Well, this is the second post I am making in the "Create Your Own Online T-shirt Store" series. In the last post I talked about "Starting an online T-shirt store with CafePress". In this post let's take a look at one of the most popular alternative to CafePress, Zazzle.
Zazzle had been around for quite a while and has really been gaining in popularity for some time. The working of Zazzle is almost similar to CafePress. With Zazzle you can create your own custom designs and buy products with those designs on it. Zazzle offers many types of products like T-shirts, Hoodies, Postage stamps, Shoes, Postcards, Calendar, Posters, Skateboards, Bags, Hats, Ties, Aprons, Business Cards, Mouse pads, Flyers, Letterheads, Stickers, Pet Clothing, Magnets, Buttons, Key chains and many other items.
Zazzle's easy to use interface makes it a breeze even for a new user to the site to create a custom design just by selecting the item from the list and then customizing the template with the online designer. The designer is also very easy to use.
Now, let's come to selling your own design stuffs on Zazzle. Like CafePress, Zazzle allows users to set up their own shop and sell their created designs on it. However, the one advantage that you have with Zazzle is that there is nothing like a free basic and a more privileged pro shop like CafePress. In Zazzle there is only one type of shop and that doesn't cost a thing. Yes, Zazzle shop is free to set up.
With a Zazzle store all you need to do is to create your designs and upload it to your store. Zazzle will take care of the more demanding tasks like transaction processing, shipping the item, customer service etc. Zazzle store can be customized to match your designs and brand, Zazzle stores has RSS feed and Google Base feed, the store features a comment wall to interact with buyers and fans, unlimited design storage (unlike CafePress, which allows only 80 items in their free shops). Each product on Zazzle has a base price that includes a 10% royalty paid to the creator of the product. But with Zazzle "Name Your Royalty" feature you can earn more than that if you want to. All you need to do is to set the royalty rate anywhere between 10% to 99%. As Zazzle's base price is fixed, the increase in the royalty will be earned by the products creator.
Zazzle stores are very flexible to set up and customize. You can sort your products within a store by dragging and dropping products use a custom image thumbnail to represent any category etc. And if you are good at HTML and CSS then what you can do with the look of your Zazzle store is limited only by your skills.
Uploading your designs to your store is also easy with Zazzle. And using Zazzle "Quick Product Create" feature you can actually create up to 100 products at a time from your own templates or Zazzle templates.
Zazzle is very beginner friendly! Zazzle University is a good place to learn things about Zazzle and marketing your store. Zazzle blog also features useful tips and tricks from time to time and Zazzle's forum is a great community of helpful users. So, if you were looking for a place to sell your designs without all the headaches that doesn't involve designing (like payment processing and shipping the item), why not try out Zazzle today?