Websites like Zazzle, Redbubble, Society6 and such are attractive for a multitude of reasons. Risk-free passive income is probably the most alluring aspect. The concept is simple enough; upload your art or designs on various items like t-shirts, mugs, and stickers, then get a share of the profits! Simple right? But as anyone who has ever given it a go will know, it’s not quite so simple. I’ve achieved enough success on Zazzle to have earned a Bronze Pro Seller badge, so I thought I’d share some of the things I’ve learned along the way. So here’s what I wish I knew before starting my Zazzle store!

1. Your Best Art Might Not Be Your Best-Selling Art

Years ago I made some chibi designs I was really proud of. They were a variety of dessert-inspired chibis and were really popular on DeviantArt, especially as free-to-color linearts. I thought if they were popular as coloring pages they would also be popular on t-shirts, so I started my own Zazzle shop and spent hours putting my chibis on mugs, t-shirts, buttons, and waited. And waited.

Nothing sold. If I remember correctly, I sold maybe two cupcake girl t-shirts over the course of a year. This obviously wasn’t working. In the end, these designs were popular as coloring book art – but not on merch. The fun details and complicated lineart made for a good coloring experience but did not stand out in a good way on t-shirts and mugs.

It wasn’t until I began making designs with merchandise in mind that I began seeing sales. I started streamlining my art style, making simple characters with bold outlines and bright colors. Rather than making art and then trying to fit it onto merch somehow, I was creating designs with merch in mind.

Having a look through the best-selling designs on various kinds of merch on your selling platform can give you an idea of what works and what’s currently popular. What worked for me on Zazzle, were funny and cute characters, based on puns or memes. What works for my coloring books are detailed and complicated chibi designs. What works for you, your art, your platform, and your style will likely be totally different!

2. Test the Water and See What Bites

Despite my limited success on Zazzle I was still really interested in it. I read in a blog that one needed around 1,000 items in a Zazzle shop before consistent sales would start coming in. So I decided to make more designs and put them on a bigger variety of items. More sales kicked in, but they were far and few between. They were just enough to offer encouragement however, so I kept going.

At this point I began improving my Zazzle storefront, and accidentally made a move that would change my Zazzle life forever. I made a set of little icons to use as buttons within the store. For miscellaneous items I made a llama, because llamas were popular on DeviantArt at the time and I thought they were cute. I ended up making a few ‘little llama’ products.

For the first time ever, sales started coming in. But what was selling? Not my meticulous designs. Not my creative cupcakes. Instead, the silly little llama I had thrown together in 5-minutes. Llamas. And only llamas.

The ‘keep calm and carry on’ meme was popular at the time, so I made a ‘keep calm and llama on’ design featuring the little llama. And the sales just kept coming. At this point I got a partner on board (my mom) and she began helping me get my designs on as many products as possible. Keychains, mugs, posters, phone cases, and more. We began selling weird novelty items as well; ties with llamas on them, earrings, backpacks – you name it, we’ve sold one.

Llamas were not what I had envisioned when I first opened my Zazzle store. But they were what worked. Some of my most popular items? Can coolers and post cards, more so than mugs and t-shirts. So test out the market, see what works and go from there!

3. Niche Markets Are Your Friend

Now the question remains; why llamas? Well, I had inadvertently hit seller gold – an overlooked niche market on Zazzle. So what are niche markets and why should we care about them?

It’s quite simple when you come down to it. As a customer, when you visit a store you probably already have something in mind. You want to get something with an owl on it for your best friend who collects owls. So you type ‘owl’ in the search bar and browse through the products. At most, you might browse through 2 or 3 pages before choosing your favorite design to buy.

So, as a seller, if you are not in those first 2-3 pages, the chances of you getting a sale is very low. There are more complex algorithms at hand, but it’s a circular thing; you need sales to get on the first page and you get sales by being on the front page. What’s a seller to do?

This is where niche marketing comes in. Consider these two search topics: ‘Christmas’ and ‘Owls’. The first (Christmas) is a super-saturated market. Any and every seller will probably have some Christmas designs in their shop. Owls, not so much. So as a new seller, your purely ‘Christmas’ designs will not show up on the 5th, 6th or even 20th page of Zazzle items. Even though you have created designs of an incredibly popular and marketable thing (Christmas) you probably won’t see sales. Owls, on the other hand, simply because there aren’t as many owl designs out there, might nab you some sales. Those few sales can bump you to the front page of ‘owl’ items, which will net you further sales. If owls work out for you, you can combine the niche with the popular; ‘Christmas Owls’ and get the best of both worlds!

If you have free time to spare, or want something to mindlessly work through as you listen to podcasts, print-on-demand companies like Zazzle are a great way to set up some passive income deposited in your bank account every month. It’s risk-free and costs nothing but time.

Hope these tips were helpful for you – if you would like to share something YOU would have loved to know before starting your first Zazzle store, please share in the comment section below!

Check out my Zazzle store HERE.

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