Zazzle have opened up their UK site but there announcement leaves a lot of questions on the table. I am guessing that the products will be produced and shipped from the UK to all EU countries. I base this assumption on the fact that the FAQ says they will use the Royal Mail. If this is true it will save money on import duties that the British would previously have had to pay if shipped from the US.

For shopkeepers it seems to be a great new source of income as I’m sure many British people will be happier to buy from a store that sells it’s items in pounds rather than dollars. I noticed that for each of my .com stores there is already an equivalent .co.uk store so I don’t even have to do any extra work to set them up. You can check them out below. From what I have read in the forums our tracking is already included.

I also note that the sites are treated as one in terms of visits, tracking and such. My Analytics code is already entered for me on the UK site – the same as is tracking my US pages – and the number of visits is about the same.

http://www.zazzle.com/ruderetro
http://www.zazzle.co.uk/ruderetro

The UK stores are almost mirrors of the originals. I have noticed a few differences apart from the currencies though. For a start, you can pay for your items with PayPal which I don’t believe is possible with Zazzle.com. On the other hand it seems that you can’t get you commission paid by PayPal even though you can with Zazzle.com. It’s very confusing but hopefully these are just a few kinks that will be ironed out soon enough. It is a little worrying though as I really don’t want to receive cheques if possible. It looks like our royalties will be in separate accounts too. It means that I have more accounts to manage.

The sooner Zazzle consolidates the financial aspects of our accounts the better as they are already getting out of hand. If you had five accounts to monitor before you now have ten. If, as rumour has it, they open up even more domains it will become ridiculous. The volume bonus reports to still seem to be working from one account though.

It is nice that the volume bonus is combined with my US accounts (although the currency conversion seems to be off, unless one pound is all of a sudden equal to exactly one dollar – you never can tell these days).

Anyway, it’s all good and to celebrate the launch of Zazzle.co.uk Zazzle have announced a design contest with 5 prizes of £500 (notice the £ not $). It is only open to UK residents. Find out more at Zazzle.co.uk.