Here are 14 tips for making more money with your Cafe Press T-shirt store.
Get a Premium Store -- Premium stores cost about five bucks per month, but you only have to sell one or two extra items to pay this expense. They have several great features which makes it worth the extra.
Sections and subsections -- Divide your items into sections and subsections. This feature, only available with premium stores, allows your reader to shop from a huge variety of items without being overwhelmed.
Variety, but not too much -- Offer a variety of designs but only offer a few projects for each design. People have difficulty making decisions when offered three or more choices. Overwhelmed them, and their decision will be to leave without buying.
Categorize -- When you have a premium store, you can select a category for each section and each subsection. Choose a category that best fits each section. Have a section be as specific as possible when choosing a category.
Create black T-shirts -- Creating dark colored T-shirts is slightly more difficult because your design must have a transparent background. Because of this you will have less competition, plus colored T-shirts frequently sell better.
Promote your items -- You will be lucky to sell a handful of T-shirts each month unless you put some effort into promotion. Use the same techniques you use to promote your regular website to promote your Cafe Press store. Try to get people to link to you. Create links from your own websites. Even use other marketing techniques such as e-mail newsletters, Google AdWords or add the URL to your business card.
Announce new products -- Create new products at least once a month. Promote them on your websites and send e-mails. It's always easier to sell to a repeat customer than to a new customer.
Link directly to products -- Sometimes it's easier to encourage someone to buy by linking directly to a specific item or section rather than the general store. You can link directly to any item simply by cutting and pasting the URL from your address bar of your browser.
Create More Cafe Press Free Stores -- Create additional stores with different tracking IDs. When using free stores limit yourself to only one page of items. Use a specific niche. Create nine different items of the same design, or use nine different designs for similar items. Links to free stores to your general store. You can use the same media basket, so use free stores to give extra promotion to your best-sellers.
Use the custom HTML options -- Under the customize option you can create custom HTML. This is a very powerful feature because you can create simple HTML with links, bold print, and keywords that may help your Cafe Press page get a little bit of notice from search engines. You don't need advanced HTML, simply learn how to create a link, add an image, and add bold or italic print. There are tons of easy tutorials available online. You can use your notepad to edit the HTML, or software such as Dreamweaver or Microsoft Expression Web.
Use the Referral Program -- Every shopkeeper is automatically an affiliate. Provide links that encourage people to start their own shops. Even if you're T-shirts never sell, you can or revenue on another shopkeeper's success. I've made more money from one or two other shopkeepers than I have from my own products.
DON'T use Cafe Press generic banners -- They don't work. Use text links, or if you want to get fancy, create your own buttons.
Fill out the Store Info section -- Enter a title, keywords, and meta tag description for each of your shops. These help search engines understand the content. Make sure to use about five or six keywords that you think people might use to find items in your shop.
Buy and Resell your own stuff -- If you hit it big with a particular item, by a bunch of them (15 or more will get you a discount) and resell them on eBay or on your website directly. This will take a little more energy, however your margins will be better. You can also sell them person-to-person if you have a venue.
Sell Books and CDs -- Cafe Press can be used as a just-in-time book printer or CD duplicator. If you have another product such as an e-book or software package, utilize Cafe Press as an automatic way to sell physical versions of your electronic products. The margins on these items can be extraordinarily high in the right circumstances. I have e-books that sell for $149.
Not creative? -- Use public domain graphics you find online. Use the Google search box on this page to find public domain images. Don't steal! Not only is it illegal and unethical, but Cafe Press polices is legal graphic use heavily. Don't steal ideas either. Other people's funny T-shirts are copyrighted. Bad: Getting a nasty e-mail from Cafe press. Worse: Getting a nasty certified letter from a copyright attorney.
If you already have a Cafe Press store, use these tips to start selling more products. If you don't, start a Cafe Press store today, and within an hour you'll be ready to start selling T-shirts and more.
5 comments:
Recently CafePress began competing with the artists for whom it acts as printer and shipper.
CafePress rents web shops to its artists. The artist creates a website page and manually loads the desired blank products. The artist imports his image onto each product, arranges the products on the page, describes the products, titles the products and tags the images.
Initially, the artist would set a markup and received the markup for each product sold.
However, recently CafePress began competing with its artists, using the artists' own images. CafePress created a marketplace where a customer can search a keyword. That search brings up artist products. When the customer buys from the marketplace CafePress pays the artist 10% of the price CafePress set. Both the customer and the artist lose money. If the artist's shop sells a t-shirt for $21, the artist makes $3.01. If the marketplace sells the same shirt for $25, the artist gets $2.50. The customer pays $4 more, and the artist gets $0.51 less.
CafePress tells artists to "promote your own shop," but CafePress buys Google adwords using the very image tags the artist provided.
CafePress justifies this bait and switch of service terms by telling artists they can opt out if they don't like the new terms; however, many have spent as much as 7 or 8 years creating as much as 88000 images.
In spite of their sweat-equity, many shopkeepers (content providers) are building shops at other print-on-demand companies and then closing their CafePress shops due to the broken faith and trust, the financial hardship CafePress has delivered into so many lives, and the huge amount of time and dedicated effort all lost in the momentum of their own businesses. Would you keep your AMOCO station franchise if AMOCO built a company store across the street from you?
Respectfully, I disagree.
I think CaféPress brings more value because of their extensive marketplace, plus the fact that they spend money on key words to generate traffic for that marketplace.
In your example you earn $3.01 when you sell a T-shirt in your own CaféPress store. CaféPress then sells a second T-shirt, then you earn $2.50. Ultimately, the value of your art has not gone down, because rather than earning $3.01 from a creation, you've earned $5.51 for the art.
Your concept of the competing gas station is faulty because CaféPress is not your competitor. In fact, had the same individuals in your T-shirt on your store as well as the CaféPress marketplace they would you choose in your store because the price of your shirt is lower. Café Press has simply delivered an additional customer.
A better example would be a McDonald's opening across the street from your Burger King. What we know about marketing is that McDonald's will spend a certain amount of money marketing their products, and they won't steal from Burger King's customers. When several fast food places open in the same neighborhood, they all make out better because people recognize they can come to the same place for variety of fast food. In fact, having a competitor across the street is one of your best values.
CaféPress has by far the best reputation from a customer perspective, therefore I believe they deliver more customers.
I do think, however, you bring up one very valid point. While I believe the marketplace has tremendous value, artists should be permitted to opt out of the marketplace. I think that for most individuals selling their creations to a wider audience would be valuable, but some individuals would prefer to charge higher prices than the marketplace. For these people they may choose to opt out and not permit CaféPress to promote their merchandise.
Finally, in fairness to our readers, your website does in fact point to a CaféPress store. While you may be unhappy, you're still using CaféPress currently. Additionally, I think it's also fair to point out that much of the art that you use in your own creations, as well as the graphics that you use to promote them are stock photography and clipart. The original artists earn nothing from your creation because they opted to sell their art to a stock art site.
Thank you for reading my blog. By the way, blog comments are a great way to build incoming links to your domain. You failed to sneak your blog link in, so I'll do it for you.
Readers, if you're interested in a wide variety of patriotic and military themed CaféPress creations, please visit www.LinkinMall.net.
I can say as a CafePress shopkeeper of several years that my profits are now down to almost a quarter of what they were before CafePress changed their pricing. My shop used to bring in a modest residual income for me (and tens of thousands for CafePress!) and now I don't think it's even worth the effort to keep it running. They're making a killing off of my designs and I get pocket change. I'm thoroughly dosappointed. :/
Just a tip for your readers: you can promote your shops for free on http://www.teeshirtshops.com/
As a cafepress shopkeeper, I agree with most of the criticism towards them after changing their pricing and lowering the commission they pay to designers. I opened a shop through CP a year ago, just when they lowered Marketplace sales commissions to 10%. I learned very quickly that the best way to use cafepress is as your print source when promoting your OWN store. Ex: When I sell a t-shirt through their marketplace, my average commission is $2.20. However, this same t-shirt sold through my store brings me $7.00. Although I have not reached my income goals, I am seeing steady earnings of $500-750 per month after one year of operation. Half of this comes from their Marketplace. They way I see it, income is income.
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