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

The Potential of Cafepress and You

Know Your Competitors

McDonald's watches over Burger King, Jack in the Box, and Wendy's, right? The shops that I have my eyes on have been CultClassicTs, FlippinSweetGear, BurnTees, Detour Designables, Media Tees, Shirtees.Net, SpeakUp Designs , Barry's World, KA Designs, and ShirtVille. I'm sure these guys make a decent earning per month. I have no idea, but Juan can't help but assume.

Earning at Cafepress

During spring and middle of summer, i.e., slow season, I sell anywhere from 10-15 products per day at Cafepress. During Christmas season last year, there were periods where I sold over 65 t-shirts a day at Cafepress. Christmas makes 65% of my entire year's sales, it's funny... When I do payroll in March each year for myself from my corporation, it's amazing to see a year to date (YTD) earnings over $20-25k. Little do most know after that, the sales slow down - so your adjusted year to date (YTD) income is slanted.

The Flow of Cafepress products

A luxury item such as t-shirts aren't as important suddenly after college tuition fees, groceries and GA$... How about the maxed out credit card bills from Christmas? Sales pick up of course, during the tax refund season of May-June...For only those 2 months. School's out for summer, people are at the beach and tanning, not in front of a computer. Sales pick up again before school, usually good around August and start of September. This applies to most products that aren't a necessity in life. Sure, clothing is a necessity, but marked-up clothing with custom graphics aren't.

The rude/crude/violent themed t-shirts and products won't and don't sell as much, because their products are banned from little Johnny's elementary school. Capeshe?

$50k in net commission sales at Cafepress is a long reach, but I won't say it's impossible. Remember, what matters most of any business is the bottom line. It's not just Cafepress that gives me a check. You have to use everything together, as one happy family. Amazon , Adbrite , Paypal, Ebay , Ebay Partner Network , Cafepress, Commission Junction , ClickBank, PrintFection , Zazzle ..... bottom line figures can reach you to whatever limit you set as your projected goal. You, as a business man should make and set goals for you to follow. It's the best way to get to them....I'll have articles about all of those topics. Soon... I'm just a one man corporation, remember? ;-)

It costs money to make money.

If you spend $900 a month on Google Adwords, and it returns you an extra $2,000 in net sales, that's worth it, right? Google Adwords can make fortunes or destroy them. I personally lost $350 in one day for poor Google Adwords keywords and budget settings 'ala Commission Junction links. Be careful with your keywords. Very careful...

TIP! What also matters, especially for luxury items, you need to set ad scheduling Monday-Friday, 8am to 11pm so you don't waste money. Go looser on the weekends, or preferably, not at all, since people are out and about shopping or whatnot. When you're working from home, the world's quieter and different Monday through Friday. This is because everyone's at college or
work...most likely, on a computer.

TIP! Don't max out the Google Adwords during the slow seasons of luxury items for sale on the Internet. You can't polish a terd. If people aren't buying, damnit, they're not going to buy, okay? It's not your fault, it's George Bush and the economy's fault. Use your guns during Christmas. Consider it your bonus for the year from Santa Claus.

Never kiss and tell.

I've been asked numerous times how much I make each month. Have you ever asked a woman how much she weighs? You'll get the same reply from several businessmen.

A prude and polite businessman does not disclose figures if he doesn't have to. You typically don't want to disclose your sales figures to competitors. This is because it's already on public display how your competitor markets him or herself. By checking up on your competition, you have an idea of what they make by doing what they do. Corporations are private companies, and do not have to disclose gross sales or figures. If a company is public, and trading on the open market, they are required by law to release such accounting and paperwork to the general public record.

That and, the entire focus on this blog is to teach you to reach your arms out farther and dig deeper into the Internet's coinpurse. Using everything together gives you a bottom line figure that reaches closer to the projected sales goal you set.

I really feel confident these tips and tricks that I will be covering over the next few months (as we gear into Christmas soon) are going to help a lot of others out. The advice I give doesn't just apply to Cafepress. You can use these tactics for anything related to selling products online that aren't a necessity, like toilet paper or gasoline. You have to work harder to sell products people don't need.

The Commission Junction Class Action Lawsuit

Class Action Lawsuit

Carrier v. ValueClick, Inc., et al.

No. 2:07-cv-02641-FMC-CTx (C.D. Cal.)

Settlement Recovery Center et al. v. ValueClick, Inc. et al.

No. 2:07-cv-02638-FMC-CTx (C.D. Cal.)

Those of you who are current Commission Junction publishers should check your reports a little more in detail. Apparently, as of this morning, word has gotten out that hijackers and hackers have been stealing publisher's commissions by use of 3rd party software scripting. The interesting twist in this story is that Commission Junction has been looking the other way while it's been happening over the last five years. What does this mean to you? Commission Junction might owe you a settlement offer.



Who does this affect directly?

If you signed up as a publisher with Commission Junction between April 20, 2003 and July 22, 2008, and were publishing ads on any website, you may be entitled.

Great, now what?

My opinion on the subject is this: Well, that sucks, but what can ya do? I guess the silver lining on this cloud is that it's nice to know that I was making possibly even more than my reports and checks have been in the mail. It can only go up from here, right? The major concern I have is that Commission Junction will recover, and everybody gets back to doing what they do.


On a business standpoint, I highly doubt Commission Junction will fall from this blunder. They are way too big and support millions of advertisers daily, worldwide. The settlement is a slap on the wrist, warning them, "Hey. Hey? Come on, now. Heeeeey."

Nothing Personal; It's Just Business

It's somewhat similar to the Class Action Lawsuit filed against Netflix in September of 2004. Some guy thought Netflix promised him unlimited DVDs for a low montly fee, and thought he could get them all in one-day shipping. It was a complete technicality that Frank Chavez was trying to capitalize off of. As a subscriber of Netflix, I opted out and asked for nothing. What do I care? I been renting videos from them since 2002. I watch a movie, and send it back. Why do I want a peice of their pie? Netflix learned hard that contracts can be very literal, and has been doing business fine since.


Apples to Oranges

I realize, of course, this situation with Commission Junction is very different. A global entity looking the other way when unethical business practices are taking place is quite different from one man trying to pinch off someone else's pie. This is Corporate America! Welcome to scandals, corruption, and greed! Weed out the bad apples, and sell the good ones.

For more details, you may go to the official website concerning this class
action lawsuit: http://www.cjsettlement.com/

Making money with Cafepress and other Print on Demand Services

Getting Started with Cafepress

A variety of services on the Internet involve "Print on Demand". Print on Demand is a technique that involves using a machine that presses a design or word onto a product with heat transfer, such as a tee shirt, mousepad, calendar, wall clock, mug, hat, sticker, poster, or anything else your heart desires. Print on Demand (POD) is another common term used for digital printing.

There are a vast selection of websites out there that offer this service. Some require a minimum order, which can be costly. I'm going to recommend three of the best sites that offer this service for free. You get to place your own creative masterpeices in their marketplaces and sell for a profit. After a 45 day customary holding period for commissions, you get a check in the mailbox.

Don't worry, the 45 day hold on your hard earned commission check is due to possibilities such as: credit card declined, a return, an exchange, a misprint. This is common for these types of services.

For those of you with limited creative talent and can't draw a stick figure if you tried, you still can make money by selling other people's products. You must have some sort of understanding of HTML and tracking codes for reporting. I'll explain those techniques later.

The first Print on Demand service website that I highly recommend the most to anybody out there is Cafepress.com.

My primary business source of income, KaptainMyke.com, is distributed by Cafepress. A privately owned company, Cafepress has been around for quite some time now, since 1999. I opened my first cafepress store in May of 2005. It started out as a free store, limiting you to just one design across many products. This limitation also includes no customization or anything beyond the free template supplied for your store.

TIP! Free stores can bring in anywhere from $20-50 a month if you are a good designer and offer tee shirts that people want.

SUPER HOT TIP! Stay away from categories that are too popular and overcrowded. I would avoid these categories: Religion, Pets, Holidays, and Cars. Why? There's too many designs, that's why!

You want to find a niche, a topic that not many people have products for, but something people are searching for like crazy. You're probably now thinking, "Okay, then what niche should I do?" That's the part where your brain comes in. You have to find your niche. Look around Cafepress and see who's the most popular shops, and why. This doesn't mean do what they are doing, this means do something like what they are doing.

Niches

While on that subject, the tee shirt business can be stressful and competitive. Others will always use your ideas and either spinoff another shirt from it, or blatently take your idea. It happens, and you just have to accept it sometimes. To combat some of that from happening, Cafepress has made its affiliate program, so others can still profit from the same ideas - equally.

KaptainMyke.com has released some of the most original, and unique ideas to the movie/television related genre of tee shirts. Some people, even licensed, official tshirt companies, have had movie studios (like Universal Studios) shut down our products due to copyright infringement and produced their own licensed official copies of our ideas. It happens. Some of our tee shirt designs were the first ever, from forgotten 80s movies and tv shows. I know, because I did my research. Surprisingly, waves of variations of the same movies and shows started appearing across the Internet. You can't point your finger to others saying they took your idea, especially if you are in the movie/tv related quotes genre, since you get the idea from said movie or tv show that actually owns the idea in the first place!

Doing fan shirts by fans for fans can be a tricky business to deal with. You have to be careful and know when to back down when dealing with copyrights. Some studios allow it. For example, the 1980 release of Flash Gordon had underground unofficial tee shirts swarming the streets and media. Everyone was free to make "Gordon's Alive?" shirts in order to push and promote the movie's release. The same thing happened yet again, this time in 2006 with the power of the Internet - Snakes on a Plane, the movie. Cafepress partnered with Snakes on a Plane and New Line Cinema and allowed fans to make SoaP fan merchandise, as long as you didn't feature a face or actual images from the film. The name of the movie itself created widespread promotion, like a virus across the web. Cafepress storeowners, including myself, made a decent income during that season of the movie's theatrical release.

Viral fan base is what makes our pop culture so vibrant and different. After all, if it wasn't for the fans, nobody would buy the movies and tv programs on DVD, right? We as a modern society should believe in spreading the love of American cinema by making fan merchandise inspired by pop culture, movies, and television. Support your favorite movies and television shows by reminding others in society of them! Someone walks up to you and asks, "Where is that from? What is that? It looks familiar to me." Mention the movie or tv show it's from and that person walks away thinking, "OH Yeah! Now I remember!"

Most likely, that person will go rent or buy the film. It works. Sometimes movie studios and television studios do not agree.

So what do you do? Keep designing, keep coming up with new ideas and stay ahead of the competitors! Tread lightly. Stay under the lawyer's and studio's radar, follow their rules and accept that sometimes studios don't agree with viral marketing techniques in order to further promote their movies, toys, games, dvds, and related streams of income for them. It takes convincing to let the studios realize they ultimately make the extra profits as well, sometimes way above the "little man's cafepress shop". -Wink.

Back to basics

At Cafepress, for $6.95 a month you can upgrade to premium shop status, with multiple sections and design choices. After you start making money, the monthly fee is paid for itself and you forget there is even a fee.

HOT TIP! One of the biggest recommendations to trying this program out is by getting a domain name, and setup hosting for it. This is because you are going to want to do way more than anybody else with your cafepress store. With it you can have custom graphics, rich, vibrant flash panels, your own templates, your own links and promotional methods...the list goes on and on. Remember the old saying, "You get what you put into it"? It rings 1000% true with Cafepress. If you know a little something about web design and photoshop - you are going to be very, very successful with Cafepress.

HOT TIP! With your own brand new domain name and webspace, you have to get CPShop. You must, must, must get it! Again, I am clearly telling you in blue and white: If you want to make serious money with Cafepress, you must get CPShop. I honestly don't think I could have been near as successful without it. 100% total customization of your scripts and pages. You can add in your own keywords, descriptions, custom shopping carts, and even sell other people's products by making seperate store ids. The fee is $19.77 to get the script. The scripts are easy to understand, and there is a support forum for help. Marty, the creator and site administrator, will help you and even log into your hosting panel to get you up and running. This man has went above and beyond getting other members setup, such as myself. Thanks, Marty! For $15 Marty will even install it for you on your own website.

HOT TIP! Also, for search engines sake, try and make your domain name say exactly what you are selling. If you are selling tee shirts about the sixties hippy culture, make your domain be something like: hippylandshirtco.com or teesfromthe60s.com. This makes you top spot on Google or Yahoo, no matter what.

I did not take this route myself, in setting up KaptainMyke.com. Learn from my mistake. Why didn't I do that? That's because my domain (kaptainmyke.com) started off as a photoshop forum in 2002. We would have photoshop wars against the site admins and owners of 2gnt.com, a car forum community. (hi, Dino!) I formed my company, moved the forum to that site, and because KaptainMyke.com had unbelievable page ranks (at that time, mind you) - I turned that domain
name into my tee shirt company. The rest was up to me, so I got lucky keeping traffic during the switchover of sites.

SUPER DUPER HOT TIP #1 ! The biggest secret to search engine ranking is STAY UPDATED. If you keep doing updates to pages weekly, no wait - daily, hourly, whatever, and offer very descriptive titles, links, and texts...you are going to soar above the SEO clients that pay thousands of dollars a month for search engine ranks.

SUPER DUPER HOT TIP #2 ! If you are selling a red tee shirt about a flying monkey doing handstands while holding a baby doing the macarena, you better make sure your link and page title are aptly named, "Flying Monkey Handstand Macarena Baby Dark Red Medium Ringer Tee Shirt". It's such a pain in the butt to go back and rename each product at cafepress, but DO IT. Spending that extra hour retyping exact descriptives of your product at Cafepress will make Google and Yahoo find you better, faster...and at page 1 on search results.

But I can't design or draw a stick figure! What am I supposed to do with Cafepress?

Sell other people's products! Cafepress now uses Commission Junction. I have written an article on getting setup with CJ. You may read all about it here. The commissions will start small, as it did for me. After 6 months into the program, you can earn a decent check every month just by selling other's products from Cafepress. You'll have to figure out what works best for you by promoting and marketing products effectively.

TIP! Start a Blog, or a Squidoo Lens, or even a Myspace Page about something and start plugging in people's tee shirt designs with links wrapping through Commission Junction to the marketplace or products at Cafepress. It's easy! 16 year old kids are buying their first car just by blogging all day in their room after school! It costs nothing to start a blog, myspace page, or a squidoo lens, so get on it!

Are you a good writer? Publish Books with Cafepress and sell them.

Cafepress has an inhouse book publishing department. There are no setup fees, black and white books with full page color covers. You can choose from Saddle Stitch, Wire-O or Perfect Bound binding options. There are 5 book sizes to chose from. Pricing includes book production, order management, fulfillment and customer service. You choose the retail price and earn the difference between the retail price and our base price. At $.45 cents a page that is a reasonable rate. You set your markup and make a commission off every book sold.

TIP! If you are a good writer, and you have a major selling book at Cafepress, other people will sell your book for you using the Commission Junction program from this article I mentioned before.

TIP! Recently, Cafepress has changed their volume bonus structure and affiliate percentiles. You now make full commission off affiliate driven sales. This means that when others sell your product for you, you now make 100% commission instead of sharing 15% from the affiliate!

Printfection and Zazzle

There are several print on demand websites found on the Internet. (Google, new window)

HOT TIP! Other "Print on Demand" Services I use are: PrintFection and Zazzle . I receive checks in the mailbox once a month from those two and Cafepress. It costs nothing to get started with any of those 3 companies. Zazzle is backed by Google partners and investors. Printfection is a newer player in the market as well as Zazzle, both providing state of the art printing techniques. Over the past 2 years I have tried to slowly migrate designs from one to another. I started that by accident, with the intentions of contingency, in case Cafepress ever went bankrupt or out of business. What ensued instead was two additional, smaller paychecks in the mail from home. ( edited )

Design Shoes

SUPER HOT TIP! Do you love shoes? Maybe if you can't design or draw, you can be a shoe designer? Zazzle.com has started shoes! As of August 1st, 2008, Zazzle has partnered with Keds Shoes. You can now design your own women's and kids tennis shoes or slip on shoes. KaptainMyke.com will be introducing the a fresh line of eighties (80's) themed Keds slip-ons and sneakers. A launch date for the new KaptainMyke Keds (KMKeds) is currently not available yet as of the date & time of this article.

Conclusion

This article primarily is to introduce to you the world of print on demand services available online. There are many ways you can be successful, but it starts with you dedicating serious time and effort into these programs. For the past three years I have literally made this an 8 am to 5 pm, Monday through Friday job everyday in front of the computer. I'm not rich, but I can pay my bills and business expenses. The rest of life such as gas prices, diapers, baby food, electric bills and groceries are yet another story. Your success will show if you can devote the time and discipline.