Zazzle Design Efforts Have Been in High Gear And I Want to Tell You About Them

So then I took The Whole Summer Off, Plus A Few Other Months For Good Measure. Today I'm resuming where I left off attempting to chronicle some of the journey with you here. I've been known to have some challenges with balance but I'm not going to belabor the point of how I should have been marketing all along, even while creating more designs. Instead, I'll tell you that I've learned so much this year, and am as excited as I ever was to have discovered Print on Demand (POD) as a creative outlet that also offers the potential for generating income. Before I move on, I'll show you some of the products I've designed that people have recently purchased. In no particular order:

I'll share even more at the bottom of the page. Since it's daunting to try and fill you in on All That Happened While I Wasn't Maintaining This Site, why don't I dip my toe back in the blogging waters with a few highlights instead?

  1. I streamlined my efforts and, through mountains of trial-and-error, plus countless hours of research, started learning how to create strategies for what I want to spend my time designing. I'm not locked into the strategies, but they're certainly helping.
  2. My last blog post tells you about one weekend in May when I designed nothing but postage stamps with the word "Love" on them. Somebody bought a bunch of one of those designs just yesterday, in fact! I'm still designing postage. It could be a little outrageous, the disproportionate amount of time I've poured into these designs. For some reason, that product has really captured my attention and I continue to be thrilled that I'm able to design my own postage stamps and also postage for other people's special occasions.
  3. Speaking of US Postage Stamps, this is the single product I've chosen to design that requires approval before the products are visible in my store. Months ago I also designed a few Zippo lighters which required approval as well. But I've since opted not to continue down that road. Postage, though? Oh yes. The ideas seem endless and I have much more to tell you, on that front, in upcoming posts here.
  4. Paper products, in general, have gotten much more of my recent design attention than the gift products I spent the first few months of the year designing. I love that I have the option to do either one, on any given day. This mood-driven creative loves Zazzle.
  5. It's been tricky to sort out my preferences where setting royalties is concerned. I'm feeling much more confident choosing the percentage for various products and these days I find myself going back to adjust royalties on pieces I designed in the first few months. Sometimes I go down; usually I go up.

If things go according to plan, I'll be blogging here even more in the coming days, so I'll wrap this up for now. I look forward to sharing some new designs with you as well as elaborating on some of the lessons I've learned while designing through Zazzle. They seem never to stop coming, and many of them, I suspect, are worth putting out there for interested others to find one day, too. For now, I hope you're enjoying some sort of creative endeavor for yourself!

Cheers!

Melody

My Photos of Banana Leaves on US Postage Stamps!

It's pretty exciting to tell you that I now design custom postage stamps. Hm. Well, yeah. Exciting is the right word. All told, I've designed more than 50 unique styles of stamps so far. But this post is about the ones mentioned in the title and seen in the photos. As of this writing, I've put 13 different photos of banana leaves that I've taken on US postage stamps. Yay me!

Incidentally, you can do it, too. (So yay you!) I mean, here's nothing about me that's so special that I have this secret, hidden trick. In fact, tons of people do it! Design their own postage stamps. Like so many of the other things I'm writing about these days (as in a hefty percentage of what you find on this website, in fact,) I discovered this nifty trick through Zazzle.

A couple of things to know if you decide you want some of these OR if you want to design your very own:

  • They're not cheap. I mean, when you buy custom stamps that I design or that someone else designs, or you design your own and buy them for yourself, the markup is pretty hefty. But of course it is! There's always a premium cost for a premium offering. Still, it's good to get that out of the way.
  • They have to be approved. Whereas most of the other designs I create on the Zazzle system allow me to use my own judgement and interpretation of their terms, postage stamps must be manually approved by an actual person who either works for or is a trained representative of the US postal service. I mention this because not only will you need to factor in a custom design timeline when you order some, but if you design your own, it's good to add a day or a few days to the estimated timeline if you're wanting some special stamps for a special occasion.

I have a collection of hundreds of photos I've shot that feature my honey's banana leaves and banana plants in general. And I've prepared quite a lot of them for this purpose - print on demand in general, and postage stamps specifically - but for now I've created this starter collection. Funny thing is, that stamp in the image at the very top is one I've sold twice now. Long before I ever even shared the link to my Zazzle store, I sold these stamps. In fact, this sheet of stamps were sold twice within the first week of my very first sales. Which I just find so interesting and fascinating. There's just no predicting what will and will not sell. But these did. So that's pretty cool. And they were purchased by someone I don't know... on the west coast, in fact.

I'm sure there's more to tell you but those are the basics. Sometimes I take a lot of photos. Quite often those photos have featured these gorgeous green leaves. And occasionally, I put them on items that are meant to be printed on merchandise. Including stamps. Feel free to get some anytime you like!