I'm new to Greeting Card Universe, but it seems like the approval process is exceedingly and unnecessarily long. Why? Places like Cafepress and Zazzle basically have no wait for approval. I may have to stick with them so I can get my cards up and selling quicker.

Sandra and Mark,
I too have been working on and submitting Christmas/Holiday cards, and have been for a month or better.  I know the approval process, the industry standards for submitting...I also know that it is much easier for me to "orate here" about submitting seasonal cards well in advance" as someone with a few cards under their belt....that does take the edge off.  However, please try to plan ahead, 4-6 months for the best exposure and an opportunity for the "cyber space spiders" to get a hit on your designs.  I promise it gets bettter...just continue to load your designs, that way you aren't 'watching the newly designed card flow' thingy like an anxious kitty (I was the queen of that)...drove me even nuttier than I am to date...lol

Have you seen some of the rubbish on other stores? Our customers at least know they are getting a quality product because of the approval process.
Some of the stuff I have seen for sale on Zazzle makes me cringe.
I have a store there, but I send any prospective customers here because I know they will not be presented with a hodge podge of misspellings on card fronts, misaligned verses and so on.
The approval process is one of the best assets this store has.

Exactly right Norma and Doreen. I have a store both places, but the artists here at GCU are exceedingly better....just phenomenal at their craft. So, even though the approval process is long this time of year....you will not see errors and mistakes, like on other sites. Thank you GCU reviewers for what you do!

I think it is quite fair to compare them in this discussion, considering the original post from Mark was inquiring why GCU has a long approval process when Zazzle and CafePress do not.
 
The points have been well stated here that those places do not review much upfront and therefore there are many products with spelling errors, images blown way beyond acceptable quality and many that are cut off or the wrong dimensions for the products they appear on.
 
We are only trying to give some response to Mark's inquiry about review process.  GCU stands behind the product and therefore helps the artists to design a card with correct spelling/grammar, good image quality and proper fit to the format guidelines.

The approval process is a lot longer than it used to be. I keep hearing from other artists that you should create and submit cards long before a holiday, etc, so they'll be approved in enough time to sell for a holdiday/event. That's fine, but on the Q&A page for new artists, it reads, "Once your card is submitted, we will review it and notify you of its status, usually within 7 days." It usually takes a lot longer than a week for approval.

Quote from Gina_139917 on Oct 28^th, 2010, 9:50am:

 
 
I agree.  They need to change that 7 days thing on that page as it takes a lot longer than 7 days for approvals.  It is a bit irritating it says 7 and here we are waiting 14+ days.  I understand they are swamped but at the same time if it says 7 then it should be closer to 7 days since that is what they are advertising that.

The approval process is one of the things that put me off, along with the pedantic 'must be in the right category'. I'm sure it would be pretty easy to give reviewers the ability to put things in the right category very easily, and that would save them getting the same cards again. I do appreciate the need for approval, I'm also at Zazzle and get annoyed with the amount of junk there, but it's quicker, easier to make yourself seen with the added bonus of using the same image on other things, not making an image just for one card. The approval process needs to be a happy medium between the two, and although I've been here since January, I haven't seen any changes, except for the worse - hence no more uploads.
The other thing is the royalty, it's just not worth the effort when I can upload business card templates , with less effort, to another site (which also has an approval process) and sell them at $5 a time. Why on earth don't GCU adopt the 'set your own royalty' option ? Anyone at Zazzle knows that people will buy something they like, and price isn't always a deterrent.
 
I've been here since January, and only uploaded 10 cards (I couldn't face that again!) with only 8 clicks since then. Compare that with 60 business cards at the other site with sales of $30 in three months, and you can see why it's a non-starter here for me. The most profitable outlet wins, and I don't have time to do them all.
 
I don't expect to win any friends, but I really do think that GCU need to look at the whole setup. Perhaps GCU should diversify and do business cards as well - I'd be happy to upload more if it was worth my while - I did actually come here to delete my 10 cards, but I guess I'll leave them a little while longer just in case.
 
I expect there are some here who have thousands of cards and are doing very nicely, and I certainly wish you all luck. Probably I'm just not cut out for the greeting card market.