Friday, May 25, 2012

How to Move Your Zazzle Products Into a New Category

For many reasons you may need or want to create a new category in your Zazzle store and move products into it. So here's a step by step guide explaining how to do just that.

(You can click on on any of the images to make them larger for easier viewing.)

1. Go into your Account at Zazzle and click on the Products tab. Scroll down and click on the "All Categories" link in the navigation menu on the left side of the screen. This will open a new page.

2. One this new page click on the "Add new category" link towards the top of the screen.






3. Fill in the Category Name and Description. Then click on Change to change the Thumbnail image for the category













4. Select the image you want for your thumbnail and click on the orange OK button.
You'll be taken back to the previous window (as seen in Step 3). Click on the orange Done button.









5. Click on the Products tab again. Check mark the products you want to move to the new category you created.








6. Click on "Actions" and then on "Set store category."










7. Select the store category you want to move the products to. Then click the orange Done button.


You probably will not see any immediate changes. But don't worry. It can take up to 24 hours (and on rare occasions even longer) for the changes to take effect. Just wait until the next day to see if the products have been moved.

Friday, May 11, 2012

How to Add a Tracking Code to your Zazzle Referral Link

Once you have created an affiliate link with your referral ID you can add a tracking code to it too. The tracking code will make it so if something you refer sells you can know where that sale came from.

You can make the tracking code be anything that you want, so you have your own unique identifier. For example, if you want to see if posting referrals on facebook works for you (what works well for one person may not for another), then you could just use the letters "fb" to mean facebook.

All you need to do is add &tc= to the url with your affilate ID plus whatever you want your tracking code to be after that equal sign. Like so:

http://www.zazzle.com/cupcake_love_keychain-146881358322495734?rf=238018347362090796&tc=fb

And as mentioned I could make the tracking code be anything. So here's another example:

http://www.zazzle.com/cupcake_love_keychain-146881358322495734?rf=238018347362090796&tc=twitterlove

If you make up several tracking ID's you might want to write them down so you can remember them all, what they mean (if you use abbreviations such as "fb" for facebook or if you make up a special "code" that only you would know what it means).

So if something you referred does sell, where do you find out that info? Well go into your account and click on the Referral History link. Underneath the Name of the product that sold and the numbers underneath that it will say "TC:" and then the code you made up. If the referral came from a link that did not have a tracking code then nothing will be underneath the numbers. (Thanks to A_Plus_Products for the screenshot.)

How to Manually Create Zazzle Referral Links

A Zazzle referral link is basically a url address for almost any Zazzle page plus a question mark, then the letters "rf" then an equal sign and then your referral ID added to that url.

So basically you can go to any Zazzle page and copy the url from your address bar then paste it somewhere.



Like so:

http://www.zazzle.com/cupcake_love_keychain-146881358322495734

And then in your Zazzle account area click on the "Associates" tab. Or you can just click on this link http://www.zazzle.com/my/associate/associate to go to the same place.

In the picture below (from the Associates page) you will see what is my Zazzle associate ID to be used in this example. It actually explains there how to create your referral ID. Basically take the url address you copied earlier then write ?rf= and then your affiliate ID after (you can also use the "&" sign instead of a "?"). Or I, being lazy, will just copy and paste the blue part shown in the example that Zazzle gives and paste that after the url. so it looks like:

http://www.zazzle.com/cupcake_love_keychain-146881358322495734?rf=238018347362090796


One of the advantages to creating a referral link manually like this is you can then refer other Zazzle pages than just a product page. You could create a referral link for the Zazzle home page.
http://www.zazzle.com/?rf=238018347362090796

Or a link to a search for certain keywords. Just do a search on Zazzle. Copy and paste what is in the url address bar, then put in the ?rf= and your ID. So it looks something like this.
http://www.zazzle.com/cute+cupcakes+gifts?rf=238018347362090796

How to Create a Basic Affilate Link on Zazzle

There is more than one way to create an affiliate link on Zazzle. This covers one of the basic ways of doing so. Make sure you are logged into Zazzle and that you are signed up for the affiliate program (sorry that I can't explain how to do this, as I signed up a long time ago).

1. Go the the page of the product you want to refer. Look underneath the product photo. There you will see several buttons. Click on the "Link" button.








2. Then select the text from the box that says "Option 1: Link for Email or IM" and copy it (you can do so by pressing CTRL+C on your keyboard or right click the selected text with your mouse and choose Copy).

You can then paste this link where you want it, such as on facebook, Twitter, an email, etc. (To paste either press CTRL+V or right click with your mouse and choose Paste).



By the way...the url that you paste should look something like this. http://www.zazzle.com/cupcake_love_keychain-146881358322495734?rf=01230000000

The first numbers relate to the product you are referring. The ?rf= part tells Zazzle that someone is referring a product and the last numbers are your referral number. If you don't see the ?rf= followed by a string of numbers then you will not get a referral.