Custom Thanksgiving cards to mail or share online. Unique designs created by independent designers mean you are supporting a small business with your purchase.
I’ve been selling “Happy Thanksgiving” cards for years now. Many of my designs were created using my own New England foliage photography.
Zazzle now offers instant downloads for certain types of cards and Thanksgiving is the perfect time to share greetings for family and friends.
Yes, there are free Thanksgiving card options out there, but designers can create unique cards – with a sample message to use – on the Zazzle platform. Templates are provided for photos and text, and it is very simple to personalize any type of greeting.
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Thanksgiving Cards With an Option to Download
If making your own greeting cards is not for you, consider ordering the downloadable cards found at the Zazzle site. You will be supporting an independent designer who will be very grateful.
Screenshot
Many of my fall themed items contain my own photos of red and orange leaves collected and photographed when I lived in New England. The folded card above is an example.
Until recently, the cards had to be purchased and then mailed. Now, it is easy to use the instant download option and buy the design for one low price. Once you have the card design, use it as much as you’d like! (Downloads are for personal use only – read more here.) Anyone with a smart phone or iPad can read your custom message and know they were being thought of during the holiday.
Happy Thanksgiving Photo Cards
Share photos of the kids, grandkids, family and pets with photo cards. Use the templates to insert your own pictures. Customize the message and surprise grandparents and friends with a “Happy Thanksgiving” message.
Are you a Zazzle Designer?
If you are a Zazzle designer and create Thanksgiving cards, feel free to leave a link in the comment section to your store or collection.
Zazzle introduced a Z-rank a few years ago and designers went nuts trying to improve their ranking. The scale goes from 1-10, with ten being the best. I believe that designers hoped that a higher number would bring better sales because Zazzle would somehow prefer the top-ranked stores.
Find your store zRank in the backend of your store. It is on the right hand side. There is also a list of quick links where the Creator Hub page contains information about zRank, and other things. Or, click my link below.
zRank in one of my stores
As an example of the unimportance of zRank, the screenshot above is from one of my stores that currently has a rank of 8. That is a pretty good number, and puts me in the top 1/5, but my sales are dismal. A higher number is doing nothing for me in the way of sales, and I never expected it to.
Here is Zazzle’s How zRank Works page, which you should read, but I go over a little of it here.
If you read the ranking page, you will be told that you can control your zRank by “optimizing” your store. Complete your store (header, product optimization, and profile) as examples.
After doing all the basics of setting up a Zazzle store, and posting a bunch of products, it will most likely increase your rank, to some middle number – 4 or 5. This is good info for Zazzle beginners who need to know that competition of the store is a must.
Zazzle even says in the “important notes” that zRank “will continue to evolve over time”. Meaning? It’s pretty vague when it comes to how this will benefit each designer – because it doesn’t.
The Most Important Thing
On the entire page that I linked above, this is probably the most important sentence: “The more the products in your store are selling the better for your zRank.” And that sums it up – Who cares? In reality, I care about selling to make money – not to get a special number at Zazzle!
Yes, you need to create nice products with templates, you need your store to look nice and easy to navigate, but your zRank will only go up so far unless you sell.
And once your zRank number is higher, you will sell way more – NOT..!
These days I think we, as designers, know that selling is quite difficult. My sales have dropped from a few thousand dollars a month to a few hundred. It was sudden, and horrible. I am not alone.
Don’t Worry About zRank
From the beginning of the addition of zRank I have pretty much ignored it. I never believed I could do anything differently to bring in sales, from what I was already doing. And when my zRank number was high, it was high because I had made sales.
That number is not going to help you get sales, but sales will help the number go up. So, therefore, I ignore it.
I believe that Zazzle came up with this idea to get designers to improve their stores. When we try hard to create beautiful stores that customers will buy from, it helps Zazzle. But designers took it to mean competition. How can I get my zRank up? They stressed, because they believed (and still do) that a higher number is what will help them sell. It is the other way around.
They (Zazzle) will keep promoting the same big sellers that they always have. Unless you begin selling products like mad, you will probably never make the 10 zRank, and even if you do, getting to the top of Zazzle’s pages is unlikely. If 400 designers have store ranks of 10, are you more likely to be seen then? The competition is fierce and there are millions of products.
Take a look at this page which shows “Our Talented Community” and you will see ten blocks featuring the best selling designers. Many of these people have been at the top at Zazzle for many years. I have seen their names over and over.
Well, the top sellers will continue to sell more, because they are found easier in searches, because Zazzle likes them, and promotes them – because they sell more.
And on it goes. They are very talented people, for sure, but other very talented people stay lost in the hundreds of pages that come after the landing page. It is the way of the world, and it is the way of selling online. And it’s getting tougher.
This is why we cannot count on Zazzle to be the place where our products get seen.
My Store zRanks – The Current Numbers
My ten stores range from 5-8 in zRanks. I just looked because I really had no idea of the numbers. My lowest ranking store, the 5 rank, is a very new store and I’m not sure I have ever sold anything from it. All stores are 100% complete.
The highest number I ever attained was a nine, and I believe it was my Holiday Store when Christmas sales were continuously coming in.
The rank will change when sales pick up or drop, but I believe that if you do the basics – get that 100% complete – your zRank will be somewhere in the middle numbers.
Selling is Most Important, So How Does That Happen?
Focus on the things you need to do to bring customers to see your products. And, the big question is, how do we do that?
What used to work, no longer works. I have more products out there these days than I ever did and very little is selling. For many years I sold numerous products every single day. I would have pages of royalties listed for a single day! Now, I have days with no sales at all. That hadn’t happened for many, many years.
I would like to write a post about how to get sales, but I’m stumped. It truly seems like a complete waste of time to create and promote. But I’m addicted to it after working with Zazzle for over 19 years, and I have the time, so I continue.
I would not encourage anyone to begin a POD store on any platform at this point. The market is oversaturated with everything. Once something becomes popular, everyone copies it. Even Etsy is in on the POD sales these days. I no longer believe it is a good way to make an income.
Forget About zRank
After you read this post, forget about zRank. If your store is complete and looking good that is all you need. As long as you rank 4 or above (as per the Zazzle page) but remember it means very little. It’s just a number. I wish it would go away.
If you are new, begin promoting yourself away from Zazzle – on Pinterest, FaceBook, TikTok, or wherever you like. Do not count on Zazzle to help you sell.
This is my opinion only. I think as designers we have better things to focus on than a store ranking. I wish you luck!
Text and photo templates can, and should, be added to nearly every Zazzle product you sell.
Zazzle is known for its use of templates and easy personalization. As designers we are expected to provide templates that are ready to use. I believe that our products posted for sale should nearly always offer at least one template.
I have worked in association with Zazzle since 2007. At that time in my life I barely knew how to upload something, much less create a template. Heck, I didn’t even know what that was!
So, I have come a long way and learned a lot. And one important thing I learned early on was how to make a template. Zazzle has also changed a lot, and now we have very advanced templates – such as photos and photo blocks – compared to back then. Everything is easy now to center and make more perfect.
My Oldest Zazzle Designs
This is a bit embarrassing, but here are some of the first things I made. Many first items have been deleted because they were just so awful. For some reason these are still around.
Created 8/13/2007 SOLD – NONE! Created Jan.2008 – SOLD – 30
To begin my Zazzle journey I upload photos of things around the house – like my little dog Rolly. I also began to draw more and eventually I figured out how to add my art to my shop. The cupcake with #1 candle was an early illustrated image.
My text sizing was off, like in that “baby girl” greeting card – it was huge! I had very large text inside the card too – and none of the text was in template form! I still managed to sell 30 cards over the years. I chalk that up to the fact that it was “art” and also the nice message inside. But, 30 sales in 18 years is pretty pathetic!
Zazzle Offers The Best Customization – I looked Around
Zazzle falls short in some areas, which I won’t go into here, but when it comes to customization, they are the top POD company – IMO. Many designers also agree with that. After they made all their recent changes, that takes 40% of our royalty amount now (Grrrrr), I got ticked off and decided to try another POD.
For most of the first part of 2026 I set up a Shopify store, created products at Printify and Gelato and began to learn new things about how to sell through them.
I am not a techy person at all. Printify and Gelato provide the products, but the sales have to come through another outlet – like Shopify or Etsy. I do not have an Etsy account – except for personal shopping – but a lot of POD creators use it to sell POD products. This is completely different from Zazzle. As the designer YOU handle payments, problems, and returns.
What I discovered first hand is that although Printify wants me to make products that can be customized with text, to do so is not straightforward. I got fed up with the difficulty and quit the whole thing before I even made a single sale.
I also wanted to integrate Zazzle items into my Shopify account, but couldn’t do it. All Zazzle items came up as “sold out” because they couldn’t be linked the right way – this was because Zazzle is not integrated with Shopify.
Let me say that I was very impressed with Shopify. I truly wish Zazzle would change and let us promote on such a platform. Shopify’s AI was a huge help to me when it came to navigating and setting up my site. And, Shopify does not begin charging (except for $1.00 a month) for three months! I wanted to shift everything to that place, but it didn’t work out. I had already sunk nearly 20 years of time into Zazzle, so I returned.
Adding Zazzle to My Blog
Now I am back to updating and posting for sale at Zazzle. They are simply the easiest for designing, and the best for customer personalization. Where else can you create a custom, multi-photo blanket gift like this!
Maybe by having a Zazzle section on this blog, some other designers will chime in with helpful suggestions and selling advice. I think most of us can use support at this point. It’s why I have wanted to find a way to keep Zazzle posts separate from my boating and camping posts.
Create Templates on Every Product
Text templates can be deleted by the customer if they don’t want to use it / them. Provide them anyway. It will help your product. I’m not sure how, but Zazzle does want to sell custom items and customers who know about Zazzle know they provide custom items.
I’d be willing to bet that most things you sell are customizable. Unless the product is going to really look bad with a monogram or name or text, add a place for it.
Make Message Templates They May Keep
I’ve found that including a message inside a greeting card helps it to sell better. Create a heartfelt message – maybe one you would like to receive – and make it a template. The customer can then decide to keep it, change it, or remove the wording. Often a customer doesn’t know what to say, so think it up for them. Make the effort. It is better than saying, “Your message here”. I think customers like to see your vision for the item. Go the extra step – it may earn you a few bucks.
People Love Themselves
People are in love with sharing selfies, making videos of how they do things, and showing off proud images of their big families. Tap into that. Provide templates that include a family name, a “date established”, a monogram – single initial or three letters. Belonging to your “tribe” is big. Think about that when you create a product and customize the template accordingly.
Families are Big
When Zazzle began offering Christmas tree skirts I made many that had beach and sea themes. But, until I added curved text across the front – with a family name as an example – I didn’t sell many.
*Making templates is not enough – you must promote the items as well.
All time sales: 15
Also, create items that work well for gift gifing, especially for the holiday season. But all items tend to sell year round, although maybe not as often. I usually sell Christmas items long into the new year.
Custom textCustom textNames – custom text
Use AI For Ideas
I do not use AI to create my designs. My products in all of my stores contain photos or art. Some clipart may have been created with the help of AI, I purchased some clipart from Etsy, so I’m not sure. I do use AI for help with tags, descriptions, and message ideas. Occasionally, I create an AI image to use as a mockup.
Some designers sell AI created products, and to each his own. I like making authentic designs, and have recently dug out my old iPad to create hand-drawn, seamless patterns. It was another new avenue for learning! It was my newest shop that was born away from Zazzle but now lives in a new Zazzle shop named Sabal and Soil.
Photo Templates Are Easier Now
Ever since phones began to give us the ability to take loads of photos, everyone loves to share them. Therefore many products you create should have photo templates. If it makes sense, add some photo templates.
Text template are easy to do, but photo templates are also easy now with Zazzle’s new grouped photo frames in the “elements” section of the design tool.
New Templates Vs. Old
Card on Left: The orange Happy Thanksgiving cards, I had to make each photo template myself and figure out the spacing, which was very time consuming.
Card on Right: Used a 4-photo ready-made template. We now have better options for making multi-photo cards. Filling these photo templates to sell took me seconds.
5 photo template4 photo template
Please Chime In
In closing I would suggest that if you design for Zazzle you become familiar with all types of templates available for us to use. Label them and go back and double check that the templates show and work.
I have recently found that I have some trouble with my text templates NOT showing correctly – they are made as templates but don’t show for a customer. The new design tool makes it much harder to double check our templates. We basically have to post items for sale and then try them out. It’s not good, IMO, but it’s what we have at the present time.
If you design for Zazzle, or even if you don’t, I’d love to hear your opinions. Thanks for reading.
