As previously mentioned by here on POD Helper Cafepress have formed a partnership with a website called Sellit that provides widgets that you can use to promote your store in MySpace, Facebook and basically anywhere you you can post HTML code without restrictions. Previously when I checked it was in closed beta so I couldn’t really get a good look at it.

Now I have looked at it I have to admit that I am unimpressed. I think that people new to the web love this type of widget/gadget but the fact is that in general they look very unprofessional. I think they can only look good if they can be can be seamlessly integrated into the design of the website. I have yet to see this happen though.

Actually you are very limited to what you can do with this widget. It seems that you can only use a section which contains products which for most Cafepress shopkeepers means that you can only promote one design at a time. Apart from choosing whether to display one item or a grid there seems to be no customization features. At the moment you can only associate one Cafepress store with your membership too.

Verdict: One good point about this is that the links lead to your store rather than the Cafepress marketplace so you can get the commission you deserve but unless they add some features I recommend that you spend the time you have allotted to marketing your products elsewhere.

When you first join Zazzle the dashboard can be daunting because there are so many options. This video gives quick introduction to help you out.

This is about the 5th in the Zazzle University series but I will be posting the others when I get time and hopefully the series will continue for a while. In this video Rob rambles on about the fact that you should market your products and while he is right I don’t think this is where to talk about it. Nonetheless this is a pretty good video that shows you two ways to market your items via twitter.

The first way is to manually twitter each item from the Zazzle product page, this is awesome. I tried it and it is simple and fast to use. They even give you some set text just in case you are too lazy to write your own. I think it would have been better if they could pull the title from the shirt though. Be sure to be logged into your account in order to earn referral fees. You can also use this as an affiliate tool.

The second way is to set up your twitter account to automatically tweet your new products. Haven’t done this yet but I think it could get messy with the bulk create tool. I recommend setting up a twitter account specifically for your store if you are going to adding significant numbers of products.

By the way, you can follow me @RudeRetro where I usually tweet about new t-shirts, sales and such like.

There is an interview with Spreadshirt’s Jana Eggers on MyFox Boston. It is basically a promotion of Spreadshirt and there is nothing much to learn from it if you are already familiar with the POD world but it is good to see the people behind the scenes.

Jana Eggers is the one who corrected my post about Spreadshirt and PayPal.

Printfection has introduced another great feature for their shopkeepers called AddMerch which, with the help of a single line of javascript, will allow people to apply images that you display on your blogs and web sites to the various products that Printfection sell. I haven’t tried it out myself but it is a great development. Zazzle has a similar tool but it seems much more complicated than this one. One thing I worry about though is that usually the images displayed on web sites are low resolution and not at all suitable for using on products. Of course you could use high resolution images on your web site but then I don’t see what could stop people from taking and using them without your permission. Below is an introductory video from Printfection.

I have been meaning to take a closer look at the Zazzle API with a similar function for quite a while now but I keep putting it off. If I do get around to it I will write up an idiot’s guide.

You can read more about AddMerch at AddMerch.com and on Prinfection’s bl0g.

Update: As you can see from the comment by Gavin from Printfection, the high resolution images are fairly safe. Sounds great.