Been busy building shops with other print-on-demand vendors. Will see what the second half of 2009 has in store for shopkeepers.
CafePress faithful … what are you doing or what will you be doing to get customers to your shops after June 1?
Posted in CafePressShopkeepers are more than miffed at CafePress.
They are pissed off.
I support their right to be, but not necessarily their reasoning.
If someone told me, upload your art, and we will offer it on apparel and merch on our site, take orders, produce and ship the items, manage inventory, advertise heavily, maintain the site, get great search engine ranking – all at no cost to you — and give you 10% of the sale price, that would sound pretty cool.
The reason that people are angry, is that CafePress wants to take the “shop” that THEY promote, and make the prices consistent. It IS a good move for the consumer, which some may be forgetting is why “shops” exist.
Shopkeepers have a CHOICE. They can continue to offer their products at their own markup — often considerably higher than 10% — in their own shops, do their own advertising, make the same profit they are accustomed to. They can either stay in the Marketplace (CP’s “shop”) or OPT OUT if it is beneath them to make $2.50 commission on a $25 T-shirt.
There are many people who rely on their monthly CafePress check to make ends meet. For some, it is just fun money — something that would be missed, but not necessary. I feel bad for those who are looking at a potential 40% decrease in income from what they are accustomed, but also, question the ferocity of some of the backlash from angry shopkeepers.
There is a sense of entitlement — that CP is taking something from them that they rightfully earned — although they freely admit 90% of their sales are driven by the Marketplace and not their own shop promotion. Even as people are losing their jobs or having their hours cut, as “unsinkable” companies are closing doors, foreclosure is an epidemic and unemployment is high, some seem to feel that CafePress is reaching right into their pockets.
I look at it this way. CafePress has been handing you customers. Now that they are making changes that will benefit those customers, the shopkeepers are threatening mass exodus. (I urge you not to cut off your nose to spite your face.)
What does this mean for the “hobby” shopkeeper? The same as it means for the full-time T-shirt designer. Something you should have already been doing: have a Plan B. Something to fall back on. Diversify. Build a presence on Printfection, Zazzle or any other print-on-demand vendor site. Make a bulk purchase of your top-selling items and open a retail site of your own. What would you do if CP suddenly ceased to exist?
Be mad. Leave CafePress if you want to. But taking pot shots as you’re leaving? You’re just hurting those who choose to dig in their heels and promote their own shops.
Why I’m not jumping ship
If you look at it from the consumer POV, it makes sense. If I go to the CafePress Marketplace and search for a “Team Edward” T-shirt, I’m going to see somewhat similar designs but with a range of prices from $1 over base price to $10 over base price. Are these two Jr. Jersey shirts the same? Yes, but the price difference is confusing and frustrating to the shopper. I love the idea of having the shirt style offered at a fixed price, because then the buyer is going to be focused on the best DESIGN rather than the best DEAL, and that helps the better designers. It really does.
If you are only making $2 per shirt and you’re used to making $6 per shirt, look at it this way … you could triple your sales by appealing to those shoppers who would have bought a competitor’s (inferior) shirt because it was cheaper than yours.
Some people feel that this is putting their quality artwork on the same level as the Comic Sans text design quickly done in Paint. Personally, I think this is going to make the better designs vastly outsell the “cheap” ones. I never want to see a sloppily executed, misspelled offering in the search results. (As someone who has plenty of plain text designs out there, among others, it is going to make me work harder to compete with the excellent artists who remain at CafePress.)
If you simply must make $6 PER SHIRT, you can still do that. Opt out of the Marketplace. Promote your own shop. You can sell your shirt for whatever markup you want, from zero to $20 or more. This has not been taken away from you, but you will need to drive customers to your shop the way CP has been doing it for you … advertise, promote.
If your designs are good enough, they will sell.
Posted in CafePress, freeliefBecome a Fan of freelief.com designs on Facebook.
We’re looking for photos of people wearing our T-shirts.
We don’t send a lot of mail, but if we have a great coupon code we’ll share it.
Hope to add contests soon as well!
Posted in CafePress, freeliefThought I’d try to spotlight a few designs and see if anything came out of it.
My first WTF moment of last night’s episode…
Is Rosie wearing a CafePress Jr. Raglan T-shirt?
Honest.
And I’m certain I wasn’t the only person thinking that.
\m/
Posted in CafePressFor the two people out there reading this, the blog might be MIA for an hour or two. Or a day. Hopefully, not a week or more.
But I have poor luck with such things as transferring domain names and switching web hosting services, so don’t remove me from your bookmarks if you can’t access freelief.com for a couple days.
Here’s a few sites that will be up and running if you should miss me:
http://www.squidoo.com/freelief
http://www.cafepress.com/freelief
And of course, it’s not hard to find me on Facebook or Myspace.
Hang on. Hope this doesn’t leave a mark.
Posted in CafePress, Squidoo, freeliefAs if I didn’t have enough going on with CafePress, Squidoo, Facebook and Twitter …
Soon, I’m sure I’ll learn why I need all these.
More likely, I’ll neglect them like Myspace and YouTube.
…
Okay, enough fooling around.
I’m uploading new designs to CafePress because that seems to be *THE* dependable ROI for my time.
As soon as I’m done playing some random Facebook app …
Posted in CafePress, Squidoo, freeliefWell, I did at least.
Doing pretty well for January. It’s not a super hot T-shirt sales month, strangely.
One item a day would make me happy. I think I’ve sold at least one item each day this month, except last Thursday. Must be the intertubez were down on the 8th.
Posted in CafePress, freeliefCafePress continues its annual contest tradition by announcing the latest, with $1200 in prizes!
Create an Anti-Valentine’s Day design in one of 3 categories:
Each category offers the top picks $250, $100 or $50. Read full contest details here.
I’m so in. <3
Politics.
Ugh.
[The short-awaited sequel to Politics and religion.]
No matter which side we’re on, every election year we just can’t wait for the political commercials to cease their attacks on us. For the blight of endless lawn signs to disappear.
But what I noticed more of this year than ever before, were the attacks being flung between supporters of opposing candidates.
I consider myself an independent. I have strongly held personal viewpoints that clash with the rigid party lines that classify people as liberal or conservative, Republican or Democrat or otherwise. That said, I haven’t found a third party that suits me, so I have to decide which issues are the most absolutely critical to me and my family and vote accordingly.
This tends to lead me to vote Republican, although grudgingly.
And due to the huge number of liberal influences in my life—friends, family and colleagues—it made talking about the then-upcoming election even more unpleasant in the months leading to November 4.
Not because I’m opinionated—people expect that from me—but because in spite of my tendencies I am actually a conflict avoider, and I’d had about enough of the us vs. them mentality over a year ago.
The most memorable exchange involved me receiving a simple two word response, racist pig, in reply to a Twitter comment I’d left regarding my selection of presidential candidate.
[Had the race pitted Senator Clinton against McCain, would that person have called me a sexist jackass? Just curious. Probably not, since I'm a white woman.]
Regardless, based on the issues and the facts I’d decided I wouldn’t vote for Obama or Clinton long ago, and if McCain had been black, it wouldn’t have caused me the slightest hesitation.
“I didn’t vote for him,
but he’s my president,
and I hope he does a good job.”
— John Wayne
I’m not excited about the next four years. I worry that even a few of the many concerns I had about an Obama presidency will come to pass. While I wouldn’t consider myself a radical, compared to mainstream America soccer moms I might qualify as one.
On the whole, with few exceptions, I am against making new laws that take away people’s rights. Should they pass a law that makes it illegal to eat horse meat? No. Doesn’t mean I want to start, but I wouldn’t take that right away from a neighbor whose actions aren’t hurting anyone else.
One of the gray areas: smoking. Yes, you should have the right to smoke. But I should also have the right to move about in public without breathing in concentrated known carcinogens, right? Touchy subject. I should open up a debate on it sometime.
On the whole, I am against making new laws that are aimed at protecting us from ourselves. For instance, helmet laws. When concerning adults, let those who ride decide. When concerning minors, we’re back in that gray area. Parents have rights, but in the case of chronically stupid parents, you gotta look out for kids as well. Another good debate topic. But not today.
Today, I’m here for ideas.
I’m looking for advice on an Obama inauguration T-shirt design that includes “I didn’t vote for him” without being negative, bitter, racist, threatening, etc. In fact, I think it should be humorous. But I’m not sure where to go graphics-wise.
Some designs currently on CafePress:
There are plenty of anti-Obama designs as well, from clever to quite rude. But with CafePress making a big push to promote the inauguration for shopkeepers’ benefit, I thought it would be good to have a presence there.
Please comment.
XP
(non-bitter gun owner)
