The Zazzle forum

Where is it?

The Zazzle forum is to be found at http://forum.zazzle.com/

Once beyond pure beginner, the most important forums there are

• Ideas to promote your stuff 
• and Show & Tell

A gotcha

In your posts, you can set text to various colours but unfortunately you can't use orange. If you try the following:

Here's some ordinary text followed by some [color=orange]that is supposed to be orange[/color]

what you'll actually get is:

Some text followed by some range">that is supposed to be orange

This is caused by an overlap with the code for the 'shocked' smiley in the html that gets generated. So avoid using orange text!

Forum: Ideas to promote your stuff

My own estimate / guesstimate is that for every hour spent making, you need to spend three promoting.

Most people are disappointed (in any sphere of selling their art / craft) when they produce great products and find they don't sell. Stuff doesn't sell itself, no matter how brilliant! You have to have potential buyers eyeballing them. And to get those eyeballs on your work means promotion, promotion and more promotion.

So this forum is a great place to start. Many fellow Zazzlers recognise the importance and go out of their way to promote not just their own but also other people's products. And the act of offering to do so does at least four things for them:

1. By posting a thread about their promotion opportunity, they have to put a link to where the promotion is taking place. The search engines will eventually pick up on that link. Bang! One benefit achieved.
2. Of course, they'll be talking in their post what the promotion is about - the search engine spiders love that as it gives context for the link. Bang number two!
3. People will visit the link and there's a good chance that some of them are potential buyers. Bang number three. Good for the promoter (they get referral fees), good for the storekeeper (they get a link to their store / product and royalties)
4. Full time affiliate marketers looking for good designs to promote keep an eye on the Show and Tell forum, especially the "What's the last thing you sold" thread. Bang number four!

Everyone's a winner!

Great current promotions announced there:

• Squidoo Lens: A Taste for Chocolate
• Explorer Designs 
• A Christian Witness 
• Squidoo Lens: Pi and Mandelbrot set 
• Squidoo Lens: Halloween Zazzlers 
• Totes Handbags and Purses  

Forum: Show and Tell

The Show and Tell forum is described as "Looking for feedback about your store or proud of a sale - announce it here!" and that's exactly what folks do.

Again, posting in the forum with a link to your store / product achieves all four bangs.

Other places

Of course, the forums and other folk's promotion opportunities shouldn't be the only places where you promote but it is a great start!

15th Feb 2012 Edit: One last thing to mention, make sure you use the tracker code facility. When you do, Zazzle will put the tracking code that resulted in the referral sale in the first column on your earnings tab under "Referral History".

This way you'll get to know which of your referral activities are working - an absolute must!

The way you use it is to place &tc=MyChoiceOfTrackingCode after your referrer id. Get into the habit and never forget.

Note that neither the Zazzle-provided Blog Panel or Zazzle Panel support tracking codes - but, no sweat, there's a better alternative - my Zazzlit gadget.

Used by many, many Zazzlers, it's a snip to use even for the technically dumbfounded! See the tutorial for adding and using it here.

So, Happy Zazzling to all you serious Zazzle storekeepers. Until next time be safe, be successful :)

Comments / feedback not only welcomed but actively encouraged, so don't be shy!