It wasn’t long before I was hooked on designing things for Cafepress, but it started to sink in that I shouldn’t put all of my eggs in one basket. I started looking around for a place to diversify, but nothing seemed as easy to use. No other place really had the same amount of products, either. I had overlooked Zazzle initially, as the selection was small and the interface seemed like a time waster.
In recent news, Cafepress made some questionable decisions about their marketplace and prompted a 2nd look at Zazzle. At first, it still didn’t seem too easy, as I was so used to the Cafepress way of editing and adding. After carefully inspection, it was clear that Zazzle was so much easier for me to use. It was time for me to take my Gabriel Angel Design T-Shirts and Gifts Shop at Zazzle a lot more seriously.
I could use one design and the default templates would fit it to the products the way that I wanted. The few that didn’t look so right were far quicker to fix compared to the Cafepress counter parts. My current favorite is the ability to added a selected background color without adding a whole new design. Oh and there is that little of advantage of getting paid the same amount for sales from their marketplace and directly from my store.
Cafepress has been my real money maker, but the recent change has made that divide a lot smaller. Diversification is always a good idea, but the ease of Zazzle will make it difficult for me to not want to spend a lot more time on their service.
Now if I could only find an easy way to integrate my Zazzle products into my own domain …
