What does it take to be a successful Zazzler designer?

The last Zazzle newsletter was about the Five P’s of profit. 

1. Be positive! Everyone likes to get a positive incentive about products and stores. That’s the key to building relationships on Zazzle. On the other hand, you must be positive about yourself and your work too. 

 2. Be persistent! Improve your products, and create more! All it takes to succeed is hard work. 

3. Be patient! Don’t give up on your store. Promote it and take care of it. Imagine your store as your new pet! ( I said this, not Zazzle!) 

4. Be prepared! This means you must be ahead of the calendar all the time. Do you know how fashion works? That’s a good example: collections are made one year before they are delivered to the public.

 5. Be political! Well, what does this mean? Is Zazzle telling me to vote in the next election? No! In Portugal, we just had Presidential elections in January. USA Presidential election’s coming up in 2012 and it is a big opportunity to earn good money on Zazzle. The idea to retain here is the opportunity. You must have your radar on all the time and discover the new opportunity in front of you!

This newsletter reminds me of entrepreneurs’ quality. Do you have it? If one wants to be successful at Zazzle we got have it! Once I made a line of products named Zazzle Hero. Do you have what it takes to be a Zazzle Hero? Many of you are in Zazzle just for fun. But some of you want to earn money. I do! It’s great to do what we like and to be rewarded for it on top of that! So we need to be entrepreneurs and we must think of our stores as real small companies. Keeping that in mind will help you to orientate your store business.

You must be action-oriented. It’s ok if you dream about your goals. You dream but you make it happen and you work towards it constantly. This is an important entrepreneur quality. You must stick with it until you can. Remember that you may fail but if you do fail you must be sure that you did the impossible to get it running the best possible.

You must know where you are going through. It’s like when you’re on a journey. You want to go to a city far away. You get a map, you Google it. You prepare your car and luggage. You find a nice hotel to stay in the journey is long and you need to make a stop to rest. You read about all you need to make the most of your journey. You set goals and get prepared to achieve your goals. Probably everything will work according to your plan. Or not...If a problem arises you must not be surprised. That’s normal. All you have to focus on is on how to solve it! And keep traveling! Don’t lose time. Solve the problem and keep on!

Ok, now you got another problem and you analyzed your problem and reached the conclusion that it’s a problem you can’t solve. What do you do? You give up? You stare at the clouds and birds in the sky? No! You ask for help. I did it already, several times. Zazzler’s are good helpers. Never got a no for an answer. Sometimes all we need is a little advice from someone that faced and overcome that exact the same problem. I’m always willing to learn from others.

Here’s another idea to keep in mind: if you’re not able to do it all alone, you can always get a partner. One of these days I saw an example of it. There’s this guy, he’s retired and has free time to create products and upload it. He’s got a nice sense of humor but he can’t draw. So he asked a friend to draw some pretty stuff and he adds the captions. Teamwork. He’s a happy Zazzle seller.

And what if I get to do something wrong? I keep that in mind and try not to repeat it. To fail isn’t a drama. It’s a natural growing process. If you are able to learn from mistakes it will be just an experience.

And Zazzle’s newsletter reads we should be political. I say we must be a person of faith. Faith in our instincts and abilities. Yet we must be open enough to recognize our flaws. Being too self-confident can endanger our vision.

Also, an entrepreneur must take risks moderate. What does this mean? I am a Zazzle starter, so for me is to invest what I earn in ads campaigns. That's new to me. I must learn how it works, I must analyze all about it. Will it work? It's uncertain. So I might just lose my money. Ok, it's just a small risk. For you, it might be different.


This was what crossed my mind when I read about the P’s of profit. And what about you? What did you think about it?