The Journey So Far
I’m still here! Time keeps getting away from me so I haven’t done much since my last update except maintain my other Zazzle store. I saw only a slight loss in earnings (~ $50.00) in my other store after paring down from 17,000 to about 1,000 products. I’m slowly building that number back up and removing non-performing products from my inventory.
And as I didn’t post an earnings update for 2017 earlier, I’ll do that next!
I’ve rather neglected this site over the last year but am hoping to get back on track again now. I’ve continued to poke around on Zazzle but haven’t done much at all on Society6. I’ve been working on my skills in various media but have decided to focus on digital art for the time being.
I haven’t been keeping up my PennyCharmer store on Zazzle either, but have been re-evaluating items in my other store and paring it down to just the most popular (this is still on-going – from ~17,000 items, some created individually but most created with “Quick Create”, to ~1500 at the time of this writing). So far this effort has not had a negative impact on my earnings. As I move forward with new, carefully considered items, I’m hoping to see a positive impact on my earnings.
I also see that I didn’t post an earnings update for 2016, so watch for that next!
zRank Update
– I’m still focused on my other Zazzle store and have now completed its clean-up (more or less). To help boost my zRank, I’ve started performing regular maintenance on my stores, checking my 180+ days products and setting any with zero views to Direct-Only; everything else in my stores will have at least one view (from me) so once I perform my maintenance, I’m left with no zero-view items in my store.
I’m also trying to maintain a consistent ratio between sold and never-sold products since I think this number may play a role in the zRank formula.
These efforts appear to have paid off – my zRank in my other store increased by one point and when I repeated the effort in my PennyCharmer store, it increased too. Both stores are now at zRank 5.
Obviously I still have a way to go, but seeing progress is definitely a morale booster!
What’s Next
I’m now trying to get into a routine for promoting my stuff.. the plan is to increase the sold to never-sold ratio .. some how.. and maybe gain another zRank point (: I’m not really the best at strict routines these days though, so my efforts are a little hit and miss at the moment.
Another plan I need to come up with is a process for dealing with all the products I’ve switched to Direct-Only (: I have a vague idea of keeping them around for a year and then dealing with them based on views received; I’m just going to let that on roll about in the back of my mind for now
And with most of the heavy lifting done in my stores, I can now put some more time into creating new designs for them so that will bring some fun back into things!
So that’s how I’ve started the year! I’ll keep you posted on any further successes!
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