Anybody got any better place for selling original stuff than CafePress?

[Bossy Monkey]

I put my store together about a year and a half ago and have never seen any return. I'm willing to accept the possibility that this is because my stuff sucks (visit here http://www.cafeshops.com/impracticaljoke
and feel free to be brutally frank) but I suspect that mainly the problem is that their prices are just too high. I marked up their base prices slightly as this is the only way to make any money (surprise?) but it's their base prices that screw things up. A bumper sticker is about $5; Northern Sun sells them for $1.75. This is just crazy. Does anybody know of any other outfit that will print t-shirts, stickers, etc., for you, but at a more reasonable price? I sold a bumper sticker and a button to Northern Sun, but I'm not making a fortune at that rate. Anybody?

[chaska]

1. Your stuff is great!

That ain't the problem.

[Bossy Monkey]

3. Thanks so much! I feel better n/t

[FloridaPat]

2. I love your store! I've seen it before. Always wanted to do

something with it. The prices do seem high though. For instance - the mug is $12 for each one. A friend of mine one took pictures of boats etc, put the photo in one of those plastic photo mugs and sold them back retail around $10. It was a few years ago. Basically what I'm saying is you seem to be at the retail level now, and for me to sell your stuff with my photo on it, I would have to charge quite a lot for one mug.

T-shirt. I can pick them up wholesale for around $5. I can use my printer to print them out for I guess $1-2. I see yours are Haines. Not sure what the wholesale price would be there.

Mouse pads - I got them for $3 and the paper costs around $1.

Yes, I know I'm doing all this stuff myself.

Your stuff is great! I love it. For a one time thing, I would buy. Bug say for an organization or doing what my friend did with the mugs, it would be too expensive.

Could you set up something for "distgributors" in your system?

[Bossy Monkey]

4. Thanks so much II; As I mentioned in reply to your PM

mine is just one store at CafePress. They're the company, they do all the buying. We the shopowners just provide designs for shirts, mugs, etc. Basically, you upload them a jpeg and they do the rest. Unfortunately, they also keep most of the money, so CafePress amounts to an opportunity to have fun pretending that you have an online business, but in terms of actually making money, the odds are against you (or at least me).

[Bossy Monkey]

5. Latenighters? n/t

[Rabrrrrrr]

6. It's pricey

base of $10.99 for a mug - that's high. I used to love collecting mugs from my trips, and even though I've stopped because, really, I can only use one at a time, I still pick up the occasional. But I'd never pay $10.99 for one. And of course, for you to make a profit, you have to charge $12.99.

Same with a lot of the other products - the cafepress base price is too high.

I love your "ADOPT or shut up!" t-shirts. Great!

[Bossy Monkey]

8. Thanks, that's what I thought, & I'm glad "Adopt or shut up" goes over n/t

[Lorien]

7. IMHO, your designs are just a tad too "undesigned"

adding a touch of the unusual to them might help. 5 1/2 years at one of the country's top Art and Design colleges, and I still stuggle with the same thing! One great aid I found is a little yellow book called "idea index" by Jim Krause. He basically takes the idea of conveying the concept of "idea" with logos and type in as many ways as possible. It's pretty amazing. I Got mine at Barnes and Noble, though Amazon might be cheaper.

[Bossy Monkey]

10. Well, that's because I have no talent :)

But the fundamental question is whether anybody would buy anything at these prices. My thought at this time is that putting more effort into design for a site with base prices that make the products unsellable might not be the most productive approach. But thanks for the thought, and the recommendation. I'll try to check it out.

[ThoughtCriminal]

9. I've made a little money at Cafe Press

We're talking $25-$50 net / year here.

I've used it because it is simple, free, does not require me to have any inventory. The latter is a big factor. You can get bulk order T-Shirts much cheaper elsewhere, but if they don't sell you have to eat the cost.

Another thing to consider - for every actual sale at Cafe Press, there are probably 10+ orders that they reject as fraudulent (that kind of merchandise is easy to fence overseas I guess). I'd hate to be dealing with the charge-backs myself.

However, the base prices at Cafe Press are too high to have many sales, especially when you add shipping.

[Bossy Monkey]

11. Go ahead and give a link to your store

a) you might get some more business
b) I get to see what a more successful CafeShop looks like
c) it'll raise your Google rank