Award Sounds

Audio Cloth has 3 sites for selling its music and audio-themed Print-On-Demand (P.O.D.) products such as t-shirts, hoodies, sweaters, etc. It's currently using:

• Zazzle
• Printfection
• CafePress

I thought I'd have a look at the social networking side of the 3, today starting with Zazzle.

Options Available
From what I can see so far, you can do the following internal to Zazzle:

• comment on a product
• comment on a gallery (same as commenting on a seller/retailer/designer)
• join a fanclub
• direct message
• rate a product

There are other options for promoting your shop and networking outside of Zazzle - e.g. through Facebook and MySpace or the flash panel below - but I'll concentrate on the internal options first.

Initial Thoughts
Commenting on products and galleries seems to have the same amount of spam as most of the social network sites. There are some users who seem to be joining any fanclub they can, probably in the hope that you'll follow their link back and either buy something, rate a product or join their club. It's a scatter gun approach and my impression is that it dilutes the potential of the networking tool.

I've yet to use the direct message feature. I'm not sure what someone would want to say to me or what I've have to say to another shopkeeper.

But that's the key point here, most of the social networking options above are for shop-keeper to shop-keeper. I've searched for products with a similar theme to that on the Audio Cloth shop. I don't count them as competitors, but more as potential partners and allies. For any that are good, I will rate them. Generally, I get a product rating back. In this way, I hope that the products (theirs and Audiocloth's) start to appear above the mass of the rest of the products. Time will tell.

Conclusion
Zazzle's approach to intra-site networking doesn't initially seem to be about increasing sales, it's more about networking with other retailers. However use it right, and it's got potential to increase sales.

At the time of writing, there are 12,460,556,340 customisable products on Zazzle. You have to do something to make your products stand out. Right now, rating products by other shop-keepers appears the best option from within Zazzle.


create custom t-shirts at Zazzle