Sorry for the lack of posting lately. I’ve been looking for a new apartment and a new job. (Sadly I can’t live on my Cafepress earnings just yet). But now that I have secured both a job and an apartment, I thought that this would be a good time to tell you my Cafepress Story. The story of how I got started on Cafepress and how long it took me to get where I am now.

December 2004: This is when it all began. My sister bought a tile box featuring this lovely design for our other sister. Then she said to me, “Hey, did you know you can sell your own stuff on this website?” I was immediately intrigued. I had been wanting to find a way to make some extra money online, but I had not ventured beyond ebay, and had never heard of print on demand before. I went to the website and devoured all the information I could lay my eyes on. I was super excited because the timing was perfect. I had always hated the idea of a 9 to 5 job, and wanted to eventually run my own business or be self employed. And I had just finished a few semesters of graphic design, graphic arts and photography classes, so I was skilled in Photoshop, Illustrator and basic html coding. The day after my sister told me this news, we left on our annual Christmas trip to grandma’s house, where unfortunately there is no internet. I took a notebook with me and spent my Christmas thinking up ideas about what kind of stores I could open and what kind of designs to sell.

January 2005: As soon as we returned home I opened up my first basic shop. Like most new shopkeepers, I planned to use basic shops until I earned enough money for a premium, and I only marked my items up a dollar or two at the most. After about a week though I was feeling very limited by the basic shop and since I was into photography, I really wanted to be able to offer framed prints. (At that time, framed prints were a premium only feature) So I whipped out the credit card and paid the $6.95 for a premium shop. I organized my shop into different sections and uploaded random designs. This shop didn’t have a particular theme, so it still serves as my “everything but the kitchen sink” store.

February 2005: I kept designing and uploading, trying not to get discouraged while wondering if I would ever sell anything. But I kept myself motivated, and my goal was to get to the point where I was making about $50.00 every month. I thought that would be awesome, just to have a little extra spending money. Then I found my way to the community forums, and I read a post from someone complaining that they “only” sold two or three items a day. I did some quick math in my head and realized that there was a lot more potential than I had previously thought.

March 2005: Still uploading, wondering, waiting, logging into my account every day and seeing that $0.00 staring me in the face. Beginning to wonder if I was wasting my time, but I kept going. And then, on March 16th, I signed in to my account and something was different. It took me a second to figure out what it was. Then I saw it. $12.06! Where it had previously said $0.00. For the first time I clicked on the sales report link, and saw that a wonderful woman from Texas had purchased six packs of my postcards. She had actually bought them in February, but since I didn’t realize that I could look at the sales reports I didn’t even know until the commission cleared. I had even had two more sales the first two weeks of March, for a raglan hoodie and a ringer T. There was one more sale at the end of the month, bring my commission for March to a grand total of $10.00!

I sold three items in April 2005, and a whopping eleven items in May. I was starting to think that this Cafepress thing might work out after all. June brought four more sales, and July brought three. July 17th was a momentous occasion because I received my very first check for the sum of $32.38. I loved looking at it so much I didn’t cash it for two weeks.

However, between July 13th and August 10th I did not sell a single thing. I began to get very discouraged, thinking that it had been a fluke and maybe the ride was over. I kept going though and opened a second premium shop. I had installed a statcounter in my shop and noticed that a lot of visitors were searching for and buying items related to a particular subject. So I opened a new store dedicated to that theme.

August 2005 was a good month, with eleven sales including a few from my new shop. And I was making a bit more, having changed my markups to $4.00-$5.00 rather that $2.00-$3.00. September was equally good with nine sales and increasing traffic to my new shop.

In October my sales exploded. I sold 56 items and made around $250.00. Partly from my new shop, and partly from designs related to a movie that had developed a rabid cult following.

By November the holiday season was in full swing, and I sold 87 items and made $350.00. December was great with 142 items sold and $725.00 earned. My first year on Cafepress had earned me a little over $1300.00.

I was pumped for 2006, but I really didn’t know what to expect during the winter months. Since I had been working retail for several years, I knew my sales would drop dramatically. I pretty much thought I wouldn’t sell anything during January, so I was pleasantly surprised to have 24 sales and bring in about $100.00. February was a bit worse, and things picked back up in March and rose steadily until December.

My second year on Cafepress brought in nearly $5200.00.

2007 started of good, with me bringing in $250.00 in January. February was awful, even worse than 2006. I think I made $70.00. But it picked up again in March, and pretty much followed the same pattern as 2006.

2007, my third year brought $7600.00.

Now we are well into 2008. Earlier in the year I looked over my shops and realized I had been doing a lot of slacking. I’ve gotten lazy, adding a design here and there, but not really putting much time into it. I would like to triple my sales for 2008 but so far my sales are up only 25%. I know, I’ll cry you a river. I shouldn’t complain, seeing as how my former retail employer has been reporting losses of 30% or more for 2008, and many other retailers are in the same boat.

So what have I done this year? I’ve been steadily adding new designs, and updating older ones. If I’m bored at work I go in and rewrite descriptions to improve my seo. I finally got around to purchasing Cpshop and I’m working on setting up a mirror of my shop on my own domain, plus several affiliate shops. I’ve had some friends model my shirts to use for promotional materials, and one of these days I’m going to order magnets for my car. And not wanting to put all my eggs in one basket, I’ve been slowly building my stores at Printfection and Zazzle, and looking into more POD services for overseas shoppers.

Bookmark It

Hide Sites