Everything I said before in this blog...

nevermind.

Since Cafepress changed:
their marketplace algorithms,
10% mandatory markup override of a marketplace sale,
cookie overrides,
and bonus tiers...

Nevermind. I'm looking at my options now...see keywords.

My feedback to Cafepress Marketplace Changes...

This is a quoted post I made on the Cafepress.com message forum inside their site. I copied this in case their moderators or admin deleted it or edited it.

As a top seller, I want others to hear my story. I look at my gross sales, so I know Cafepress must hear my voice. If not, well, I'm ashamed to be sitting in front of this ocmputer from 6am to 5pm M-F week after week like it were a regular job to anyone else....

Anyway, here goes:

I am 29 years old. I was diagnosed with Multiple Sclerosis, or MS for short in 2005. I had to quit my very high paid salary job as a network administrator becase of mental trauma and stress.My son was born and we had to move. I couldn't really work, so I NEEDED to find a job working from home. I know there is others out there like me, too. I can't get away from someone who doesn't have a health problem my age nowadays...

I found Cafepress and... yada yada, now I have a headache.

You, Cafepress - have been giving me a SALARY as my own CEO of my OWN company since 2005! Thanks! At $5-7 a shirt...this was a regular job now for my family and myself. I felt blessed!But now, with my MS getting worse and medical bills going up... now apparently I'm losing my job, too? - like 10% of our Nation? I can't already compete against myself as I already do against other shops. You just gave me and the 40 million other shops a 10 or 20% paycut to all of us. I pay for my Adwords campaigns, facebook, etc.. all that now costs me triple! Nevermind our bonus tier structures suddenly dropped for all of us, too. KaptainMyke is very sad.

Thats my feedback.

A Guide to Cafepress Markup Commissions

Cafepress.com has custom markups that you can set on all your custom made Print on Demand products. This is a familiar territory with competing websites as well.

Unspoken Rules?

Let's get right to it without beating around the bush. This is merely advice speaking through the window of experience and, nothing more. Seasoned veterans at Cafepress who have been around for a while typically have the higher markups than new shops who have just opened their doors.

Rebuttal Alert! Hey, but that's not true! What if you are a great designer and it has nothing to do with how long you've been around!?!

HOT TIP! Ah, it's yet another trick on the mind with the analytical thinking of a person sitting at home or work on the computer shopping. If you have only 10 sections of a few products with $10-15 markups, a potential visitor is going to think to himself, "Who the hell are you?"

If you have been around for two or three years (maybe longer), you now have most likely 200-500 sections containing hundreds of variations, styles, and colors. The potential visitor now sees thousands of products at a higher price. Hmmm, that must mean quality. That must mean you can be trusted. Maybe now he's thinking, "Wow, you've been at this for a long time. Look at this large selection of products! I think I might buy from you." Don't you do this when you shop online? I know I do. What makes my customers any different? They are just like you and me because we are all consumers.

When you start out, you gotta learn the ropes anyway. Take it slow and I'd start with a $2-3 dollar markup. Build up that inventory and fill the store with coupons from this guy. Remember, your free coupons are paying for your Cafepress markups anyway. There is a free coupon feed you can integrate into your shop. Do a Google search for "cafepress coupons" at any day or time to post up new ones. (new window)

Go on, give yourself a raise! You've earned it, 'ol boy or gal...

If you've been around for three or four years, I'd start going higher on the markups. Make sure your Internet presence is strong, though. As long as you are constantly advertising and promoting yourself, I'd go with a high markup tier on your products. Go fer it!

A $15 button or sticker?

Of course, I wouldn't do a $10 markup across the board. A product that is already $2 or $3 at cost is just not reasonable with such an extreme markup. The lower the cost on the product, I'd recommend choosing your markups by percentage. A $2.50 item should be commissioned at no more than 50%. Remember, (usually) these items at Cafepress are for that little "extra" to meet or beat that coupon that's burning a hole into their computer screens.

Oh, while I'm reminded of this - I personally would never pay over $5-$7 for a bumper sticker. Markup your commissions and look at the final selling price to your customers. Would you pay that? If you wouldn't, neither would your potential customer.

Adjust Accordingly

SUPER DUPER HOT TIP ON FIRE!!! Open up your Google Analytics accounts if you got 'em folks....90% of all large successful Cafepress stores reach at least 85% new visitors versus 15% repeat visitors. At least 5% of the repeat visitors are your competitors. Trust me...

My point? If most of your traffic is new visitors, most won't know it if you've made a change to your site or Cafepress store! Change your markups and give them at least 2 weeks. Check your saved email sale reports (if you got 'em). If not, enable email notifications of sales at Cafepress and save every one of them from now on. Now you can start seeing waves of your 85% new visitor reach and whether or not they will pay your price you've set. Sales will go down if they think you're too high.

If your sales slow down, go back, lower the markups a little and wait another few weeks. If you want solid results, wait an entire 45 day period from the 3rd day of any given month of the year.

I have no sales! I only make $10 a month! What gives?

Another possibility of zero or low sales is you are selling a product that just won't sell, low promotion, no advertising, or you just plain suck. Sorry, I have to be honest here!

I've made hundreds of designs that haven't sold at all before. I've made some that have only sold one in an entire year. It happens. It's what makes the world unique and different. One might think your design is crappy, but another peroson will absolutely adore it. Just don't take it personal! It's just business.

What do you do? You make a TON of options for them. Make a blue version, a red version, a blue with orange version, a PINK version for the ladies....give people options and make more designs! You're fishing your castnet of creativity and design in Cafepress's ocean of a marketplace. Maybe somebody will see your vision or humor.

I myself make some rather bizarre or twisted types of what I consider "humor". Call it dry, call it dark, call it what you want - it's KaptainMyke.

The rumor mill is spinning

I heard numbers. I've heard $12-15 markups, even as high as $25 per product! These guys are making some money! Lordy! they also got thousands and thousands of sections, grandfathered in from the recent Cafepress section limits on shops.

If you are a great designer or author, people will pay your price if they want it bad enough. Again, if I want something bad enough, I'll pay that extra dollar myself. So will your potential site visitor.

Be creative

A great and creative example of an extreme markup is the $100 Shirt at Cafepress. Does he sell any? If so, how many? Comment here if you read this, Mr. $100 T-Shirt Guy. I'd really like to know.

The sky's the limit with your imagination.

The SLOW SEASON

The dreaded slow periods of any luxury retail website that sells products (that we all don't really need) suffers from this period twice a year. When? After Christmas and after school's out.

Period one: January to April. Period two: May to July. Things start getting good when grade school and college returns every fall. Then, Christmas comes again!

It really IS the season to be Merry at Cafepress!

At Christmas I'd hike up any markup you got currently by $5 or more (at least!). People will pay anything during Christmas time. Why? I do, why wouldn't anybody else? Consider it your bonus for the year. Everyone typically has received some extra money during this holiday
season at any job. Albeit tips, wages, bonus checks, or "Jelly of the Month" club memberships.

Inflation's a B!7@%!

This is 2008. Gas is high, groceries are high, shipping costs are OUTRAGEOUS, contract work, services, etc., etc., LIFE - everything is going up in price.

Why don't you?

Blogging for Cash

A good rule of thumb for making money on the Internet is a simple one. "If you are required to pay money up front, it probably is a scam". This rings true 90% of the time, I'm afraid. I've read it, and I've experienced it first hand.

Urban Legend Alert! A 16 year old high school sophomore buys first car with cash earned by blogging and taking surveys. While I have not seen absolute proof of this, there may be some truth to this recently started and wildly popular urban legend...

People get paid to take surveys on the Internet, all the time. And, successfully, too. However, most of the time it's a website that offers to sell you a list that contains companies that may or may not offer surveys. The real successful survey or secret shopper companies are the free ones, inside the stores you wish to survey or shop for. Don't be shy! Just ask somebody in customer service if they have a secret shopper or survey program. If they don't, they probably have a company they outsource. They'll tell you.

Get rich quick schemes or business ideas being sold on ebay are obvious paths of destruction if you don't set them up right. Ponzi schemes are the worst. It all implodes eventually, or when the new customers stop signing up. Unfortunately, a lot of people get stripped of their bank accounts with hopes and dreams to become the next self made millionaire. Try to get it for free first, if you can. Sadly, it's the selling of the information that make all the monies at the end of the day.

HOT TIP! Self made millionaires are usually by accident. Real success comes from the next proverbial "Pet Rock" or "Slinky". Society is bored too quickly, forgets and always is ready to move on to the next "thing". Wait 30 years and it's just called "nostalgia".

There are always exceptions.

Cafepress for example, is free - but you'll earn more by paying the $6.95 fee per month while running a premium shop. Technically, it's free if you sale at least one or two items a month. The fee pays for itself if you have a markup that earns you a return on investment (ROI). CPShop isn't free, but it guarantees you better SEO if you use it creatively as I and so many other shops have done. You have to pay Adwords if you want people to click on your ads, right? The list goes on and on...

Ebay charges fees for listing auctions. Obviously, your ROI is guaranteed as well - but only if you sell your item. You could pay an extra $19.95 to run a showcased gallery auction listing, too. This guarantees you at least 1-200 extra hits by visitors.

Best Intentions

I read and skim others blogs all the time. The ones with the photos of little Lola's first birthday are adorable. Blogs have now shifted from personal to business, like MySpace kinda did. People in Hollywood now throw out a Myspace URL instead of a business card. Sometimes, the business card is the Myspace page. It's nice to see a new trend with companies or entities becoming more personable to its potential buyers and readers by starting blogs now.

One thing important that I cannot stress enough is try to make money on your blog if you can. All you cafepress storekeepers out there still using the old "?pid=3041422" tag need to update your links to Commission Junction links from Cafepress's new affiliate program. If you are signed up with CJ, please update your links so your CJ checks get bigger in the mail. Anything even related to Cafepress at all should be updated with tracking links looking something like: "http://www.kqzyfj.com/click-2387222-10462227?sid=3041422&url=http://www.cafepress.com" , like mine.

Sign up for CJ if you haven't yet. You'll need to be approved (takes 1-2 days) and then you can generate your links via Cafepress's program. Look at my link...its custom with tracking, but it trails off ending with url=http://www.cafepress.com . To promote other shopkeepers, you'd just add a "\shopname\section#" after the trailing cafepress.com.

Here's the signup page to be a publisher through CJ: https://signup.cj.com/member/brandedPublisherSignUp.do?air_refmerchantid=1585594 .


HOT TIP! As a rule of thumb, you don't want to link to other people, products, or sites unless they are going to make you money. Unless they are putting your links on their sites as well (crosslinking).... It's considered wasted ad space, or the other guy gets your hits for free. Zazzle and PrintFection, and others to date don't really have a good affiliate tracking system yet. I say yet....because it just has to change soon. My reports aren't showing up to par with my "Zazzle Star" asterick mark after every url. http://www.zazzle.com/kaptainmyke* . But, they are currently making me money, so I promote them. Cafepress earns me more money, so I devote my 90% to them as my primary distributor.

Hey, this is America. Nothing's free.

HOT TIP! It's okay to give free information, but outweigh it with the money making links. Talk about anything you like! Start plugging in Amazon Associates links to keyword text in your paragraphs, too.... It is relatively easy to create links with their automated API. Signup today! http://affiliate-program.amazon.com/gp/associates/join.

HOT TIP! Affiliate marketing is a lot like throwing out a big cast net in the Internet's creek or pond. Toss, pull, and see what you grab up when you check your reports at the end of the month. Note, I said month.

Nothing can take a full effect after a day, even 7 days. Wait at least a month before making any drastic changes. This can be applied in business, life, or website design. Sometimes, if you make too many changes at once, you really don't know what one thing made the biggest difference.

Passing on information to help others can and will reward yourself as well! - Especially in Affiliate Marketing.

Blogging is free. Sign up for free. Use the free tools in front of you. I repeat, the one thing important that I cannot stress enough is try to make money on your blog if you can. Use Ebay, Commission Junction, Amazon Associates , and anything else that is related to what you are writing or selling.

Read this article if you haven't yet - http://onemancorporation.blogspot.com/2008/07/commission-junction.html. I try to explain in detail some creative ways to market other people but you make money, too.

I just told you all this. For free.

Viral "Buzz" is Free.

RE: RE: [FWD] OMG THIS ONE YOU HAVE TO READ OMG LOL!!!

Every morning I wake up, I get at least two emails forwarded from my neighbor. With him it's a hit and miss for me, because I've seen just about every forwarded Internet fad email since 1999. Remember the 2-story outhouse? How about the five versions with different signs for both floors? The phallic sand castle? WOO WOO Bubb Rubb guy? TubGirl? Goat.se? The one's that get me are the urban legends that get started and passed around...

It's Okay to Pee in Someone Else's Pool

So, every morning it's a 50% chance that I've seen it, and 50% chance it's not true. I already have Snopes.com open and ready to go before I click his emails... Then depending on the context
of said email, I'll go ahead and click "reply to all" to the fifty something people he spammed and bust the urban legend with a link to Snopes.com. I know, I'm terrible. How to people have time for this? People complain they can't pick up a phone because they're too busy, but they can read and contribute to this email? I almost forgot... Did you know it's not true that the water will turn purple if you pee in a chlorinated community public pool? Well, I'll be!

Oh, It's Magic

As a whole, society has been on high alert of these forwarded and spam junk emails. We've evolved so fast with cell phones, blackberries, palm pilots, and all that etc., etc... This makes it even harder to get through the beaded curtain of someone's inbox. Okay, so what if you are a businessman who really, actually, positively has the next greatest thing to show others via email? You have no doubt in your mind, that what you have to say or sell is very important. You must forward it to others. So how are you going to do that when it's hard to convince people to click that magical "open" or "read" button?

HOT TIP! Your best friend will read any email you send to them. So why don't you start with your best friend? Your friend knows other people you don't know. You know people your friend doesn't know. It happens, that's why there's billions of people on this planet.

My best friend comes over to my house with an empty pickle jar. He asks for some well water and he fills it up. He pulls out the lid from his backpack with a computer part shoved inside with 2 wires hanging out. He plugs it into a surge protector out in my shed without warning. The jar starts making the water turn white and little bubbles started forming. I said, "Woah! Hey! Don't set my shed on fire, Beakman! What the hell are you doing?!" To which he places an airtight straw through a rubber grommet in the lid and attaches a balloon. The balloon starts airing up. "I just created hydrogen, dude. My class at school is working on a project and this is it."

Um, what?

A week later I stumbled upon some ebay auctions about similar items, and this ebook. Coincidental? I emailed that same friend about it and he said "yeah, the technology is there, and the Internet is now helping others spread the knowledge out there". He's a conspiracy nut with that story about a man who disappeared in the early 1900s who had a pending patent on a water powered engine. Insert obligatory X-Files whistle.

So ANYWAYS...

If somebody you don't know at all sends you an email entitled, "my car is now running on water"...pfft., "So?". If your best friend just sent you an email with the exact same subject line...you're going to read it and see what they are talking about, right? They just heard about a hot new product that is installed under the hood and now they are getting 70 mpg instead of 15 mpg. For real? How's it work? We gotta tell others! You now send it to your Dad, or your boss...it starts spreading like a new trojan horse virus written last night. So now my Dad and Larry have this contraption underneath Nana's sweet Cadillic Deville.

HOT TIP! Apply this to an email you really want to get out there. It's a trick on the analytical thinking of a forwarded email. If the author promotes himself, eh so, what? If somebody else is excited about someone's work and virally passes it along...it's more effective.

Oh yeah, I still don't know if this thing works or not. I need to call my father. I"ll give you guys an update when I hear something. See, I'm talking about a product I don't even know about... but it gauged my interest because my buddy already came over showing me a peice of it from his university study group.

The same trick was applied to some of you subscribers reading this blog. I have a few email relationships with competiting Cafepress shopkeepers. I started talking one day to a really cool awesome tee shirt site owner via Google Mail asking if they'd be interested in a blog such as this one. I just figured 3 years ago I could have used an information source to help get me started. I sort of fell into what has become of now. If I can help bypass hurdles, obstacles, and potholes along the way for a brand new Cafepress store being opened...then I accomplished what I set out to do.

http://creativegumption.blogspot.com/2008/08/one-man-corporation-blog-to-bookmark.html

You know it's good marketing when I hear about something because a friend told me about it.

I mean, isn't that the most trusted source? "I heard it from a friend."

Well, Mike from The One Man Corporation got it right when he sent out an email to his competitors (other Cafepress shopkeepers) teasing us with some valuable information and an invitation to forward it to more friends. And so, a friend forwarded it to me.

It worked. I got the email and actually didn't delete it! That's a feat in itself. I hate forwards. I always delete them. But, hey, if the first few lines grab my attention, I'll read on.

So check him out. I'm going to add his blog to the sidebar here for future reference. He's got some great tips on making money from home, valuable resources, and insight that can only be learned from experience. After all, he does work from home. And he's sharing his experiences for everyone to benefit from.

I've personally started building better relationships with competitors just by using this technique. This works in a world where all competitors rely on the same distributor for their product. Everyone else needs to stay in business, too, right? If your boss is doing better and the company is becoming more successful, the money is there to start getting a raise. If you suck, you contribute to a sucking company, profits drop, the boss says he can't give you a raise because the company is doing sucky, because the employees suck, which means he's sucking at being a good boss...it's a viscious cycle, isn't it?

Same thing...if your distributor or "boss" like Commission Junction, Ebay, Amazon, Cafepress, ie., WHATEVER YOU ARE DOING OR SELLING, is getting more sales and revenues, then your sales and revenues will go up as well. In the affiliate business, if you help others, then you reap the benefits and rewards, too. It's a give/give relationship on the Internet.

You got a great idea and want to get it out there? For free? Start with your friends and family. You don't have any friends? Stop being a jerk and get some! Simple.

Be that Ying to other's Yang. Yeah, I said it.

Trends in Advertising

Ever popped in your favorite VHS tape from your movie collection at home? Sure, we all have. Then you suddenly think to yourself, "Wow! Look at those clothes and hair! What were were thinking then?" Funny, nobody thought that...at that time. Everything that is a part of our culture evolves. This especially affects business, fashion, technology, food, or any service. The world moves with waves and changes...even in advertising. Let's reflect on a brief history with a few points I'd like to bring up and cover...

War and Protest

The fifties were a nation about being patriotic, and worried of being blown to mushroom clouds. War posters and magazine ads were simple and to the point about everything. Things were just starting to get good. Aw, hell... I'm too young, I don't care to start with the fifties, sorry. Check your local library or Amazon.

Do I see a Pattern?

The sixties were their of own era. Most of the people worth talking to that were a part of the sixties do not truly remember the sixties. Advertising methods were all about distorted wavy text, peace signs and bright pretty colorful flowers. Patterns on everything was hot and very much in style then. There were patterns on dresses, wallpapers and flooring of the typical American home. Kitchen appliances were cream or white. The color television was starting to appear in certain corners of neighborhoods. Patterns were all over concert posters, festivals, books and magazines. Car magazine ads were simpler, yet effective in getting the message across while advetising their $1,800 car. There were no concerns of drugs, gas prices, or safety issues then.

Wood Panelling

Then, the seventies came rockin' in. This era was more about clearing the fog of the sixties. Really cool things starting happening then. Color TV was more popular and affordable, music was thriving, people were getting treated with a little more equality. Everything was bright, colorful, and very much in your face. Patterns evolved more into floral patterns. Wood panelling came around and soon everything was wood panelled. Walls, furniture, home electronics, TV sets, even cars - were wood panel. Kitchen appliances were now yellow, and pastels were huge. Again, car magazine ads were simpler. Cigarette and liquor magazine ads were a huge business, mostly consisting of the rugged rocky mountain cowboy man or a contemporary casual business man/woman. In my opinion, the seventies were bland when it came to advertising or reaching out to a target audience.

Silver and Black

The eighties were a fast paced businessman's world. Computers and technology started to appear in the home. Everything was digitized, electronic, or techno-esque to look more "state of the art" and advanced. Wood paneling was now being mixed with black. Kitchen appliances were white or black. People were trying new things, new companies were developing, everyone was trying to catch up to each other. Beepers and cell phones appeared and put us all closer together, yet so far away. Sony and Nintendo came around the block soon afterwards. This started keeping rich eighties kids indoors more often, and paler. Coke ad campaigns and Max Headroom will sadly be missed by some of us. Only hackers like Matthew Broderick were using The Internets at this time, so online advertising wasn't ready yet. IBM and the PC was leaping ahead of a little guy named Apple, who didn't advertise enough in the eighties. As a farewell to advertising a failed spokesperson, Jack in the Box blew up Jack.

We don't even know

Somebody decided that we should just take the last 30 years and mix it all up in a big jumbo bag of culture vomit... and so the nineties were born. The nineties were a period of people trying to
figure out their own unique thing. Company mergers were splitting up from the eighties due to the economy frowning upon monopolies in business. Cell phone companies were born left and right. The advertising methods sometimes attacked each others technologies, plans, and coverage areas. A new form of advertising in the early nineties was realistic computer generated bus wrapping ads. Crystal Pepsi was the first wrapped ad around a bus. The Internet really took off in the late 90s and changed the world in a way we'd never seen before. In 1995, Ebay was born and changed the way we sold anything on the Internet, even to this day... Napster is born out of a Boston University by Shawn Fanning. A world of peer-to-peer file sharing explodes, with advertising and banners from within the "free" services running like a virus across the world's web.

I still miss Pee Wee's Playhouse and Crystal Pepsi. Anybody in the computer industry was cashing in on "Y2K Proofing" of your American Home PC. In a pre-Geek Squad era, the little man was making more money than the yet to be invented corporate computer fixer upper giant...

Old is New

The millenium was all about us shutting off or blowing up because of that Y2K thing going around. Nothing happened, so instead we had to make up for the anticipated investments of our society. Things started getting expensive and overpriced from here on out. People no longer paid $40 to install a CDROM in their computer. They'd rather go to the corporate computer store giant and pay $200.

In other news, one word: Enron.

Vince McMahon starts the XFL to reinvent the NFL and we all try to forget, including him. The XFL was a professional American football league that played for one season in 2001. The league was founded by Vince McMahon, better known as the owner of the World Wrestling Federation (now World Wrestling Entertainment). The XFL was intended to be a major professional sports league complement to the offseason of the NFL, but failed to find an audience and folded after its first season. This is another example of a great promoter and producer, but lack of need or want to reinvent the wheel.

The Here and Now

Today, everything is all about reflecting on the past. Advertising has evolved into everything we do or say. Everything is all about vintage, old, worn down, or roughed up. Car manufacturers billboard ads have taken the eighties road, reverting back to simplicity with bright colors and stripes to get your attention while you drive your $2,500 car. Car magazine ads took a 180 degree turn instead and used computers to show all the pretty gadgets and gizmos under and inside the cars they sell for $50,000. Companies once again started merging again and beating out the little guy. AT&T, Barnes & Noble, Geek Squad, Starbucks, Dell, and other large conglomerants once again dominate the consumer markets. I guess they didn't pay attention to the eighties as much for that one. Jack in the Box brings back Jack, and is successful. Apple reinvents the computer, the walkman, and the phone - all in one decade. We'll see if history repeats itself as it always does. Again.

Vince McMahon buys every wrestling entity and becomes one big wrestling conglomerate. Probably one of the best promoters and film producers to date, whether you love or hate wrestling, Vincent Kennedy McMahon does his job and does it well. This man makes millions,
even billions selling hot WWE merchandise related to DVDs, toys, clothing, and tickets to sold out shows worldwide.

Video games and gaming brought new life into advertising again. Coca-Cola and online gambling giant Bodog ran ads that were appearing within video games such as Grand Theft Auto series
and more. In the future, look forward to real-time, rotating ads in games that future gamers will play. Google's next ad frontier may be inside videogames at the Wall Street Journal shows reports that Google is in talks with Adscape Media.

Napster came back, this time legal, legit, and 100% free from scandal...with a 7 day trial for unlimited downloading. (Which is a great service, by the way.) Competitors such as Limewire catch on and do the same thing, with advertisements built in. However, many users still opted to use their old free downloaded and out of date executable...still downloading illegally for free all day and all night. Just be sure to not upgrade, and log off when you're done, right?

"The world's an imperfect place. Screws fall out all the time..."

-Judd Nelson, The Breakfast Club

Please enter your account number, again.

The world is getting too fast now. We need to slow down. Databases are running together. My father and I have the same first name, but not middle name. I am not a junior. However, sometimes our credit and bill collector calls seem to run together. This is good for one of us, and bad for the other. That's just an immediate example how our society is getting lost with one another. You call customer support, but most likely you're going to talk to somebody overseas. Hey I'm not knocking anybody oversears, they need a job and to have to work, too.

One thing now that's important is "100% customer satisfaction" and a human responding to an email or telephone call. When you campaign or advertise, try to throw in somehow that you are
still around for them when they need it. Many people still think it's important to support customer support. I'd rather help out a local businessman than an corporate giant, or an outsourced company, wouldn't you? You'd rather get hired by an employer than a temp agency recruiter, right? Anybody looking for a job in 2008 knows this problem. You fill out a million forms with your past employment history, sign up with hundreds of recruiter agencies, when really it'd be much simpler to just email the damn resume straight to the employer. Suddenly, your SPAM folder just exploded into your inbox. Better get Panda Antivirus and Security or AVG Free Edition... Crap.

What does all this mean?

You have to pay attention, everywhere. Look around you when you leave the house. Look at colors, shadows, styles. What is going on behind the ad you are studying? Billboards, bus ads, magazine ads, taxi cab ads, web site ads...they all start to run togther now, don't they? Everything looks old, vintage, and "stylish". Even television and commercials are doing the "film scratch" technique, to give a vintage feel to film. This was borrowed from genius filmmakers who in the past five to ten years have pioneered that in their horror films.

Sometimes, being original and looking to the past can propel you forward into a very successful marketing and advertising campaign. Just remember, sometimes it works, and sometimes it doesn't. YouTube, Adwords, and MySpace have been used as very succesful marketing vehicles for the creative artistic individual. If you sell tee shirts, are a musician, an ebook writer, or anything related to a creative side - you might want to revisit these avenues for you and your business.

Pick your favorite colors, and pick a time period. Theme it the way you like, but stay simple. Rough it up a little, and remind people that you are there for them 100%. Now go to it, get out there and advertise! Here's some advertising books for you to check out and read over. You have many more options to choose from in this day and age than our past competitors ever
could or would have.

KISS

Keep It Simple Stupid

GoogleBase Your Products... Now.

Let's be friends, Google!

Another free service from Google is GoogleBase. You don't even need a website to list your products. If you have hundreds, even thousands of products to sell, you may do so by uploading a spreadsheet from excel. For the more advanced programmer, you can utilize the API built in from your website to Google's servers. You can learn more about it, and with documented help from Google by clicking on this link here.

You will need to do this procedure once a month, every month, every 30 days. I repeat, keep it up and make this a regular monthly "chore" for your business or products you are selling.

From the website:

Product Search connects your products to the shoppers searching for them, helping you drive traffic and sales to your store. Your products will appear on Google Product Search and may even be displayed on Google.com, depending on your items' relevance.

Using Cafepress and Googlebase Together

Those of you who are selling books, gifts, or other products such as tee shirts at Cafepress - listen up carefully. There are a variety of tricks you can do to get your products listed quickly and effectively on GoogleBase...

There is a free tool you can use called CafeToolbox. This is a service written and maintained by a Cafepress shopkeeper, so support him and donate via Paypal if you are a fellow shopkeeper using his tools. If you do not have a Paypal account (it's free), you can still support him by purchasing a product from his official store, CafeToolbox. Create an account (also, free) and plug in your Cafepress store details. Depending on the size of your shop, it will create a downloadable file you can send to GoogleBase.

Large Cafepress Stores

If you are a large store, you will most likely hiccup the CafeToolbox web server, and have a 20 MB text file to download, such as myself. GoogleBase starts running into problems when you upload a file greater than 6-7mb. I do a little playing around in excel and notepad to split my file into 2 smaller files.

Personally, I'll tell you what I do, and maybe this can give you some ideas of your own. This is a really big secret I don't think others have tried out besides me. I haven't seen anyone else do this method yet...

I am a Foxpro programmer. Anybody heard of that? It's an ancient archaeic programming language Microsoft used in the early 80s. I became proficient in it by learning and coding a bill collection agency's database that was written in FoxPro 2.6. This language is so old and ancient that nobody uses it anymore...except me.

Keep in mind, you have to know a little bit about rows, columns, excel, and some programming to do this trick. This is a really ugly and nasty way to do this.... Maybe you personally know Visual Basic, or Visual Studio, C+, Visual FoxPro, or even MYSQL... In theory, you could import everything into an online MYSQL databse and inject your code or strings using the following methods....

SUPER DUPER HOT MEGA TIP! First I download my 20mb text file file from CafeToolbox. I then put it in an incoming directory on my computer and run a program I wrote. It imports the file into these columns and rows, much like MS Excel. I figured out a way to go back and rename key products to give more search engine spotlight. For example, all my Callahan Auto Parts tee shirts are sucked out, renamed to "Tommy Boy Movie Callahan Auto Parts Tee Shirt" . The renamed products are injected right back where they were inside this comma delimited text file.... This program looks for certain strings and I wrote logic that renames and adds the corresponding movie or tv show's name - and affix it to the prefix of each product name. Brilliant, no? It is, especially when you have to go back and rename 32,000 products! Here's an exact string from my code: replace all title with "Seinfeld tv series "+title for title="Jackie Chiles ". There is a field named "title" and my string searches for text I ask for. There's hundreds of better ways to do this, but I've been trucking along ever since and have been too lazy to write a better program. As I make a new design, I go back into that program and add it's new movie or tv product, and what I'd rename it to...

The Name of the Game is to Rename

HOT TIP! I rename my products for search engines to find me better, outside the Cafepress engine. You can apply this technique so you can be more descriptive in the titles of the products. Why? Because sometimes Cafepress fields for product titles aren't long enough. What if you have a "Official Super Duper Awesome Product With a Really Long but Necessary Title" Dark Blue Short Sleeved Tee Shirt? Is all that text going to fit in the Cafepress word box when you are creating your product? Exactly.

After my crude renaming program runs, it counts all the records, divides in 2, and copies out 2 split up files for me. I then log into my GoogleBase account and upload my 2 files, kmyke2.txt and kmyke3.txt. I now have my 32,000 products renamed with my own titles, in 2 smaller txt files. Within hours my thousands of products are listed for free at GoogleBase.

You Mean There's Other Search Engines?

HOT TIP! Next, put it over at MSN Live Product Search, for free. Again, CafeToolbox has a MSN product file creator as well. However, I do not modify that file. I immediately download and then upload to MSN. For some reason, my crude programming techniques corrupt the file for MSN and Mr. Gates doesn't like my file. So, eh., oh well, click, send, upload. Google's nicer to me than MSN anyways.

Did you take my previous advice, fellow Cafepress shopkeeper? Did you also get a PrintFection account? Again, CafeToolbox has a PrintFection tool generator. (This guy's awesome, donate to him, please.) For that one, I have a modified FoxPro program again, this time conforming to PrintFection file layouts for GoogleBase. I rename those products and spit out a modified PF file for GoogleBase.

HOT TIP! Wait a minute here, you can't have but one website profile per GoogleBase account. I know! My GoogleBase account for my Cafepress files are with my KaptainMyke (at) Gmail account. I signed up for another account at GoogleBase and set up another website profile for my PrintFection store, called KaptainMyke2 (at) Gmail.com. Sign in, upload the PF file, log
out - log back into my primary gmail account.

All of these techniques invole a little understanding of excel, text files, some programming and understanding file layouts. If you know Foxpro, Basic, or any flavor of MySQL, and are into the Cafepress way of making money...then hopefully I just gave you a brainstorm. ;-)

No Website? No Problem

HOT TIP! If you don't use the advanced techniques I covered, you can still go to CafeToolbox, download your Cafepress file, then upload it at GoogleBase for free, without even owning your own web site.

HOT TIP! If you are a large store, and don't understand the tips I covered, open your 6-20mb text file in wordpad and go somewhere in the middle of the file and CUT half the file out and PASTE into a new wordpad document and save as 2 seperate smaller text files. Be sure to keep your formatting and word wrap OFF. Don't touch or do anything else. I mean it! Another alternative is to create an FTP account and upload your files via secure FTP protocol.

HOT TIP! Use Adwords and drive traffic to your products posted at GoogleBase.

HOT TIP! CafeToolbox has tools for MSN Live, iOffer, Yahoo, and Google. Get to it! Go, sell then, now!

Conclusion

HOT TIP! This article covered using Cafepress and GoogleBase together. You can use GoogleBase and list any products you have to sell. These tips and tactics were for large stores, large numbers of products you are trying to sell, and sales with a high volume. If you are much smaller, your methods will be simpler and easier with fewer products to deal with.

You can use GoogleBase to sell and use the file uploads by using APIs from almost anyone, such as Ebay or any other website. Most likely, each third party company will have their own API generators so you can develop custom links that work between you and whatever your business needs. Use Google Checkout as another alternative for increasing online sales.

Happy uploading! Good luck to the webmaster and creator of CafeToolbox. I speak for most of us currently using your tools when I say, "We hope you reach your goal, and keep it up!" Thanks!

More information can be found by going directly to the official website, CafeToolBox.com.