3 Reasons I Have Multiple Niche Shops on Zazzle (and 2 downsides)
In various videos and articles I have shared that I have multiple shops under my Zazzle account (I currently have about 10 shops.) And I have received a few questions wondering why I have so many shops rather than just focusing on one.
I have a few reasons for this, so let’s talk about it!
Now, I do want to add a disclaimer here, these are my opinions and this is what works for me. I am not saying that this is the best way to go about things or that if you aren’t doing it this way that you’re wrong. This is just the way I have found I get the most enjoyment out of this business while allowing myself to be creative and still making a profit.
This article is also in video format!
Creativity
Creativity is the biggest reason for me to have multiple shops. I get new shop ideas on a regular basis, and while I don’t pursue even half of them, I do often write them down to save for later. But I have pursued a handful of them.
This allows me the space to pursue different creative ideas and have fun with them rather that forcing myself to stick to one niche or topic.
What I don’t do is drop a half finished shop to start a new shop and repeat that cycle only to have 10 half finished shops. I will see a shop through until I believe it is ‘finished’ before starting a new shop.
I also find that if I were to have one niched down shop and I needed to continually be putting out new designs, at a certain point it would start to feel forced as I would be running out of ideas. With multiple niched down shops I can step away from one shop when I run out of ideas and be creative for another shop. So I never have to force my creativity, which would likely result in bad designs.
No time to read now? No Problem! Pin it for later!
Diversification
I’ve mentioned diversification a handful of times throughout this website and my YouTube channel, and I will mention it again here.
Diversification is so important in the online space. Whether that be by having multiple shops on Zazzle or having multiple POD shops on different platforms or having multiple streams of income in the online space in general (I have all of the above – built up over the last 5 years.)
Having multiple shops protects you from your income getting completely taken out by a single competing shop. By having multiple niched down shops you have insurance if something happens to one of them. If something does happen, the other shops should hopefully help pad that blow.
Cannibalization
If you have a niched down shop, there’s really only so many products and designs you can create for that niche before you’re just competing with yourself and you won’t really be making anymore sales. Does that make sense? Let me explain…
If you have a shop in the astrophysics niche and you have dominated the niche, I mean 50-100 designs on many products across the platform. And many of your products show up on the first page when searching for the targeted keywords. By creating more designs you will just be competing with your own products and you will be getting diminishing returns the more products/designs you create. You are cannibilizing your own sales.
But it is important that we continue to put out new designs consistently, that’s where having multiple shops is nice. As mentioned above, when I spoke about creativity, we can step away from one shop and continue to put new designs out for another shop and then come back when we have new ideas later on.
Seasonality
Many niched down shops have some kind of seasonality to them. I have 3 shops that are popular during a very specific time of year – all in different months of the year.
Shop 1 has a peak season in February-April – sales start to pick up in mid to late February and usually peak in April with an abrupt die off at the end of the month.
Shop 2 has a peak season of May – August – sales start to trickle in in late April but really start to pick up in May and continue steadily until the end of summer.
Shop 3 has a peak season in July-August – this is a new shop, so I am just guessing at this point, but sales should start to pick up in late July and continue until the end of August, possibly even into September.
So between these 3 shops I should see steady and consistent sales from February into September.
And not long after that, the Holiday season is here and everything sells well in November/December.
Given the above information, there are a few months of the year where my sales will drop, mainly January and October. And this has been pretty consistent for me for the last few years. (I’m hoping my new shop might roll right from the end of summer into the holiday season, but we’ll see.)
That’s why this year, I would like to build out 2 new small shops that have a niche that peaks in one of those months.
I also have shops that are evergreen, which is great too! But honestly, I like my seasonal shops better.
Those are my main reasons for why having multiple shops works for me. Obviously, this won’t be the case for everyone, and that is okay! Everyone’s journey is going to look different.
Now that we’ve gone over what I would call the pros, let’s talk about the two “downfalls” when it comes to creating multiple shops…
Shop Setup
It may seem like a slog to have to complete the shop setup for each new store you create, but the truth is, once you’ve run through those steps a couple of times it’s not that hard. And if you have a well thought out idea for a shop, it shouldn’t take too long.
I recommend using ChatGPT to help come up with the shop name, tagline, and about section to speed the process along.
Regardless, it’s certainly not a reason to stop yourself from creating what could be a profitable shop!
Marketing
Marketing even just one shop can be a really time consuming process and so this is where I can definitely agree that marketing for multiple shops is hard!
I do all my marketing on Pinterest, as I think that’s the easiest place to market (at least for me) but I am totally willing to admit that maintaining multiple Pinterest accounts is kind of a pain!
But that’s where creating systems is so key. I batch create pins and then I batch upload and schedule them out. Admittedly, I spend way too much time looking at Pinterest stats, but as far the actual pin creation and upload process goes, I only spend a few hours a month.
I hope this article was helpful for you and gave you some insight into how I run my Zazzle business and why I like having multiple shops.
What do you think? Do you have multiple shops or just one? I’d love to hear from you in the comments below!
