Zazzle Print-on-Demand Review

Zazzle is very deceptive for a Print-on-demand service.  It had been mentioned to me as an alternative for CafePress however when I looked at the website it didn't look like it was very good.  First the website kept mentioning to earn up to 17% if you sell products and refer your own products (7% affiliate commission) which means only a 10% markup. I think that 10% is low considering the time it takes to get, prepare, and upload images and then make the products and descriptions. Yes, it is passive income, but that doesn't mean it doesn't take an effort to get the ball rolling.

I had already at this point tried using Cafe Press and Printfection and found them to not meet my needs, so I registered for an account and found my self pleasantly surprised.

Payment options: Check or PayPal

First of all I discovered that I CAN be paid via PayPal so no more 2+ months to get paid.

Customizable site via templates and color options

Secondly it is free to sign up and use. You can't edit the CSS files, but you can choose from several themes and select your colors via an options menu.  I already had my color scheme and header logo ready so I added the information and selected full width for my logo.

My site was customized in only a couple of minutes instead of the 10-20 minutes it took me to make changes to a CSS file with Printfection.

Adding products is easy but slow

I then went to adding products to my shop.  I was able to divide my images into groups (like folders) and I had no problem uploading them. Adding products however is a really slow process. It wasn't difficult in the least, but I think I had to click through more options than I can count to add one product.

There was a benefit to the slowness of this. I was able to give custom descriptions, names, and tags to each product. I was also able to add text to an image in different colors which made great headings.  I hadn't seen that option for either CafePress or Printfection.  It made my products more unique and more valuable in my opinion.

Products

They offer plenty of products. I'm not sure who has more Zazzle or CafePress, but they even offer ties, key chains, stamps. I was impressed. From their website information it looked like they had fewer products, but that isn't the case.  They had all the products I was looking to add and more.

Marketing tools

Unlike CafePress and Printfection I can easily add a flash or Javascript widget to add products from my store to a blog or other website. They also have some special product linking code available to go directly to a product page using text.  When you make a new product, you're also given code to add it to a website apart from your store.  I was quickly able to add that widget code to my travel photo and art blogs.

Commissions/Royalties

Well, it starts at 10% for your own products and 7% for affiliates. You can set your own markup.

SEO

Today, yes one day after setting up my store, I did a search for my store name in Google and I found over 10 results were found at Zazzle. That was very impressive because obviously Google considers it a good site to be checking it so fast and because the site's SEO was excellent.  If you have good Google results for your site, you'll make more sales because more people will see it when they search for things using words in your product tags or description.

Conclusion

If it weren't for the lack of a way to add products more quickly (in fewer clicks) I'd say that it was perfect.  If you want a wide variety of products, with better options than CafePress then signup with Zazzle and you won't be disappointed.

To see my Zazzle store go here.