How do I set up a good Cafe Press store?

[Daiko-chan]

(Okay, I had typed this post already and was going to start a new thread when suddenly the CAA forum demanded that I re-login! -that made me a little frustrated... and I hope that this hasn't happened to anyone else. -sigh- *having to do things twice does not make Daiko very happy*)

Anyways, I know about http://www.cafepress.com
I've viewed their FAQ's and I know what it is that I have to do to get a store on their site.

I just wanted to know a few things:
-what is it like? in both the short term and long run
-how do you get the money you've earned from them into one's bank account? do they send the money electronically, or do you get a check?

and finally,
-what is the referral ID for http://www.animeangels.net ?
I want to refer them so that I can give them some support
(since they also have a Cafe Press store)

-I think that's about it.
(now I hope that I can preview this thread without having the CAA request me log in again...)

sorry, that's not right,
I mean...
thanks in advance for the help everyone!

(I'll be back online when I can later, I hope to get some good information then.)

-Daiko~
(pray for me...)

[Bobtheduck]

First off, see what the ideal dimensions and DPI are for each product. You take the inches (say 5) and multiply it by the DPI (say 300) so you know for that direction, you need 1500 pixels. It is a pain to make this stuff in paint because it doesn't let you zoom out past 100%. If you have some other program that can do that, great! Draw your designs and pay close attention to bleed area and such, keeping important things within the danger zones.

I'd say that most men's T-shirts have pocket size designs on the front, and full size ones on the back. If you make a bumper sticker design, you can fit it on all the mugs and even other places like two of the hats (but not the black hat). The Boxers are worthless because you can't design anything on the back. If you're going to make detailed posters, you should probably own Photoshop or even Photoshop Elements. You will need it to manage such a large picture, I'd think. You should know that stretching out a pic will leave it pixelated unless it's a vector pic, such as an Illustrator file, but illustrator is hard to get used to and it costs more than Photoshop... So, if you make a poster, you need to make sure you either design it on that scale to begin with, or get very very very high resolution pics... Of course, even the shirts need high resolution pics if you aren't going to draw them yourself in a paint program...

YOu can make as many stores as you want on one free account. You need to devote each store to one concept. I think you can link to another store within that store, and even two stores, so if you make a lot of stores, you need to map out your connections... That's something I haven't done yet, but you may want to try it anyhow. Make sure to keep all the images centered, and don't use anything that remotely look like corporate logos or celebrities (with the exception of political leaders, because they are fair game) and try to come up with something clever that people would be willing to buy a novelty shirt or something for.

You can visit my stores here:

http://www.cafeshops.com/willworkformar
http://www.cafeshops.com/bobtheduck2004

EDIT: Oops, forgot to tell you what it was like. You won't get many sales off the site because they don't advertise for you. You need to do all the advertising yourself. The mens' shirts are great, but you can't wash them in hot water or dry them in much heat. That's the only product I own so far.

There are ways of getting your store on search engines, but I don't really know how. I can't find the submission page on Google... Word of mouth is probably the best, and considering the high price of buying online, a better thing to try is to buy 15 of the product in question and sell them locally. If you do that, the price goes down drastically. Even better is to sign 15 people up and have them pay you when you have the signiatures, and then buy them all so you'll allready have your money. If you tell it to buy from your own store, you get a 1/3 discount and all of your shipping is dropped from 4 dollars an item to 1 dollar an item. It's a very good deal, especially if you want to make shirts and gear for a group thing...

You have to be carefull about things like centering and cropping on the pictures yourself. It's all up to you.

[Daiko-chan]

ah, you cute cat-duck you!
-thank you so much for that!

...I had wanted more information though, and replies from more people
I want to know if the service is worth it- if it's good in the long term and all
and if I have alternatives to this for selling goods online that I create

I have recently learned that CAA also has a store!
-I wish to have the CAA's referral ID so that I can be more supportive!

I hope that someone will add on to this thread and help me to gain more information regarding this (I don't like just jumping into things without knowing what's going to happen first- because usually if I do something without being careful, I get into trouble)

...I am sorry that this is so late, I've been kinda out of it lately,
I'll do what I can...

-Daiko~
(is very thankful!! )

[Bobtheduck]

Cafépress is good at making things for you with your designs. The shirts are iron-on, and other things are just printed. They can also publish a CD for you if you upload data or MP3's, or if you send them a master.

They're not good at making stuff with stretchy material because they use iron-ons, and iron-ons aren't good for stretchy stuff...

You can publish a book on there as well, but the prices are pretty high for your customers... A way around that is ordering in bulk and selling in person as well as printing a larger book with fewer pages.

If you want to produce goods yourself to sell, you can use Yahoo to start a store. That costs a little money, and it requires you to make the stuff yourself, but it is worth it if you have things you can make yourself for a business. If your stuff is particularly geeky, maybe you can start a store on think geek? I know nothing about that, though.