Cafepress are holding another design contest and this time the task is to create a design for a gym bag with the theme “Get in shape”.
WIN a $500 AMEX gift card plus a SIGG water bottle AND a Flip Mino video camera. Submissions will be accepted between December 18, 2009 and January 6, 2010.
Open to legal residents of the 50 United States and the District of Columbia who are 18 years or older at time of entry.
Details: Cafepress
Not being a developer myself I don’t really know what this means but from what I hear Printfection’s API is miles ahead of other POD stores. And now it seems to have gotten even better.
Unfortunately thought, the thing that is really holding Printfection back is not the lack of tools because there are plenty, but rather the lack of an affiliate program. If Printfection had an affiliate program there would be more promotion and developers would be clamoring to test out their API. We live in hope.
“The Printfection API just got a whole lot simpler. Using our new API wrapper, developers can focus on their code instead of dealing with the integration between their application and the Printfection API….(read more on Printfection)”
The Smithsonian Institute has just joined Cafepress and this is a great opportunity for affiliates as there is a ready-built market and huge brand recognition. I am Irish so I don’t really know much about the Smithsonian but I believe they are historical curators or such like. Anyway, I thought I’d let you know so you can add this brand to your affiliate sites. It should at least pull some traffic your way.
Zoological Park Hooded Sweatshirt
Cafepress items being sold on eBay below list price
It has come to the attention of several Cafepress shopkeepers that some Twilight inspired tees produced by Cafepress using designs created by Cafepress shopkeepers are on sale on eBay. This is an excerpt of a post by Cafepress shopkeeper, Hope, who noticed her designs being sold on eBay for prices lower than she charges.
I found a lot of Twilight t-shirts that appear to be cafepress shopkeepers designs. I don’t know if this shopkeeper below has permission from Cafepress or the shopkeeper, but I did find a few of my designs on t-shirts being sold without my prior consent and much cheaper than what I sell them.
Here is the link to the eBay seller.
Cafepress are not really sure what is going on yet but they are investigating and have put their legal team into action. Hopefully we will find out more soon.
The thread has been closed in the Cafepress forums but you can still read more about this issue there and if your designs are being sold on eBay you should contact Cafepress or any other POD that you may be using.
I have no idea why Cafepress has done this or even when but from what I hear it is a recent development. It wasn’t all that long ago that the link was removed. To be honest I wouldn’t be all that surprised if it were taken down again soon. You can see the image below to find out where the link is. There are two similar links on the page. The one on the left is to see all the shopkeepers items in the marketplace but they are unsorted and probably don’t lead to many extra sales for Cafepress. The problem now is the price disparity. The Cafepress marketplace items are generally (not always) cheaper than in the shop. In some cases the marketplace prices are even lower than the base price for the shopkeepers so it is impossible to compete on price (and pretty difficult to compete on marketing). Anyway, it’s better for the shopkeepers to have this link than not to have it.
Apparently Zazzle are having deals for the 12 days of Christmas and they have announced their first deal today. 50% of the net greeting card, note card, photo card, and invitation sale price will be deducted when 10 or more of a single product type is purchased and the coupon code 12DEALSCARDS is applied at checkout. The net sale price is the price of the product (excluding shipping and taxes). If a volume discount applies to your order, you will receive either the discount set forth in this offer or the standard volume discount, whichever is greater. Offer is valid from December 3, 2009 at 12:01am PT through December 6, 2009 at 11:59pm PT. This offer does not apply to past purchases and may not be combined with any other Zazzle promotional or volume discount offers. Offer valid on Zazzle.com only.
Printfection are going a really cool route by allowing their shopkeepers to totally brand their own stores and now they have gone one step further in helping you put your store on your own domain. That is awesome. If I ever get time I must look into doing something with my Printfection store again. Below is the post but check out the original post at Printfection.
Great news! You can now put your entire Printfection store on your own domain. That means no mention of Printfection anywhere in your URLs or within your store!
Better yet, you don’t even need a server or hosting plan, just a domain name. We’ll map your domain name to our servers (e.g. www.yourdomain.com or store.yourdomain.com), so all URLs will show your domain name, not Printfection’s. Your visitors will have no idea that we are acting as your website host and merchandise fulfillment service. Best of all, this new domain mapping service won’t cost you a cent. It’s completely free.
If you already have a Printfection store, you can easily change its URL to your own domain. If you don’t yet have a domain, you can register one and point it to your Printfection store in less than five minutes. See “Setting up domain mapping” for more information, including step-by-step instructions.
We hope you enjoy this new addition to our myBrand portfolio of white-label fulfillment services. Let us know if we can do anything else to help you be great at selling merchandise and building your brand.