Printing catalogs of your Zazzle stuff with Nifty, each with a QRCode

If you'd love to take a printed live catalog of each of your Zazzle collections with you when you're promoting at a real-world event, then you'll be jumping with excitement at this new Nifty tool!

Here's an example of a live-print catalog - note the print button and (the live part) that QR code:

the print button is at the top left of your catalog

The really cool thing is the QR Code at the top of the page under your title. It removes a HUGE barrier to sales. Imagine, there you are at your stand at the exhibition and someone has been lured in for a closer look...

• they say they like that tee shirt but the monogram's not theirs and also ask about other stuff you have with the same design. 
• you tell them about how they can personalize it and you whip out your ring-binder and flip to the right collection
• they love some of the things they see and definitely want to buy
• cool! Just get them to point their phone at the QR code and they're taken to the very page you printed (as long as you haven't messed with the collection in the meantime!)
• they can then tap any of the designs they love, to then be whisked off their feet to that design's product page on Zazzle - they could bookmark it for later or maybe even personalize your template with their details and buy there and then!

Or maybe you put some out as flyers in local venues - sit and wait for the sales! There's more ideas in this Zazzle forum post.

🎓 It's best to pull from a collection because you then have total control over the product designs you include and their order. There's nothing to stop you pulling by department or any other Nifty ways you fancy - just reprint your catalog to keep things in sync after any major changes.

Getting your printed catalog

Here's where to find the button to open the catalog printer in Nifty Step 2:

get access to the catalog grid printer tool in the Share a product grid page section of the Nifty Promo Control Panel

Here's a link to Nifty with all the settings in place to pull from one of my collections Go on, click the link and give it a go, it's really cool! 😎


⚠️ In Firefox (just on a Mac?) when you view a pdf instead of printing to your printer, later pages have fewer products and smaller sizes. Weird 🤪

✅ It works just fine and dandy in Chrome, Safari and Opera 🙂

👁‍🗨 Once again, for the sake of transparency, the links used on the catalog page are on a 50/50 referral split. That means half of them will use your referral id and mine will be on the other half, all chosen at random. Don't worry, any royalty due on sales of your products will always go entirely to you.

If you have a Nifty Subscription, your referral id will always be used, so you get to keep all the cash 🤑

I hope you find this tool useful for helping you make sales in the real world!

Best,
Mark (HightonRidley)

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🤓 Notes from Nerdsville

I've not got much control over the exact layout and font size on the printout. The systems used on the computer that is doing the printing seem to be in charge! Headers and footers are in your page setup - nothing to do with Nifty.
I'm on a Mac and printing to a real printer gives me 9 products per page on a 3x3 grid. Same for when I use PDF as the "printer" to use.

Automated Pinning - making a nIFTTTy Scheduler applet on IFTTT

Let the nIFTTTy Scheduler take the strain and pin up to 1000 products for you, spread over the days, weeks and months to come.

Pins made this way look great. Here's what one looks like in the list of your pins:

a Pin as it appears in the list of your Pins

 ...and below is the Pin itself. It's a Rich Pin, meaning that the prices are up-to-the-minute (nearly), and so will change if they change on Zazzle. Same for the title and description you see. The hashtags come from the IFTTT applet, as you'll see below. Cool, huh? 😎

the Pin itself

The link to the product includes the tracking code you set up (see later) and your referral id. If you have a Nifty subscription, pins will always use your referral id. If not, half the Pins will use yours and half mine (what's called a 50/50 referral split). If it's your product, you will always get any royalty due.

Summary

1. Set up the products you want pinned
2. Choose to make a nIFTTTy Scheduler
3. Set up your schedule details
4. Copy what you're given to paste into a new IFTTT applet
5. Set up the applet
6. Wait for your first Pin!

Step by step

So, on with the step-by-step guide to make your own nIFTTTy Scheduler applet.

👉🏽 First, as usual when your doing any kind of promoting with Nifty, you set up things in Step 1 of the Nifty Promo Control Panel to get the products you want to work with:

First set up the products to work with - here it's working on my store

👉🏽 Next, in Step 2, you choose and set up the tracking code to use for the nIFTTTy Scheduler before opening it:

Click the "show/hide" button and set up the tracking code before opening the scheduler

👉🏽 Click the button to open the scheduler and set up your schedule. Here's an example schedule:

Set up your schedule and click the button "Copy for pasting in IFTTT"

Now it's just a case of clicking the button to copy your feed url for IFTTT.

👉🏽 Next, log in to your IFTTT account, get to the "My Applets" tab and click the "New Applet" button:

getting ready to create your nIFTTTy Scheduler applet

 

👉🏽 ...and you'll see this:

the first step in creating the applet - choosing the "if" part

🎓 Before continuing, a quick explanation is in order.  IFTTT is put together as

• if a service you choose meets a condition you select
• then another service you choose will carry out an action you set up

👉🏽 The first step is to choose the service for the "if" part. You'll be choosing the RSS Feed service, so click the "+this":

handily, the RSS Feed service you want is at the top of the list of services

👉🏽 Click the RSS Feed icon and you'll then choose the condition; a trigger in this case:

available "trigger" choices for the "if +this" part

👉🏽 You want to pin whenever a "New feed item" appears in the nIFTTTy Scheduler rss feed, so click that choice.


🎓 The nIFTTTy Scheduler rss feed only ever has one Zazzle product in it and only when one of your scheduled timeslots is active. Remember, timeslots stay active for 30 minutes starting from their set time.


👉🏽 On clicking it, you'll see the following, where you paste in the RSS feed url you copied from the nIFTTTy Scheduler just now.

👉🏽 Here it is with the feed url pasted in from my example above:

paste the feed url given to you by the nIFTTTy Scheduler

👉🏽 Click the "Create trigger" button and you'll move to the next step, choosing the service to carry out the action you want:

getting ready to choose the service for the action part of your applet

👉🏽 ...so go ahead and click "+that":

choosing pinterest as the service to perform the action you want

👉🏽 Start typing "pinterest" and the list of services will be filtered as you type. Click the "Pinterest" one


🎓 This blog post is all about Pinterest but you could choose Twitter, Facebook or others. The exact steps in setting up the action vary by service.


👉🏽 Ok, so you've clicked "Pinterest" and now you choose the only available action, "Add Pin to board":

👉🏽 When you click it, you set things up for it:

setting up the action - the defaults given are near-perfect

👉🏽 Fill in your board name, being ultra careful to get the spelling and capitalisation right. Next, add hashtags to the "Add a description" field, being careful not overwrite what's already there:

hashtags are added in the IFTTT applet's description field

👉🏽 Add your hashtags to the description field - note that the "ingredient" graphic changes while you're typing into the field. When you click away from it, it'll change back to the graphic.

Almost there.... Click the "Create action" button and you get to name your shiny new applet:

default name / applet description - change to something more sensible

👉🏽 The default name / applet description isn't very helpful, so change it to something more meaningful to make it easy to recognise later. Here's a more helpful description I tend to use, one which includes a summary of what's being pinned and the name of the board:

✅  That's it, you're done! Click the "Finish" button and then just wait for the next timeslot in your schedule to become active. When it does, within half an hour you should see your first Pin appearing 😎

Zazzle has fixed their RSS feed mechanism for pulling from the marketplace

This is such good news with the Holiday season almost upon us!

The really good news is that it means all the tools available via the Nifty Promo Control Panel also now work again with the marketplace. And that includes the normal nIFTTTy scheduler!

Promotion tools available in Nifty - now all work with the marketplace again 🙂

No need any more to use the stand-alone tool I created as a workaround, the nIFTTTy Pid Scheduler.
😎

6 step Pinterest recipe for Zazzle referrals - guaranteed

Updated October 30th 2018

Proven by Zazzlers as revealed in the NiftyToolZ, Tips and Support Facebook group.

Each of the following steps is described below in more detail:

1. Get a Pinterest business account if you haven't already got one
2. Use a tracking code with date pinned included in it on all Zazzle pins
3. Pin 50 Zazzle product designs per day minimum, using hashtags
4. Spread over a week, repin at least 30 from your Pinterest home feed /  search
5. Spread over a week, follow around 10-20 boards / people
6. Give it 3 months and you should be seeing referrals starting to become regular

Ok, now to explain each of those 6 steps in more detail...

1. Get a Pinterest Business Account

Pinterest will view affiliate links very dimly if you don't have a business account. They may even delete your account if you pin too many without one.

2. Use a tracking code with date pinned included

Every pinned Zazzle product design absolutely has to have a tracking code. Make sure it has the date pinned as part of the code. This is essential so you know where your successes come from and how long ago it was pinned so you can react accordingly.

When you choose a tracking code, make sure it's unique to the theme/style/board you're working with. (If you use either of the nIFTTTy schedulers, see below, the date pinned is added to your tracking code automatically.)

3. Pin 50 per day minimum - every day - and use hashtags

Yup, at least 50. Every day. With relevant hash tags.

You say "Hmmm.... that's a tall order, it'll take me at least an hour a day, likely more, and I can't afford that time away from creating. And I'll lose track of where I got to as time goes on."

I say to that, use a tool that automates the whole process, hashtags and all. Once set up, it'll run and run until there are no more product designs left to pin. (With the nIFTTTy scheduler pinning from a store at the rate of 10 per day, it'll run unattended for 100 days.)

Pin to boards themed by design style or by event / bank holiday. And go niche. You know, things like gothic weddings, first responder business cards, trucker gifts and so on. Make sure your niches are related to what interests you and it'll make your interactions on Pinterest both easier and more attractive to others.

4. Repin at least 30 spread over the week

If you don't interact on Pinterest other than to pin a lot of affiliate links, there's a good chance your account will be seen as spammy - and that can get you shut down.

To interact, choose from your home feed on Pinterest or do a search for pins related to your chosen niches and then pin what you like to the right board.

Crafts and maker projects are always good especially when kids are on vacation from school or for times like Halloween, Christmas, Diwali, Hanukkah and so on.

5. Follow 10-20 boards / people spread over the week

Another form of interaction you need to do is to follow others - either the person or some of their boards. You don't have to do this each day but try to spread it around during the week and / or at the weekend.

The important thing is to demonstrate by your actions that you're a human and not just a bot.

6. Give it 3 months

The way that it works on Pinterest is that people repin things that appeal to them for whatever reasons work for them. One of those reasons is that it's something they might buy for themselves or as a gift for others - not there and then but 'when the time comes'. You know, much like you might be browsing a store and think "Oh, so-and-so would like that".

From the massed experience of people in the NiftyToolZ, Tips and Support Facebook group, this tends to be around 3 months on average. We know this because of the pinning date included in the tracking code.

Note that you do need to have a lot of pins for the averages to work out for you. The 50 per day, every day, should get you there.

Summary

• Pin lots every day, sticking to some form of niche themes and their boards
• Demonstrate you're human by interacting with other people, their boards and pins on at least two or maybe three days a week
• Give it time

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About Nifty and how it helps both with automated and manual pinning

The Nifty tools have been designed by a Zazzler for Zazzlers and that means they're crafted to deal with all of Zazzle's idiosyncracies.

Automated Pinning

The nIFTTTy Scheduler works in conjunction with IFTTT (If This Then That) to work its magic. For a complete, step-by-step tutorial on making your own nIFTTTy Scheduler Applet, see this blog post

Manual Pinning

The Nifty Promo Control Panel provides a tool for pinning individual products - you set up the collection or store / category / search you want and then in Step 2, you choose individual product sharing.

getting at the individual product sharer for Pinterest (and other social media)

Here's what the Pinning tool looks like in use:

click the image to try for yourself

Just flick through the designs, Pinning as you go. Easy!


Find out which Nifty Tools are right for you on this blog page: https://razamazazzle.blogspot.com/p/which-tool-is-right-for-you.html

Bugfix on Society6 Nifty CPanel and its promo tools

Someone reported that they couldn't get the Society6 Nifty CPanel to work with their store's name nor with a collection they made.

It was a weird one that took a bit of digging. It turns out that when an artist's name is longer than a certain number of characters, that's when the bug surfaces. Once I'd found that out, the fix was easy.

My thanks to the person who reported the problem 💐


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🤓

The page from Society6 I'm turning into an RSS feed treats long artist names slightly differently than short ones. If an artist's name is too long, the page uses a shortened version and adds a horizontal elipsis character. And that was the problem.

You see, the horizintal elipses (a "..." character) is represented by the html entity … And that's an illegal character in some places in an RSS feed. And that was breaking the feed so that it wasn't producing anything.

Luckily its equivalent, … is ok so I swapped it wherever it appeared and now it's ok.

Zazzlers: Enhanced nIFTTTy Pid Scheduler - now save your settings

I got a request to allow the current settings in the nIFTTTy Pid Scheduler to be saved, so have now added that feature. It was something I meant to do but never got round to and the request was the kick I needed to get it done!

saving your settings

To use it, either drag the link to your toolbar or right-click it and choose the option to bookmark it. If you change any of the current settings, the stuff 'under the bonnet' of that link will update ready for you to save / bookmark again.

The only setting it doesn't save is the list of pids (if you've entered any), as that makes no sense.

⚠️ Changing any current settings won't update the bookmarklet on your toolbar, if you 'saved' that way, nor will it update the bookmark, if that's how you did it. You'll have to re-drag/re-bookmark to save your new settings.

Enjoy!
😎

Zazzlers: Introducing the Royalty Page Totalizer bookmarklet

Sometimes the simple tools are the most used and I think this one might be one of those.

So many times I've wanted to quickly add up the royalty amounts on a page in my Royalty History Report and it's a bit of a pain. Good mental arithemtic exercise, I know, but not every time, please!

So I've built the Nifty RHP Totalizer bookmarklet (RHP = Royalty History Page). It totals the amounts in the final column of the page - that column's currency is always the same and is the currency you've set in your account.

results of clicking the bookmarklet on one of my RHP pages

(Now at v1.1 to fix a recurring decimal digit issue that cropped up sometimes)

To get the bookmarklet, drag this link to your toolbar: Nifty RHP Totalizer and that's it done!
Here's a video showing you that - you may want to view it at full screen

To use the bookmarklet, just get to any page in your Royalty History Report and cick it. It really is that simple.

Installs fine in Firefox (and others) but in Chrome (just on Mac, ok on PC) you have to jump through hoops. More info about installing a bookmarklet in Chrome here: https://help.crossbrowsertesting.com/live-testing/getting-started/installing-the-bookmarklet (opens in a new window)

After a while, you'll wonder how you did without it!
😎

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👮🏼‍ Your Data Privacy

Rest assured, as this is something I take really seriously.

Your data can can only be seen by you. I can't track what you're up to. Anyone who knows about such stuff can check the code in behind the bookmarklet to confirm that nothing sneaky is going on.

New Nifty tool - identfies your sellers not in the Zazzle Marketplace

The new tool is the Marketplace Availability Today Checker Report and is a bookmarklet.
Tool updated to v1.2 - see the new double-check screenshot towards the end

To get it, all you do is drag this Nifty Match Report link to your toolbar. When you've done that your toolbar should look something like this:

That's all there is to installing it. So simple 😎

To use it, first get to your Royalty by Product report in your Zazzle account. Start off with the default of 25 items showing. Here's a random page from mine:

Getting ready to click your new bookmarklet

Next, click your new bookmarklet. I did and after a few seconds, I got this:

Report generated when you click your new bookmarklet

You can see the last 6 items don't have images - these are missing from the Zazzle marketplace. The reason in this case is because I deleted them. If you look carefully, you can see each of them says [product deleted].

So, if there's no image it means the product failed to be pulled when requested from Zazzle's RSS feed mechanism, possibly because it's not present in the marketplace

Possible reasons for not being present in the marketplace:

• Only G-rated designs can be shown due to the way Zazzle's RSS feed works
• Marked as deleted - you did this either accidently(!) or on purpose - or something weird is going on
• Not marked as deleted but still missing?
  • If there are lots like this, try reducing the Royalty by Product Report page size to show fewer items and then regenerate the report
  • Still missing? Click its link (opens in a new tab/window) to get to its product page
  • If that product type (sku) is no longer available (what I'd call "discontinued") you'll see a message to that effect
  • If clicking the link results in a different error page, you've definitely got a problem with it because it's not shown as deleted, it's not discontinued but it's still gone missing
  • Opened ok? See the image below for how to double check as a last resort

Products that haven't been deleted but have no image get a double-check link

If it's not a deleted product, you can double check it wasn't a pulling glitch by clicking the link you'll see.

Got questions? Issues? Want me to check something for you? Get help in the NiftyToolZ, Tips and Support Facebook group

Enjoy!



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👮🏼‍ Your Data Privacy

Rest assured, as this is something I take really seriously.

Your data can can only be seen by you. I can't track what you're up to. Anyone who knows about such stuff can check the code in behind the bookmarklet to confirm that nothing sneaky is going on.