ZAZZLE:
First Impressions:
- Clean appearance and good quality products.
- The products themselves look like things that I would like to buy and also feature creative/ illustrative designs.
- The tagline for the website is 'Personalised Gifts, Custom Products & Decor'- so it sounds like its aimed towards people who may be designing one off items rather than creating lots of different things to sell to the public.
Right away there is a scrolling image which shows different products, focusing on different themes and also different holidays such as Easter, Mother's Day etc where they can target specific audiences and choose items for them.
There is also a 'Today's Picks' section below which again focuses on specific objects, choosing clear and bright images of fashionable and quite 'trendy' items.
It also has a quite sickly sweet 'About Us' sections which actually professes that Zazzle is all about YOU. They are attempting to make a website that uses templates and quite general layouts and trying to play it as being deeply personal and creative.
However immediately underneath there is a Brands section which I think kind of goes against the sappy About Us section above which talks about individuality, compared to the absolutely HUGE names such as Disney and Marvel.
Starting up
- Lots of information available, including step by step instructions.
- Also tells you the pricing system which lets you know how much you will make ( depending on how much you price your item at)
- Offers the option to either 'Sell your art'( where you sell your artwork to go on lots of different items and you set your royalty price) see below:
I used my Facebook to log in and went to my Account. Here I could put my design onto different items- which was a great tool to use for this workshop.
The custom design part of the website was really easy to use and the photos of the designs were high quality.
(the mug images come with donuts!)
Sometimes the designer would lag a little bit when resizing images, but this could be that the images were large files. Overall it was really fun putting lots of my designs on lots of different items.
Overall
It's hard to review the whole experience of the site without properly signing up and trying to sell the items- so it's difficult to know if it would be worth doing or if you could make a good amount of money off it. However it has loads of items to choose from and to apply your image to- and originally I thought you had to work to specific templates which I thought would narrow down the type of designs you can make.
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CAFE PRESS
First Impressions
-Less impressed than we were with our initial thoughts on Dazzle
- Quite basic
- Less designer orientated, looks cheaper
- We didn't like the colour scheme
Similarly to Zazzle they group together images, however these seem more random and less illustrator based- focused more on logos/ quotes. Again we weren't huge fans of the orange and green colour scheme, but appreciate the fact they have used a colour scheme in the first place. I think because of the bold colours the products photos don't seem as clean and professional as the ones used on Zazzle's homepage.
Again they go for a chummy, 'we're not the same as all the other guys' type 'about us' segment. I can see why companies do it, but it usually makes me like them less.
They also promote big name TV show and brands as Dazzle does. From the colour scheme to the types of 'entertainment' they have on their products, I think CafePress is like the happy little sister to the older and cooler Zazzle.
Starting up
- Less clear information about selling
- Has lots of different options on how to sell with Cafepress, but we couldn't quite understand them!
- No outline for pricing.
Like Zazzle it seems to offer a couple of different options to sell- either using your designs on their products or making your own products and using CafePress to sell them.
Creating designs
Something I really liked about CafePress was that you could upload an image and see it on lots of different items straight away, and you didn't have to log in with Facebook of your email. It was really quick and easy to see you products, and a vast range of products too.
However, because it would match up your image to products best suited, sometimes an image would only have a few results- and unlike Zazzle you can't edit, resize or reposition the image yourself (at least on this page)
Another option that was made more obvious on CafePress then it was on Zazzle was the 'Choose Fit' or 'Fill' option, where you could either fit the whole image in as it is or zoom and crop it to fill the space:
However it would freeze whenever I clicked on 'Choose Fill', again probably because the images are so heavy! I also tried to log in with Facebook as I did with Zazzle, but it wouldn't load.
Overall
Again, it's hard to say for certain when we're not selling our items on this website, but from what we can see we preferred Zazzle. CafePress is still good to use but way more complicated trying to find the information you're after, Zazzle has a much simpler layout and clear instructions. The website in general also freezes a lot more and is more glitchy, which makes it frustrating when you are trying to log in and upload designs!
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OTHER SITES
Other pairs looked into different selling platforms, and here are some brief notes made from their investigations:
PATREON VS KICKSTARTER- Crowdfunding
Patreon
- Make your art and donators get benefits
- Good for long term and ongoing projects
- Popular with Youtubers, artistic types etc.
Kickstarter
- Single project that gets funded
- You put a pitch forward and hope it gets funded
- If enough people back your item then you take the money and make the item product you have promised
- Rewards offered to backers
INDIEGOGO VS GO FUND ME- Crowdfunding
- Similar charges
- More charity based (i.e. medical bills, funerals)
- Big headline stories through indiegogo/ go fund me
ETSY VS FOLKSY
Etsy
- More visitors
- Popular
- My personal experience: You have to make your prices pretty high in order to make anything from it, the listing prices and commission cuts what you make to so low it hardly feels worth it! I was selling things quite cheaply, so they were popular and I sold quite a bit but it felt like I wasn't making any money.
Folksy
- Basic account: 15p + VAT per item listed and 6% + VAT sales commission
- Folksy account: £45 per year, no listing fees and 6% + VAT sales commission
- Less traffic than etsy but gaining popularity
- Approx. 4500 British designers-seems more home grown
- Seems cheaper for items than etsy
-Both have similar user interface.
DAWANDA
-5m vs Etsy's 54m users
- NO listing fee
- 10% commission
- Products don't seem illustration/art orientated
- Worth a look for starting out
BIG CARTEL VS SHOPIFY- E-Commerce
Big Cartel
-Artist focused
-Free for up to 5 items - (maybe good to cycle your products? you could promote as a low stock, get it while its still here type shop)
-$9.99 for 25 items, $19.99 for 100 items, $29.99 for 300 items
- 'unsupportive atmosphere'
Shopify
- Bigger and your own designs
- $29 for a basic shop / $79 for a bigger business/ $299 for advanced shop
- charges to use Paypal
TEESPRING VS SPREADSHIRT- T-shirt P.O.D
Teespring
- Amateur looking website
-Disorganised website
-Better preview
Spreadshirt
- Professional looking
- More choice, but limited space for design
SOCIETY 6 VS REDBUBBLE- P.O.D
Society 6
- More original, unusual products available
-"Better" stuff
- $1 signup
- 3.5m users
Redbubble
- Good for social media, sharing
- Wide range of products
- 4.5-5m users
- Less traffic?
- Both are good, I follow illustrators on instagram who use these websites and there doesn't seem to be a preference for one or the other.
ARTWEB VS SAATCHIART- Online galleries and artwork sales
Art web
- You get your own page to showcase your work
- you get an art web domain
- $4.79 basic plan, but $8 for more viewers
Saatchiart
- No domain name
- 30% commission
- POD option
- Difficult to find your art
ARTFINDER VS DEGREEART- Online galleries and artwork sales
- 30% commission
- Not much illustration, mostly Fine Art
- Original works
Degree art
- Fee for application
- Good promotion service
- Features art prizes, exhibitions etc.
- Selection process applies for both
SPOONFLOWER- Fabric printing
- Print your design on fabric and giftwrap
- 10% discount
- Also see Fabricpress in Cheltenham for printing designs on fabric
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