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The Demise of Zazzle Credibility. Where Do We Go From Here?

3/5/2016

15 Comments

 
For those who are not aware of this game changing revision to the product page, Zazzle is eliminating html coding from the description on product pages. It is not just that you can no longer use it. They will delete any you have if you don't do it yourself.

If this doesn't affect you, then shame on you for not including this basic marketing tactic for increasing sales in your store. It is/was an easy way to double and sometimes triple a sale.

That will be gone now along with the increased sales it brought.

You can read the Zazzle announcement here.

In short, starting on March 4th, you will no longer be able to add html to a description. On March 23rd, Zazzle will forcibly strip any html in the description field.

For us and a great number of Zazzlers, this means trashing cumulative weeks, usually months, worth of work that was done based on Zazzle's recommendation just a short year ago.

Many feel disrespected. Our cheeks are stinging. How about your's?

If you can not count on what Zazzle says yesterday, how can you place any value in what they say today? 

What they are saying today is that you should forget about the proven value of links in the description and rely on including a Collection on your product page. See more information on this in their blog.

Zazzle wants you to think that their Collection tactic will be an equal or stronger selling tool. Here is why it is not:
  1. The six product Collection shows up after the description in the second, sometimes third, reveal. This is a rarely seen part of the product page. Of any web page. The description shows up on the first reveal, which is the end point for including important information you want seen. Basic webmaster stuff.
  2. Six is not a magic number except to Zazzle. A link in the description could take customers to one product or one of your store category with many products. Flexibility based on your individual store, design and marketing needs is gone. One size fits everybody . . . noobies to end gamers.
  3. This new presentation of a Collection on the product page is just one more thing to go wrong. Been in the forum lately? There are countless posts of some of the most basic Zazzle features that are not only broken but have been for months. The big problem right now are the endless reCAPCHAs. Want to revise your descriptions to remove html? Be prepared to fill out two sometimes three reCAPCHAs. Quick create has been unusable for several months. We tried the new collection feature on six of our products. Sometimes the Collection appeared, sometimes not. Sometimes all products show, sometimes not. Already broken.

Zazzle is trashing an incredible number of hours of your work by deleting this Zazzle recommended description html and asking you to re-invest another vast amount of time. How long will it take you to review all your product descriptions that have/had html links? How long to then create a six product Collection with a headline and copy for each set of six products? Don't forget to add in the extra reCAPCHAs in your time calculations.

You should notice that there is a two to three week window of time in which no new html can be added to product description but existing html will continue to work producing views and sales. Essentially, these great many hours of html work are being "grandfathered-in" for this time frame.

This has been our compromise solution to Zazzle . . . permanently grandfather-in existing html. Make the change and disallow html going forward but keep existing html links working. It could not be easier for Zazzle . . . just don't do something. We think this to be fair and equitable. Afterall, most of us put these links in the description at Zazzle's urging.

It's been over 24 hours since we made that suggestion in two of the Zazzle forums. No response or even acknowledgment from Zazzle.

Our Plan Going Forward or Is It Backward

Like many of you, we have too much invested with Zazzle to trash it. No doubt Zazzle is counting on that.

And frankly, this change is not as bad as the money grab CafePress made sometime back in which they significantly reduced and restricted royalty rates, ::Jinx:: sending a great many CPers to Zazzle.

However, Zazzle's credibility is gone with us. We are reluctant to invest our time at the same rate as we have done for the past almost nine years.

We fully expect that a year from now there will be some reason that any and all work on Collections will be removed or changed to our detriment. We also expect to see other changes within the year that will again cause us to re-evaluate.


  1. We will not be going through our thousands of products with html links to remove the code. Zazzle said they would do that. We will be quite surprised if that actually works as advertised. The forum will be filled with all the auto-strip complaints on March 24th.
  2. We will focus on our top selling products. In these we will revise the descriptive copy and create Collections. This will be done on a seasonal basis. Thus, our Christmas products won't see anything happening until September/October.
  3. The other 80% of our products will be updated either when they make their first sale or when we get to the bottom of our to do list. We never get to the bottom of our to do list.
  4. We will significantly scale back product creation because it is time intensive and because our primary tool, QC, has been broken for months. Zazzle says it has no ETA for its repair. It is not being seriously worked on.
  5. The time that we gain from scaling back on Zazzle will be re-focused on our other PODs, online businesses and building up our referral promotions.

If you have all your eggs in the Zazzle basket you might reconsider that strategy if building a growing online residual income is part of your business plan. Diversify your income streams has been our advice for many years. More so even now.

Best of luck.

15 Comments
Christine link
3/3/2016 10:42:55 pm

Amen!

Reply
Hallelujah!
3/4/2016 12:31:34 am

Reply
Redgeez
3/4/2016 12:01:56 pm

Totally agree!

Reply
Sarah Trett link
3/4/2016 04:08:18 pm

yep totally agree it is such a shame. The collection idea is great in theory but to add products to collections is just far too time consuming. Time is money, I think zazzle are forgetting that we are trying to build up our businesses too and our time is precious we do need to see a return on our time.

Reply
Peter link
3/4/2016 04:40:39 pm

Yes. We are like any other business and require a return on our investment of time and also of money. Zazzle is throwing out a significant part of many designers' time investments.

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My Zazzle Store link
3/5/2016 02:30:13 pm

I have talked to several 5-digit and 1 6-digit earners on zazzle and none of them used anything but basic HTML in their descriptions, so this won't affect their sales.

I also talked to 1 5-digit earner and w/e category you are, that say it will.

I had only recently begun, so recent that the changes hadn't taken affect until right when the changes were announced. So, I have no credible evidence myself. So, maybe we shouldn't chicken little this quite yet. Maybe you would have made the sales those HTML effects supplied anyway?

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Peter link
3/5/2016 04:27:19 pm

Everyone's business model is different. Since I can definitely point to years of examples in which a link in the description made a difference, I will stick with my assertion that this is a bad change for the majority of Zazzler's. But you miss the point . . . basically a year ago Zazzle encouraged us to include links in the description. Many of us have invested considerable time and effort. Now all that time was wasted. Why should we invest any time in Zazzle suggestions given this past? More than anything, that is the point of this post.

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annie link
3/6/2016 03:31:47 pm

I also added html to a lot of my descriptions ... a while ago they did encourage it. I don't plan on editing any of those designs though - I'll just wait and see what they look like after they have finished. Seems like a lot of time for me as a shopkeeper to do this for very little in return. Plus, I've also been reading all of the issues people are having with the recaptcha.

Tiffany Bryant link
3/5/2016 02:50:49 pm

Yes, indeed... this is maddening. I'm a fairly new Zazzler and I've spent many hours adding awesome image links to my product descriptions recently based on your recommendations. (Thanks for all your awesome tips, by the way).

I'm about to reach Pro (once recent earnings clear) and I hadn't seen this announcement until painstakingly searching for some information in the forums today. Maybe they only inform pro-sellers of these important updates? I still haven't found a way to email subscribe for updates from their blog or forum...

Anyway, I was mostly commenting to let you know that it seems they removed the part of the Holiday Tips blog post you linked recommending using HTML in product descriptions... although commenters referencing it were not removed, so I can tell it was there. They are definitely losing credibility at every turn.

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Peter link
3/6/2016 09:35:30 am

Wow! Zazzle rewriting history by removing their year old recommendation from a year ago and replacing it with other text.

Now I have seen everything. A new low.

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Barb
3/5/2016 08:36:46 pm

There was a post in one of the pro rooms. QC is going bye bye and being replaced by something else. It was sent to me I am not in that room. But since no more mention as asked not to tell, So that is why its not being fixed. I suspect the worse case coming just like all else being done. Our time is gone at Z please go elsewhere don't support them anymore.

Reply
Suzie Wong link
3/6/2016 07:12:11 am

Stealware ever hear of it? It is all about Zazzle getting all the money. Zazzle feels that they can do anything they want. Just doing their own affiliating is very suspicious. And removing the HTML another way to weed us out. People have said why not just get rid of us? It is all carefully planned to keep the authorities off of them. As long as they keep some happy and us busy the focus is off them. The new products all the hoops are just diversions.

As many are doing getting out is the best thing you can do. How many sales are coming in just from not deleted abandoned stores?

Did you know the majority of designs and shops on the first pages are made up stores by Zazzle? That actual artists were removed even those making a lot of sales! It is all strategically planned and has been for at least 4 years.

I removed every product on 4 stores since they will not delete my account. I highly suggest you do the same and send a letter to destroy your files even sold items you have a right not to want them sold no matter if sold even if told differently.

Then write snail mails certified to the executives at Zazzle emails and address found on Linkiden. Do not use the Zazzle one for the Beavers.

Do not let them do this to so many good people including you.

Reply
Peter link
3/6/2016 09:40:40 am

Hi Suzie.

I can not speak to several of your points, but i do know that Zazzle acts as its own affiliate.

Have you ever had a sale cancel and then comeback but now with a third party referral? That third party is Zazzle.

There, was it seems, a problem with the first purchase. Zazzle writes the customer that their order was canceled and asks them to re-order. When the re-order is made, Zazzle "earns" the referral fee.

I have always thought this to be unethical as it is easily open to abuse. Why not make an extra 15% on every sale by simply following that process?

Reply
Nancie
3/20/2016 02:51:07 am

Really disappointed to read this, and all of the comments. I am just starting with Zazzle, and am seriously thinking that I should look at another POD company as my main go-to. My plan had been to set up my main shops with Zazzle, and do secondary (for lack of a better word) shops with some other PODs. Any recommendations on some other POD services to consider?

Reply
Peter link
3/20/2016 10:24:03 am

Aloha Nancie. Thank you for your comment.

Being new, you probably do not have access to the ProDesigner forums. So I will post here what I said in there:

"Three years ago I put together a spreadsheet of all the PODs I could find along with some of their characteristics.

I have just updated the Excel spreadsheet and it is free to download from our How2 Acceleration Page: http://bit.ly/PODsCompared

For those that downloaded this sheet in the past, there were some PODs that went belly up, there are some new PODs since March 2013 and some PODs have changed procedures/policies.

Did you know Amazon just went into the POD shirt business a few months ago?

In reviewing all these sites, I really must say it gave me a renewed appreciation of Zazzle and the superiority of this site. Both in terms of product creation for earning royalties and this is the easiest site from which to make referral links.

There are a great many broken Zazzle parts and that is frustrating. But it is also one of the more sophisticated sites and the easiest to use when it is working.

This was also a good exercise because I had created stores back in 2013 at some of the other PODs to best gather information and had forgotten all about them. Even had money waiting at one!"

We will continue to put most of our effort into Zazzle but are shifting more time to other PODs. Our vote for second best POD is RedBubble.

Reply



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