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Make Money with Zazzle

Golden waves and a Zazzle Teddy Bear

I haven’t added much new designs to my store lately, but I managed to add a kamon with golden waves and a Zazzle Teddy Bear. Most work I did last couple of months went into recycling old designs to new products. This is an easy way to boost the amout of products without spending too much time.

First new design I want to show of is a pattern. It’s a yellow and orange flower on a light brown background. It has a typical Southern France feel to it.

Golden waves kamon

Next in line is a new Japanese Kamon design. It’s stylized wave design and this time I use a different gold texture. Brushed gold in stead of the sparkly deep yellow gold I used in all the previous design. The old “gold” designs always did pretty well and I’m curious how the more modest brushed gold texture is going to do. Personally I thibk it is an improvement.

Zazzle Teddy Bear
It was about time to add a more funny cartoony image. I found some nice images of teddy bears and I created a vector image. I always think my cartoons are done well, but it is a wild guess whether the products will sell. Here is my first Zazzle Teddy Bear:

Pinterest iPhone 6 board

Zazzle has a wide range of cases for phones and tablets, for instance for the iPhone, iPad, Galaxy, Droid, Kindle, etc. Apple recently released their iPhone 6 and iPhone 6+. Which means Zazzle offered a new range of cases begging to be sold. I thought I could make a board on Pinterest and display all the designs I put on the iPhone 6 cases. And also I could show other Zazzlers designs I like and make some affiliate money in the process. It’s an experiment and I hope it’ll work.

Make Money with Zazzle

Illustrations sell better than patterns

Recently I’v come to a surprising conclusion that illustrations sell better than patterns. It’s been a while since I posted a blog, October and November were rather busy. But I didn’t sit on my hands. I did some research on my sales to see what actually sells best. I made a lot of patterns, but also illustrations like Japanese mons or Haida art animals. Patterns go well on iPad and Kindle cases and the like. But cases can be quiet expensive.

Zazzle allows you to download an Excel-sheet with al your sales. My sales I categorized in pattern and illustrations. More than 90% of my sales were products with an illustration as a design. Conclusion: illustrations sell better than patterns. Action: make more illustrations. As I mentioned I created some desigs based on Japanese kamons. This is a sample:

Uesugi Mon Japanese samurai clan Jewelry Box
Uesugi Mon Japanese samurai clan Jewelry Box by ejkaal
Look at other Uesugi Gift Boxes at zazzle.com
Sakai Mon Japanese samurai clan
Sakai Mon Japanese samurai clan by ejkaal
Find more Sakai Tiles at Zazzle

This new insight urged me to visit my older designs of illustration and put them on the new products. Zazzle now has gift boxes for sale, ideal for a single illustraion.

It’s a bit early to declare my conclusion correct. Anyway, sales are picking up. November brough me 10 times more dollars than an average month in 2012 or 2011. That could be due to the amount of patterns I created the last two momths. They may help my store and Zazzle products to be found more easily. Mayby the patterns will take off some months later. But for now I’m happy with the increased sales. And I will keep a close look on what product and designs sell or don’t.

Pattern designs

Barcelona tile pattern for Zazzle merchandise

I’ve added a new Barcelona tile pattern to my Zazzle account in order to create a bunch of products. It’s not the first Barelona tile pattern, but this one I explicitely show off for the first time on a website. For the purpose of selling, that is. Below is an Apple iPhone 4s case as an example, but I’ve got dozens of products with this pattern.

Most of my patterns I get from books and I redraw them in Inkscape. If you’re into patterns for products designs, a vector graphic program is essential. Especially if you need to design fo a whole range of products at Zazzle.

I’ve got a bunch of examples of Barcelona tile patterns. They pretty colorful and bright an I find them very well suited for Amazon Kindle, Apple iPad or Samsung Galaxy cases or the like. As you can see above, a nice clear and bright picture on a webpage.