There are a lot of places to shop online, and Zazzle is one of the ones that allows you to do your own customization. You can also design your own products from start to finish if you’re comfortable with the design program!
The Artisan Shopping Directory has a store on Zazzle where you can find a lot of unique designs on a wide variety of products. Let’s take a look to see how to shop for custom items on Zazzle.
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Why should you shop on Zazzle?
Zazzle has a lot of things to recommend it, including hundreds of different types of products. You can take a look at the kind of things you can buy there by clicking to see their sitemap with the list of product categories: Zazzle Products
I’ve put together a collection that includes some of the products from our members and contributors so that people can find our members in one place. You can see that here: Artisan Shopping members’ collection
The way that Zazzle works is that independent artists upload their designs to Zazzle in the form of products that Zazzle produces. When one of them sells, Zazzle creates and mails the order and pays the artist a percentage royalty.
Artists can set up their own royalty amounts, and they can also earn higher royalties by sending people to their own Zazzle shops.
This is a basic royalty-structure setup, and it’s similar to a lot of other print-on-demand platforms. (A print-on-demand, or POD, platform is a website that does all of the production and fulfillment of orders when someone buys something.)
The difference in this case is that a lot of POD platforms require the designers to set up their own shops somewhere else to sell the products. In Zazzle’s case, they have the website where people shop, so the designers aren’t selling anything themselves.
The other thing that’s different about Zazzle is that you can go on there yourself and design your own products using your own photos, without having to go through a designer who will do it for you.
You can use the templates that another designer has created and edit it, or you can start from scratch and make your own thing completely from a blank to the finished product using the Zazzle design tool.
This video goes over the basics, and I do a walkthrough of the Zazzle design editor so that you can see how it works:
Personalization on Zazzle.
To personalize products on Zazzle, all you need to do is go to the listing and look for the “personalize this template” section on the listing.
I’ll add that this is probably going to be easier to do on desktop instead of on a phone, but you can do it in either place.
When you click on that, the window that allows you to add your own details will open up. You can type your own name, monogram, details, etc into the boxes and it will change on the image of the product as you type into the boxes.
In this screenshot, I typed “K” into the text box, and it changed the original “M” on the phone case to a “K” instead. You’ll be able to see exactly what the change will look like before you place the order.
When you’re happy with the customization, click on “done” and the design will save the changes that you made. You can buy it at that point, and Zazzle will print the order and send your order when it’s ready to ship.
If you want to make more extensive edits, you can use the design tool for that. To get to that, click the box that says “edit using design tool” that’s under the personalization boxes, and it will open up an editing program for you to use.
Watch the video above to see what that looks like (there are timestamps in the video to find that section) but it’s a fairly basic graphics editor. If you’re at all familiar with any other photo editing tools, it should be pretty easy to figure out.
To see gifts for people who love their phones, click here.
Adding photos to Zazzle.
You can add your own photos to products and templates on Zazzle, which makes it fun to create your own custom products.
The easiest way to do it would be to find a product that someone else has already designed, and just upload your photo to the personalization section.
Plan on using a photo that’s vertical if the template has a vertical slot, and horizontal if the template is horizontal. That way the photo that you upload will fit better on the designs.
To see the full directory of all of our verified members, click here.
Uncustomized products on Zazzle.
Zazzle doesn’t only have products that need to be personalized. You can also buy things that are just unique designs, and they also have things like gift wrap, tissue paper, and printed paper that can be used for craft supplies.
You can customize your own products using the templates that are available, but you can also find unique designs that are created by artists and are sold as-is.
But remember that even if you find something that doesn’t have a personalization option on the listing, you can always go into the design editor to add your own custom touches including a name, monogram, or message.
There are a lot of designs that are a plain picture or design, but if you like to have a monogram on your things, you can add one to most listings there.
The only time that you wouldn’t be able to personalize something is if the original artist has marked it specifically to NOT be customizable. That’s an option for some listings, but that’s the only time it wouldn’t be possible.
Customer service on Zazzle.
Speaking of individual artists’ settings, another benefit of shopping on Zazzle is that there’s one centralized customer service contact.
Even though the designs on Zazzle come from different designers, the customer service belongs to Zazzle itself. That’s because Zazzle is basically paying the designers to use our designs, but they’re the ones who are selling everything.
On platforms like Etsy, you’re dealing with individual shop owners when you have a problem. Some people will respond quickly and some will take a lot longer, so there’s no consistency as far as that goes. Each show owner also has a different set of policies, so you’ll have to make sure you’re following the individual shop policies.
On Zazzle there’s one set of policies because it’s one company that’s producing and shipping all of the orders. It’s easy to get in touch with the customer service and you only have one return policy etc. to pay attention to.
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Product quality on Zazzle.
Since Zazzle oversees all of their own product production, they can make sure the quality is consistent. I’ve bought a bunch of things in different categories, and the quality of the paper and fabric products is really good.
I’ve purchased things from other POD platforms, and depending on what kind of blank products they print on or subcontract out, the quality can be inconsistent.
I’ve never had a bad product from Zazzle, and I’ve heard good things from other people about the things they’ve bought. I feel confident recommending it as a platform to buy from based on that.
They also ship things pretty quickly. IAnd in general, I’ve received the things that I’ve ordered faster than they estimated when I checked out.
If you’ve never shopped on Zazzle before, give it a try. It’s a fun way to personalize products and add your own photos to gifts.
See the Artisan Shopper Designs store on Zazzle