CafeSuccess

CafePress Newbie Don'ts

2009-01-07T02:48:00.001-08:00

So you are new to CafePress. Let me save you some time and grief by giving you a list of basic CafePress dont's.

- Don't kid yourself into thinking shopkeeping is easy. You'll need to juggle graphic design, web design, marketing, copywriting, CafePress product designer and a lot more. Shopkeeping requires a lot of skill, determination, patience, stubbornness, creativity and again a lot more. For me it's the best job in the world, but easy it's not.
- Don't expect quick results. You might get some beginner's luck, but don't count on that. True success takes time and dedication. If you don't make sales in the first few month's, don't be disappointed. Give your shops at least six months to start generating profit.
- Don't get stuck with basic shops. You can make money with basics, but they are no match to premium shops. As soon as you are able to open a premium shop, do it.
- Don't overlook the forums and CP help pages. Everything you need to know about shopkeeping and more is written somewhere on the CP community pages. Read the forums especially the stickied posts, study chat transcripts, get familiar with the templates...
- Don't forget about tutorials and info provided by Diane at tutortanith.com. Diane is a super smart lady. She knows a great deal about shopkeeping. Pay close attention to what she has to say on her website and in the forums.
- Don't expect others to give you all the answers. Learn to help yourself. Shopkeepers are very friendly and helpful. If you get stuck, post in the forums and ask for help, but don't expect anyone to hold your hand.
- Don't be a copycat. It's wrong on so many levels, it doesn't even need explaining.
- Don't ignore copyrights and trademarks. Know them and respect them. It will save you from wasting time and energy, not to mention keep you from getting sued.
- Don't expect the CafePress system to run smoothly all the time. Glitches, bugs and all sorts of problems happen often. Nobody likes them, but if you are serious about shopkeeping learn to live with them. Whatever you do, don't panic. File a bug report. Visit the forums, see if others have experienced the same or if there is a solution offered. Be patient.
- Don't edit more than one shop at a time. It messes up the templates, descriptions and what not. Trust me on this one. One shop at a time.
- Don't underestimate and disrespect your customers. You need them. Fight for their attention and don't do anything to insult them or send them away.

Happy shopkeeping!

A Dream

2008-08-26T01:44:00.000-07:00

I had a funny dream last night. I was attending a top shopkeeper conference of some sort with lots and lots of shopkeepers around many long tables. The funny part? Instead of sitting on chairs we were all sitting in shopping carts.

This Holiday Season...

2007-11-30T06:12:00.000-08:00

... I am making a lot more sales than I did this time last year.
... Sandy is still a pitiful copycat and plagiarizer without brains or talent to come up with her own designs.
... Life is good.

Parasite At Work

2007-09-02T10:15:00.000-07:00

Yes, the parasite a.k.a. my stalker a.k.a. Sandy a.k.a. a woman with no talent from Westerville, Ohio keeps feeding herself with my ideas, but even more so with ideas of other shopkeepers.

She is so obvious it's pathetic. When she wants to add a new section to her shop, before she does anything she has to gather ideas, other people's ideas, of course. How does she do it? She goes to the marketplace, searches for the designs in the niche she plans to attack next and then steals, steals, steals everything she can find on top of the marketplace for that search.

Must be very pathetic to live a life as a parasite.

Messages!

2007-07-26T02:35:00.000-07:00

Hey, Sandy,

I've seen your shop. Very nicely plagiarized designs and descriptions from my shop. Other than lack of respect for my work and all the help you got from me, you seem to suffer from a lack of shame, too. I won't even talk about the lack of intelligence to come up with your own ideas.

Ah, well, you know what they say "karma is a bitch" and I bet she'll give you a very nice ride once you face it.

Everyone else, here's a couple of tips from me,

Keep your shops secret from other shopkeepers. It won't stop copycats like Sandy from stealing your ideas, but it will at least make it harder for them to find you.

Be careful of who you help. There are a lot of bad people out there. I made a mistake by helping Sandy and she back stabbed me. Don't make the same mistake. Help only the people who deserve it.

That's all.

Not Returning

2007-07-16T02:30:00.001-07:00

For a while I thought I'd return to this blog. However, the final decision is not to do so. I am not closing the blog completely, but almost. I weeded out the posts and only left a few with general help texts. Everything else is deleted forever.

There were some very nice people reading. I am sorry that this is the final goodbye, but I know you will understand. I am also sorry that I never got to talk to the reader from Korea who was one of the first people here and kept reading till this day. I'd love to hear from you, so if you wish drop me a private message via the CP forum (username BZ). If not, never mind, I wish you all the best :)

Good luck with your shops, everyone. I hope you make millions :)

A Few Things I Heard In the Executive Chat

2007-07-11T18:12:00.000-07:00

Calendars will change to 2008 in August
Value tees will be removed from the marketplace late in July
There will be gift certificates in time for the holiday season.
In the next few months they will start charging extra for printing on both sides of apparel. Printing on both sides of tote bags will not change result in extra charge.
They are looking into direct deposit, but IF it happens it won't happen this year.
Tile box will be upgraded.
There will be new clocks in the future (not sure if they'll just upgrade the existing ones or release different models).
They are working on tote bags and want to get back to printing on in the center, not on the top.
Jr Jersey ex Jr Baby Doll will get a new thumbnail image sometime in August.
The very useful numbers that showed how many times a tag was search in the marketplace that are now stuck at zero all the time will be fixed, but as far as I understood - not any time soon. I think I hard end of the year mentioned. I guess they think it's not important... I wouldn't agree.

Let Me Tell You About My Stalker

2007-07-04T00:02:00.000-07:00

There is a person reading this blog several times a day each day. I am quite sure I know who this person is, but lets pretend that I don't know and keep it at that. I don't check the stats for the blog often, but whenever I do, that person is near the top of the page with more visits and page views than anyone else. That is actually nice, someone is interested in what I write, I appreciate it.

Ohhh, but that person is not just interested in this blog. Nope, that person spends hours and hours and hours visiting my premium shops. That's fine, too, because I chose to share those shops with everyone.

You'd think the person would stop there, but no. The person is a regular visitor at my 4thClick shops, too. Both of them. There, the person, found a new game to play - put stuff into the shopping cart. So, "the person" is going around both 4thClick shops putting stuff into the cart, coming back the next day and viewing the cart and than repeats. Was it because I mentioned a few times that I get frustrated when people put things into the cart and don't buy or for some other strange reason? I don't know and don't really care.

I could have lived with all of the above and never would have said one single thing about it here, but the next thing that happened spilled the glass for me. A few weeks ago I mentioned that I made some new political designs. Surprise, surprise the person shows up in my political shop via marketplace after the search for "newly arrived" political designs. How many hours did it take to go through all the newly arrived designs and shops and try to figure out which one could be mine? Why this obsession? Is it really a copycat or someone with too much free time and no respect for me at all?

Last night shortly after I wrote about my efforts to get visitors to see the design I wanted them to see and buy, there's the person. Spent 2 hours 40 minutes in my shop. First came from a bookmark or a cashed page, than in the middle of the visit left and came back from the marketplace after searching for the design that this person suspected I was talking about in my latest blog entry. (Note: the blog entry in question was later deleted from this blog.)

How does that sound to you? It doesn't sound good to me at all. If I wanted people to snoop around my political shop I would have put a link to it in the sidebar, so everyone could do it. Isn't it enough that I keep three of my premium shops public and both my 4thClick shops, too, so that anyone could see what they are about, check out prices, see the shop organization and use them as learning material if they need to? (Note: my shops are now edited out of the blog.)

I am really upset over this. I feel like someone is constantly breathing down my neck. I didn't mention anything giving the person a benefit of a doubt and hoping that the person would find something better to do than chase around CafePress trying to discover my shops or play with my shopping carts. Well, now it has gone too far, I can't not talk about it.

So, I am talking directly to you, now. Bravo, you succeeded in a few things. You made me regret that I ever started this blog. You made me not talk about certain things that would be helpful to the rest of the readers, because I knew you'd abuse them. I used to really love keeping this blog and put my heart into recording my experience as a shopkeeper and found joy in helping others make it on Cafepress. Not any more. You took the fun and joy out of it for me.

I have too many other things to worry about to have the energy to keep writing this blog as I did up until now and have to measure every single word, so I wouldn't mention anything that could be abused by "the person".

After explaining everything, I am sure that everyone will understand why this has to be the end of this blog as we know it. I might return once in a while to write a thing or two, but from now on, don't expect me to write every day or even every month.

I will still be present in the community and if you want to talk to me (everyone except "the person", I don't want to talk to you) you can drop me a private message via the forums (username is BZ).

Basic Shop Potential

2007-07-02T05:05:00.000-07:00

Elise asks:

"I was wondering, do you think if I market my basic shops really well... Would they potentially earn as much as a premium shop? Why or why not?"

Here is what I think. It would be possible, but extremely tough. The only way of succeeding at it I can think of is having an external website that would bind all the basics together in one place. In that case, you'd need a web domain, web hosting, CPShop and a lot of time and effort invested into marketing to pull it off.

In theory, it could work. In real life... I doubt it.

Why not? Here is a list:

No matter what your premium shop looks like, it will look better than a basic shop. All basic shops look the same. Premium shops look more professional and can be personalized to make a better impression on shoppers.
The SEO for basic shops is extremely limited. Premium shops have just a few limitations in that respect. In a premium shop more can be done for SEO than any of us will ever have time to do.
Variety. A basic shop can only offer one product type at a time, the choice is very limited. In a premium you have many different designs in one place. I have people staying half an hour or longer in my premium shops, looking around and ending up buying multiple items. On numerous occasions, people come searching for one thing and end up buying something different after looking around. You don't get that with basic shops.
Efficiency. In a premium shop you can have a hidden section with all available products in it, with the prices set, designs well adjusted on the products and the products arranged as you please in whichever order you want to put them. When you create a new design you can just import that hidden section into a new section, do a bulk change of the image, do a bulk description and a bulk title change, delete products that are not needed and you are done. That saves loads of time. You can have a design up in a section and looking great in less than 10 minutes or less if you have a good hidden template section. Premium shop saves time all around and leaves you more time to do other stuff.
Limitations. In a premium shop you can create a section with many items of a single product. There are even whole shops with just one products as SagArt's clock shop, for example. Can't do that with a basic shop. You can make as many sections and add as many designs to a premium shop. No limitations at all. That gives you a lot of freedom that you don't get with basic shops.
Easy price setting. You can do bulk price changes. It gives you the freedom to experiment, offer short time sales of certain products, etc. without having to spend hours changing the prices.
Marketing. It's much easier

I could go on and on. The truth is, whatever you can do with basic shops, you can do it many times better with a premium. You can make money with basic shops, I have. You can make a lot more money with premium shops. Even my smallest, very much neglected premium shop, with hardly any designs in it makes more money than my 70+ basic shops together. Sixty bucks a year is a small price to pay for what you get with a premium shop.

It's only my opinion, but if one is serious about CafePress, wants to earn money and is ready to invest time and effort into it, a premium shop is a must.

Hope I answered your question, Elise.

Shop Review

2007-06-29T10:57:00.000-07:00

David asked if I could give him my opinion about his Shiny Black Sheep shop. No problem, David, I'd love to. I like to analyze stuff.

First impression - beautiful, very modern web design. Second impression - great, actually fantastic designs - very original, very artistic, very attractive and very well thought of. As for the designs and the artistic value I have the best impressions and words of praise.

The prices are quite low and affordable, so they are fine. I would have them higher, though. The site is so well designed, it looks upscale, so I'd expect higher prices. Still, that's a personal choice.

Unfortunately, it's not enough to have beautiful designs to sell stuff and that is especially true for online selling. Here are the problems I can see with this shop.

The "above the fold" area is not used well.

The above the fold area is everything you can see on a web page without having to scroll. The fold is the line dividing the immediately visible area from the area that can be viewed only after scrolling down. Internet visitors are not very patient and a bit lazy, so as much of important data as possible should be placed in the above the fold area.

The top banner, although pretty, takes way too much space and it's not very informative. Actually, it takes quite a bit of scrolling down to reach the area where the actual products are displayed. That's a good way to lose visitors.

Speaking of losing visitors... the sidebar links to the blog, MySpace, eBay and the other links are taking away the visitors, as well. The goal is to get shoppers into the shop and keep them in for as long as possible. While they are there, they should be paying attention to products and not get sidetracked by shiny banners.

Bad SEO!

David says that the shop gets visitors. That's nice, but who are those visitors? Are they looking to buy t-shirts, mugs, pillows, buttons? Are they looking to buy anything? Judging by the SEO, I'd be surprised if many shoppers visited the site.

Lets go from the top. The title bar of the browser says: Shiny Black Sheep : CafePress.com. Not good. The search engines give a lot of weight to the text in the title bar, so it's very important for the SEO. Is "Shiny Black Sheep" an established brand that people are searching for? I don't think so, so putting that into title bar does nothing for SEO. Words like t-shirt, shirt, clothing, gift should be put into that title bar, so that the website would be associated with those products. Those words alone are too general, so just putting them into the title is not good either. The shopkeeper, David in this case, has to decide what type of stuff he sells and how he wants to market it. I am not going to go deep into that, so I'll pick one possible option and that's retro (this could be a wrong pick, remember that I am just giving an example). Now, off to Keyword Selector Tool and search for retro. First good choice "retro clothing", next "retro t-shirt". Ok, I thought of another one parody. Back to the keyword selector tool and I get "parody t-shirt". So there... those are the keywords that should be put into the Title bar, something like Retro Clothing, Parody T-shirt and Gift Collection.

In the same way, the section titles should be chosen. Remember, they end up in the title bar, too.

These should be changed from time to time, especially when there is something seasonal to add to them... ie. "Christmas Gift".

The title bar text of the front page is the text entered in the Title line that can be changed in the Adjust Shop Information area of the shop. The title bar of a section is the title of the section.

All the descriptions should be written in a similar way. For example:

"Welcome to Shiny Black Sheep (A.k.A. S.B.S.), You have found a great selection of t shirts & accesories, get ready for the Black Sheep, dare to stand out!"

This text is taken from the shop as it is made now. It's not only short, it is not very informative for the search engines, either. Just "t shirts & accessories" is too general and says nothing about the shop. What kind of t-shirts, what type of accessories? What else? The text is the food for search engines so you've got to give them lots of it and incorporate as many descriptions of what you offer. Bold text - great idea - but from the SEO stand wrong text is bold. Search engines give importance to the bold text. Is anyone searching for "dare to stand out", if they are, are they looking to buy shirts and accessories? The keywords should be printed in bold.

When writing any text think of the visitors that are not yet on your page - those that are searching the web. What would they enter into the search box? The texts on your page should match those search terms. The text is your link with them. That's all you have. They can't see pictures to understand what your site offers. Those that are already in the shop will look at the pictures and the text is not all that important for them.

No titles or descriptions.

This has everything to do with the previous topic. No titles, no descriptions - no feed for the search engines - the site is not communicating with the search engines.

Even where there is a title it's not SEO friendly. Will anyone search for "iTelephone t-shirt"? Will anyone search for "iCasette Mug" or anything iTelephone or iCasette? It's clear what the designs are about once you see the design, but the those searching the net don't have the luxury of seeing the images and they don't know that the cool products are hidden behind those names that are witty, but not what people would search for.

SEO in this shop needs most improvement. Either you work on SEO and attract search engine crowd or you open the wallet and pay for some heavy marketing. Either way, the theme and target audience of this shop should be determined, so that the right crowd is brought in.

This is a new shop, so I can't really say that it's fault is a lack of designs. However, for most shopkeepers it's true that a lot of designs are needed to make regular sales (I am talking hundreds and thousands here).

My final tips:

Keep adding new designs.
Improve SEO. No need to do it all at once. A bit of this and that each day will do it in a long run. This includes adding titles and descriptions to ALL sections and products.
Fix the web design so that more important info can be found above the fold and bring the actual products higher on the pages, so there wouldn't be so much scrolling before the products appear.
Spell check.
Put to a minimum, or if possible eliminate the outgoing links (eBay, blog... etc.)
Have patience. The designs are good. They will sell eventually, until that day keep working regardless of sales and learn not to take it personal when nothing sells.

This is, of course, just an opinion. The final decisions are always the shopkeeper's responsibility.

OK, David, I hope this was useful. Everyone else, I hope there was something interesting in it for you, too.

member since 6/28/2006

2007-06-28T01:26:00.000-07:00

That is what is written in the top right corner of my account page at CafePress. Happy CP anniversary to me!

Most important things I've learned in my first year at CafePress:

Patience is a must. Lots of it.
Success is possible, but not without long hours of hard work.
Premium shop makes the shopkeeper's job a breeze compared to basic shops.
At any given moment there is a bug or an unsolved problem going on. Whatever it is, it's not worth losing nerves over it.
There is something new to learn every day. Successful shopkeepers are a great source of wisdom and practical knowledge.

That and a million of other important things.

Tip Of the Day - SEO Q&A

2007-06-20T12:30:00.000-07:00

Here are some SEO basics in form of a Q&A text.

Q: What is SEO?
A: Search Engine Optimization - the art of making a website/shop attractive for search engines.

Q: Why would I care if a search engine likes my shop/website?
A: Because they are the bridge between your shop and the shoppers. If you build a good relationship with the search engines they will send people who want to buy what you are selling right into your shop.

Q: What search engines do I need to impress?
A: Google before every other. Google is the ruler of the cyber universe - it can make a star out of you, or ignore you and make a job of selling t-shirts much harder for you than it needs to be. Yahoo, MSN and other smaller search engines are important, too, but they are used by less people, so they have a smaller potential in bringing shoppers into your store.

Q: How do I get on Google's good side?
A: By having a lot of fresh, keyword rich content on your site.

Q: How do I keep my website fresh?
A: By frequently updating it. This can be done in many ways. You could add new designs, sections and new products. You could go into old sections and change descriptions. You could change the layout of the site, shuffle sections and products... In other words keep tweaking the site/shop, even if the changes are small. That will keep Google aware that the site is active and it will give it more credit and better position in the search results.

Q: What is a keyword?
A: Keyword is a word or a group of words that shoppers use to search the web. "Monkey" is a keyword, "Love Monkey" is also a keyword, "Love Monkey t-shirt" you guessed it - a keyword.

Q: What do I do to make my shop keyword rich?
A: You use every given opportunity to add text to your shop. Write all titles, section teasers, section descriptions and product descriptions. Use the footer of the site to add interesting/funny/educational texts relevant to your designs. Use the headers of sections to give a good description of what is available in the section. While you are at it, fill those texts with keywords that shoppers would use when looking for the stuff you sell or that would attract people who are your target shoppers. Example: "Wide selection of unique and funny monkey t-shirt and gift items for a monkey lover." See how "monkey t-shirt" and "funny monkey t-shirt" and "monkey lover" all fit into one small section. Plus we have words gift and unique thrown in too... so if someone was looking for "unique gift for a monkey lover" your description would allow for your page to be listed in the search results.

Q: How do I know what the shoppers are thinking and what keywords they use?
A: Easy. Use Keyword Selector Tool. Type in a general keyword and it will give you more specific keywords to use in your descriptions. Example: search for "monkey" or "monkey shirt". Go through the results and find the keywords that will be most beneficial for your shop. The more keywords with a specific product name in it - the better. The more people search for the keyword - the better. Don't give up if the page doesn't appear. Just go back and reload. It's worth all the reloading.

Q: What else can I do to pimp up my shop SEO-wise?
A: Make the keywords in shop description, section descriptions and the footer bold. To make a text bold use html. If you don't know how to do that you can learn here: HTML Text Formatting. You should not use html in section teasers, product descriptions or titles. If you add your own images to the shop (banner, logo...) add alt and title tags to the html code for the image. Titles are very important for SEO, as they go into the title bar on top of the browser and they appear as links (both carry importance for SEO), so make sure to pick really good titles - both section and product titles matter.

Q: Anything I can do for SEO away from the site?
A: Yes! Build links from various parts of the net pointing to your shop. Use every given opportunity to do that. Post links to your shop in blogs, Squidoo, on MySpace. Don't spam, but be sure to use an opportunity when you spot one.

Q: Anything I shouldn't do?
A: You shouldn't try to fool search engines. They are smart and will bust you. You don't want that to happen, believe me! Don't use hidden text (same color of the text and the background). Don't repeat a keyword too many times on a page. Any excessive use of one single keyword is called keyword spamming and will get you in trouble.

Q: How can I know if my SEO efforts are paying off?
A: Get a StatCounter for your site, keep an eye on it, especially on the Keyword Analysis feature. Are the Search Terms that visitors are using those that you planed to be your main keywords? If not, you will need to work them into more titles and descriptions. Search terms are also great inspiration for new designs. It's reversed SEO. The shopper is already there and you know what s/he wants, so get busy, create and offer it to them.

Q: How do I find out if a search engine likes my website?
A: Use that very search engine and search for site:your shop's full web address (example: site:http://www.cafepress.com/cutestshopever). As a result you'll get a list of all the pages from your site indexed by the search engine. The more pages - the better, but they need to be in the main list. Those results that have Supplemental Result in the bottom line are not all that useful.

Q: Is there anything else I need to know about SEO.
A: One always needs to keep learning about SEO.

Tip Of the Day - Time Saving

2007-06-15T13:41:00.000-07:00

Here is a quick and easy one.

When you are rearranging items in a section don't drag a single item all across the section clicking a bazillion times to do that. Select all the fields between the item you want to move and the position where you want to move it by clicking on the one end and than clicking on the other while holding shift. Than click up or down to move the whole selection and put the item you want to move where you want it to be.

Example:

Items stand like this:
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
You want to move 2 and move it behind 8 so that the items stand like this:
1
3
4
5
6
7
8
2
9
You do NOT select 2 and than click the arrow down six times to do this. Here is what you do. You click on 3, than hold shift and click on 8. This will select everything from 3 to 8. Than, you press the up arrow once and the items will be lined as you want them to be.

It's one of those obvious things... but than I've been known to overlook the obvious. Maybe this will help you save some time. It helps me a great deal, especially since the real sections are made of close to or more than 100 items unlike the example of only 9 items.

Fashion Hint

2007-06-05T06:41:00.001-07:00

I've been following Roland Garros tennis and I noticed that almost all female players include some variation of purple/violet in their outfits.

I am not a fashion expert, but it's obvious that these colors are in fashion this year. I think it wouldn't hurt to include them in designs that are female orientated. It should make an impression of women who are into fashion and follow fashion trends. Even those that are not that into fashion will probably recognize the colors and feel attracted by them.

I am not going to call this a tip, but it's surely a hint. It might help and I doubt it can hurt... so why not use it.

Tip of the Day - Tagging

2007-05-15T11:48:00.000-07:00

Interesting discovery:

If you edit the tags for an old design and save the new tags, the design will show up among the newest arrivals with the next influx of designs.

Changing tags of an existing design can help or harm a design depending on how well it sells.

Design that sells well and already has a good position in the marketplace will lose its rating and start it's marketplace life from scratch. I can't see one single reason to do this. It's too big of a risk and you gain nothing with it.
Design that never sold or sold a long time ago and that is stuck somewhere deep in the marketplace, where even you can't find it will, too, start its marketplace life from scratch. Such design will regain the advantage that new designs get and have a good position in the marketplace that new designs initially get. This will give that design a new chance to be noticed and start selling.

Considering all this I give you the Tip of the Day:

Occasionally, go through your designs and re-tag old designs that never sold before and/or that are buried deep in the marketplace search results. At the same time, don't touch the designs that are already well placed in the marketplace.

This tip will not work wonders and bring you a million sales in an instant, but it will better your chances of making marketplace sales. I am sure it's worth the shopkeeper's time and I will be dedicating a few hours a week to re-tagging my designs from now on.

Font Recommendation

2007-05-11T05:45:00.000-07:00

I just discovered a great font and I am happy to share it with you. It gives a distressed look to the letters - a bit scratchy, a bit of a noise... Just the right amount of distress to make the text look very cool.

Don't judge it just by how it looks when it's black text on white. The true beauty of it is in the white text on black background. Perfect for black tees.

Here, see for yourself, download and enjoy designing with it: Viper Nora.

Surprising Discovery... - Bonus Tiers

2007-05-09T12:03:00.000-07:00

I just discovered that the second volume bonus is... NOT 14%, it's 15%.

For some reason I always thought it was 14% and that's how I counted it. After a few people mentioned the 15% bonus I had to search help files and indeed it's 15%. That's a good news.

Here is a quote from the help pages:

No bonus for the first $250 in base price sales
Tier 1: 7% bonus for base price sales between $250.01 - $1,000
Tier 2: 15% bonus for base price sales between $1,000.01 - $5,000
Tier 3: 20% bonus for base price sales between $5,000.01 - $10,000
Tier 4: 22% bonus for base price sales above $10,000.01 in monthly base price sales

Shadow from the forums mentioned a few times that there is Tier 5, but he was quite secretive about it. If it does exist it's a super secret thing for the big guys, not the poor little fish like me. From what I could gather (and I could be completely wrong here) the fifth tier starts at $50,000.01 in base sales but I have no idea what the percentage would be... maybe 25% (just guessing). Wouldn't it be easier if it was all in the open and if that info was available to everyone not just a chosen few? That's all assuming that Shadow is not just joking about the whole thing and that I understood him correctly.

License Plate Frames

2007-05-03T05:17:00.000-07:00

I usually don't make these. As an exception I made a couple today. They are actually fun to make.

The top image should be 1875x210 pixels and the bottom 3060x270 pixels (that will make them 300dpi when printed).

I color the background black and than use white text. Makes a nice contrast.

Since the template is so wide and short I put several spaces between the individual letters and even more between the words. Like this:

I L O V E <---- Top
M O N K E Y S <---- Bottom

It makes them easier to read, too. I know I could stretch the letters to fit the template, but I don't like the distortion that is created that way.

There... Why don't you make a license plate frame today, too?

Two Useful Links

2007-04-16T02:04:00.000-07:00

In messages to two different people this morning I mentioned two websites and thought it would be helpful if I'd post them here, too.

GIMP Savvy is an online resource book about GIMP with lots of images and very useful, practical information. It makes learning to use (beginner and advanced) GIMP easy.

Frequently Asked Questions About Copyright (Issues Affecting the U.S. Government) will answer most questions regarding government officials and material in relation to copyright.

Discovery!!!

2007-04-03T02:17:00.000-07:00

I just managed to add 73 products to a basic shop! Yes, I said 73! I am absolutely positive that we were able to add only up to 50 just a few months ago. When did this change happen???

It's good and I imagine it will help everyone who still doesn't have a premium shop, but why isn't this change announced anywhere? I am sure I would have noticed if it were mentioned somewhere.

So, good news! A basic shop can hold more than 50 items now!

By the way, I opened a new basic shop for a design that does not fit any of my premium shops. It's actually regional and will only make sense to people from my country. I don't expect to sell anything from that shop, but it's only costing me half an hour of my day, so I decided to put it up anyway...

Transparent Images - Clean Edges

2007-02-02T11:34:00.000-08:00

Shelley asked if I had any tips about getting clean edges on transparent images.

There are a few things that I know of and that can help.

First of all, if you are creating the design on the computer using a graphics program than make sure to turn off the anti-aliasing. That will make the edges crisp and won't create the white pixels around the edges. Starting with a dark background (instead of the usual white) even with the anti-aliasing on will make the edges look more natural on dark apparel.

If you are hand drawing or painting the design and than scanning it it will be a bit harder (but not impossible) to cut off the white pixels. What you can do is zoom the image so you can see the pixels well and than use the select tool experimenting with the threshold until you get a selection line nicely separating the too light pixels from those that are dark enough to keep. Once you have separated what you want to keep it's easy to make the rest of the picture transparent (see the internal links in the sidebar to find the link to the transparency tutorial).

Finally, if the white pixels are equally spread around the edges of the design you can select the area you want to keep and use Select/Shrink feature to lose the white pixels. Depending on the image size and the size of the anti-aliased area you will have to shrink the selection by more or less pixels.

Hope that helped a bit.

Free InstantCafe Feeder

2006-10-29T13:56:00.000-08:00

I downloaded and installed Adam's InstantCafe Feeder last week. Yesterday I got the registration key and immediately went on to try out the program. I had no trouble running the software and setting up the variables. It was super easy.

I did have one problem. My prices came out wrong, but thanks to Adam's quick response that problem was fixed. It had nothing to do with the Feeder, the setting on my computer was messing up the prices.

I had a feed for my premium shop in no time. It took me an hour or so to make feeds for all my basic shops and compile them all into one big file. I still remember the time when I ventured into making the feed manually and wasted hours and hours adding products one by one into an Excel sheet. That was torture. This was a breeze.

The premium shop feed was accepted in the first attempt to upload it to Google Base. The feed for the basic shops, however, returned a failure. When I go to see the details, they say that the feed is being processed and that it will take up to two days for the processing to be over. That, of course, has nothing to do with the InstantCafe Feeder, that's just Google making my life difficult. Doesn't matter, the feed for the premium shop was the important one and that one went through just fine, so I am happy.

It is so generous of Adam to make such a useful tool and let shopkeepers use it for free. I give five stars and two thumbs up to both Adam and his InstantCafe Feeder.

Design Theft

2006-10-18T06:19:00.000-07:00

Design stealing is such a terrible issue. It has not happened to me, fortunately, but I read a lot about it lately. It makes me sad and angry and I can just imagine how frustrating it is for the creative people who had that happen to them.

What is design theft? It's when certain people are too lazy, too unimaginative and lacking self-confidence to make their own unique designs, so they feel the only way to succeed is to steal other people's designs.

My question to these people would be... Why steal designs when you can sell them as an affiliate??? Why waste all that time making a copy of a design, than setting up a shop or section in your shop, putting the products up, writing descriptions.... etc... When you can be an affiliate and earn 20% just by linking to the product??? The affiliate commission is just slightly lower than the shopkeeper's commission and in some cases I can imagine it even being higher than the shopkeeper's commission. There is no doubt that being an affiliate is the way to go, it's the only fair way to go.

I know, no matter what I say there will always be people who will steal designs. Some things can't be changed. Still, too bad... Playing fair so much more fun!

CafePress Coupons

2006-10-06T07:44:00.000-07:00

CafePress Coupons is a wonderful site that offer support to both shopkeepers and shoppers.

The website offers codes that can be used to get a discount when shopping at CafePress. For shoppers, the benefit is obvious, they get to save money while shopping.

For shopkeepers the benefits are multiple. CafePress Coupons offers a script that can be included into the shop's html and which would than automatically update the shop with new coupons as they get available. A shop with a discount coupon looks and feels more friendly to the shopper and put together with the nice discount makes the shopper more likely to buy something.

Additionally, shops that include the script in the code get a chance to be listed on the front page of the site. The Google PageRank of the site is 6, so a link from would be very valuable for search engine ranking of the shop.

Considering that only premium shops can add a script to the html code, the full benefit of CafePress Coupons is reserved for premium shop. Still, the basic shop shopkeeper can copy the coupon code and paste it as text into the shop description so it can be seen right under the logo. Although there will not be a chance for the basic shop to be listed on the CafePress Coupon website, the coupon can still motivate a shopper to buy something from the shop.

CafePress Coupons website is a great tool. I recommend it wholeheartedly!

Waiting For Success

2006-09-22T05:43:00.000-07:00

There is an interesting discussion going on over at the CafePress forums.

Someone said that newbies should be patient and give a design/shop three months before they consider it a failure. Someone else said that this was bad advice and that one should wait at least a year before calling a shop/design a failure. The second person even said that one should not listen to advice given by people who have been in the CafePress business for less than two years.

The thing about two years of experience before you qualify for giving advice is a complete nonsense. There are people who may have no experience in being a CafePress shopkeeper but on the other hand have huge knowledge about SEO or marketing. Why wouldn't they give advice? I believe that everyone can bring something new and everyone should be listened to. Not every advice needs to be taken, but for myself I will listen/read everything and use whatever I find interesting be it from a CafePress veteran or not.

Patience, yes, that's true. Patience is a must and I will repeat that a million times. Patience, patience, patience.

Having said that, I have to say that waiting is not easy. As a relatively new shopkeeper I know how hard it is to put in 12 hours of work a day and get just two or three sales a month if that many. It's easy to say be patient when you are getting 20 sales a day. Some of the people in that thread say... oh yes, be patient, wait for months and months... but in another thread they come and complain when they sell only two or three things a day. I'd like to see their morals if they would suddenly have to wait three months (or a year!) to get a sale. Would they say, oh cool, never mind the sales I'll just keep working on it in the next 12 months or would they start having doubts and thinking of quitting?

My final words... yes, I'll be patient and keep working on it, but yes I will be disappointed and long for more sales and better results at times. Up and down... riding on the waves... that's how life is for me.

Reading Material

2006-09-19T09:22:00.000-07:00

Today I discovered the chats & workshops page on the CafePress site. I should have known about it for ages, probably, but I did not. Better late than never, right?

There is a lot to read there, I can't possibly read everything at once. I read transcripts from a few chats that had subjects that I thought would be of most use for me at this stage of my shopkeeper life.

I had to weed through the logs a bit, but in general there is a lot of good advice and info there. Most of the things we all already know. Write good tags, do a good work on SEO, make your store shopper friendly... Still, it is a good read and there is no harm in reminding myself of the important and useful stuff.

Warning - Editing Multiple Stores

2006-09-14T04:16:00.000-07:00

I just read a post over at the CafePress forums where someone had unintentionally changed the look of a whole premium store.

The same thing happened to me a month or so ago. I only have one account and only basic shops, unlike the person who posted, but the situation was basically the same.

Here is what happened to me. I had one window open writing the front page description of a shop. I wanted to see what description I used in another shop and opened the manager for that other shop in another window. I went to the manager of the other shop, opened the window with the front page description and read what I had written there. Without closing the window of the second shop I went back to the first shop, finished writing the description and saved the information. The next time I checked the second shop had exactly the same description as the first shop, even though I never edited or saved anything new in that second shop.

You see, what happens is that if you have two windows open with shop manager edit pages of two different stores in each, when you save information in one shop it will automatically be saved in the other one, too.

I only had to rewrite one description, but I can imagine how much of a mess would it be if the layout or descriptions of a premium shop would be overwritten and gone.

The moral of the story... Only edit one shop at a time and don't even think of opening the manager of a second shop until you finish working on the first shop.

Free Fonts

2006-09-13T04:44:00.000-07:00

Do you need free fonts to use when making your designs? I do! I am always on the lookout for a nice free font.

If you ask me, the best place on the web for free fonts is dafont.com. Dafont is a nice designed, well organized website that makes looking for fonts a joy.

Most of the fonts at dafont are free, but not all are free for commercial use. I make sure to read both the info on the website and than the readme file packed with the font before I make sure it is completely free and install the font on my computer.

Even with the exclusion of those that are not free for commercial use there are more than enough great fonts on dafont. When you need nice letters, numbers and dingbats for your designs... dafont is the first place to go to. Great site!

No Sales - Why?

2006-09-10T00:22:00.000-07:00

Every few days a question pops up on CafePress forums.

I am not making any sales. What am I doing wrong?

Here are all the possible answers I can think of:

You did not read the help pages. I strongly recommend that every new shopkeeper reads all the help texts and files provided by CafeShop. There is the learning center, there are the tips, templates... Further, s newbie shopkeeper should read CafePress forums archive, especially the stickied threads, and than make it a habit to read the forums on regular bases. There are additional useful texts to read at Cafepedia and it is highly recommended to read those, too. It sounds like a lot of reading, but if you want to make sales there is no other choice but to learn everything there is to know. Most of the other shopkeepers are willing to help with specific problems, but nobody will hold your hand and guide you through everything.
You think that CafePress is easy money. Being a shopkeeper is a complex and demanding job. You need to know at least the basics of design, marketing, copywriting and SEO plus be witty, artistic or both. Making a quick design and putting it on a few products in a basic shop and than waiting for sales will not do.
You forgot to write tags when you uploaded your images. Tags make your designs visible in the marketplace. It will take time for search engines to index your shop and for affiliates to notice you, so the marketplace is your best bet. You do not want to exclude your best bet, so check your tags.
Your used generic tags. Dog is a descriptive tag, but how many designs are there that are tagged with the dog? Too many! Miniature dachshund is a much better, more specific tag. Another example... gifts doesn't say much while dog lover gifts is a much better, well targeted tag.
You do not do any marketing. You need to promote your products every way possible. Squidoo, Craigslist, MySpace, AdWords, Froogle are just a few. Collectively they make a powerful tool for making your products visible to shoppers.
You offer just a few designs on a few products. Make a variety of products and put each on all the products where it fits and makes sense. The more designs the better chance that somebody will like one of them. The more products the better chance that the person that likes the design will find it on a products s/he wants to buy. Someone might like your design, but what if s/he wants it on a sticker and you only offer t shirts?
Your designs don't fit the products. Products with unfitting designs look unprofessional and unattractive. Put some effort into making your designs. Make a clock design, a mug design, re-size your designs to fit different products. CafePress is full of talented people working hard on making best possible designs. If you want to compete with them, you will have to work hard on your own designs.
You did not take the time to write quality descriptions. Your products, sections, shop front, titles and meta tags will all have to be filled with descriptions filled with relevant keywords. As soon as your shop gets listed by the search engines the descriptions will play a huge role in your visibility to the shoppers. It takes time to write the descriptions, but once again, you just have to do it if you want sales.
You were not lucky enough to get a sale. Yes, luck plays its role on CafePress, too. It is the matter of the right person looking at the right designs at the right time. If you do everything from the previous eight points you will not need a lot of luck to make sales. If not, you'll need lots and lots of luck.
Finally, the reason why you have made no sales might be that you have not been a shopkeeper for long enough. Many shopkeepers wait months for their first sale. They say that if you make a few sales in the first couple of months than you are doing extremely well. You would need an existing audience to start making a lot of sales right away. If you are starting from scratch you will need to wait before your sales start piling up.

Perseverance, hard work, continuous learning and patience are a must for a CafePress shopkeeper. Keep working at it and the sales will come!

Making Images With Transparent Background Using GIMP - Illustrated Tutorial

2006-09-08T07:06:00.000-07:00

It took me a while to learn how to make images with transparent backgrounds to use on black shirts (dark shirts as of lately). Knowing how frustrating it can be, I decided to be helpful and make an illustrated tutorial for newbies. I give you a step by step guide to making transparent images using the free graphics program GIMP.

First open the file with your image. I used a simple image of a flower made for this tutorial exclusively. Since it is not going to be used as a real design, it has a small pixel size. Normally, with a design you would have an image of a much bigger size.

The picture shows the layers window, the image and the GIMP window. There is just one layer present, the one with the image.
Create a new layer by pressing the button in the bottom row of the layers window. Just follow the red arrow.

To view a bigger picture of the image on the left just click on it.
A new window will open to give you different options related to the new layer.

In the new layer window, be sure to pick the transparency option. The width and height will be automatically set to match the image size.
Now you have two layers. The transparent layer is highlighted which means it is active. We need to work with the image, so we click on the white space around the old layer, the one with the image.
If everything was done right, the layer with the image is highlighted. We can go on with the job now.
In the GIMP window double click the magic wand icon marked with the red arrow.

A new window will open called Tool Options. If your image has just one connected surface that you want to make transparent (like the one in the example) than make sure to select the first option in the list of mode options (see green arrow).

The blue arrow shows the threshold slider. If your background is made of a solid color, than you can put the threshold to zero, but if it has slight variations of color you might need to move the threshold to a bigger number.

Trial and error method will help you select the right threshold. Pick the threshold, click the background if the right surface was picked you did it, if not, change the threshold and try again. Repeat until you get what you want.

If you have two or more separate surfaces that you want to make transparent pick the second mode option - the one indicated by the arrow.

Find the right threshold value by doing the same as described above.

After you find the threshold click on all surfaces that you want to make transparent.

This picture shows the image with a correctly selected background. Everything that is not part of the design is selected.
Right click the image. Go to select and than click on invert.

Now, the whole design is selected and the background is left out.
Right click the image again. Go to edit and than click on copy.
Go to the layers window and click on the eye icon of the image layer like indicated by the arrow.

We do this to avoid the confusion when viewing the image.
Select the transparent layer. It has to be highlighted on the list of layers.
Right click the image. Select edit and than click on paste into.

Click on the anchor icon on the bottom of the layers window.
Now we have two layers. Each layer has your design in it, but one has a transparent background and the other has a colored background.
Highlight the layer with the colored background. Make sure that the layer with the transparent background is not highlighted.

Click on the delete layer icon.

Go to view menu, select zoom and than pick a zoom that will make your design a couple of times bigger than its real size.

Look at the edges of your design. I did not use anti-alias and the edge to the image is sharp which is what we want when making designs for dark surfaces.

If you used anti-alias you might have a thin whit/gray border around your image. In that case you will have to go to selection menu, choose shrink and than shrink your selection by two or three pixels. When you do that copy the selection and go back to the create a new transparent layer and paste the selection into it and than delete the layer with the white border around the edges.

When you make sure that your border is fine and that you have just one layer with the transparent you can go on and save the image.

Choose a name for your image, the folder and make it be a PNG file type.

Be sure to leave the save color values from transparent pixels checked. I turn off all the other options, but you could choose to leave the comment or date.

Click OK and you are done. Your images is ready to be uploaded to CafePress. If you have done everything right, after you upload the image CafePress will show a transparency picker bellow the image allowing you to pick white or black transparency. The presence of the picker is a sure sign that your image is transparent.

CafePress Tips - Mug and Stein Image

2006-08-31T04:13:00.000-07:00

There was a question on CafePress forums about putting images on both sides of a mug. Since I have made no sales to brag about I thought I could write something useful and create an illustrated guide to making an image for a mug or a stein that would show the design on both sides of the product.

The template provided by CafePress for a mug is 1662 x 600 pixels. In this example I will use that exact dimensions. You should not use anything smaller than that, but you can make a bigger image if you wish. Just be sure to keep the same proportions.

For a start, create a design on a canvas that is exactly 600 pixels tall and no more than 831 pixels wide. I used a square image in my example, but yours can be rectangle if you wish. My example runs from top to bottom, but yours can have blank space on either top, bottom or both.

Create another 600 pixels tall and no more than 831 pixels wide image with a second design. It can be the same as the first image or you can make a different one. I used the same image with one simple change - I flipped it so it looks like a mirror reflection of the first one.

Create a new image with the dimensions of 1662 x 600 pixels. Go to one of the two design images you previously created and copy it (select all, copy). Come back to the new image and paste the selected design image. Move the selection to the side. You don't have to worry about the exact horizontal position, as long as you fit the image well vertically.

Copy the other design image and paste it into the bigger image this time moving it to the other side. It can be a pain to make the whole image symmetrical, so don't bother with that. Just put the image in a space where you think it would fit. Again, fit the image well vertically. The pasted image should run exactly from the top to the bottom.

You do not need the two smaller design images any more, you can close or delete them. Go back to the big image and do an automatic crop. You do this because it is most likely that in the previous step you did not create a perfectly symmetrical image.

Change the canvas size to 1662 x 600 pixels. Be sure to center the image while you are doing the canvas resizing (don't confuse this with image resizing!), so the border is added equally on all sides.

All you need to do now is upload the design to CafePress, tag it and create a mug or stein using it. When you create the product, enter the edit page for it, select the image and at the bottom of that first page where it says Select Image Alignment choose X if it is not selected already. That way, the image will be perfectly aligned. Click next, give the product a title, description and set the price.

That is all... you created a mug or stein with a design on each sided of the product. This may not be the most sophisticated way to make the two sided image for the mug, but once you try it you will see how easy it is to do. Once you have the design, it only takes a couple of minutes to make the final image.

NOTE: The borders around the images are there to help you visualize the dimensions. You do not need borders on the actual images you will use on your products.