Zazzle - Use Create-Product to earn 17% of sale

By Vivek Puri | September 1st, 2006 at 03:35 pm ET         

Zazzle, the customized products marketplace for consumer enthusiasts, has announced a new marketing tool - Create-a-Product API. Idea is pretty simple, easily integrable, and great for websites having huge number of photographs. Basically visitors on your website or blog can automatically generate customized products from any image or text on your web site, and for any purchase made from your API links, you will earn 17% in commission(10% Royalty + 7% Referral). You can even add logo or text to each of the products created using the API. Custom Apparel’s, US Postage, Custom Mugs, and custom cards can be purchased using this API.

Setting up Create-a-Product API is easy. You need to get your contributor and associates account on Zazzle, create your product template to define how your products will be generated, create the links and add them to your site and you are all set.

I think this is a smart thinking on the part of Zazzle given that all kinds of widgets are floating around in the blogosphere. It will be a nice idea to integrate Create-a-Product API with major photo sharing sites like Flickr/Photobucket(copyright issues still remain), or stock photo sales sites like Gettyimages/Fotolia. All someone needs to do now is write a small plugin for wordpress and most of the blogs are set to earn.

Zazzle.com, based out of Menlo Park, CA, was founded in 2003 and is one of the well funded companies in the area of customized products. Zazzle has received $16 million in Series A round of financing in July, 2005 from Google fame venture capitalists John Doerr and Ram Shriram. Zazzle was founded by Robert Beaver and his two sons, Bobby and Jeff who were still attending Stanford University.

Links:
Zazzle
Create-a-Product