get. I really appreciate everyone’s support and I love to give it back, too. There are so many wonderful and talented designers here
May 8, 2010 at 8:01 am |
Designing your own banner will give your shop an identity and also show the viewer (through images) what they can find below. People are visual; seize the opportunity to recognize this and make an impression.
May 8, 2010 at 12:24 pm |
carry a camera wherever you go, and capture whatever takes your fancy. Use your photos for design ideas, or to get the proportions right on something if you’re not the greatest free-hand drawer. Particularly good photos could be made into products directly. Also if you have access to a design program e.g. Adobe Creative Suite as mentioned before, that will really help, with manipulating and perfecting images and drawings, and the potential of the program can really get your creativity going. But only if you are in it for the love, or else the long haul! It’s an awful lot of zazzle products to sell to make up the price of one of those programs!
May 12, 2010 at 9:13 am |
I’m relatively new to Zazzle and have found co-designers really supportive even though you are really in competition! I’ve also emailed and received responses from designers willing to share their tips and hints, which I feel has been invaluable to help me continue with trying to ‘make it work’. I was reminded Rome was not built in a day.
May 20, 2010 at 8:20 pm |
Go back to your old / first designs after a while. Sometimes you’ll notice things that can make that product MUCH better now that you’ve developed more knowledge and experience at “designing things”. Now redesign the same product but much improved! I found several mistakes I had made when I was new and “green” at designing things.
Also remember: you are in a sense building a retail store without the physical walls and entrance…. think like retailers do: when you first walk into a store the first 20 feet are THE most important, treat your store the same way, make sure your first impressions are strong ones.
This is a great community and I feel very lucky (no pun intended
to have found a great place like Zazzle to open an online store!
I wish you all great success!
January 31, 2013 at 2:11 am |
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