Zazzle is a print on demand company that allows you to upload your images to their site, and then design items with your images. When one of your designed items is ordered, you get a predetermined commission from the sale.

You can have just one or several galleries on Zazzle, and it is totally free. It is a fairly easy site to use, and the quality of the products is quite high.

Currently Zazzle produces custom printed clothing, print on demand art, and custom printed gift items.

Do you think that Zazzle sounds too good to be true?

Anything that sounds too good to be true usually is, and there is a catch to using Zazzle. The catch is that people will not just come to your Zazzle gallery. They need to be invited. In order to get attention and traffic to your gallery, you need to promote the gallery.

This is not an unreasonable catch. As anyone knows, if you want to succeed, you need to work at it. There are lots of ways that you can promote your Zazzle gallery, some take a bit more effort than others.

Promoting your Zazzle gallery is not difficult at all. Once you set it up, some of it can be done automatically.

First of all, if you don't have one already, you should have a Twitter account. I am not going to go into the virtues of a Twitter account here, other than to say that it is a great way to create followers, and promote just about any kind of business. What I like best about Twitter is that I can create RSS (Really Simple Syndication) feeds that feed directly to my Twitter account. For example, I feed my Hubpages feed to Twitter. Every time that I publish a new hub, it automatically tells all my Twitter followers. If they are interested in the topic, they will follow the link back to the hub.

1. Create a Twitter account if you don't already have one.
2. Create an RSS feed for your gallery.
3. Use a service like Twitterfeed to feed the RSS feed to Twitter.
4. Now that you have set that up, every time you publish a new item, it will automatically tweet to your followers.
5. If you are new on Twitter, don't worry, you will get followers just from being there.
   

You can take your same RSS feed and feed it to many RSS feed services. For more information on RSS feeds, read this article How To Get Deep Links with RSS Feeds.

Just like you can promote articles online, you can also promote your images from Zazzle.  Each Zazzle item has its own web page address.  For instance, the main picture at the beginning of this article has a web page address of http://www.zazzle.com/dichotomy_poster-228813496588084925 for the poster.  You can take any webpage address like this one and add it to social networking and bookmarking sites.  My particular favorites are: Tagfoot, Delicious, Digg, and Facebook, but there are many others.

Each one of these sites can create traffic for your Zazzle gallery through backlinks and also through your network of friends on that particular site.

You can write articles online about how you create your designs for your Zazzle gallery. For instance, the design highlighted in this article is from an original watercolor painting. I could write an article about how I painted this picture, and then refer back to the Zazzle gallery as a place someone could see the picture or purchase a print. Articles can also be tweeted on Twitter, and promoted on social networking and bookmarking sites.

You can also promote your Zazzle gallery offline. There are many ways that you can promote your Zazzle gallery in the real world.  Here are some suggestions:

• Create business cards with your Zazzle gallery address on them.  The address should look like this--http://zazzle.com/lakeerieartists--only with your name after the slash.  Hand these out when you meet people.
• Buy some of your Zazzle wearables--hats, shirts, or dog clothes--and wear them (or have your dog wear them).  When people ask you where you got them, you can send them to your gallery.
• Put your Zazzle gallery on your regular business cards.
• Use your Zazzle greeting cards to send to friends and acquaintances.
• Talk about Zazzle to people--word of mouth still works.

I am sure that you can think of more ideas just like this for when you come into contact with people.  The idea is to make people aware that your gallery exists.

Another idea is to include a link to your Zazzle gallery in your signature of your email and of any forums that you participate in.  This is a more passive way to promote your gallery but it works. 

Most email systems allow a several line signature. You can put a link to your Zazzle gallery there.  That means that everyone who gets an email from you is reminded that you have a gallery.

Forums are interactive communities that build trust and fellowship with like minded people.  For instance, the Hubbers Forum allows Hubpages authors to share help and ideas.  Find some forums that resonate with your likes, and join them.  You will be able to put your Zazzle gallery in your signature.  Then just have fun.  Forums are meant to be places to chat, and learn from each other.  Do not promote outright on forums.  That is against forum ettiquette.  If people are interested in what you have to say, they will look at the links in your signature.

Blogging is just beginning to hit its potential online in many ways, and it is a great way to promote your artwork, your Zazzle gallery, and your art techniques.  People love reading blog posts, and getting to know the artist (you) better.

Blogging is easy to do, and you have the opportunity to have an informal type of conversation with your readers.  You can write short posts, and feature one of your Zazzle items on each post with a link back to the item.  In the post, you can talk about how you created that design, what you were thinking while you designed it, or what your favorite art materials are. 

Your audience will want to see your work because they are interested in you as a person, and as an artist.

Of course, most of these methods can be used in conjunction with one another, or together.  You can use RSS feeds from your blog to feed to Twitter, and you can blog about your Twitter account.  This is how viral marketing starts.