It’s been a little over two months since the marketplace changes at Cafepress, and I’ve decided I’m going to stay in the marketplace. I waffled on the decision for a while, back and forth between Hell no and Well, maybe I’ll wait and see how it goes. The verdict is, it’s actually been going pretty well and is getting better. Some numbers:
June 2008: 64 orders, 77 items, $580.44 commission
June 2009: 31 orders, 36 items, $76.25 commission
July 2008: 72 orders, 95 items, $728.63 commission
July 2009: 60 orders, 92 items, $183.12 commission
August 1-9, 2008: 17 orders, 25 items, $186.50 commission
August 1-9, 2009: 22 orders, 37 items, $58.20 commission
So, instead of focusing on the fact that I’m only making about 25% of my previous commissions, I’ve decided to concentrate on ways to make the Cafepress model work to my advantage. I’ve decided I will continue adding to my stores there, but only t-shirts. No longer will I have to spend two hours designing and uploading different sized images for the stickers, buttons, magnets, etc. I can just upload two files, one for the dark shirts, one for the light shirts, slap ‘em on, bulk change the title, and I’m done. No need even for a description because Cafepress does the marketing for me.
My sales at Zazzle have been very slowly improving, but the fact is that Cafepress makes it a lot easier for customers to find what they’re looking for.
1 response so far ↓
1 Rich // Aug 18, 2009 at 12:20 pm
I’ve had the same wishy-washy feelings about Cafepress since the changes to commission. On one hand, I’d like to just pull all my designs from the marketplace but on the other hand, a little money is better than nothing.
But that’s only true for work I’ve already done. I have no incentive at all to come up with new designs if they only pay $1.50 to $2.20 per shirt.
And so I don’t put new designs on Cafepress, but instead load them up to my Zazzle store. Maybe someday Zazzle traffic will improve to the point where it makes sense to just quit CP altogether.
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