2021 Zazzle Income Report - My Third Year with Print on Demand in Review

It’s taken me a while, but I have finally compiled all my sales data from 2021 to share with you! And, if you’re anything like me, and you enjoy looking at the data in a visual way, I’ve got some juicy graphs for you to look at below.

A few things to note before diving into the data…

If you haven’t read my 2019 income report you can find that here.
And you can check out my 2020 income report here.
I had about $150 worth of canceled orders throughout the whole year. Those sales are not included in any of the graphs.
I took a contract for film from mid January 2021 through to the end of September 2021, and that took the majority of my time as a typical day is 10-12 hours.
My partner, Evan, and I were also working diligently on building our website in 2021.
Essentially, Zazzle took a backseat and I didn’t have much time to put into my shops in 2021. So I mostly coasted off the work I had put into Zazzle the previous year.

In my opinion, being able to take all of this information into account makes looking at the graphs and the sales data much more interesting and informative as you have more of an understanding of how much effort was going into all of it throughout the year as well as where the shop(s) were at when the year started.

2021 Zazzle Income Report - My 3rd year on Zazzle.

A Brief Rundown of My Shops

In 2021 I had a total of 5 stores on Zazzle. Naturally, I want to keep my shop names private, however I can give a brief overview of each shop.

Shop 1: This is the first store I created on Zazzle back in April of 2019. There isn’t really any rhyme or reason to my product or design selection, I was just messing around and seeing what worked. This is the store that sold all the masks in the previous year and some of this year. This shop has a few thousand products listed, however it’s not really a part of my long term goal on Zazzle anymore.
Shop 2: This is my shop where I list my seamless patterns. I started this shop in September of 2021 and only made one sale the whole year, but I included it in the graph anyways.
Shop 3: This is a small-ish niche store. I opened it in mid-December of 2020. My partner, Evan, and I originally opened an Etsy shop to sell these designs as printables and I figured I’d create a Zazzle shop and get all the designs uploaded there as well. I put a few days work into this shop and haven’t really touched it since. It has less than 1,000 products.
Shop 4: This is a somewhat niche store that I opened in January 2021. This is the store that I currently put most of my work into. However, I didn’t really start putting serious effort into this shop until late 2022. By the end of 2021, it had around 250 designs live.
Shop 5: This is a small niche store. I opened it in mid-December 2020. This store has a specific month that it does well, but it doesn’t really show in this year’s sales data as it was so new at the time. This shop had about 300-350 products listed by the end of 2021.

I’ve compiled the sales data in a few different ways. To start, I looked at all the sales data month over month. Next, I broke it up by shop. And then I did it again but I removed all mask sales, because the masks were a short-lived thing for my shop. They don’t sell much at all anymore and are not a part of my long term plan with Zazzle.

And with all that out in the open, let’s dive in!

2021 Total Zazzle Sales & Earnings by Month

As you can see in the graphs, my sales and earnings started pretty strong right from the get go and even grew month over month for the first 2-3 months. However, once Spring hit the sales started to decline.

Sales stayed somewhat low throughout the summer and all the way until October. And finally in November and December, we see a boost in sales and earnings.

2021 Monthly Zazzle Sales & Earnings by Shop

It’s pretty clear that Shop 1, my oldest shop with the most products, is the clear winner here. My other shops didn’t have much in the way of sales throughout the year as they were all just getting going.

Shop 4 saw a bulk order in August where someone bought 35 items.

Otherwise, Shop 3 was the one that made the most sales and the most money. That’s the shop that I piggybacked off of Evan and I’s Etsy shop and spent a couple days on at the beginning of the year setting it up and haven’t really touched it since.

2021 Zazzle Sales & Earnings Excluding Masks

When you take out the sale of face masks, the sales and earnings are a little lower for the first few months and then they start to steady out and match the previous graphs.

I like taking out the mask sales as they were a bit of an anomaly and skewed the data. They’re also not part of my long term goal. By taking them out of the graphs the data seems more clear to me and it’s easier to look at the earnings and sales of the other shops.

*Please also note on these graphs the value of the Y axis has changed compared to the graphs that include sales masks.

Goal Setting with Zazzle

After compiling all of this data it really put things into perspective and makes me think about my long terms goals with Zazzle. I’ve said this a number of times throughout this website, but Zazzle is a long term business and, unless you are putting in full time hours and already know exactly how to build a shop, it is going to take quite a while to build it up to success. And that’s not a bad thing!

Looking back at the sales data, I’m actually quite surprised by how little my Shops 2-5 made month over month as they are now my main earners instead of Shop 1.

I’m excited to compile the data for 2022 and 2023 when the year is up.

I think it would also be interesting to look at one shop’s progress over multiple years as well as how many products are in each shop compared to how much they make and different things like that.

That being said, it is really time consuming to compile all this data, so forgive me if it takes a while for me to publish it!

If you like this kind of data be sure to subscribe to my newsletter to get notified when I publish my next income report!

And as always…

Happy Designing!

Tessa

– My Recommended Tools –

Below are my personal favorite tools that I use regularly in my POD business.
The below links are affiliate links meaning I may receive a small commission for anything purchased through these links at no extra cost to you.

Creative Fabrica – My favorite place to get graphics with a straightforward commercial license for print on demand use.

Adobe Illustrator – I use Adobe Illustrator for at least half of my design creations. It’s pricey but so worth it when you choose to take the business seriously. Get a free trial to Adobe Illustrator here.

Graphics Tablet – My partner got me this exact tablet as a Christmas gift when I was just starting out with creating my own designs. It has served me well now for several years and it was a very low cost investment that made a big impact in my POD business.

Ergonomic Mouse – If you spend long hours at the computer like me I highly recommend investing in a good ergonomic mouse. Over the years, I have caused an injury in my hand/wrist from being at the computer so much, but my pain has gotten significantly better since getting this ergonomic mouse on Amazon.