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Zazzle Is Not Ronco

4/24/2017

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You don't have to be that old to remember the line from the Ronco commercials . . . "Just set it and forget it". There was a time when Zazzlers could just design it and forget it. However, it hasn't been that way for some time.

It seems a great number of people never got the memo, which is likely costing them money. And for those who choose to promote their products for referral fees is it costing us time and money.

​More on that after we take this moment to
toot our own horn.

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It seems like it was just yesterday when we hit Silver ProDesigner (which is a $25,000+ level). Afterward, I wasn't paying too much attention to the big numbers. Then I looked up one day and we had earned over $30,000!

​Not as much as some, but more than most.

As a kind of celebration sale, we've discounted all the How2 eBooks and eBook bundles by 30% through the end of April.

These eBooks document the things we've done to reach this $30,000 milestone. Maybe they will work for you. You can learn more about both the eBooks and Bundles in the menu to the right.

When you find something you like, use the coupon code 30000
in your shopping cart. See more than one thing you like? You'll have to make multiple purchases and enter the code for each one.

April 30, 2017 is the last day for the code.

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Aren't these two beautiful Zazzle wedding stamps? We thought so.

We use hard linking for our affiliate web sites and I recently ran our site Not The Post Office through a website that identifies broken links. I was shocked when it came back with 154 broken links to Zazzle. As a percentage of all the site's links, it was not so big. But 154 by itself is a lot.

When I went to fix the links, I started seeing Zazzle's "Product No Longer Available" message all too often.
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I believe there were two issues that created these broken links.

The first is this Ronco view of your Zazzle store "Set It and Forget It.

For some time, Zazzle's not-so-new MarketPlace policy has been to remove your products from the MarketPlace if after 16 months it has:

  • No Sales
  • No Views
  • No Updates

Most of these brokens links were for products that had been "Hidden" from the MarketPlace by Zazzle for the reasons above.

Those two beautiful stamps above are examples of well designed products their creators let lapse on Zazzle.

If you've taken the time to design it, you should take the time at least once every 16 months update your no sales products. Or at least view them. Either one will reset the 16-month timer. For many, it will be difficult to just sit down and do them all (Like us). So set up a timed schedule where you do so many a day, week or month.

We all have these products. Here is one of ours:
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Created in August 2010, we modified this product's tags in October 2015. It has never sold and has been out of the MarketPlace currently for about two months. This design sells well with other states and products. Kind of a waste.
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You can discover your "auto-hidden" products by setting the filter on your Product Page to "Hidden". 

Keep in mind that this will show all hidden products such as your Quick Create templates.

Not all products are worth "saving". We shudder at many of our earliest designs and think they are better left to rest.

You can focus your attention on your better designs by doing a search. We did a search on "moose" and discovered several other moose mugs the were no longer for sale.
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Moose lovers will be happy to know these mugs are now back in the MarketPlace with updated tags. They needed them.

From an affiliate's point of view, Zazzle should be setting these types of products to "Direct Only" rather than "Hidden". This would eliminate most of our bad links. "Hidden" links discourage Zazzle affiliation in my opinion.

At the end of this post I have included our current list of storekeepers that have their broken links replaced with other products on one of our web sites. I hope your products are not among them, but if they are, take a look at your hidden products.

I said there was a second reason for our broken links and this one is hard to understand.

A good number of the broken links were to products for Disney and Hallmark. As a percentage of all our Disney products this number was shocking.

To make matters more confusing, when we did a Marketplace search, we did find the products we were promoting on our website. Worrisome.

Why were so many of these links broken? Will the other links break soon? Why this type of broken link on these big sellers and not on the products of traditional Zazzlers?

We don't know any answers.

All of these broken links were from two link formats ago that were not shortened nor contained meta data.

It was an easy fix on our end. We simply fetched the new shortened link and the problem was solved. The image, copy and alt text on our website all stayed the same because it was the same product.

​I hope Zazzle will look into this.

Picture
Below is a list of the storekeeper names for which their product link (All are stamps) returned the notice above. In several instances, there are multiple broken links for a given store.

We've checked many of them and the store itself is still open. Thus, it appears to be a "Hidden" product issue.

All Events Invitations Party Occasions ZIZZAGO ® (1)
AnnesWeddingBoutique (1)
Butterflies Are Blooming At Zazzle (1)
CHRIS AMBROSE ART (1)
Christmas_Wedding (1)
Dale's Designs on Zazzle (1)
disney (1)
Ever After DesignHoliday Postage (1)
fjdklfjdlkfd  (3)
FloralPalette (1)
floraluniverses (1)
GiftsBonanza (1)
Holiday Postage (1)
HolidayHearts (1)
impressmedesigns (1)
itsjensworld (1)
jax and j (1)
Justbyjulie Brides Wedding Stationery And Gifts (6)
Justbyjulie Customized Gifts (1)
KatiesKreations (1)
laurabolterdesign (1)
Marry_Me (1)
PamJArts (1)
PEARLelegance (1)
Perfect Postage & Cards for your special occasions (1)
Photoslot (1)
reflections by carla rolfe ™ (1)
Sabine Steinmüller Greetings (2)
Secret Corner Invitations, Cards & More (1)
Tailored Type (2)
tailoredtype (1)
Wedding_Trends (1)
WeddingPalette (3)
Weddings By Jade (1)

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