I drive a hybrid and pride myself on getting amazing mileage (52MPG lifetime, baby!). To accomplish this, I drive…well…slow. I go under the speed limit and stay in the right lane. Works for me…I’m a laid back guy who takes life slowly and casually.
But there is one place where I welcome a little high speed action. And that’s in creating products on Zazzle! Introducing Quick Product Create!
Yes, now it’s easy to create up to 100 products instantly. Quick Product Create (or QPC) is a simple three step wizard that allows you to create multiple products using selections of related products (all products, dark apparel, paper products, etc.) from the Zazzle Default Products menu, or from one of your own Product Lines that contain matching product templates.
Design for success
The first thing you need is a design you plan to put on many products. Typically, this is in the form of an image (a JPG, GIF, PNG, etc.) Since this one design will be blasted on several products, you should design it with that in mind. Here are some hints:
- Create the image at the highest resolution you can. Since this image will be placed on several products at differing sizes, it’s best to make sure it’s of sufficient size and quality so it will print properly on most products. Visit our image guidelines page for more information on image resolution.
- Think about colors. If your design only works on a dark background, you will have to make sure the products you put it on are dark. One trick I’ve seen many contributors do is to outline a design in either black or white. In other words, a design that only works on a white or light background can work on all backgrounds if a white or light outline is added around it.
- Think about shape. A long rectangular design can look great on many products (full wrap mugs, ties, t-shirts), but may not work well on others (buttons, magnets, stamps). If your design is not suitable for some merchandise, be sure to remove those items from the set of products you publish.
Ok, so I have my design. I’m going to use this “Get outta my grill” image I made a while back.
The original is a high resolution PNG file, so it should work fine for most products.
Place it!
Ok, got my image. Now I need to start the Quick Product Create process by going to http://www.zazzle.com/cr/quick/start. When you start, you see this dialog pop up:
Click the dropdown arrow in Step 1 to see what options you have:
As you can see, there are some default Zazzle Product Lines you can choose from. These currently include:
- All Products
- All Non-apparel
- Apparel only
- Dark Apparel Only
- Light Apparel Only
- Paper Products
If you have previously created a Product Line in your gallery that contains template products, it will show up here as well under My Product Lines. This way you can pre-define a custom set of products that you create often. Rob has written a great post about how to create your own Product Lines for Quick Product Create. Advanced users, read all about it here!
I’ll choose All Products since it contains a nice mix of t-shirts, cards, stamps, mugs, and other products.
Once you select a Product Line, you will see that you can change the default image in Step 2. Click the link that says “Change”, and you will see all your Zazzle images, or you can upload a new one. Here, I’ve selected my “Get outta my grill” image.
In Step 3 you will notice that you have the option to change the default fit/fill mode to one of three options:
- Use template defaults (uses whatever the product template was designed with. Could be either fit or fill.)
- Fit (makes sure your entire image is visible in the product’s design area - no cropping)
- Fill (fills the entire product’s design area. Cropping may occur)
For most cases, using the default should be fine.
Ok…click Create Products…
Shazam!
Now I have a grid of 33 products with my design!
Sweet! Now all I have to do is check to make sure all products look their best. If something needs to be tweaked, there are ways to do that on a per-product basis. For example, the first sticker in the grid looks a bit tight. Looks like my design is getting a little cut off. Luckily, we have controls you can use right above each product:
- Edit options - This opens a dialog with product options (sizes, styles, product views)
- Customize - This brings up a mini design tool in a dialog where I can move things around, add images or text, change sizes, etc.
- Delete - Removes the product from the set of products you are creating with Quick Product Create.
Since the image on the sticker is a bit too big and is getting cut off, I need to shrink it. To do so, I click the “customize” link above my sticker product and shrink the image with the “resize” tool in the mini design tool.
Details, details, details
Now all my products look good and I’m ready to continue, so I click Next. I’m presented with a screen that is very similar to our Post For Sale page. You need to fill out all the information for these products, including title, description, tags, royalty percentage, etc. Required fields have a red asterisk next to them.
Most of these options are pretty self explanatory. However, there is a dropdown labeled “Quick Create Product Options”. Let me explain the options.
Most of the time, you are simply going to select the default option “Products to sell” because that’s what you are doing…creating products to sell.
However, if you want to make products to sell that are templates (so buyers can easily change text or images), you would select the second option, “Templates for sale”. This ensures that all fields marked as a template will remain a template when posted for sale. For more on how to create templates, see my previous post, More than just embroidery…
The third option, “Templates for reuse for quick create” is an advanced option for people who want to create a new set of products to use the next time they use Quick Product Create. This new Product Line would show up in the Step 1 dropdown under My Product Lines. As I mentioned before, Rob’s post explains how to do this.
Tada!
Click Post It and you’re done! All products are now queued up for creation. This takes anywhere from a few minutes to 24 hours. If you have postage or shoes in your Product Line, expect those products to appear in the Product Line closer to the 24 hour limit since those products need to be approved before they get posted.
Helpful hints
- You can have up to 100 products posted at once. If you want more products, repeat the process after you create your first grid of products by clicking on the Create More button at the top of the first page, or at the end of the process you can click the Do It Again button.
- There are checkboxes next to each product created in the grid. Use these to select multiple products that you want to remove from the grid. At the top of the grid, click “Delete selected” to remove them. Use these to select individual products that you want to remove from your Product Line. To select multiple products, it’s often faster to use the “Select all” link at the top of the page and de-select those products you’d like to keep.
- Always be sure to check your design on all the products in your grid before moving to the next step. You don’t want to post a product where the image is cut off or not positioned properly.
- Quick Product Create puts all products you create in one Product Line. Select an existing Product Line when posting for sale, or create an entirely new Product Line based on the design. For example, with the image I used above, I could create a Product Line called “Get outta my grill!” and post all these products there. Many successful contributors organize their galleries by design.
December 19, 2008 by HabitForming
Now that you’ve mastered the bulk product creator, err, the Quick Product Create tool (QPC), I wanted to share with everyone how to make templates for the Quick Product Create tool. Using templates will drastically cut down your product creation time! Since all of you are veterans of making Zazzle products in bulk by now, you are probably at the same point that I am with this new tool. I am finding that the QPC tool is very handy when it come to making multiple products, but I still have a desire to cut down the time I spend adjusting each product after they are generated. This means the editing part or even adding the same tags over and over again to these products. When it comes to some of the ‘repetitive’ things that you do when making your products with the QPC tool, you can use templates to avoid redoing the same thing over and over.
For example, lets say I plan on making a whole line of t-shirts using a variety of designs for the front of these shirts, but the back will consistently have my brand logo below the nape of the neck and rather than going in there and adding it to every single product, one by one, I can create templates with the logo already on the back so that when I choose these templates, the design is placed on the fronts all the apparel I have selected and the logo is already on all of the backs.
Let me show you how this works. First things first, go to http://www.zazzle.com/cr/quick/start while logged in and the Quick Product Create pop up window should appear (if not click the ‘Get Started’ button).
The first thing you will be asked to do is to choose what sort or products you want to create in bulk. There are a few default product ‘templates’ that you can choose from, but when it comes to using custom templates that you have set up, you need to create them first and save them as templates to be used later for QPC. Once you create this initial set of template products, you can then use them the next time you choose which products to create.
The first time around you must choose from the default templates that are available. You can add up to 100 products on your create list. Once you have added the first line of products, you can keep adding more and more until you have the desired selection of products. In my case, I will choose the ‘Light Apparel Only’ to generate a bunch of products to tweek and then save as templates. I will also delete all the additional products that I don’t want and keep adding more until I have the exact line up of products that I plan on making into templates.
Next you will be prompted to select an image for your products that will eventually become templates. I simply use the default ‘Your Image Here’ image that is already available for you use. By selecting this default image, you can give your products an image place holder. Once the products are generated with this image place holder on them, you can always replace them with your own version if you like. You will also be asked to choose your fit/fill options (#3) but since you will be creating templates, you can leave it on ‘Use Template Defaults’. Next just click ‘Create Products’ and you will see the first batch of Light Apparel products appear.
Once all the Light Apparel products are created next its time to prune and tune each product to meet your template needs. In some cases You will need to delete the products that you don’t want in the mix, as I mentioned earlier. Remember, you can make up to 100 products at a time, so make sure that you add all the products you want to make for this particular template set.
Above you will see the products that were generated for me. I don’t want hats or ties for this particular product template set, so I will delete those 3 products.
Next I will go in and individually customize each product so that its showing the right model and shirt style that I want for my templates. I will also add a brand logo to the back of every shirt so that later when I call upon these templates, all the shirts will be set to the right style, model type and will come with the logo on the back already positioned the way I set it. This will drastically cut down on the time I would spend repeating this process over and over again.
As you can see above, I’ve changed a few of the shirt styles and the models as well. What you cant see in the image above is that I also set a logo on the backs of all the products. See below.
Once you have set up all of your products the way you want them, click on the NEXT tab to go to the next step.
Here you will find all all the fields for pricing, product info and setting categories etc. Since you are creating templates, the most important part to take notice is the ‘Quick product create options’ section you see below:
By choosing ‘Templates for reuse for quick create’ you have now set these products to be templates for use later with the Quick Product Create tool. Once you set all the other things like Titles, descriptions, categories etc, click the ‘Post It’ button and your template products will be created and placed into your product selection. These products WILL BE LIVE and your customers will be able to create and customize products using your templates. This is great to make a sale off of a customer that didn’t find what they were looking for in your store. If you don’t want your customers to see these templates, you can make them private products, which will hide them from the public, but still allow you to use them as Quick Product Create templates.
The next time you go to use QPC, you will notice that there is a new selection available to you. In this case, I placed my QPC Template products in a folder called ‘Templates’ and as a result, there is now a ‘Templates’ category that I can choose when selecting what ‘templates’ to use when bulk creating products the next time around.
When you choose this option, you will notice you will have all the products that you selected and set up previously popping up with the design you selected on them.
