Thread: Taking on Merchandising with new Cafepress store

Hey all,

This one kind of follows on the heels of Lin's thread here:

http://www.writingforums.com/showthr...d-merchandiise

Anyway, I spent the last couple of weeks or so setting up my online merchandise store for my webnovel site:

http://www.cafepress.com/soryanshoppe

I say couple of weeks because I started off with Zazzle, then scrapped it and ended up back at Cafepress (I had used Cafepress for a moderately successful store a couple of years ago so I had a little experience).

My advice for those considering: Go with Cafepress. It's more polished.

Sure, on some items you see a lower cost at Zazzle, plus the store itself is FREE. Cafepress has a free option that only allows 80 products (and only one type of product per store), and then a Pro option that costs about $7.00 U.S. per month. Cafepress also has more sellable items in total.

After working with Zazzle for awhile and watching tutorial video after tutorial video, I decided my time was worth way more to me so the $7 was a small price to pay. You can also use your own url with a Cafepress pro store, but to me it's not really a big deal so I'm not gonna bother with it.

Zazzle had only one thing I loved way more than Cafepress - the ability to upload a large number of images at once. Cafepress has a five at a time upload that is not cool.

Aside from that, though - in Zazzle, if I want to edit a product and change the image or change the price, I can't. I have to make a whole new product and then delete the old one. This is just asinine.

In Cafepress I just select all the products and change the image/price markup/tags all at once. What a lifesaver.

In Zazzle, they have a tool where you can type in text that you want to appear on your product, then position it where you want it to go.

You'd think this would be great but damn did it eat up a colossal amount of time. Cafepress lacks this tool but I found it better to just include the lettering in the image, all done.

I opted out of appearing in the Cafepress Marketplace. This seems counterintuitive but from my reading, it appears that Cafepress charges a fee for appearing here, they collect this fee by raising the markup on your products and setting the retail price to an amount of their own choosing, taking more money from you when it sells.

So yes your products are more visible, but now they cost more and you make less, so you're kind of competing with Cafepress at this point.

Another thing to watch out for - avoid the backprinting. When they need to print your web address or anything on the back of a shirt, they'll add a $3.00 surcharge, thus driving up the cost of your item. Once I realized this, I re-did my designs to feature the web address on the front. I'm trying to keep those prices as low as possible. Some of the prices are already quite high but what else can you expect from this type of service, I guess.

Finally, here's a little dandy to weigh on the side of Cafepress. I found this site:

http://www.sellit.com/

And it works with Cafepress and not Zazzle. Apparently you can end up appearing on many other websites by using this service. Right now I just signed up for the free tier, but as funds allow I'll take out some advertising with them and upgrade to the higher level service and see how it goes.

I'm knee-deep in this Cafepress stuff now so if anyone has any questions just let me know. I'm gonna keep tweaking this thing and keep trying to get eyes on it so I'll let you guys know if I discover anything important.

Wow, John.
I really dig the way you jump in and cut right to the heart of this stuff.

You could run both merchandise groups, right? Like if one had a product you liked. Or to A/B compare them.

I'll be interested to see what you say about Sellit.

Wow, those prints are NICE.
I think it's wise to restrict your great images to that sort of presentation, not put them on mugs or mousepads. Maybe a calendar sometime?

Your project really leads with art and you've got a great grip on working it.

I assume you're wearing your shirts and stuff around.

Now THAT is point of purchase advertising.

Not living in the states, and being mostly a Goodwill rat anyway, I have no idea how to evaluate the prices of these things.
I wouldn't pay $16.95 for baseball hat, but maybe it's pretty normal? How do these prices stack up with normal retail price of logo shirts, hoodies, and such?

Hey Linton,
thanks for checking it out!

Yes there's absolutely nothing to stop anyone from running both stores and breaking up products as they see fit. For the low cost of "FREE" all you're really putting in is time and sweat equity.

And you're right, as I mentioned some of the prices are a bit higher than I would like. Some I was only able to realistically put $1.00 markup on, the highest markup I ever put on was $3.00 where I could get away with it.

I guess part of my job is to keep pimping the story so the perceived value of these items grows so that I'm able to charge more.

I've ordered a few pieces for myself and I'm pestering other autonomous walking advertisements, er, I mean "my friends" to buy anything they can afford and wear it around.

I'm not a fashion or clothes guy myself. Something has to be really wearing out before I replace it, but to me these prices are high compared to the Walmarts and Targets here in the States. I'm just hoping people have a bit more disposable income than me, I guess.

As for that piece you showed in your last post. I picture it like this:

GIRL: I can't believe we're finally married. I've been waiting for this for a long time.
GUY: Me, too, baby. Time to rock your world.
GIRL: I love you!
GUY: No, I love...hold on. Wait...what's that? Soryan Order?
GIRL: That's nothing, you were saying..?
GUY: No, no. It's definitely not nothing. Quickly, to the internet!!

...another marriage ruined. I'm such a stinker...

I wouldn't worry too much about the price markup. Your stories and artwork are addictive, and people will pay extra for something that they identify with, especially if that merchandise isn't available anywhere else. Your designs and products are great. The difficult part is usually building up a fan base. When you reach critical mass, you'll start making regular sales. At least, that's my experience after selling stuff online the past few years.

I bookmarked your Soryan Order site. It's right up my alley, and I've been looking for something to read. Great fiction and great art!

Have you thought about recording your stories as MP3 files? You might hook a lot more fans that way. You could syndicate the MP3s on podcasting sites as a free download, and use the attention to drive traffic to your Cafe Press store, or to sell a collected print edition of your writing and artwork.

I'm glad I stumled across your work, John. You've gained a fan.

Thanks Craig,

I've been slacking on that one for awhile because of low readership. But now it's time to go on the attack again.

I've been over in the blogging world learning some stuff that I'll now apply to the novel site.

Making an MP3 podcast is something I definitely did not think of. Now I'll need to find someone with a good voice to read it!