Hi all! My Etsy shop is now CLOSED. Some of my favorite designs, and many more, can be found in my Zazzle Shop!
Since I added my Etsy and Zazzle shops to my little side hustle of a brand last fall, I’ve kind of toggled between the two of them for where I’m putting my designs. I’ll go through phases where I really love using one more than the other. Right now it’s Zazzle, and I thought it might be interesting to some of my customers and for anyone else looking to sell with drop shipping to break down why that is. I’m going to start with Etsy because that’s honestly where most of my sales come from.
My Etsy shop is closed, but I’d like to encourage you to support their other makers!
Etsy was my first baby. It evolved from digital prints, which I still sell, to a full line of apparel and home goods. I integrated Printify- a drop shipping company that handles my orders and printing. This means that when a customer places an order, Printify prints the item on demand and mails it to the customer.
This is great because it means I don’t have to pay in advance or store inventory. This is not so great because recently I’ve had a couple shipping issues that were totally out of my hands. For example, I had a customer receive an item that wasn’t even one of my designs. I also have to pay for the item plus shipping out of pocket and then essentially wait for Etsy to reimburse me, which takes a couple of days. Usually, that’s totally cool, but I had one HUGE order of tank tops that initially took a big toll on my debit account. I also have to pay listing fees for Etsy– $.20 when originally listing my item, and then they take a small percentage out of my sale.
Etsy is probably more trusted than Zazzle by the consumer. I’m honestly not entirely sure why that is, but I think that’s why I generally get more sales that way. There are all sorts of Etsy Facebook communities and the same cannot be said for Zazzle. Etsy also has an integrated marketing option where you can pay for promoted listings. There’s an online app that grades your Etsy listings for SEO quality, spelling mistakes, etc. which optimizes your chances of being found in a search.
Recently, I’ve been more drawn to Zazzle. They have a bigger product selection of products than Printify does, but more than that, you can actually, as a designer and as a customer, try the designs on several different products once it goes live. For my bachelorette party, I designed a t-shirt but the girls chose all different styles to have it printed on.You can even move the design to a different type of product… so a shirt to a mug, for example.
The prices between Zazzle and Printify are pretty comparable for the customer, and Zazzle almost always has some kind of sale going. I make less with Zazzle but I also don’t have to pay a fee for listing, nor is a fee taken out of the transactions. I just make a flat 15% affiliate earning + 5% for design royalties if someone clicks through one of my referral links to get to my shop. If you don’t click through my referral link, I only make that 5%, which is a little disappointing. *EDIT: I now make 14.9% in royalties on my products on Zazzle. You can change this- I didn’t realize that when I first started! Once you go 15% or higher, they take a fee, so essentially 14.9% is the most you can make on royalties without a penalty.*
There isn’t an integration for marketing or SEO with Zazzle, but I’m not all that convinced that those do much for me on Etsy. Zazzle’s customer service is amazing and their design tools are more intuitive than Printify. Zazzle also gives you an option to embed your products into blog posts, like I did above. As for print quality, the two seem about the same based on shirts I’ve ordered from both.
I always feel with these kinds of posts that it’s a lot of information that I hopefully and spilling about clearly. If you have any questions, let me know!
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