Your own business in the net with CafePress

It is widely known (and understandable) that when someone is receiving dozens of spam e-mails on a daily basis with headers such as “make cash quick”, “win money easily”, etc. and realizes all of them are scams or frauds, in the end he ceases to believe that there are any real opportunities to make money online. The good news are, those real ways exist and are at the grasp of many of us!

Have you ever thought about running your own small business online? Probably not, because this very often involves spending large sums of money for starting it. What if I tell you that for most of us it is possible to run our own legal and legitimate business without spending any money at all, but still making profit? It is just a matter of knowing what, where and how.

Sounds too good to be true? No, I am not telling you a lie. I am not trying to scam you either. Curious? Read on to know what am I talking about.

Although there are many different ways of making some extra real money online, my favourite is what I usually call “on demand t-shirt designing”. Briefly, this consists in the creation of cool designs, funny images, etc. which are later sold in printed form to online shoppers. All this requires is minimal skills in image design and knowledge on how to use image edition software (again, Photoshop is a very good choice).

On demand designs

There are some major companies operating in this sector (CafePress, Spreadshirt, Custom ink, etc.), yet they’re not the competitors of the entrepreneur users but rather their allies. I see it as a symbiosis: they have the prestige, the customers, the web infrastructure, the production machinery and deal with all the sales, while users provide them with the items they sell.

CafePress.com main page (click to enlarge)

I will write a short review on how CafePress works because it is the company with which I first started such a business back in 2002 (and still today), and also because it is the one of them I know best.

What is CafePress?

So what’s the company profile? CafePress is an online retailer of stock and user-customized on demand products headquartered in the United States. Founded in 1999, as of February 2006, the site hosted over 2.6 million online shops with over 200 million products.

New users are always welcome to open a free account in their website (registration is required for buying as well as for selling) and provide some personal data. With a free account it is possible to start selling in their marketplace and also in a small personal shop site, however with limitations. Users can choose to upgrade to Premium Shop, removing all limitations and obtaining many other advantages, although this requires paying a recurring fee.

Submitting and tagging a sample design (click to enlarge)

In either case the design of products works in the same way: by using image edition software such as Photoshop, the user creates his own designs as image files. Once finished, the files are uploaded (in many available common formats such as JPG, PNG, PSD,  etc.) to the account in Cafepress in the user media basket. This is a virtual folder where all of the user’s submitted image files are stored and tagged with keywords. The images in the media basket are always available for being assigned to new products: the user can choose a product from a wide range (for instance, a t-shirt or a mug) and place the design on it in a very easy manner (WYSIWYG, or What You See Is What You Get).

Whenever a product has a design assigned to it, it appears available for sale both in the marketplace (which is a search engine in CafePress site to find all the available designs from all of its sellers), and in the user personal shop site.

Dealing with sales

At this point, you must be asking yourself two important questions:

• How do sellers make profit?
• Do sellers have to deal with the sales?

The answer to how profit is made is pretty straightforward: CafePress works with a user-defined commission system. It is the seller himself who decides how much profit he wants to obtain from the sale of a certain product with a certain design on it. This is done through the base price and the markup: the base price is the minimum charged by CafePress for production costs and for their own profit, whereas the markup is the extra amount the seller charges which he will obtain as profit. An example of that:

A black t-shirt’s base price is $18.99 + the seller chooses a markup of $3.00 = $21.99

$21.99 is the price which will be displayed to any potential buyer, both in the marketplace and in the user shop. The only exception to that is when the buyer and the seller are the same person: only the base price is charged, as it would be senseless to pay the markup to oneself.

What you see is what you get: the result (click to enlarge)

Note that even though two products might be the same (e.g. baseball cap) but with different designs, the price between them can differ (if the markup is different). Therefore the markup does not really add value to the product itself but it should vary in accordance with the quality and success of a specific design.

Secondly, dealing with the sales is nothing the seller should worry about. After all, that’s CafePress job. They process all the sales, transactions, deal with production, handling and shipping of items, and the best of all: they deal with customer care and with product returns (unsatisfied customers or faulty products). Of course the seller can intervene as well in some aspects of customer care, for instance sending newsletters to buyers with CafePress tools; but as mentioned above sales is the part a seller should least concern about. He receives a clean daily updated list of sales, transactions, profit made, products sold, etc. which is very useful in order for him to know the profit he is making, the success of his products and what designs sell better than others. It can also measure customer insatisfaction, as it also provides the number of returned items.

Have you ever sold items through eBay? Then try to compare it: with CafePress you – the seller – no longer need to process the sales, wrap or pack the sold items and bring them to the post office for sending them to the buyer. One saves so much time. Not to say, of course, that if the shipped item gets lost on the way to the buyer, with CafePress it is not of your concern either. Doesn’t this sound great?

When do you get the real money?

The profit made through sales is not received immediately in the seller’s bank account. At first there is a 30 day “lag time” for commission payments to account for returns and exchanges; once this time has lapsed the money becomes available as CafeCash or CafePress money. This CafeCash is pooled in the sellers account and can be used for certain things: for instance to pay Premium Shop fees or to buy his own products directly without having to pay from a credit card.

The seller can choose at what amount the CafeCash is sent to his bank account as real money. CafePress writes cheques at $25, $50, $100 and $250; this means that if a seller chooses $50, no cheque will be sent to him until he accrues $50 in cleared CafeCash. Cheques arrive promptly by post to the address provided for such purpose and are always in USD.

Conclusion

Being a CafePress seller since 2002, I can wholeheartedly recommend making business with them. They are serious, helpful, efficient and very professional. Their website is very intuitive and user-friendly, and has a collection of useful help files and tutorials. There’s even a community section where sellers exchange ideas and give each other advice.

The quality of their finished products is excellent. I have twice bought sample products with my designs to verify the quality and I can say I was extremely satisfied with the results.

What I find great too is that oneself can start an own business without having to spend money first. It is totally possible to run a CafePress shop without ever paying a single cent from your pocket.

Regarding the lucrative aspect: CafePress will NOT make you rich (unless of course you’re very good at designing, have excellent salesman skills, outstanding creativity, get a Premium Shop and use advertising systems such as Google AdSense, etc.) because there is lots of competition between sellers, and also because most of the design ideas you might have already exist in abundance in CafePress marketplace. But be optimist and see the good side of it: CafePress can render you a steady flow of extra money without having to continuously work for it, because once you have several successful designs being sold regularly you needn’t produce more to keep making profit; those successful ones might be bought by customers on a regular basis and periodically generate you profit. It is a good idea however to keep adding new designs now and then so to expand your offer and have more chances of expanding your profit too. The profit you make in the end depends on many factors – including those mentioned – but regularly adding new designs certainly has an impact on the performance of your business.

Lastly it is important to mention this is not a get-rich-quick scheme. It will take some time before you actually sell your first design, but if you’re patient enough and create minimally attractive designs it is just a matter of time until your efforts start to be rewarded.

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