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Successful Selling on Cafepress: Tutorials, guides, tips, and hints
Cafepress is an online marketplace for items like t-shirts, mugs, etc. You upload your original graphics, online shoppers buy them through your Cafepress shop or the Cafepress website, and Cafepress makes the items and ships them. If you have ever wanted to design t-shirts and want to work from anywhere (including while sitting at home in your pink bunny slippers), choose Cafepress because they are the leader with over 20 million products and years of experience.
Find your Niche:
The idea is that you can open a pizza shop in New York City, and you will have plenty of people walking by, but they have a lot of choices. You can open the same pizza shop on a deserted road in Wyoming and you may not get many people coming by but every hungry person who does pass doesn't have any other choice. Find something in the middle. On Cafepress, dogs are extremely popular (over 2.7 million products). Good luck getting noticed! But if you're too specific, like a design for Texans with blind Rottweiler/Pug mix dogs, it might not apply to enough people. Also, you are not alone! If you like something, there's bound to be someone else who does too. Design things that you would wear or give as a gift.
Be Original:
Just adding text to a shirt is easily copied by other shops. While "just text" designs can sell very well, you run the risk of many people coming along and diluting your sales. If you use graphics and other unique design elements, you can make your designs more desirable and it will be harder to steal your ideas. It should also go without saying that completely copying the designs of other shops will not make you a top shop. You're just a bottom feeder, not a leader.
Add Image Tags:
When you upload your images to the "Image Basket," a page titled "Tell Us More About Your Images." On this page you will want to add keywords. In the world of Cafepress they are called Image Tags, and those are the ONLY thing that will make your products show up in the Cafepress Marketplace. The Marketplace is what you are searching when you go to the Cafepress website. You want to be listed on the Marketplace because many, many people who want to buy things are searching there every day. You can opt-out by not adding Image Tags or changing your shop's settings to "Private." But you are driving a nail into the coffin of your shop! Choose your Image Tags carefully based on what people who would like your design will actually search. As you type the Image Tags, and include commas between them, suggested Tags you might not have thought of will appear below. It is STRONGLY recommended that you read this page:
Open a premium shop:
If you make about $5 a month, you can pay for a premium shop. They are customizable and therefore you can brand yourself in the minds of your visitors. Basic shops are limited in the number of items and designs you can add. Once you've paid for a year of having a premium shop (about $70), you have can have unlimited designs and products without paying more. Premium shops allow for custom HTML, which means you can have hit counters, pages with information about you and your shop, and many advanced features.
If you can't afford a premium shop:
At the very least, open more than 1 free "basic" shop and use text links to link them together.
-TIP: You can link from your website or blog to multiple basic shops and they will show up on one page. The URL should look like this: http://www.cafeshops.com/cp/store.aspx?s=THISSHOPNAME,THATSHOPNAME,ANOTHERSHOPNAME,YETANOTHERSHOP
Replace the fake shop names with your shop name (it doesn't need to be in all caps).
Get a Counter:
Once you've done all that marketing and linking and word-of-mouthing, you are going to want to know if it's working. There are many hit counters out there, but we use . There's a robust number of useful features in the free version and you can get more if you pay to upgrade. Statcounter will tell you what website they came from, what search terms your visitors used to find your shop, how long they stayed, what path they took through your shop, and much more. This information can help you know what brings most people to your site and at what point they leave. Is everyone looking for scrapbooking and you only have one design? Time to brainstorm for more and link to other designs as an affiliate.
Do the Math:
Whether you scribble your monthly totals onto a napkin or create a complex spreadsheet, keep track of your progress.
-TIP: Make projections based on how this month has gone so far.
The calculation: (Sales + Affiliate Sales - Monthly Costs) / Day of the month * Number of days in the month.
Make Goals:
Based on the math you're crunching, you will start seeing your average number of customers a day or month, your average profit a day, and your monthly earnings. Successful shops make goals and as they meet them, they prepare to meet the next goal. Keep them small and possible. At the beginning, you won't make very much and it can be very disheartening. So give yourself goals like selling 1 item, making $5 in a month, etc. Quitting your day job and then opening a Cafepress shop is not recommended.
Be an Affiliate:
So you have traffic, but no one is buying? Maybe your designs suck, but you can still make money. Instead of just returning from whence they came, catch their eye with other awesome designs from other Cafepress shops. You may be hesitant to send your traffic away, and you should make it clear what is part of your shop and what is outside of it, but if they are going to leave, might as well make some amount of money off them.
Learn about TopicAds:
Learn more about adding search boxes and text links:
Recruit affiliates:
Write to other websites and pitch the affiliate program to them. If anyone you know has a website or blog, ask them to link to you. Start your own website and drive traffic to your shop. Make a page on your premium shop that explains the affiliate program and include banners that people can use to link to you.
Go to the community forums:
Add your shop link and describe your shop a little in your signature. Go through the forums every once in a while and join in the coversation. Announce your designs; there's an entire forum just for this purpose:
Don't be a jerk who goes off-topic or posts meaningless threads. Ask genuine questions and share your ideas and point of view. People who are curious about you or like your posting will follow the link in your signature. In fact, you can see that it's true when you look at the stats of your hit counter.
Check the Cafepress Wire:
The top searches and hot topics are listed on a page called the Cafepress Wire. Cafepress picks hot designs, top shops, and "what's hot." When these are on the Cafepress Wire, it increases that topic's exposure and you should cash in! Seeing these topics may also spark some ideas for you, so go there for inspiration.
The Cafepress Wire:
Join shirt-ranking sites:
There are entire websites dedicated to ranking shirt designs and shirt shops (for example ). Most will either link to your shop as an affiliate or require you to link to them. Add your designs for free and increase your exposure. You can encourage your visitors to vote for your design, but keep in mind that if they click a link that says "return to shop," that will add the affiliate cookie to that visitor's computer. That is a visitor who was at your shop, voted for your design, and now if they buy something part of your commission goes to the ranking site. The trade-off is that your design got another vote and moved it up in the ranking.
Look at top shops:
The most successful shops rank high in the search results on the Cafepress Marketplace. Visit those shops and look closely at how they organize their shops, who they link to, who links to them, what makes their designs popular, and anything you can gleam off their shop.
Try something else:
You may have a lot of success now, but keeping your shop growing means coming up with another approach to getting sales.
-HINT:
You are going to be our competition, so this guide doesn't tell you everything. You need to be pro-active and search for new and innovative ways to make your shop stand out. There are over 2 million members of Cafepress, some of whom have multiple shops. Find your "bread and butter" topics, but keep expanding your shop to find other designs. If a certain topic is selling very well, offer several design within that topic. Even if they found your shop through one design, they might like something else that is related.
It's time to get started!
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