New Year, New Designs, New shops!

Hey guys, its been a while since I posted, but lots has been happening! Christmas was super busy for my shops and I managed to sell quite a bit! I have quite a lot of updates for the new year plus a roundup of some of my sales, as well as many exciting designs to share! Since all the updates will be a lot, I am just gonna talk about Zazzle today & DesignByHumans & RedBubble later on in the week.

Zazzle Shop

LOTS is new in Zazzle, both good and bad... I'll start with the iffy stuff, which is basically just Zazzle changes.

ZRANK & ZAZZLE UPDATES
The first bit of update that I haven't talked about much here is the introduction of Zrank last year, and the effect it has had on Shopkeepers. Zazzle uses a mysterious algorithm to rank everyones shops with a number.... 1 being the worst, meaning your products are seen last in the marketplace, and 10 being the best, with the chances of your products being found the best. 4 -10 will have the best placements in the marketplace.

Things that alter your Zrank for certain are individual tags, titles, & descriptions on products, whether your products are customizable or not, whether all your products are all similar or if each is designed unique, and possibly your sales to products ratio.

I haven't noticed a difference in sales since Zrank has been implemented because my rank has been at 4, which is considered the minimum for good placement in the marketplace. I don't really like Zrank that much. I have jumped through all the hoops to raise my Zrank - and it has been stuck at 4 - except for a few weeks ago when I managed to raise it to 5. It promptly went down after I added new products, however. Which leaves me in the dilemma - do I add new products here and risk losing marketplace visibility, which I need a lot now that I don't do as much promoting - or do I just leave my shop as it is, not add any new stuff & just sell my old items on Zazzle, while updating my other shops? I am already behind on zazzle products anyways thanks to their tedious product creation, making me really lean towards the latter choice! I do still sell a lot of designs there and while I would love to make all my products available, it doesn't seem to make sense adding all my new designs if they won't even be found thanks to my rank declining every time I add new things.

Add Zrank with Zazzle's new Captcha when creating multiple items in a row, it seems Zazzle is really trying to cut down on the amount of products in their marketplace. All these hoops is making Zazzle a very time consuming hobby for me.

ZAZZLE SHOP UPDATE

With all the new Zazzle changes taking place that seem to push designers further and further behind, I really haven't been able to update many of my new designs there. If you are looking for my more recent stuff, you will almost always find it on RedBubble! And if you want a design on something RedBubble does not sell but Zazzle does, let me know the item & design and I will upload it to my Zazzle shop for you! :)

Aside from all Zazzles changes, my shop was super busy over the month of December! I made a lot of sales, even things I had never sold before! Thanks to all who visited my shop over the month. Here is a collection of the individual items I sold in December 2015, if you would like to see them!

Sold in December 2015
by Tanya

Also, I found out yesterday that my Anti-Valentines Day tote bag was featured in a buzzfeed article - how cool is that! Here is the article, enjoy all the items here!

Buzzfeed - 18 Awesome Gifts for your Best Friend Who's Over Valentines Day

And here is the featured bag! Since the Buzzfeed article it has had 250 views and has sold a few times . Thanks to the referrer who added this one! :)

I Hate Valentines Day Survival Bag by TanyaDraws
Create your own cheap personalized tote bags.

Good News for Zazzle International Designers

Hello everyone! Today I have some really great news. Yesterday Zazzle posted on their forums saying that they will be accepting Foreign TINs from international designers! This means any designer who lives in a country with a treaty with the US that also gives out tax identifying numbers can all complete W-8 BEN forms without having 30% of our income taken away from us, and we don't have to spend hundreds of dollars to get an outdated ITIN number. You can read about the changes on the Zazzle Forum (click here). I and many other people are very thankful that Zazzle has finally cleared up this issue for us.

I am extremely happy to hear this news, and am currently in the process of getting my W-8 BEN form finalized once and for all. I am excited to continue working on things in my Zazzle shop and I have a lot of updates to make, as they added tons of products during my inactivity - and I was busy making tons of designs the whole time too! This whole experience has taught me a little more about the POD experience, however. First of all, I have learned that the IRS has instructions that can be interpreted differently by different people, leading to this whole mess in the first place. International tax law is something I never even considered upon joining Zazzle. I understood that I had to complete a W-8 BEN form before I could receive my pay for tax reasons, but I never thought about the impact that could happen if the rules surrounding the W-8 BEN form changed. I also never would have expected a company to not give fair notice on a change such as this, that effects peoples pay and livelihoods. I know from experience that it can take up to 7 weeks for Zazzle to process a W-8 BEN form - they should have let designers know at least 7 weeks in advance, before they started implementing the 30% tax rule. Then again, they never gave us a timeline. The whole announcement was panicked, and not well thought out in the first place. From this experience, I will be extremely weary of print on demand sites based in the US for now on, and I will read more into the tax treaty between Canada and the country where a new POD is based before joining.

I do have really exciting plans for my Zazzle shop. On top of all the designs I have to add, I also have plans for a brand new shop in the months to come. I can't wait to get started! I also have news about a new Print on Demand I joined in the midst of all this confusion and insecurity. While it is a simple POD, I am still playing around with it and trying to figure out some of the main things about it before I write about it here. It looks very promising, though!

Now, because I hate adding a blog post without a picture ( I hate walls of text and I just added a whole wall of text!) here are a few of the new designs I have added to my redbubble account lately! I look forward to adding these patterns, as well as the countless others I made during my off time, to Zazzle's wide range of products including fabrics.

Retro 3D colours geometric pattern iPhone case! I love how bright this is, definitely
a great accent to any boring black purse! ;)

Geometric star maze pouch, in lavenders & teals! I absolutely love the RB
pouches, I am sure I have mentioned that before. This is a soft, but intricate pattern
that has a vintage kaleidoscope feel.

This simplistic red, blue and black pattern has a very simple tribal print feel.
You can see more intricate details if you look closely at the black parts-
it is tiny line drawings!

New Zazzle Product: Travel Passport Holder

Soooo yesterday I was feeling pretty productive! I wrote the Nuvango post that I wanted to for a while, I created a whole new set of items for my shop and I was settling down to do some reading with my newly made tea. I apparently don't know how to close my tea thermos, because I accidentally knocked it over and the lid flew open and spilt boiling tea all over my leg. Now I am left with giant burn blisters on my leg, which isn't very fun. On the bright side, the burn and ginormous blisters are where my boots will have to go, and since I can't put on boots and its snowing like nuts outside it means I didn't have to go out. So today was all lazing around and trying to let my giant blisters settle. But enough about my leg, with the indoor relaxation came some productivity!

The second new product from Zazzle that I am going to feature is the passport holder! These passport holders fit all standard sized U.S, Canadian, Mexican, Australian and EU passports. They are made from 100% durable recycled paper stock and finished with vinyl to make them extra tough and water resistant. Best of all, this product is hand made in Los Angeles! To show off this exciting new product, I created a Polyvore travel collage. Featured in this collage is my red penguin passport holder, as well as other red items from my shop and other online shops!

This set is designed to allow to you travel in comfort and style while keeping yourself entertained on your flight. Here is a closeup of some of my favourite passport holders so far!

My penguin passport holder that I featured in my collage!

Cute Smiling Penguin with Scarf Passport Holder by TanyaDraws

Personalized blue leaf watercolour pattern! This has always been one of my favourites, and I will be designing new watercolour plants soon!

Peacock blue modern watercolor leaf design passport holder by TanyaDraws

My best selling design along with a personalized monogram! Everyone always loves a classic owl. 

Hand Drawn Black and white Owl Passport Holder by TanyaDraws