21st Century Affiliate Marketing

Selling my own designs on CafePress

I have been selling products in my CafePress shop for several years and there are many things I like about it.

I enjoy selling my designs and earning commissions on a regular basis, but I’m not much of a graphic designer and there are many things I like that I don’t have either the time or the talent to create and sell.

Promoting designs created by others on CafePress

At one point, I was doing well with earning commissions through the CafePress affiliate program, but that dropped to almost nothing when they went from a private affiliate program to using Commission Junction.

CafePress changed the pricing model for products sold through their marketplace

Last year, CafePress made some changes and when one of my designs sells in their marketplace, I earn a smaller commission than when the same product with the same design sells in my shop.

Most of my sales in November and December were through the CafePress marketplace, so my earnings were smaller than they would have been if they were made through my shop.

On top of that, I didn’t earn any affiliate commissions.

Getting started with Zazzle

So, I decided today to look into Zazzle and see if it was something I wanted to try.

I have a lot of friends who have either moved from CafePress to Zazzle, or they have shops at both of them.

Getting started with Zazzle is very easy

I set up my account and opened my brand new Zazzle shop today.

There’s not much in it, yet.

Basically, I’ve chosen a theme, entered a bit about me on my profile page, uploaded my standard profile photo, and set up some of the optional stuff for promotions.

Adding designs and products to Zazzle

Now, it’s time to modify some of my best-selling designs and add them to products at Zazzle. That’s going to take some time and will be an ongoing process. My goal is to have most of my best selling designs on both CafePress and Zazzle before October, so they’ll be ready to promote in time for the massive November-December buying season.

I’ll start later this week with one of my best selling designs on CafePress and see what it takes to add it to multiple products on Zazzle. I’m sure there will be differences and I may run into obstacles as a result of my experience with CafePress and being so new to Zazzle. We’ll see if these are serious obstacles or just speed bumps.

Zazzle has their own private affiliate program

in addition to selling my own designs, I’m looking forward to trying their affiliate program and selling designs created by other people that I find and like.

For instance, when browsing through their marketplace, this afternoon, I found a design that cleverly combines two things that speak to me, and possibly to you, with a bit of humor.

I’m a huge Star Trek and Star Wars fan and I was really angry last year with the bailout of banks and financial institutions that were considered too big to fail.

That’s why I laughed when I saw this design:

A lot of people use the abbreviation, “lol,” to say that they laughed out loud when seeing something. I don’t make a habit of that, but I really did laugh out loud when I saw that design.

I like it better than my own Too Big To Fail design.

The nice thing is, if someone sees this and buys either a product with my design or the more clever death star product then I’ll earn a commission.

I enjoy earning a commission.

Really.

The more, the better!

Even though I don’t have a single product in my Zazzle shop, yet, I can still earn by promoting other people’s designs, and I like that.

When I have products in my shop, then I can benefit from any other Zazzle shop owners who choose to promote my products.

A sale of one of my designs through someone else’s affiliate link slightly reduces my earnings, but that’s more than made up for by their promotional efforts, so I’m happy to share part of the profits with them.

There are significant differences between CafePress and Zazzle

So, I still have a lot to learn about Zazzle, but I’m liking what I’ve seen and learned up to this point.

Another difference between CafePress and Zazzle is that you have to pay for a premium shop on CafePress in order to have multiple designs in your store, but on Zazzle, it’s totally free.

Even though it only costs about $7 per month for a premium shop on CafePress, this ought to appeal to you if you don’t want to pay anything and still have a way to earn money through online marketing.

Discussing Zazzle on Squidoo Marketing

I’ve started a discussion in the Zazzle Group on my Squidoo Marketing community for discussing opening a Zazzle shop, creating designs, adding them to products, and promoting them.

Since I’m a complete newbie on Zazzle, I’ll use myself as a guinea pig and talk about some of the things I do to create the products and market them.

I’m sure I’ll make some mistakes and I may have some ideas you never thought of, so I’m hoping it will be a useful discussion. You can see it here:

I am a newbie to Zazzle - do you have any advice?

That discussion is primarily for people who enjoy using Squidoo to market their products, but we’ll also be discussing other avenues of promotion and sales. You’re welcome to come and join us there, if you want.

In conclusion…

I like what I see so far at Zazzle and I’m looking forward to exercising what they offer and promoting designs I find that were created by other people, too.

I’m looking forward to seeing if I can develop a new, reliable, and growing income stream with Zazzle.

What about you?

Do you have any thoughts about CafePress, Zazzle, or either of their affiliate programs?

Act on your dream!

JD