Big Oops at Cafepress
Lots of Oops at Cafepress
Cafepress’s recent decision to screw their shopkeepers out of their hard earned cash has resulted in many people opting out of the Cafepress marketplace which in turn has resulted in many Oops! pages like in the image above. It will probably take a while for this situation to rectify itself because there are still many people on the fence about whether to opt out of the marketplace or not.
I haven’t really talked too much about Cafepress’s decision. I just don’t want to waste my time on it but this site was created with the intention of helping people set up and be successful with their POD business so I think I should give you my opinion.
In general, I believe that Cafepress’s decision to pay out only 10% commission on marketplace sales will make it very difficult to make money there. Unless your art is exceptional or you are lucky enough to be chosen by Cafepress for extra exposure the likelihood of generating more money in Cafepress than you would in another POD is very slim.
At the moment I can only recommend Zazzle because that is the only other POD that I have spent any time with. Their commission structure is good and combined with the volume bonus and referral system I believe it is better than Cafepress ever was. That said I advise against keeping all your eggs in one basket as I am sure a few thousand Cafepress shopkeepers will tell you. Other PODs I’m interested in at the moment are Spreadshirt, Printfection and Skreened. If you are a Cafepress shopkeeper, the guys at Skreened as well as a few others are doing their best to help you upload your designs there with ease. That will be my next stop although I will continue to focus my attention on my Zazzle stores.
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I wholeheartedly agree, and when it all sinks in I doubt there will be many designers left on Cafepress at all. The common report right now is a 60-80% drop in real income, even with the same number of sales. Also a supposed software glitch is showing shop sales as marketplace, further ripping commissions out of the pockets of shopkeepers. I don’t believe it’s a glitch. Designers are complaining bitterly and just getting insincere platitudes from customer service. No real explanation given, just corporate greed.
I’d like very much to see somebody keep an eye out if CP is planning to buy yet another POD company like they did last July (Imagekind). Any advance warning, if that’s possible, would be appreciated.
I think they will have no shortage of designers. They may not deserve them but they will have them. I think a lot of quality designers will leave for greener pastures though.
I haven’t come across the shop sales issue and I have been watching carefully but if I do I will probably post about it here.
I really think that Cafepress is gearing up to sell rather than buy. If they wanted to buy something the fastest way is to borrow money but at the moment they seem to be trying to raise cash by reducing expenses. High liquidity makes a company more attractive to potential buyers. Just my opinion though.
I recently wrote a blog post you might want to add to your list. It’s about the importance of SEO when it comes to marketing, how Cafepress enticed us all to build their website and do their SEO for them, and about the money grab they’re doing and the impact it has on shopkeepers now. http://healingcommunication.blogspot.com/2009/06/importance-of-good-seo.html
I’m not quite sure what list you are referring to but thanks for the link.
We would like to welcome CafePress refugees. We have been offering POD services for the last eleven years (by the way we were the first t-shirt design online service in 1997), and offering FREE stores for store owners for the last six years. We have many other advantages over both CafePress and Zazzle, but come see for yourself.
Tom Kind
E-Shirt.com Marketing Director
Tom, I don’t know if you are going to come back here, but I wanted to mention that I’ve been unable to log in to do anything with my E-shirt stores for quite some time. Can’t seem to find an e-mail address to ask someone about that. Would love to be able to upload more designs there–especially since they show up in searches of Amazon.com–but I can’t.
Look at the general POD forums, or even the Cafepress forums, and you’ll see all kinds of shopkeepers leaving or threatening to.
Yesterday I started a poll to help us assess how the new Cafepress changes are affecting us. I’m welcoming any and all input. The poll’s at http://www.squidoo.com/cafepress-exodus.