I first met Elaine from Zazzle when I noticed she signed up for the Abundant Artist mailing list. I reached out to her and we had a great conversation about helping artists earn more money. Elaine is in charge of getting more artists to sell their work through Zazzle.com, as well as forming partnerships with other companies. She was very professional and my impression is that Zazzle works very hard to make sure that its artists find success. If you have experience selling art on Zazzle.com, let others know how it went in the comments. I was not paid for this article.
In today’s economy, it can be extremely difficult to make a living as an artist! Zazzle offers a way for artists to showcase their work on hundreds of different products and let us take care of all the hard work (manufacturing, shipping, customer service, payments). Zazzle brings 20,000,000+ monthly viewers from all around the world to your artwork. Creating your own customizable store on Zazzle is absolutely FREE and extremely easy.
What Zazzle Offers
- FREE fully customizable stores to showcase your work
- Name your own royalty
- 15% referral rate for any customer you send to Zazzle + up to 17% additional Volume Bonus payment
- Hundreds of products to put your artwork on ranging from real US postage stamps, canvas prints, invitations and business cards to shoes, iPhone cases, necklaces, t-shirts, mugs and even skateboards, just to name a few
- 20+ million monthly shoppers to view your work
- Bulk Image Uploader to upload many large image files at once
Example of Artist Store |
How Zazzle can help you sell your work
- Weekly Seller Newsletters – you can read tons of tips and advice in the archived newsletters!
- Entire sell section with tons of tutorials and guides on everything thing from creating a product using our design tool, to where and how to promote your work.
- ProSeller Program with special benefits
- Link building tools for your website or blog
- Flash panels, blog panels, banners
- Design Contests
- Zazzle forums where our amazing ProSellers and staff give pointers and answer questions and help you make money with your art!
Hi, it’s Cory again. I just want to interject and let you know that even though Zazzle offers many great resources to sell your art online, they are just one channel. I spoke to several artists who are selling their work through Zazzle, and they all let me know that to be successful, you have to do more than just put your art on Zazzle.com. Successful artists use Zazzle, their own website, and many other channels to sell their work. Having your art in as many places as possible is a good thing!
Here’s What a Few Zazzle Sellers Have to Say about Their Experience…
“WOW! Thank you for changing my life since 2005. My sales have increased every year. With your easy-to-use referral tools and helpful tips, I’m well on my way to earning even more this year. With my many stores here on Zazzle covering all kinds of designs and subjects, you have made it possible for me to leave my full-time professional career for someone else in need of a job during a bad economy.”
— Trevor – TDSwhite
“In addition to creating, marketing and selling designs for my own brands, Zazzle’s referral program is a great way for my business to earn more money. And with official merchandise from world famous brands like Star Wars, Hallmark, Disney, Harry Potter and more plus the quality content from international artists, illustrators, designers and photographers there is an endless opportunity to generate referral income and increase my earning potential.”
— Debbie – TheSpottedOlive
“The entire process from shop set-up to creating products, to cashing royalty checks is simple, intuitive and revolutionary. I’m a self-taught graphic designer making a living full-time with my Zazzle stores, and I have to say it’s such a great feeling to wake up in the morning to 5 or 6 “Sold!” emails! Zazzle has definitely changed my life.”
— Valerie – BeezKneez
How to go from Newbie to Zazzle ProSeller in no time
1. Create your store – Sign up for an account on Zazzle and start your first store that will be a virtual gallery of your work
2. Create products – Use our tools to upload your images, create hundreds of products and post them for sale
3. Tags and Descriptions – These are extremely important! Be sure to add thorough and relevant tags and descriptions for all your products so that customers can easily find them on Zazzle and also on search engines like Google.
4. PROMOTE! – The best way to start seeing significant sales is by promoting your work online and offline. Send an email to friends and fans, blog about your products, link to your Zazzle store from your website, Facebook, tweet it, etc! You’ll even earn a 15% referral payment if you refer a customer to Zazzle! We also offer free blog panels, banners, and link-building tools.
5. Participate! – A great way to know what’s new at Zazzle and learn all of our tips and tricks is to subscribe to our seller newsletter, stay active in our forums, “like” Zazzle on Facebook and enter our contests.
Things to Keep in Mind as you Begin Creating Products
- Design with a customer in mind – You should be able to immediately answer the question “Who would buy this product?” For example, if you created a mug with a painting of a dog on it, you should be thinking about a dog lover.
- Keep adding products – Don’t just create a few products at the beginning and then forget about your store! Keep creating new products around different holidays, events, themes, etc to appeal to many types of customer.
- Tell People about your new products – Show off your designs and fancy customized store through email, Facebook, twitter, personal website or blog, and any other online or offline channel that you can think of! Best part of this is that if you create referral links, you will earn an additional 15% of each sale!
- Think at least 1 month in advance – If you plan on designing for certain holidays or events make sure to have your products up in your store at least 1 month before! That is when we see the most sales.
Additional feedback I got from interviewing artists who are having success on Zazzle
- Don’t jump on sales bandwagons – make the art that you are good at making. Just because you hear someone else is selling lots of puppy mugs, don’t go creating puppy mugs if you’re not good at it and don’t want to do it.
- Just like any other site, there are copycat artists on Zazzle who try to pass their work off as original. The Zazzle staff will take it down if notified, but some artists have felt that Zazzle could be more proactive about preventing copyright infringement.
- Sometimes Zazzle changes their layout and functionality without warning. Make sure you come back to the site frequently so that you are familiar with how everything works, or you might get frustrated.
- Take a partner – managing Zazzle and other online marketing sites can be a lot of work. If you have someone you can work with, then you can spend more time creating.
- The Zazzle staff is really helpful & approachable. Several artists mentioned that they received personal help and attention, which is pretty amazing considering how much business Zazzle is doing.
Any additional thoughts? What has your experience with Zazzle been like?
gostei do artigo,e do site mas atualmente tenho meu própio site.Confesso que já participei de varios sitesque não posso
dizer nomes e nemhum deles cumpriram as promessas de vendas,gastei vários dolares e euros durante 2 anos para nada.o que vocês tem a me dizer?
Sorry Carlos, my portuguese isn’t so great…any one else?
I liked the article,and the site, but I currently have my own site.I confess that I have participated in several sitesque can’t
say names and nemhum of them fulfilled the promises of sales,I’ve spent several dollars and euros for 2 years for nothing.what you have to say to me?
I liked the article, and the site but I currently have my own site. I confess that I have participated in several sites that I can not
say names and none of them fulfilled the sales promises, I spent several dollars and euros for 2 years at all. what do you have to tell me?
hi Amanda, I also have my own wordpress site which I have installed a Zazzle Store Builder plugin and have all my products displayed on my site, its a great way to make extra sales 🙂
I liked the article, and the site but I currently have my own site. I confess that I have participated in several sites that I can not
say names and none of them fulfilled the sales promises, I spent several dollars and euros for 2 years at all. what do you have to tell me?
Make a product that you can use yourself…Order it & make sure that it is up to spec. …Before you put it up for sale…You should always proof the item you are putting your image on…(I did a bumper sticker)…
Also- sometimes you don’t sell anything, but the act of having an image of a work of art on Zazzle will make the collector want to buy the original…
I have created beautiful marketing materials for bricks & mortar shows, on Zazzle- they do a really nice job of putting my best foot forward…
*be a buyer as well as a seller- to really get to know a company…
Thanks Sari!
Thanks for this post! Interesting to hear that other people have had success.
I have a Zazzle store and haven’t really been pushing it as much as I should. Mostly because I wasn’t sure about the quality.
I tried out the paper printing to make sure it’s something I can stand behind. I have to say, I was more than pleased.
Sounds like somehtting I’d like to do. Thanks to Cory
I really enjoy creating on zazzle. It’s like a addiction, love coming up with new designs. I really like to create home decor items.
Hey there! I know this is kinda off topic but I was wondering if you knew where
I could find a captcha plugin for my comment form? I’m using the same blog platform as yours and I’m having problems
finding one? Thanks a lot!
Your are good
and i would like to have my new store in zazzle
but i already have one in name mahadev store
can i proceed for the next one
I have has a Zazzle store for a couple of years and although I have not started making a constant income I still enjoy it. So I keep on posting more products with new designs and hope for the best.
I’ve been on Zazzle for some time now and it definitely helps having a variety of products.
Thanks for the information! I appreciate it.
Hi! I’m at work surfing around your blog from my new iphone 4! Just wanted to say I love reading your blog and look forward to all your posts! Carry on the superb work!
Hi,
I recently stumbled upon zazzle and am interested to know how it works. In terms of getting our sales shipped to the addressee and the money ? Does zazzle take up some percentage of the cost ?
Heya this is kind of of off topic but I was wondering
if blogs use WYSIWYG editors or if you have to manually code
with HTML. I’m starting a blog soon but have no coding knowledge so I wanted to get guidance from someone with experience. Any help would be enormously appreciated!
Ive had tons of luck with zazzle.com, its a great place to sell apparel if your a designer or artist… even easier!! I’ll admit, its hard off the start, but once you get going it gets better the designs are their to stay. These are my sites:
http://www.zazzle.com/flowerzilla
http://www.zazzle.com/tattoozilla
nice 🙂
please I want to know if is it true that when I want to get my money I have to pay fees first ? and how much is it fixed or percentage ?
I agree with your post we can add our picture on the products. We can create our own activity on all products. It’s a good and nice post to share with every one from zazzle.com
Is there a monthly fee to have a store or be an associate? I’m trying to create a shirt for my friends to see and buy for an event,online and not taking other people’s addresses-they can get their own. It’s more or less a one time thing unless it catches on through advertisement.
I have been using Zazzle for a while now and starting to earn. But still have trouble ways to promote my Zazzle. I hope will be able to get the hang of it soon. This are my stores:
http://www.zazzle.com/cupofimagination?rf=238254048615643828
http://www.zazzle.com/heart_chronicles?rf=238254048615643828
Joanne, your pages look nice. I think there’s some social media stuff available on Zazzle, one of the reasons to choose it over some others.
A super basic question – how did you get those nice-looking banners across the top of the pages? I’m a real newbie to this, and the instructions are beyond terrible. Any hints…?
Lovely gift ideas you have. Just keep on posting and let the use the social media to spread the word. Its amazing to see how creative people can be. Way to Go
A few of the items I have also sold are found in the website in one of my stores
http://www.zazzle.com/achempong*
I want to ask about something plz
when I make money and want to get it I have to wait 2 months but what is the fees which I have to pay to get my money ??
I read that in a blog and I don’t understand that ??
anybody can help and explain what is the fees? why don’t they take the fee from the money which I will take from them (my profits I mean) ? and how much is it ?
I truly agree with Brandon Cameron
Zazzle is a fun place to post your nice designs and be able to earn something from it. It is time consuming but when you get the hung of it, the sales start coming depending on your designs. I am glad I have sold a few tshirts, cards, stickers and cases as well. Check them out at my Zazzle Achempong store
http://www.zazzle.com/achempong*
Hi there – I’ve been frustrated with selling on Zazzle because their bulk uploader seems to only place art on about 100 of their products, when they sell many more than that. It seems that you have to go into every product besides those 100+/- and do all the descriptions, tags, etc., over and over again. This is extremely time consuming. Am I missing something? Is there a way to apply your design to ALL their products instead of only some at a time? I’ve searched and searched, but I feel like I must be missing something. Any advice or insight would be greatly appreciated.
We have a zazzle.com store which we created a few months ago. .
http://www.zazzle.com/timelessartoncanvas
So far we sell one item about every month.
It is very time consuming but fun.
There are many things to learn and it seems never ending at times. Most people say make at least one new design on many products a week.
As a painter that is difficult.
Hi there. I had a look at your store and it looks great! It’s well organized. I notice you posted this earlier in the year. How are your sales now? Increasing? Do you continue to add more regularly?
Hi everyone!
I am very new to selling at zazzle.com
I would be appreciate if you could give me feedback on this.
My store’s link is below:
http://www.zazzle.co.uk/il_at_moon
This article was very helpful last fall when I was setting up my first Zazzle store (http://www.zazzle.com/janusian_gallery*). I know have nine stores and am one of their ProDesigners. As others have mentioned, the setup is very tedious: it takes far more time to add products than other POD platforms such as RedBubble or Society6 because each product on Zazzle is expected to have unique titles, descriptions, and keywords. However, the extra work can pay off: it is the platform from which I have made the most sales. I agree with the advice to have someone help with posting and someone should also help with social media marketing. I’m doing it all myself and it’s overwhelming.
Thank you for this article! I have just recently created my Zazzle store: https://www.zazzle.com/katalinbatorhos*/ and it is so much fun to create products and designs… but promoting is another thing… 🙂 I am just starting on it. Could you make a blog post maybe about this topic? For example how can we use pinterest for promoting the zazzle store etc? 🙂 Thanks so much
I definitely do prefer zazzle over others. I used to spend an endless amount of time and energy on society6 and redbubble. In 6 months I only got one sale on society6. I was literally putting my sanity at play. I like how zazzle gives you the opportunity to place your designs on endless of products and customize them the way you want. Anyway, this is my store
https://www.zazzle.com/rainbowchild_art
And this is my skateboard store which I still haven’t finished.
https://www.zazzle.com/zkateboard_designs
I am uploading products and making new designs on a regular basis. I can definitely see myself making a full time, steady income within a short amount of time. You just have to make it work and put effort into it.. and know what you’re doing. 🙂 Cheers.
I really like zazzle. there are endless opportunities for an artist like me. Although I’m new to this site but I have found zazzle very interesting so far, as there are so many products to create. I have designed a few products. Please have a look to my stores, I hope you’ll like it. Link to my store are given below:
https://www.zazzle.com/virtueoffashion
https://www.zazzle.com/indiandesignsstore
Hi, I don’t get any sale yet can anybody help?
this is my store https://www.zazzle.com/mishel_boutique/products
I’ve been with Zazzle 6 1/2 years.
Here’s what I’ve learned:
First understand the shopping audience:
People who shop at Zazzle are usually shopping for something for an occasions or a celebration, like birthdays, anniversaries, all sorts of holidays, a new home, a new baby, a wedding, etc.
People who shop at Zazzle are also convenience shoppers who want to do their shopping by computer or phone from work. These people love Zazzle.
Things to know:
You’ll need 200 plus products in your store just to begin to get noticed, so if you’re just starting out, keep creating!
Understand it can take up to 2 or more years of steady creating and promoting to begin seeing a trickle of regular sales–but longer your products are in the Zazzle market place, the higher they move up to get noticed, so the longer you stay it, but better you’ll do.
Make Collections of Your products! This is vital because, if someone looks at your product, ALL your OTHER PRODUCTS IN THAT Collection are displayed right under the product! Zazzle promotes you by your Collections! Take advantage of it!
Store advice: In your advanced settings, you can choose the layout of your store: what people look at first, whether collections, recent sales, categories, etc. Make your store eye appealing. If show your categories, make them visually appealing. Fix up a nice banner for your store header. Make sure your store tags in settings are the best and most relevant that can be. Tell people a little about who your are. Don’t leave “the about” blank in your store. It will build trust.
Descriptions and tags are important and Zazzle changes their platform design every so often on how their tags are set up, so you’ll have to go through periodically and update them. A combination of short tags and long-tail tags works best right now. (2018)
Zazzle has a massive quantity of products, but you DON’T don’t have to design for ALL of them. Choose what you LIKE to design for, whether it’s shirts, posters, mugs, etc. It’s okay to specialize a store to just what you enjoy making.
Since 2016, Zazzle is looking for quality not quantity in products and their zRank checks & rates your store, which effects your position in the market, so it’s important not to put the same design on 20 things. Aim at putting a design on products it best suits. Also make sure the design fills the product design space correctly and looks good. If you’re doing the same design on more then 5 products, change the title a little so it stays unique.
If you’re looking for promotion advice, visit the Zazzle forum. A business Pinterest board (if you want to earn referrals from Pinterest, your board must be business, not personal) a blog, social media are all good avenues.
The Truth about Referrals–they’re not easy to come by these days. They’re earned through a link containing your Assoc. I.D. from some place outside your Zazzle store, whether through social media, email, a business Pinterest pin, website, whatever. (You cannot earn referrals by hosting a Collection of other people’s products in your store.)
http://www.zazzle.com/bevstuff
Beverly — Great overview. Thanks so much for sharing. I’ve been on Zazzle a couple years with a few sales — and not necessarily of things I promoted. Even with a large Pintrest following I’m having a hard time of figuring out how to get seen. My shop is
https://www.zazzle.com/nancyworrelldesigns
I’ve noticed in this comment section that the expel asking questions about the income aspect seemed to be ignored for some reason. I would suggest some simple clarity.
-If an artist puts out a painting for $300, how much of that $300 does the painter receive, and I’m not talking about the royalty rates. what percentage of the sale does Zazzle take?
– if one sets the royalty at 15% does Zazzle make 85%?
– Also, regarding photos, are they royalty protected or can anyone duplicate the shot, even before Getty takes it? Are the photos protected from copying all over the world?
– Sice photogs are shooting raw mostly, what format does Zazzle prefer? DPI or large files?
These are just some simple questions that don’t have clear answers, especially what Zazzle makes off the artist, and how protected is the artists’ work so they are to ripped off?
Thank you, if anyone can clear up some simple math for me that wold be appreciated.
When you look at a Zazzle price on a product, say a light colored shirt and it lists for $25, that’s the amount Zazzle gets: $25. As a seller, you set your royalty to a percentage of your choice, say 10% (to make the math easy), so your percentage is added on top of Zazzle’s price so they sell the shirt for $27.50. Their price + your royalty. Now the tricky part is Zazzle offers sales all the time, so if the shirt price is discounted to $15, then your percentage is likewise reduced to $1.50. So with the $300 art example, if $300 is the list price before your royalty, that’s Zazzle’s take. If you set your royalty for 50%, that art would then sell for $450 with your royalty added on top. It’s the customer who’s paying you.
Referral fees are a flat %15 on whatever price an items was sold to a customer for from sales. It’s like a sales commission from Zazzle. So, if someone bought your $300 dollar art piece which your promoted outside of Zazzle or if another Zazzle Affiliate promoted it,like on Pinterest, you’d get $45 straight up added to your account. Referral fees are the only thing out of Zazzle’s pocket into yours, but they actually aren’t that easy to come by.
Rules About Royalty: You can set your royalty fee to any amount you like, but you just have to keep in mind your royalty increases the price of the item. For a royalty fee 15% or higher, they charge your account a $5 fee. To avoid that, you can set royalty to 14.9% and not have to pay that.
Zazzle is a US company bound by US copyright laws. Zazzlers in other countries, like Germany or Britian, are probably subject to their country’s copyright laws, but I don’t really know.
Zazzle published creed says what you create & publish remains yours. Not theirs.
But there are caveats:
Zazzle requires what they publish must be your original work or photos.
You may purchase a license to use photos from places like, Shutterstock, and that is allowed by Zazzle because you bought the license.
There are resources for royalty free/copy-right free photo resources, but you have to be very very careful that those don’t randomly include something that could be copyrighted, like a Disney Balloon in a crowd or a Starbucks logo on a cup or a brand name on a pair of pants–anything like that, because, if someone spots it and reports it, Zazzle will pull your product off the Market place for copyright violation. I had a movie studio request to use one of my Zazzle designs and in the release form I had guarantee it was my own work (and it was), but that showed me it’s a good idea to stick to your own art work and own photos.
Zazzle was putting some products on Amazon for a sale, but there’s a spot in your store settings where you can check or uncheck whether you want to allow Zazzle to that or not.
Thievery is a problem for all PODS: If you read the Zazzle Forum, largely Chinese thieves lift product images from Zazzle and put them on stuff to sell at other online locations and there are complicated filing procedures you have to do yourself to get them pulled off those places. I’d recommend going to the Forum to read up on that, if you’re concerned. There are water-mark settings provided by Zazzle that you can check in your store settings.
Zazzle uses DPI. 200 DPI is average for most things; sometimes 300 is better for very small things. I use 300 all the time for a higher quality resolution. If you read the product description under the product you want to designed for, it will generally tell you the design area measurement in inches. (I use an online inch to pixel converter).
I just want to say zazzle made it possible to create a business that my 9 year old daughter and I both love. For those who wants to create their own brand using zazzle. Check out our site at http://www.abigailtsui.com
This is the most helpful article and comments I have ever read about Zazzle. I am so glad I came across this. Thank you all for sharing. I was on Zazzle in 2016, sold one item, but I was new online, and was painting at the time, and wasn’t sure if I wanted my art in designs on products. But I have had a change of heart about my art. Everyone it seems wants to be an artist. I paint in the naturalism or realism style, the way you see flowers, landscapes, wildlife in nature. We travel in about a fourth of the United States, 6 months out of the year, and on the walls where we stay, much of it is abstract. So from seeing this, I believe naturalism or realism style is out. But I know that can change, but when? So I am back to give Zazzle a try, and I am loving the site this time. I love placing my art on the products, I love the products of Zazzle. I think I had to try the world outside of Zazzle, and it was like I found a home for my art on Zazzle. And I love all the comments I have read this evening about Zazzle on this site. Thank you all.! You have all helped me to see Zazzle in a new light. It is a site for artists, we are artful designers. I gave my store the name Rosie Foshee Artful Designing. It is a way of saying, I will be continuously designing with my art for those that visit my store and shop on Zazzle.