# TL;DR

Too long; didn't read.


# What the f... heck?

"TL;DR" is a tongue-in-cheek way some online users have of saying they refuse to read some long piece of textual content. Sometimes as an insult that it's not worth reading. Sometimes just to point out that there has got to be a shorter way of saying something.

![Useful abbreviations for the time-pressed online reader](630f5eba-5a80-4571-8269-513404bb19b5)
from [Wizard of Ads](https://wizardofads.org/forget-tldr-its-tbdc-you-gotta-worry-about/)

Many websites started playing on this idea by incorporating a shorter-than-short summary of a document and heading it "TL;DR". As though to tease the reader in anticipation of them quipping that the text is too long to be worth reading. A good TL;DR section will actually contain useful information. Often using a funny turn of phrase. But also it's meant to be a somewhat unsatisfying answer because the reader realizes it's actually too short to be of much use. Hopefully they get a chuckle and move on to read at least some of the rest of your document.


An explanation of why many KB articles have a header titled "TL;DR"

What is "TL;DR"?

The wait is over. Go for it. Set up your agency. Cheers. :-)


An explanation of why you can't currently set up your stores and start using the major features meant for Zazzle designers yet

About our closed beta program and public launch

Product descriptions, store descriptions, and some other data allow for rich text using [Markdown](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Markdown) Unlike pure HTML, Markdown is limited to fairly simple formatting options. This also protects users from malicious scripts and unsightly formats. But Markdown is also very easy for most people to use. Just hitting enter twice between paragraphs of plain text does just what most users expect.

SHD supports the basic formatting options of basic Markdown. But also a few more advanced features like ~strikethrough~ and tables.

Here is a guide to how to format your text.


<table class="ContentTable WellPadded">
  <thead>
    <tr>
      <th>Sample text</th>
      <th>Visible result</th>
    </tr>
  </thead>
  <tbody>
    <tr>
      <td>*italic text*</td>
      <td><i>italic text</i></td>
    </tr>
    <tr>
      <td>**bold text**</td>
      <td><b>bold text</b></td>
    </tr>
    <tr>
      <td>~strikethrough text~</td>
      <td><del>strikethrough text</del></td>
    </tr>
    <tr>
      <td># Heading level 1</td>
      <td><h1>Heading level 1</h1></td>
    </tr>
    <tr>
      <td>## Heading level 2</td>
      <td><h2>Heading level 2</h2></td>
    </tr>
    <tr>
      <td>[external link](http://a.com/)</td>
      <td><a href="http://a.com/">external link</a></td>
    </tr>
    <tr>
      <td>[internal link](/article/about)</td>
      <td><a href="/article/about">internal link</a></td>
    </tr>
    <tr>
      <td>www.example.com</td>
      <td><a href="http://www.example.com/">www.example.com</a></td>
    </tr>
    <tr>
      <td> ![Alt text](http://url/a.png) </td>
      <td> <img alt="Alt text" width="100" src="https://image.snugglehamster.com/view/image_7e185789-a96f-48b3-9a4f-f1cc57b3708b"/> </td>
    </tr>
    <tr>
      <td> &gt; Blockquote </td>
      <td> <blockquote>Blockquote</blockquote> </td>
    </tr>
    <tr>
      <td>
        - List item
        <br/>- List item
      </td>
      <td><ul>
        <li>List item</li>
        <li>List item</li>
      </ul></td>
    </tr>
    <tr>
      <td>
        1. List item
        <br/>2. List item
      </td>
      <td><ol>
        <li>List item</li>
        <li>List item</li>
      </ol></td>
    </tr>
    <tr>
      <td>---</td>
      <td><hr/></td>
    </tr>
    <tr>
      <td>
<pre>```
  # code block
  print '3 backticks or'
  print 'indent 4 spaces'
```</pre>
      </td>
      <td>
<pre><code>  # code block
  print '3 backticks or'
  print 'indent 4 spaces'</code></pre>
      </td>
    </tr>
    <tr>
      <td>
<pre>
| Col 1 | Col 2  | Col 3 |
|-------|:------:|------:|
| Left  | Center | Right |
| 123   | 456    | 789   |
</pre>
      </td>
      <td>
<table class="ContentTable">
  <thead>
    <tr><th>Col 1</th><th style="text-align: center;">Col 2</th><th style="text-align: right;">Col 3</th></tr>
  </thead>
  <tbody>
    <tr><td>Left</td><td style="text-align: center;">Center</td><td style="text-align: right;">Right</td></tr>
    <tr><td>123</td><td style="text-align: center;">456</td><td style="text-align: right;">789</td></tr>
  </tbody>
</table>
      </td>
    </tr>
  </tbody>
</table>



A primer and cheat sheet of the Markdown language elements used on this site

Markdown text


# In good faith

Our business model is built around helping you improve your print-on-demand sales. Not selling your data. One of our core values is maximizing transparency about what we do and how we do it, within reason.


# Public domain data vs private data

Most of the data we collect and use is in the public domain. Anybody can go to Zazzle or other websites and find this same data without requiring special credentials.

Any private data comes from you. For example, you as a designer can [import your royalty history log](/article/about-sales-reports#importing) from Zazzle. We regard this as privileged data and strictly limit who can see it directly to you and to limited system administration staff.


# Retention of data

We reserve the right to retain any data we collect. There are places where we provide you with the means to delete your data. And you can request in writing the deletion of any particular sensitive private data. We also reserve the right to [delete any data](/article/data-retention-policy) to conserve space or curate content.


# Anonymizing data

We do not share private data you generate or import with any other parties. But we reserve the right to anonymize and aggregate data for our use. For example, we might display average royalty rates on the sale of a broad category of products across thousands of stores. We make sure to design our use of this data so it does not expose individual sources or harm their interests in that data.


# Harassment via data

One specific goal we have is preventing other people from copying your designs and business practices. We can't prevent users from studying your publicly visible data of course. But we would not want, for example, to make it possible for someone to see your specific sales history. Or leave an obvious trail that would lead other designers to the doorsteps of highly successful designers in order to copy them.

This would be an example of exposing a member to harassment by making features that make it simple to single out easy targets of abuse. While it's impossible to foresee ways users might game our system and potentially abuse other users, it is our sincere goal to prevent this by obscuring private data and maximally encouraging other uses to seek success by studying their own performance instead of seeking to duplicate other people's.


A policy statement about our efforts to keep your data private

Privacy statement


- [What is this report for?](#what)
- [The search results grid](#results-grid)
- [Filtering](#filtering)


# What is this report for? [#what]

This is a direct parallel to the [Royalty History](https://www.zazzle.com/my/earnings/royaltyhistory) page on Zazzle. That page is very basic and can be very frustrating at times. When you [import your royaltyHistory.csv](/article/about-sales-reports#importing) file here you'll have an easier time finding and understanding individual sales.


# The search results grid [#results-grid]

The main grid shows the same essential information you'll find on Zazzle's Royalty History page:

![Image](d899102f-3a7c-4d47-83ee-2b372902d2a1)

There are many columns to display. So as with Zazzle's own grid, this grid stacks them together into "combo columns" to make them fit a typical browser:

![Image](1bcd133f-59c0-45cc-99da-6f7dfbcb0808)

Many of these columns are sortable. Look for the sort icon next to a column's header:

![Image](77bc2ee7-abf1-4ff5-9240-c36d916e799e)

Most of the columns here should be self-explanatory. It's worth explaining the "Flags" column:

![Image](7cd8249c-0796-41a7-8272-3aa10b4fb69a)

Zazzle displays some cryptic symbols on their Royalty History grid. We try to spell them out more clearly. You can hover over any of the flags to see more descriptive hover text show up. Here are the current options:

- **Transferred**: Your design was transferred to another product
- **Customized**: The customer personalized or altered the design
- **Self** or **3rd Party**: This sale originated from an outside referral
- **VAT**: A VAT or other sales tax was applied
- **Converted**: Payment was converted to US dollars from another currency


# Filtering [#filtering]

By default you'll see your full history. But you can also selectively filter the results too:

![Image](f4cf42b6-6c93-4dd5-8a92-8458e389e626)

Most of the filters should be clear. The text search works on several columns:

- Store name
- Order line
- Product name
- Transfer to type
- To (customer name)
- City, State, Country


Learn how to list, search, and sort through the royaltyHistory.csv data you uploaded for your stores

How to explore your sales/royalty history

- [What do you mean "sales reports"?](#what)
- [Where do I find the sales reports?](#where)
- [How do I import my sales from Zazzle?](#importing)
- [What happens if I upload again later?](#reuploading)
- [Can I delete my royalty history data?](#delete-data)
- [Accuracy of totals](#accuracy)
- [Explore the different reports](#explore-reports)
  - [Sales summary](#sales-summary)
  - [Royalty history](#royalty-history)
  - [Sales over time](#over-time)
  - [Tops & bottoms](#tops-bottoms)
  - [Customers](#customers)
  - [Alignment analysis](#alignment)


# What do you mean "sales reports"? [#what]

This website does not log into your Zazzle account and look at your sales data. But you can download your royaltyHistory.csv file from Zazzle and import it here. Then you can explore your sales (royalties) in a fresh new way.


# Where do I find the sales reports? [#where]

Make your way to your "[My account](/account)" page. Find the agency you want to handle. You probably only have one. Click the "Manage" button under the section header:

![Image](47cbb751-68b5-4aef-b0e3-1463fd5209a1)

Then switch to the "Zazzle sales" tab:

![Image](eb397819-5b21-4e82-b3e3-18ddf7155a05)

This is the "Summary" sub-tab. You'll start out with all zeros here. You need to import your data from Zazzle.


# How do I import my sales from Zazzle? [#importing]

On the "Sales" or "Royalty history tab" you'll see a button for importing your royaltyHistory.csv file. Click it. You'll see this dialog:

![Image](fe2dcb3a-89bf-4328-b141-414921972880)

You'll need to [download this from Zazzle's website](https://www.zazzle.com/my/earnings/royaltyhistory). Click on the link for a shortcut to get you to that page. Scroll down to the bottom of the page and look for something like this:

![Image](5532705a-2369-4f0b-a788-96138149d975)

Click to download the CSV file. You can close this browser tab now to focus on the dialog again. Now you can either click on the "Upload file" button to find the file or you can drag and drop the file right onto that button. Give it a few seconds to upload. You should see a toast message pop up like this:

![Image](89df84d5-66d0-4f33-b11a-0bd2f0584245)

You may see a yellow one warning you that some records were not imported. Most likely because you have not [set up and verified all your stores](/article/how-to-create-a-new-store) yet.


# What happens if I upload again later? [#reuploading]

Let's say you made a new sale today. Download your royaltyHistory.csv file again. Upload it here again. You won't get duplicate sale records.

You can even download a filtered subset of your sales on Zazzle and upload that here. All your previously uploaded sales records will still be there. This will just add the newly found ones. This is helpful if you have a long sales history and want to speed up your ongoing imports.

![Image](e48e6526-b4d5-42c7-83fd-bcfe3b47107b)

Keep in mind that it takes a while before a sale gets cleared by Zazzle. As you do subsequent imports you'll be updating the order status of existing sale records. So make sure your filtered records have a long enough time frame to notice those updates over time. I recommend you go back at least 60 days in your filter.


# Can I delete my royalty history data? [#delete-data]

We understand that this is sensitive data. We do our best to protect your privacy. But if you decide you want to clear this data out, just use the "Delete full history" button on the toolbar on the "Royalty history" tab:

![Image](1c259a1a-ffa9-4d18-b412-fab55429b467)

If you change your mind you can always re-upload your data again later.


# Accuracy of totals [#accuracy]

We have observed that in some cases there are discrepancies between what Zazzle reports on their website and what they include in their data exports. So naturally you'll see those same discrepancies in our reports. It should not be greater than 1% though.

If you do see a significant discrepancy, be sure you've imported your latest data. And that you are not comparing across stores if you haven't created and verified all of your stores here. Otherwise, [let us know](/contact). Be sure to give us concrete numbers and any details you think might be relevant.


# Explore the different reports [#explore-reports]

The various sales reports can be found as sub-tabs of the "Zazzle sales" tab:

![Image](3d61ce79-89d5-40b1-8bdc-d57cdbab499b)


## Sales summary [#sales-summary]

The first one is "Sales summary". This is a high level look at your sales across time and broken down by store.

![Image](70ae5979-81cc-4ea7-8041-a051eada1175)


## Royalty history [#royalty-history]

This is the finest-grained detail report on your sales. It mirrors [Zazzle's own Royalty History](https://www.zazzle.com/my/earnings/royaltyhistory) page. But you have lots more filters to choose from, making it much more useful. [Learn more here](/article/how-to-explore-your-sales-royalty-history).

![Image](5ff30513-0a5f-4831-8d6a-d1ac9a6f8ab4)


## Sales over time [#over-time]

This is a classic trendline report showing your sales over time. You can break them down by store as seen in this screenshot. You can graph the number of orders (shown), quantity of items ordered, or royalty amounts. And you can narrow what you focus on by time, store, current order status, and some features of orders like whether customers customized their orders.

![Image](276da17d-bb1e-4dba-8d75-608767e22fa0)


## Tops & bottoms [#tops-bottoms]

These are your classic top 10-style lists that includes tops and bottoms. Explore top and bottom stores, products, designs, states, and months of the year.

![Image](4dfe2ccd-7272-4bfe-89de-4c95e5261019)


## Customers [#customers]

This is a half-baked prototype. It gives you some insight into who your customers are. See how many different people there are and explore superlatives like the biggest single order by anyone, the most repeat orders by the same customer, and the biggest state where you've sold to. And get some insight into your repeat customers.

![Image](dd06270f-15c2-4882-b769-231282ac0c95)


## Alignment analysis [#alignment]

This is a [Premium](/article/subscribing-for-premium-agency-features) report. It delves into all your stores's catalogs to compare where your products are versus where your sales are. The standard for comparison is Zazzle's departments. You get an overall score from 0 - 100%. And you get a detailed breakdown across all 600+ Zazzle departments to help you determine whether you might want to redirect your design efforts to better align with your sales. [Learn more here](/article/how-to-use-the-alignment-analysis-report).

![Image](cd3f6804-dd6e-46d3-a3d2-5b4083d89a36)


An introduction to the sales reporting and analysis features and how to import your data

About sales reports


- [Why collections?](#why-collections)
- [Walking through a basic example](#walkthrough)
- [Linking to a Zazzle collection or category](#zazzle-link)
- [Disabling or deleting a collection](#disable-delete)


# Why collections? [#why-collections]

If you're comfortable with Zazzle's own collections then you probably are eager to reproduce them here. I encourage you to learn first about [design](/article/what-is-a-design-group) before you do.

Once you have [created your design groups](/article/how-to-group-products-with-the-same-design-together) then you will be ready to create your collections.

[SHD collections are different](/article/what-is-a-collection) than Zazzle collections. You can do more with them. But generally speaking you are using them to organize your products into a network of hierarchies as complex as you want to. The rule of thumb is that you first [group products with the same design together](/article/what-is-a-design-group). Then you wrap those up in small collections of products (and designs) with shared themes. And then create larger collections of those collections. You can of course deviate from this if you want.


# Walking through a basic example [#walkthrough]

Let's create a new collection of several designs that have a shared theme. We already [created several designs](/article/how-to-group-products-with-the-same-design-together). From our store management page's Products tab we can click "New collection" in the toolbar:

![Image](0532582c-f800-4a1a-a9b0-e40d1287aefd)

Or we can do the same from the "Collections" tab:

![Image](f6936680-fb46-4f69-8a2d-5b5d14389b0b)

The agency and store are already selected. So I just need to give this new collection a name and click "Save":

![Image](5d7c9250-c44c-424f-9583-abd7a539cb80)

I could fill in the details here. But I'm going to skip that for now to speed this up:

![Image](d28d6076-fdf9-4013-ae6a-2af3f0c018c7)

Instead I'll click the "Basic settings" section header to collapse that and get it out of the way and click the "Add items" header to expand it:

![Image](2574c7da-cf95-48a1-852c-2b2eb8509dbe)

The "Add items" section is a full search for products, designs, and collections. The same one you see in the Store > Products tab. Just to keep things clean I only show 5 search results at a time. You can boost that higher if you want to see more at a time:

![Image](ff850e9a-7647-48c7-b1ee-8aeae20b92ee)

I filter for "anime" and see these results:

![Image](83a9d69e-df54-4445-bb26-f29801941191)

Exactly the three I want are here. I click on each of them in turn and see this:

![Image](e18bde93-6cd5-4fe2-a5f4-094c7026b0a6)

Once added to the collection the item "tiles" are grayed out. I can click on any of those to remove it from the collection again.

I can drag the member tiles around to change their sort order. Or I can use the sorting buttons (eg "Name A-Z") to sort them by name or age:

![Image](ebb40d23-1fa2-458f-9844-026c50d7197f)

Now that I'm happy with the designs I've chosen to be this collection's members, I want to add a "main image" (and thumbnail image) to this collection. I expand the "Images" section and collapse the "Add items" section.

![Image](6f25c376-d80a-42d5-8e6b-490cabb50197)

I really should create custom main and banner images. But for this demo I'll just click the "Use this thumbnail" button on one of the member tiles:

![Image](94c5c8bb-7051-4e96-897f-d54d1a01830a)

And there's my quick 'n' dirty main image:

![Image](001d20d3-85b0-4e4d-bbb1-4bdb8cfe7cf6)

I'm done enough for the moment to see what this looks like to the public. I'll click the "Manage" toggle:

![Image](f82a57a8-32d8-4570-b5f5-a9a4efbc3d8e)

And here we go. No description. No tags. No "Shop at Zazzle" button. Very simple.

![Image](bf42668f-805f-4896-a1d7-33c4bc4469d0)


# Linking to a Zazzle collection or category [#zazzle-link]

Chances are good that you have an existing Zazzle store category or collection. You might as well link to it. You'll be pasting a URL or ID into either the "Zazzle collection ID" or "Zazzle store category ID" text box. But not both:

![Image](bdc6537d-2083-4107-8c93-883a3a7f5a18)

Visit your store's category and grab the URL (eg https://www.zazzle.com/store/trippykitties/products?cg=196259790997593680). Make sure it's the public view, not your private management page.

![Image](1176f0dc-cd92-432c-bcef-78eab7a8d624)

Paste it into "Zazzle store category ID":

![Image](fe8ddeab-29e7-4296-9500-d9228a66d7b7)

Or visit the public page for one of your collections. Copy the URL for that (eg https://www.zazzle.com/collections/mimi_the_anime_cat-119730317259523217):

![Image](aad7a5db-5266-4db4-b06e-b7badc3526e0)

And paste it into "Zazzle collection ID":

![Image](4b1b5162-87f4-4842-b095-f684ae863b9a)

Then click "Save". Remember that you can't link to both:

![Image](14ab7cbb-a5d1-4a08-97fd-63aead33b128)


# Disabling or deleting a collection [#disable-delete]

You can delete or [disable](/article/disabling-stores-products-collections-etc) your design via the toolbar. Neither action will disable or delete the member products.

![Image](c5e8ff04-42a4-4352-8138-1a0fcc503b6d)


Learn how to create a new collection of products, designs, and other collections to help manage your inventory

How to create a new collection

Collections group together related products, [designs](/article/what-is-a-design-group), and other collections.

![Image](c357cc82-0131-4ecb-93cd-17e918407ba4)


# Versus Zazzle collections

SHD collections can contain more than Zazzle's can. But there is an analog. Here's an example of [one SHD collection](/a/adron-design/c/notebooks-and-planners):

![Image](2b2dc2eb-84d3-437e-bef7-ab9681c881bd)

See the "Shop at Zazzle" button? This designer chose to link this collection to one at Zazzle:

![Image](22bab99d-c3c5-4ba0-958b-4fc93ad6e9fc)

What an SHD collection can do beyond this is contain other collections or designs. Giving you a way to create a complex hierarchy to your store's inventory.


# Versus Zazzle store product categories

Zazzle does offer a way to create a hierarchy for your products via store categories. 

Here's a typical example of what that looks like on [a store's home page](https://www.zazzle.com/store/gigiberry/):

![Image](d902dc2c-05ff-4a27-8819-4efcaffdbd0a)

Here's an example of an SHD collection that represents [one of those Zazzle categories](/a/shd/c/stickers-labels):

![Image](dcb394a0-636d-451d-bf09-3be089102db0)

One key difference between an SHD collection and a Zazzle category is that a product can only be added to one category. It can be added to any number of SHD (or Zazzle) collections.

Another (current) difference is that it can take a day or more for your new categories or changes to them on Zazzle to show up in your store there. Changes to your SHD collections are instantly visible.

One super cool thing you can do is make one of your collections into a [showcase for your store](/article/how-to-add-a-showcase-to-your-store).

Ready to [create your first collection](/article/how-to-create-a-new-collection)?

An explanation of the purpose of collections of products, designs, and other collections and their relationships to Zazzle's collections and categories

What is a collection?

- [Why design groups?](#why-design-groups)
- [How do I create a design?](#how-to-create)
- [Starting with a single product](#start-from-product)
- [Starting from Store > Products list](#from-product-list)
- [Description and tags](#basic-settings)
- [Adding a Zazzle collection ID](#zazzle-collection-id)
- [Choosing a store](#choose-a-store)
- [Changing the unique code](#change-code)
- [Uploading a custom design image](#set-main-image)
- [Reordering the products in the list](#reorder-products)
- [Disabling or deleting a design](#disable-delete)


# Why design groups? [#why-design-groups]

If you are familiar with using Zazzle collections specifically to group different products in your store that all have the same design on them, that's what this is about. [Learn more about designs here.](/article/what-is-a-design-group) Let me encourage you not to simply [create one SHD collection](/article/how-to-create-a-new-collection) here for every Zazzle collection there. I recommend that you start by grouping your products by design. Then move on to collections.

I will refer generically to this special kind of collection as both a "design" and "design group" here.

![Image](8427a218-6626-48cd-bc4a-012880930cca)

# How do I create a design? [#how-to-create]

Currently there is no bulk importer for designs [like there is for products](/article/how-to-import-your-stores-products-from-zazzle). You are going to have to create designs by hand for now.

There are two ways to create a new design group and add products: One product at a time or from the Store > Products management page.

# Starting with a single product [#start-from-product]

You probably won't do it this way, but this is a simpler process that's easy to explain. Find the product you want to add to a design. Open it for editing on its "Product settings" tab. See the "Design" drop-down list and the little button next to it with an up arrow?

![Image](d978ed2a-55f1-4f12-aabd-0bfe6804895f)

If you have a design already defined then you can simply choose it here and click the "Save" button.

But let's say you don't have a design yet. You want to create one. That's what the button next to it does. Click that and you'll go directly to a the newly created design's editor page.

![Image](e312f621-c29d-4e32-9b97-d4d1203bd0ef)

You're going to want to delete the part of the product name that is specific to that product. In this example, trimming "Cat City Cartoon Crowd **Laptop-Sleeve**" down to "Cat City Cartoon Crowd".

[See below](#basic-settings) for more about managing the rest of this page.

Now that you have your new design you can choose it from the "Design" drop-down list on any product editor page and save the change to add it. Note that you can also get to your design's editor page using the smaller button with the diagonal arrow:

![Image](be5f2b6f-3992-4023-95b8-e9fd169182d6)


# Starting from Store > Products list [#from-product-list]

The faster way to create a new design is by going to your store's management page and switching to the "Products" tab. From there you can use the search to find the product you want to group together. In this example I chose to only show products and and filtered by "cat city" because my products all have similar names:

![Image](ceecbb8a-4658-406e-88a3-bcdfcb065cf8)

If you see a mix of some things you want and some that you don't then you can further refine your selection using the "Selection mode" toggle switch and clicking on items you want to include:

![Image](500a6504-0e4f-4312-97e1-baeb07a915ce)

When you have the items you want in the search results or cherry-picked from them, click the "To design" button in the toolbar:

![Image](05a959a6-5afc-4cfc-9893-da5ab22dbc5c)

You'll see this dialog:

![Image](3746b9a6-c8c8-4dbd-afc0-d680dee6a3e4)

If your products all begin with the same name (eg "Cat City Cartoon Crowd") and end with product names (eg "Drawstring Bag" or "Leggings") then the dialog will notice this pattern and guess what your design group should be named. Down the list you will see the product names trimmed to reflect that similarity. If it could not guess a shared name for the design then you will have to type one in. As you do the product names below will get shorter as above if they begin with the name you enter. This is a good way to check your spellings and make sure you are naming your design appropriately. It will not alter your products' names.

When you click "Add all" it will either create a new design and add all your selected products or it will add them to an existing name with exactly the same name. This is **very important** to note. You cannot have two designs with the same name in your agency's stores. But it also means you may unintentionally merge two groups of products into one if you try to use the same name twice.

[See below](#basic-settings) for more about managing the rest of this page.


# Description and tags [#basic-settings]

The Basic settings section of the design editor looks a lot like the product editor's Basic settings section. That's not an accident.

![Image](7e397d4f-e4b2-4fed-9e0f-575ebcbe3012)

Do you need to edit the tags and description? Strictly speaking, no. But remember that this is a searchable database record. And the public page for this design is indexed by Google. So it matters.

So what do you choose for your description and tags? Depends on how you go about crafting descriptions. I presently create one product — usually a poster — and then create more Zazzle products based on that poster. That saves me a lot of time because Zazzle will carry over my poster's product name, description, tags, and so forth. As a result, I can usually take the description and tags from any product with a shared design because they are all the same.

There remains an active debate over whether your Zazzle products' descriptions should stick only to the design or should also include verbiage about the specific products (eg coffee mugs and tee shirts). Your mileage may vary.


# Adding a Zazzle collection ID [#zazzle-collection-id]

Sorry that it's a little confusing at first dealing with "design" and "collection" terms. It won't take long to get used to. But odds are good your SHD design started life as a collection on Zazzle. You might as well link to it so your customers see both. To do so, go find the collection on Zazzle. The public view page:

![Image](df719876-70b0-4fe9-a3bb-de90654f2410)

Copy the URL from your browser's address bar. In this example: 

`https://www.zazzle.com/collections/119357097262590458`

We only need the numeric part at the end there ("119357097262590458"). But you can paste the entire URL into the "Zazzle collection ID" text box:

![Image](6963fba1-3284-446e-9682-edcd6fe7733d)

As soon as you tab or click away, it'll strip away the stuff it doesn't need:

![Image](a1194641-a840-4f9b-9044-0965ca8473c6)

Click "Save". And now your customers will see the "Shop at Zazzle" button:

![Image](c34e4bd2-4dd1-4679-803b-af034888832f)


# Choosing a store [#choose-a-store]

Most often your designs obviously belong in one store or another because the products that share that design are in the same store. But it is possible to include products from different stores if you use your designs across them. Strictly speaking you do not have to align your design with a store. You can choose "(none)".

![Image](b9b97c72-b4b6-44c4-84a2-855d6fb97888)

But I **strongly recommend** choosing one. It will be easier to manage and find your inventory. In the future we may phase out the "none" option anyway. It's not clear that this old feature is meaningfully beneficial.


# Changing the unique code [#change-code]

Every design has a [mnemonic code](/article/about-mnemonic-codes-for-things) that is globally unique. This is not something you choose. It's created based on the name of your design. But you can change it by clicking the little circular arrow button next to it:

![Image](98fe4ebf-3f55-46dc-be3e-6fdca739c492)

When you click it you'll see a popup explaining what will happen and allow you to change your mind.

![Image](1ead06b4-fea0-41b0-b66c-7c52a31ef62f)

That tees up a future change. You'll need to click "Save" to make it happen though. During save it will come up with a new code.

Why not automatically do this every time you save? Because you may have already shared links to your design on social media and other websites. If we change this then you will break those links. So why allow you to change it at all? Because you may change the name of the design to something significantly different. Or maybe you had a typo in your design's name when you first created it. It's up to you to decide if you want to fix your URLs based on such changes or just keep them the same so your existing links don't break.


# Uploading a custom design image [#set-main-image]

Your design is visual, after all. It appears on all the products you're grouping. So you should choose a good representative image. The easiest way to do so is via the "Use this thumbnail" button on one of the member products in your design:

![Image](6cb76682-db86-4bd8-8b68-505552b90f5c)

Or you can upload a custom image by clicking "Upload":

![Image](aea2d039-fe10-4908-b287-df7e001b555d)

![Image](890b6eed-1587-4fde-9f83-b6757b11b145)

I **strongly recommend** doing this extra step. Ideally you will choose an image that has the pure design without showing any particular product it is applied to. In this example:

![Image](ecd12f34-b5c3-4eba-84a5-e760bec884c1)

When you upload it it will be trimmed down to a square. So you may want to pre-trim it to roughly a square before pasting the image or selecting the file for upload.


# Reordering the products in the list [#reorder-products]

You may be satisfied with the ordering of your products in the list of design group members. If you are not then you can simply drag and drop them into whatever order you wish:

![Image](ee549284-3ecc-4366-b258-e30309bd6d20)


# Disabling or deleting a design [#disable-delete]

You can delete or [disable](/article/disabling-stores-products-collections-etc) your design via the toolbar. Neither action will disable or delete the member products.

![Image](83b468fe-ee14-48ec-ae24-6950adc04e45)


Learn the basic process of creating a design group and adding more products to it later

How to group products with the same design together

# [TL;DR](/article/what-is-tl-dr)

Only [premium agencies](/article/subscribing-for-premium-agency-features) may have external links in descriptions of products, collections, etc.


# External links and spam

Spam-bots crawl around the web looking for sites that allow posting and commenting in order to insert unrelated ad content on those sites. To some degree they wish to appeal to users of that site. But mainly they want to have links from those sites back to their own sites. Doing so creates false credibility for those target sites. The suggestion is that if many websites link to that target site then that site must be authoritative in the public's eye.

In the meantime you get a crappy site. Blocking external links from user content on this site helps discourage spammers from spoiling this website.

Local links are the exception. Links to other parts of this website are generally not considered spam. And they are nearly worthless for spam-bots crawling the web.


# Premium agencies are allowed to

If you are paying for your [agency](/article/what-is-an-agency) to have [premium features](/article/subscribing-for-premium-agency-features) then you are allowed to include external links in your descriptions of the agency, your stores, your products, your collections, and so on.


# How are links handled?

This question only comes about because products and other user content for design agencies have descriptions that contain [Markdown text](https://commonmark.org/help/). That's essentially plain text but allows formatting of the sort you can see in the article you are currently reading.

We don't prevent you from adding links in your descriptions. And we are happy to allow local links to other content on this site. It's only external links to other websites that we filter. If your agency has premium status then your links are clickable and clearly visible as such. If not then they just look like plain text.

Google and most webcrawlers will not consider a URL displayed as plain text to be a hyperlink and will essentially ignore them. Thus discouraging spam-bots.

Explains under what circumstances products and other content may contain links to external websites

No external links

Welcome to Snuggle Hamster Designs (SHD). Here you'll find the creative work of multiple Zazzle designers. [Zazzle](https://zazzle.com/) is a print on demand (PoD) service that matches people's designs to their [blank products](https://www.zazzle.com/custom).

SHD is primarily oriented toward helping our Zazzlers to improve their sales through several approaches. For starters we provide an alternative way to manage one's catalog beyond Zazzle's own built in tools. We provide a faster and arguably much better search experience than Zazzle does. We provide added search visibility via our SEO measures. And once someone does find a product of that they like, we try to keep them focused on that designer's store instead of yanking them away to products by other designers. We put Zazzlers first.

We are also rolling out tools to help Zazzlers improve their social media marketing game. And still more features to help them better [analyze their sales](/article/about-sales-reports) to find out where they should be spending their creative time and marketing efforts. Long term we plan to offer more sophisticated analytics. [Want to learn more?](/article/why-bring-my-zazzle-stores-to-this-site)

Please read our [Terms of use agreement](/article/terms-of-use-agreement) for policy details. And to be clear, Snuggle Hamster Designs is a completely independent entity from [Zazzle, inc](https://www.zazzle.com/about).

We celebrate April 8th 2024 as our public launch date. It took about a year to prepare for that launch. And we greatly appreciate the immense help of a dedicated group of testers who helped us for months prior to launch during our close beta testing phase. And of course we welcome everyone else who is joining us on a hopefully long journey ahead.

If you have any questions, please do search this [knowledge base](/article). Or [join our Discord server](https://discord.gg/4A3yYkJFwe). Or [contact us](/contact).

A brief summary of who we are and what this site is about

About Snuggle Hamster Designs

- [About this agreement](#about_agreement)
- [Limited liability](#limited_liability)
- [Acceptable behavior](#acceptable_behavior)
- [Trademarks and copyrights](#copyrights)
- [Tracking usage and data privacy](#usage_privacy)
- [Governing law](#governing_law)
- [Subject to change](#subject_to_change)


# About this agreement [#about_agreement]

We're trying our best to help you succeed. We appreciate your patience with us and kindness toward all. As a user of this site and our services you agree to the following.


# Limited liability [#limited_liability]

Snuggle Hamster Designs (SHD) provides services for designers of print on demand services. We try our best to help designers improve sales of their designs. But we do not guarantee success in this regard. As a designer or agent of one you agree to indemnify us for any harm to your business that might occur during or after your use of this site.

We provide a platform for other people to promote their products, services, and ideas. We make good faith efforts to prevent fraud or injury from such third parties. As a user contributing or consuming third party content on this site you agree to indemnify us from any harm arising from the actions of that content.


# Acceptable behavior [#acceptable_behavior]

If you are a third party contributing content or participating in interactions on this site with other users then you agree to act in good faith to respect us and other users of this site. Regardless of whether other users are not respectful. You are encouraged to let site administrators know of any poor behavior by others and not to return such poor behavior. We reserve the right to refuse service to anyone abusing the site, abusing our staff, or abusing other users.


# Trademarks and copyrights [#copyrights]

When we make some [stock images](/article/about-stock-images) and other materials available to users, we maintain our copyrights to such materials and make them available for limited, defined uses. You are expected to adhere to limits as described in each case.

You are not authorized to use our branding, including logos, company name, etc in any way that would imply our endorsement or affiliation with your own ventures without express written permission.


# Tracking usage and data privacy [#usage_privacy]

We use cookies and other means to detect and record usage of this site by you and others. We reserve the right to retain this usage data indefinitely. We have a strong goal of protecting within reason the privacy of all our users and the data they share with us in confidence. We make good faith efforts to be clear with you how we generally will use your confidential data. You agree to indemnify us against any unintentional data loss, theft, or revelation.


# Governing law [#governing_law]

SHD operates principally in Florida in the United States of America. We are governed by US and Florida law.


# Subject to change [#subject_to_change]

This agreement is subject to change by us at any time. We will make a good faith effort to notify users of significant changes but cannot guarantee such notification.


Lays out the basic rights and responsibilities of this site and you as a user of it

Terms of use agreement

- [What is SHD anyway?](#what_is_shd)
- [Isn't Zazzle's marketing good enough?](#zazzle_marketing_enough)
- [How can SHD increase my visibility?](#increase_visibility)
- [Zazzle is frustrating](#zazzle_frustrating)
- [Store organization and searching](#organization_search)
- [Using cutouts to create cover photos](#cutouts)
- [Social media advertising](#social_media)
- [Sales reporting](#sales_reporting)
- [Niche analysis and exploration](#niche-analysis)
- [Watch out for trademark violations!](#trademarks)
- [The bottom line](#bottom_line)


# What is SHD anyway? [#what_is_shd]

[What is SHD to you as a Zazzle designer](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xgZtsJJ_8gA)

[Snuggle Hamster Designs](/about) (SHD) started as a duo of [Zazzle](https://zazzle.com/) designers, or "Zazzlers" working together under one brand. We each have our own Zazzle stores and products under the SHD brand.

But most often when we talk about SHD, we're talking about this website. One of us is a software engineer by trade and decided to create a website to help market our products better than Zazzle does. Over time we realized we could offer the same tools to other Zazzlers to help them with their marketing too.


# Isn't Zazzle's marketing good enough? [#zazzle_marketing_enough]

If you are satisfied with your Zazzle stores' sales then I guess it is perfectly fine. You don't need SHD's help.

Odds are good that if you are a Zazzler then you are not satisfied. You long ago realized that you are not even one in a million designers on Zazzle. You are next to invisible. This isn't Zazzle's fault of course. You're in good company with countless other designers, past and present, and all their countless products in Zazzle's store. How can you stand out?


# How can SHD increase my visibility? [#increase_visibility]

Many Zazzlers create social media posts to advertise their products. Why do they do that? To get their products in front of more eyes. SHD serves that purpose too. Among others.

The most basic thing we are doing is making you more visible to Google and other search engines. How? This website is built from the ground up with [SEO](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Search_engine_optimization) in mind. Every public page is optimized to make your store and its contents as easy for Google's webcrawlers to digest as possible. Many (most?) new sites struggle with getting over even this bar. But the main engineer behind this site has over 30 years of web development experience under his belt.

Here is a technical insight into Zazzle. Google and other search engines today rely on [sitemaps](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Site_map). These hidden files greatly increase the visibility of web content because they make it much easier and faster for webcrawlers to keep up with new content and updates on a big site like SHD.

One problem with Zazzle is that they have chosen not to include every product in their catalog in their giant sitemap. Are your products in the sitemap? Our investigations have led us to the conclusion that Zazzle is only including the products of designers who have earned their [Pro badges](https://help.zazzle.com/hc/en-us/articles/115002536588-How-the-Pro-Program-Works) in their sitemap. Does this mean Google won't find other products? No. It will find some. How about yours?

The SHD site puts all product pages into its sitemap. And all collections. And all stores. And so on. There's almost nothing that isn't in our sitemap. And every time a product or other item gets changed in the database, Google sees the newer date as a clue that it should revisit that item's page again soon.

I could write so much more about this topic. But the bottom line is that SHD is adding to your store's visibility. Especially if you have not yet reached [Pro](https://help.zazzle.com/hc/en-us/articles/115002536588-How-the-Pro-Program-Works).


# Zazzle is frustrating [#zazzle_frustrating]

Zazzle is an amazing service, really. They've managed to outdo competing print on demand (PoD) services in a number of ways. And so many of us choose to sell with Zazzle because we think they are the best for us. But that doesn't mean they are perfect. Consider some of the ways that SHD helps smooth out Zazzle's rough spots.

(Please note that the following are "as of this writing" issues. Some are bound to change over time with policy and technical changes to Zazzle.)

When you create and publish a new product with Zazzle you must wait at least until the next day before you'll see it appear on your store's home page, in Zazzle's search, and other places. That "indexing delay" can sometimes stretch into many days or even weeks. SHD's bulk store importer / updater is limited to those products listed in your store at the time. But you can manually import new products just by plugging in your new product's URL. In this way your SHD store can ironically be more up to date than your Zazzle store is.

Making changes to your collections, categories, and other content in Zazzle can make them invisible for a while in a similar fashion. SHD does not have an "indexing delay" because all pages use the live SHD data.

Zazzle keeps your product titles short. And your tags limited to 10 per product. SHD doesn't. SHD also allows you to use richly formatted description text using [Markdown](/article/markdown-text).

Are you familiar with Zazzle's "landing pages" yet? Someone clicks a link on Pinterest or Facebook to your product on Zazzle. But instead they get a slightly different page in front of your actual product detail page:

![Image](9d8b4d82-a6db-4bbd-852e-dd5992850d87)

The user must click "View Product Details" to get to it. Even to find the heart icon to say they like the product. This has been deeply frustrating to many Zazzlers and caused some to reconsider their use of Zazzle Promoter Program 2.0 in light of all the opportunities that this "landing page" affords your customers to bypass your product. The default setting for stores allows us to bypass these landing pages by using differently formatted links to Zazzle.

Have you ever wanted to change a design on Zazzle? Not the description, but the actual visual design? If you do so then you'll create a new product instead of updating the old. And thus you'll get a new URL. This breaks any links you have to your Zazzle product page. If you link social media and other pages to your SHD product page, you can stop that from happening. Because once you create that new product version on Zazzle you can modify the Zazzle product ID of your SHD product record. Links to SHD stay valid.

One pain point for many Zazzlers is the feeling that Zazzle wants to take customers away from your products, your stores, your brands moments after they finally find one of your products in search or from a link. SHD puts the primary focus on your brand. If someone liked one of your products enough to go see it then the odds are good they want to see more of what you have to offer.

This section has already gotten too long. But it illustrates just a few of the ways SHD can help you smooth out some of Zazzle's rough spots.


# Store organization and searching [#organization_search]

SHD offers a slightly different but complementary way of organizing your products than Zazzle. Design groups enable you to roll up all your products that share the same design on them into a single item in search:

![Image](b836c2fd-96aa-4cc4-a458-1f81e81664d0)

Meanwhile SHD's collections give you the best benefits of Zazzle's categories and collections with more capabilities than both combined.

![Image](d9bcc6ef-8a5f-49fe-b35e-6b3252c82ef3)

You get to select one of your collections to be the showcase for your store. Which features prominently on your store's home page. This gives you fine control over what your customers see. Rotate your showcases seasonally or keep it evergreen if you'd like.

![Image](e2dab52a-4c80-4fa2-a4a1-10bbae043562)

Your organizational efforts are great. But most of your customers want to be able to search for whatever they are searching for. SHD offers a tailored search engine. It's very fast. It allows users to search for everything. Not just products. And it provides a very compact way to view many products in efficient ways.

![Image](80354084-f223-427f-82c7-eb839b12fa0c)


# Using cutouts to create cover photos [#cutouts]

Zazzle encourages us to [create custom cover photos](https://www.julieerindesigns.com/2023/03/13/zazzle-custom-cover-photos/) for our products. You could buy your products and stage them for photo shoots. But most of us just use the in-situ mockup images Zazzle renders for us as our starting points. The most annoying part of the process is usually just cutting out the background. [We've got a tool for that](/article/how-to-use-image-cutouts). We've painstakingly created masks in Photoshop and apply them automatically to your products. All you have to do is just download the cutout image with transparency and use it in your image editor of choice:

![Image](0ecd8ec2-3dcb-493a-901a-e76d6439e0d0)


# Social media advertising [#social_media]

I'll be honest. I'm skeptical of social media (SM) marketing. I'm not convinced that dumping copies of your product descriptions and images onto Pinterest, Facebook, and other sites really increases your sales. I think you have to do more than just spam other sites. What "more" means is a huge topic that has been explored and debated for decades now. But the simple fact is that many Zazzlers do want to take advantage of Pinterest and other SM sites to promote their products and brand.

We're here to help you. You can create and save SM posts for your products in SHD and then share links not only to your products, but to those specific posts. We have a very cool image template tool that lets you quickly and easily create and customize images tailored to Pinterest and other SM sites from your product images or others you upload:

![Image](a4b5cab2-6ac9-48e8-b585-27d917b6719e)

The links you share to these posts help to prevent Pinterest from replacing your hand-written ads with alternative content you don't want. And they allow us to give you fine-grained statistics about which ads brought people to your product pages.


# Sales reporting [#sales_reporting]

Zazzle lets you see your sales history ("[Royalty History](https://www.zazzle.com/my/earnings/royaltyhistory)" page). But as time goes by it gets difficult to find sales entries. And it gets hard to get a big picture from looking at the page.

You can download the CSV export and import it into Excel. This is much better than using Zazzle's page. But this already creates problems because of the way Zazzle represents data in its CSV file. Some numeric values won't be seen as numbers by Excel, throwing off your totals. And various flags are represented with cryptic codes that Excel is not good at parsing out.

Or you can just import your CSV file instantly to SHD and slice and dice the data quickly and easily:

![Image](7fc5f68e-40dd-4287-bb32-d5a412eaf974)

And then you can view trendlines, tops, and other reports. [Learn more here](/article/about-sales-reports).

![Image](12ae493c-a429-48c9-b71b-af56b1580dd8)

![Image](460708e2-a265-4bbe-824c-04bf4d9b9330)


# Niche analysis and exploration [#niche-analysis]

Zazzle makes a large list of searches performed on Zazzle by real people available to Google for SEO purposes. We import that information and provide two major tools related. The simpler one is the [Niche explorer](/article/how-to-use-the-niche-explorer):

![Image](c55fdf97-0ebd-42c7-9ca0-64c0e1ffa81a)

This tool lets you explore those customer searches on Zazzle to help you understand what's on Zazzle's customers' minds as they are shopping. And to get some new ideas for underserved niches that you might create new products for.

The other is the [Niche analysis](/article/how-to-use-the-niche-analysis-tool) tool. This performs a reserve search starting with your product as the search result and applying more than 350k searches by Zazzle's customers against your product to see which searches could match yours:

![Image](a3df14d8-9b0b-47db-af5b-586057eb0644)

With each one you can find out whether your product actually does show up in that specific search. As with the Niche explorer we are sorting these by a "nicheness" score. Your product is more likely to show up in more niche searches. But also these give a pretty good insight into what your prospective customers are thinking about when they come across your stuff.


# Watch out for trademark violations! [#trademarks]

Zazzlers often get takedown notices from Zazzle for copyright and trademark infringements. [Learn more about trademarks](/article/what-are-trademarks). Then use our [Trademark Search](/article/how-to-use-the-trademark-search) tool to explore. We also offer a [Trademark Analysis](/article/how-to-use-the-trademark-analysis-feature) feature that compares all of the products across all your stores against all 4 million trademarks at the US Patent and Trademark office at once and shows you the possible conflicts.

![Image](52559686-972b-4485-8fd5-cea8a430224a)


# The bottom line [#bottom_line]

I don't want to overstate what Snuggle Hamster Designs has to offer. We aren't selling magic. You make the best products you can. We're here to help you sell them. Mainly by helping people find them. But we're also here to help you understand your existing inventory so you get more data driven ideas about where to go next.

Please consider [upgrading your agency to Premium](/article/subscribing-for-premium-agency-features) for access to special features.


A brief discussion of the benefits and costs of using this site to promote your Zazzle stores

Why bring my Zazzle stores to this site?

- [In brief](#brief)
- [Chipping in](#chipping-in)
- [Limited resources](#limited-resources)
- [Our referrals or yours](#referrals)
- [Make it so](#to-premium)


# In brief [#brief]

SHD offers designers [a lot of great features](/article/why-bring-my-zazzle-stores-to-this-site) for free. If you like those features then we think you're going to love the extras you can get if you [upgrade your agency to Premium status](/article/how-to-upgrade-or-downgrade-your-agency). Current rate is $19 per month (or $209 per year) for Premium. Here's a quick look of some of the differences:

| Basic agency | Premium agency |
|--------------|----------------|
| Create stunning [social media posts](/article/how-to-create-and-share-social-media-posts) | Share them |
| Preview stock backgrounds | [Stock backgrounds](/article/about-stock-images) |
| Links to Zazzle use SHD's affiliate code | Use your agency's own affiliate code (or PP2 links) |
| No image cutouts | [Image cutouts](/article/how-to-use-image-cutouts)
| [Basic sales reports from your royalty history](/article/about-sales-reports) | [Alignment Analysis](/article/how-to-use-the-alignment-analysis-report) report |
| Limited store insights | [Full store insights](/article/how-to-use-the-store-insights-page) |
| Limited product insights | [Full product insights](/article/how-to-use-the-product-insights-page) |
| Niche explorer preview | Full [Niche explorer](/article/how-to-use-the-niche-explorer) |
| Limited storewide niche analysis | [Niche Analysis](/article/how-to-use-the-niche-analysis-tool) report for each product |
| Limited Trademark Analysis | Full [Trademark Analysis](/article/how-to-use-the-trademark-analysis-feature)


# Chipping in [#chipping-in]

You don't have to of course. You are free to use SHD's services as they are without paying any fees. But if you can afford to, one reason to pay for premium is to help support our efforts. A lot of hard work went into building this website. Development continues daily. It also costs money to host the site and to run the small business behind SHD. At the time of this writing the principal proprietors have been spending a lot of time and money over the past year to create all of this without generating any revenue to help pay for it. We super duper appreciate everyone who chips in to help us help you out.


# Limited resources [#limited-resources]

Computing resources have gotten very cheap over the years. Creating the illusion that it costs nothing to provide a service like this. In reality we do have cost constraints and limited resources. As of this writing we are storing over 200 MB of images for each Zazzler importing their stores here.

We must also be respectful of Zazzle's computing resources. We go out of our way to minimize our impact on their servers. As a result we are limited in how quickly we can import your products from Zazzle. This is not so much as cost as a constraint for us. We give priority to the imports of paying customers.


# Our referrals or yours [#referrals]

By default we do have a way to earn money from your stores' products through [Zazzle's referral program](https://help.zazzle.com/hc/en-us/articles/226336108-How-to-Join-the-Associates-Program). If someone clicks on a link from your product on SHD to go to your product on Zazzle and subsequently buys it or something else then we earn a 15% referral bonus from Zazzle.

If you upgrade to Premium then we'll use your Zazzle member ID / affiliate code instaed of ours. So you'll get that 15% referral bonus instead. If you are a member of the more exclusive [Promoter Program 2.0](https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSdcZ4EQxDFOATx51ixhXvu-ekYc73M9wfMfzV1sCtFWyFE0bg/viewform) then you can switch on "clean URLs" that don't contain a referral code so you can earn your 35% referral bonuses. Many members of the PP2.0 program earn way more each month than our Premium subscription fee.


# Make it so [#to-premium]

Ready to upgrade? [Start here](/article/how-to-upgrade-or-downgrade-your-agency).



An explanation of the benefits of a paid subscription to premium features your agency

Why subscribe for Premium agency features?

Oftentimes a store offers several products that share the same printed design. For example:

![Image](7716b5c8-ca25-4b34-bc96-ecec57e7faa8)

We encourage store owners to group their products by design. The main focus of course is on the products. We refer to these generally as "designs". But we'll sometimes refer to them as "design groups". Here's an example of an [Alpaca design](https://snugglehamster.com/a/w-h-sim/d/eo-happy-birthday-boy-cute-alpacas-in-teal-serapes).

We also encourage store owners to choose an image of the pure design distinct from any particular product it appears on to represent the design group. For example:

![Image](15aa8819-0ba3-48a8-932e-10a69f3d848e)

In searches these designs appear as tiles featuring the main design and "microtiles" showcasing some of the individual products:

![Image](cb1a0e02-2b1c-4c0f-ad06-72ffbc945346)

Learn how to [create a design group here](/article/how-to-group-products-with-the-same-design-together).

Note that designs are similar to but not the same as [collections](/article/what-is-a-collection).


An explanation of the purpose and nature of designs for grouping similarly styled products

What is a design group?

Hover over your user profile icon in the upper right corner of any page. Click "My account":

![Image](854b319f-d7cf-42c0-8814-88e52a5191a6)

This is your "My account" page. Switch to the "Account settings" tab:

![Image](4e41c717-9f38-4316-82a5-77714ef97596)

From here you can change your password. And [set your profile picture](/article/how-to-change-your-profile-picture) and change other things about your user profile.

![Image](2fbf13e3-996f-444f-809f-f8ceca69e750)


A quick look at how to change your password once you are logged in

How to change your password

So you just realized when you set up your [agency](/article/whats-the-difference-between-my-user-account-and-my-agency) that you also have a user profile picture. It's very easy to set this. Just visit your "My account" page. Click the "Account settings" tab to get there:

![Image](f10fe843-fe1c-4691-a4d4-dae826a3e9d3)

From here you can also [change your password](/article/how-to-change-your-password), your display name, and so forth. At the bottom you can choose your user profile images:

![Image](075ebcc3-282e-44ea-ad12-93272acfc07c)

When you're done click the "Manage" toggle switch:

![Image](d92dcdfc-e033-4b57-9daa-087673b424b5)

Here's how the public will typically see it:

![Image](0d7eda76-917e-4a23-b08e-86246aa56b9a)

And on a mobile browser:

![Image](eb3d10c5-953b-484a-b9e7-7e7b103d1908)


Learn how to upload an image of your user account as distinct from your agency's branding image

How to change your profile picture

# [TL;DR](/article/what-is-tl-dr)

You are a person. If you have an account then you are a user. If you are a designer then [you have an agency](/article/what-is-an-agency). Even if you are currently the only one in it. All of your stores, products, and other branded content is owned by your agency.

# Why the distinction?

If you are a Zazzle designer then this may seem strange. Zazzle refers to you as a "member" or "associate". They give you a public profile page that gives visitors a little blurb and a list of your stores. This seems sufficient most of the time.

For starters having an intermediary data entity between you and your stores allows me to make it easy for you to transfer ownership of their stores super easy. You wouldn't have to give the new owner your user account as part of the transfer.

But moreover. Some Zazzle stores have joint ownership by two or more designers. They have to share a password there. They won't have to here. And you can also invite other staffers to join your team and help out without giving out your password. Perhaps to help you manage your inventory. Or your marketing efforts.

[Learn more about agencies](/article/what-is-an-agency). And don't forget to [set your profile picture](/article/how-to-change-your-profile-picture)

A quick clarification about the difference between your user account and public user profile and your agency and its public profile

What's the difference between my user account and my agency?

- [It's a Zazzle thing](#zazzle-thing)
- [Why does this affect the importer?](#affect-importer)
- [Why does Zazzle have this limit?](#why-limit)
- [Pushing the limit](#pushing-limit)


# It's a Zazzle thing [#zazzle-thing]

If you have a large store you may have noticed that the initial import only brought in the first 1,000 (1k) products. This is not a limitation of this website. It is actually a Zazzle limitation.

For technical reasons, Zazzle's developers chose to put a cap on how many results you can see returned from any search. Try a [search for popcorn](https://www.zazzle.com/s/popcorn) for an example. You should see it indicating more than 10k search results:

![Image](02f7a009-85ce-4971-b5b5-33b97d29b89b)

But if you page your way through the search results as far as you can you'll see there are only 1k shown. To illustrate this, add "ps=100" into the URL. "ps" is short for "page size". And then "pg=9" means "page 9".

![Image](cb124285-a398-4b76-b582-f3cdf002a03d)

See how there is no page 10 listed? Page 9 is showing you products 901 - 1,000. There is nothing more.

That's the 1k brick wall you're hitting.

# Why does this affect the importer? [#affect-importer]

This 1k limit affects the Zazzle RSS feeds just the same as the human-friendly search pages. [The storewide product importer](/article/how-to-import-your-stores-products-from-zazzle) relies on Zazzle's RSS feed to discover products in a store. If it could see past the first 1,000 products then it could import them as well.

# Why does Zazzle have this limit? [#why-limit]

I can only speculate as an outsider. One technical reason may be just to make searches perform better. One reason may be to prevent outside hackers from burdening their servers by requesting unreasonably large result sets. As a programmer I can tell you that these are unsatisfying answers because they do other things that prevent these from causing real strains on their system.

I can also speculate about business reasons for this limitation. The 1k limit makes it harder for outside systems to collect vast amounts of data from Zazzle. Imagine writing a simple webcrawler that can gradually download Zazzle's vast catalog of millions of products in 128-item search results over a few hours of hammering their RSS feed.

There is a business case for believing making it this easy to export their entire catalog would be bad for Zazzle. In fact I can quickly think of a dozen arguments for how this could hurt Zazzle. One of the most basic is that someone could set up a mirror site and draw away Zazzle's customers from their ability to effectively market in their own way. Another is that it would be easy to generate basic aggregate statistics with which to measure Zazzle against other companies. Zazzle probably considers this important competitive information that they don't want easily discovered.

The bottom line though is that there is this 1k limit on just about every page you can think of on Zazzle that lists things. It's there and it presents technical challenges for us to deal with. That's our problem.

# Pushing the limit [#pushing-limit]

The newer version of the product importer does go beyond the 1k limit using a clever trick. Originally I was just getting the first 1k of products from your store sorted by recency (newest first). Now I add to that the results of sorting by oldest first, which can get me up to 2k products. I also then sort by lowest price and then highest price, getting me up to 4k products total. And then I sort by most and least popular, getting me up to 6k. It's not guaranteed to be 6k of course. There's bound to be a lot of overlap in the 6 different sort orders. But it's likely to get a large fraction of most stores that are over 1k.


An explanation of the curious limit on how many products you can directly import and how this limit appears in other places

What's with the 1,000 product import limit?

- [Enter by hand](#by-hand)
- [Your very first bulk import](#first-bulk-import)
- [Watching your import's progress](#watch-progress)
- [Why is this so slow?](#why-slow)
- [Bulk product imports after the first time](#bulk-update)
- [Will bulk import undo my product's settings?](#bulk-import-undo-settings)
- [Updating a single product after you change it in Zazzle](#update-single-product)
- [Importing new images](#import-new-images)
- [Why don't the other importers update images?](#why-other-import-dont-update-images)
- [Triggering single product Zazzle imports by hand](#trigger-single-import-by-hand)
- [Why do this by hand?](#why-by-hand)

There are several ways to get your products from Zazzle into this site. Each one has somewhat different behaviors that you'll want to be aware of.

# Enter by hand [#by-hand]

You can just create all this data by hand, one product at a time. I recommend against it. It's super tedious and annoying. There is almost no benefit to it. And you will not have the benefit of imported data like current prices, Zazzle department, and so forth. It's an option. An awful option you don't need.

# Your very first bulk import [#first-bulk-import]

Your most useful day to day import tool is going to be the one found on the store editor's "Products" tab:

![Image](53990028-cdbe-494d-a585-37c768987b5a)

Once you have [created your new store](/article/how-to-create-a-new-store) you come here and click the "Import" button on the toolbar. You'll see a helpful message so you know what's going on and can back out if you want. Although there's not much reason to.

![Image](7e8a9dcd-7828-49ba-ad55-afc6b5bfdba2)

During the first part of the import you'll see a busy-wait spinner on Import button:

![Image](86e2c3e0-7603-436b-9c4b-fa0b3285b554)

And hopefully in a few seconds you will see this "toast" message pop up briefly:

![Image](87c7d730-b405-42b7-a09b-7ed3508264b0)

I wish I could say that importing is done. But it's not done. It actually takes a long time to import all your products this first time for your new store.

# Watching your import's progress [#watch-progress]

You're a busy person. You've got things to do! You don't want to wait for a long import. But you're also really curious about what's going on. So here's a handy trick for you to try. Enter "[import]" into the search bar where your products will eventually show up. That first quick pass generated a list of new products needing to be properly imported. You'll see them listed now:

![Image](bad494b1-b5d8-4483-b538-396339db6336)

It's not going to automatically update the search results. One trick you can use is to click on that text box, add a space at the end of it, and then click away. Keep doing this trick every few seconds to satisfy your curiosity about progress.

Now you know how to properly obsess over this tedious import process.

# Why is this so slow? [#why-slow]

We live in the Internet age where you can download a monstrously large video in a few seconds. Why is this process so slow? The simple answer is that this site needs to be polite when fetching data from Zazzle. The initial lookup uses a machine-friendly RSS query. That runs quickly and is designed by Zazzle for bulk queries like this.

But this RSS fetch only gets us limited information about each product. Like it's name and current price. When we want to get all the images, tags, template definition, and so forth, we have to fetch these pages like a human visitor would. Which means we have to slow down and obey the speed limits set by Zazzle. These help keep the Zazzle site from bogging down.

Practically speaking this means we can only fetch about one product detail every 6 seconds. So if your store has 1,000 products then it's going to take 6,000 seconds, or about 1.7 hours to fetch all of them.

# Bulk product imports after the first time [#bulk-update]

That first time hurt. Sorry about that. But going forward it should be faster and easier to import your newest products. How do you do it? Same way you did when you first imported. Go to your store's editor. Switch to the "Products" tab. Then click "Import" again.

Is it going to take a long time? It should not. What happens is it starts out doing that fast import step that takes a few seconds to see if there are any new products. If not then you're done. But let's say you created 10 new products since your last import. Then expect it to take about 20 seconds to import these new ones.

But this bulk import did more than import those new products. It also refreshed some data on all your other products. It imported the latest prices for example.

# Will bulk import undo my product's settings? [#bulk-import-undo-settings]

Did you change your product's name, description, or tags on this site to take advantage of some cool features here? When you do a storewide import you won't lose those changes. But when you go to their detail pages you will see helpful notices that there are deviations now:

![Image](97bf0dcd-a12f-45b8-bc79-a736d6da3b53)

This is true also if you changed these things on Zazzle and have not taken steps to update the same products here. You can use the "Use Zazzle's" button to do a quick edit and save.

# Updating a single product after you change it in Zazzle [#update-single-product]

You can re-import a product. In that product's edit page on the "Product settings" tab just click the "Import" button:

![Image](877d0709-cf0c-48bc-bc44-2009361a18db)

This is a more invasive import than the store one for existing products. This one will wipe out your edits of name, description, tags, and some other things where it can get something from Zazzle. It will not alter your design selection and some other things that are specific to this site.

# Importing new images [#import-new-images]

One thing neither the storewide import nor the single-product import will do is change your images. If you want to do a fresh product import that will wipe out all your images then switch to the "Images" tab for that product. Click "Import":

![Image](eb0807f7-d0cf-4c08-80ef-31d50b1e7be5)

You will get a chance to read a quick note and back out if you don't want to do this.

# Why don't the other importers update images? [#why-other-import-dont-update-images]

Presently there is no practical way for our importer to detect changes in images on Zazzle. And even if we could, there's a good chance you will have done some curation of the images imported earlier. So we make the conservative assumption that you don't want these changed automatically.

# Triggering single product Zazzle imports by hand [#trigger-single-import-by-hand]

It's easy to tell this site to import a specific product from Zazzle. From your store editor's products tab, click "New product":

![Image](9cad12d4-5be5-4f32-b73b-2b61d2a17cce)

Use the "Import from Zazzle" form. All you need is the product ID from Zazzle:

![Image](0aa6fe76-ae1b-4598-b449-8c34fd970f88)

Go to Zazzle. Find your product's public view page. Copy the full URL to the clipboard:

![Image](1c6c2f51-ae08-4367-af68-17112af4a0da)

Paste it into the form. When you tab away it will throw away all the stuff in the URL not needed and show only the ID:

![Image](97329dda-5987-4108-bd27-6bc781c8dc91)

Click "Import".

# Why do this by hand? [#why-by-hand]

You've got the bulk importer for the store. Why do you need this? Your new product should be visible to the public immediately. But only if they know the URL. It won't show up immediately in your store's product list until the next day. Sometimes it takes much longer.

If you don't want to wait until tomorrow to come back and run the bulk importer, this is an option.

This is also an option for getting around some strange limits of Zazzle. Like if you have [more than 1,000 products](/article/whats-with-the-1-000-product-import-limit) in your store, you can use this to input the products that are beyond the first 1k.



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