A promising site with promising products...really lacks in MANY areas!
Written: Aug 13 '09 (Updated Aug 13 '09)
| Site Ease of Use: |
 |
|
| Customer Service: |
 |
|
| Effort vs. Reward: |
 |
|
|
| Full Review |
I've known Cafepress for quite a few years now and I'm sad to say it's gone quite downhill for shoppers and shopkeepers alike. It is one of the largest sites online that comes up when I try to find funny t-shirts online and it's competitor is Zazzle (Zazzle.com) and I have bought/sold from that site as well as Cafepress.
My very first experience with Cafepress was when my husband decided to buy some funny saying t-shirts for an upcoming football game for him and his dad. He actually spent $60 on some cheap, white printed t-shirts. I was not happy! I found out that I could've made up some sayings and saved him around $30 if I had designed them myself. So the next year, I decided to open up a free shop that they offer and try out a few sayings and designs.
So I opened a few free stores, where you can put some t-shirts, mugs and other things (they offer ornaments, calendars, tiles, framed tiles, onesies, and so on). I did some really dorky, yet funny design and forgot about it. Seriously, a couple months later I got a $75 check in the mail from Cafepress. I had been selling my design on those (on baby onesies) like mad and had no idea. That got me all excited. I guess I did not set up "email notifications" but after that, I did. It got me excited. I signed up for my first shop at around $6.95 per month (you can build your own website shop)...it's not the easiest thing to do...and I can't say I sell anymore than If I opened up all free stores. But it allows me to have my own site and design it the way I like. I can also have framed printed pictures and wall calendars (which marketplace/free stores don't get). It felt like my own little business that way. You can pay in advance and save a few bucks. But getting established takes a good 6 months before you get some decent profit, and I worked my rear off around the clock designing, uploading, fitting onto products, advertising (which I'm horrible at), typing in keywords, organizing my store, offering coupons and so on. Overall, it was worth it as a stay-at-home job (on the side while I was home with the kids). At the same time, some weeks I worked 40, 50, 60 hours and more..only to make a few bucks. I thought it would be worth it if I were to at least get enough credit or money to rebuy gifts for people on there.
I have also bought gifts from Cafepress for people. I have printed pictures onto tiles, ornaments, magnets and drawings on t-shirts, hoodies, personalized items and so on. I am impressed with the ornaments and their cost (but they are only printed on one side) and at a base cost of $5.99, you can upload a cute picture of the family. If you buy from someone, usually they would mark it up $2 to 6 dollars (if you liked a design someone made)...and I would do this at Christmastime for people. I especially LOVE their tiled jewely boxes (called trinket box, jewelry box or keepsake box) the base price (meaning blank box if you upload your own pic or design was $15.99 but they jacked it up last year (2008) to $18.99 base price (after only offering them for a year). They are offered in two colors: black and dark, shiny wood. If a shopkeeper put their design on it, they would mark them up around $4-9 (average) and that's a good profit for a designer, but that made them $24.99 on up to $28.99 each! They still sold to the random customer (and still do) even at that price, and Cafepress coupons help to off-set some of their steep prices.
They offer coupon codes, I suggest googling to use them. You can get free shipping sometimes or $5 off $50 and so on. But even their coupons have gotten shabby! They used to offer $3 off $10 or more, $5 off 25 or more and so on. Now it's like $5 off 50 or $75 here and there. Coupons are easy to use and you can use them on everything and help offset the shipping. Shipping is decent unless you add several magnets, mugs or heavy items, then it goes WAY UP and fast. I think I wanted like 8 magnets once and my shipping flew up to $15, when it's normally $5 or $7. Yikes! You can also order bulk, see the website http://www.cafepress.com for details. Magnets can be outrageous when shopkeepers mark them up only because Cafepress's base price is steep. So they are trying to make a buck or two off them, but $7 for a magnet is super steep! If they offered them a bit cheaper, I'm sure they would sell like mad! Sometimes people throw them in their cart online just to get to a certain price to be able to use a coupon code. They also offer reduced-priced magnets and buttons in 10's and 100's. I've only sold (with as many designs I have on Cafepress...over 1500) 1 set of mini 100 buttons. Don't forget (as a shopkeeper) to markup your prices, because many times of working late night, I forgot and made no profit!
Downsides to being a shopkeeper to a free or bought store is that you have to size your image to each and every product. It does not AUTOMATICALLY size onto the product. For instance, if you make it once size on a tee, you have to resize it to fit a mousepad. A SERIOUSLY time-consuming task and not necessarily worth it if you don't sell much, or have a low-end design. I mean t-shirts are the MAIN thing that sells on Cafepress, so mousepads will sell much less than a tee (so you have to weigh if it's worth it to adjust images one by one slowly). Although when you offer your picture/design on more products, the wider your possible customers/audience will be.
Another MAJOR MAJOR downside to Cafepress is to shopkeepers. They recently went from shopkeeper mark up their own products/designs (I would mark up 25% to 40%) to their own markups of 10%. So for me, my profit margin went down majorly. I used to make hundreds more per month than I do now. I can't believe Cafepress did this and has devastated some shopkeepers who did this on the side, for fun and for a living. A good thing is now shoppers pay less, you never pay more than 10% over Cafepress's base price. But is my hard artwork only worth 10%? I mean I spend hours designing, drawing, perfecting, fitting it onto a product, promoting, uploading, keywording and so on and then I sell say a pack of postcards (previously I would make $5 profit, and now I make $1.40). That's a HUGE hit! It has made me no longer work on Cafepress or uploading or working on any of my designs. A buck here or there is NOT worth my time, but I have decided to leave my designs on thus far to see how it will go. So far not so good. Wow, it really looked like I had a career in the making and I was excited, but then it didn't last long!
This was the SECOND blow, the first blow was about 2007/2008 they decided to get rid of bonuses. You got a bonus as a shopkeeper if you sold over certain amounts, it was very inspiring. Some months I got an extra $100, it was beautiful. It gave me excitement and goals to reach. But then they got rid of it and really reduced shopkeeper/designers' incomes and then the 10% markup new policy...just not good. And owning your own store does not mean your own name, you are http://www.cafepress.com/ (insert shop name). As a shopkeeper/domain owner you have so many rules, not the freedom you would have owning your own website. Templates are far and few between and pretty simple. You must know HTML to work with your own site (so it can be pretty daunting). As a shopkeeper you have to not only know how to design, how to upload it to a program/computer, how to size it to items, how to do HTML on a website, how to advertise, how to tag correctly/keywords and so on. How to do 1001 and things, in my opinion, it is a lot of work to get some income generated.
The THIRD worst thing Cafepress has done recently has to do with searching their products. It used to be difficult because they had thousands of people uploading products daily and you would have to sift through products and cruddy designs until you found a good one, but the search process was "easier". You could search through "most recent" or "most popular" and when you found a design you liked, you could link up with that person's store and buy multiple things from them. Oh my gosh their searching is sooo difficult now. They have downsized bad designs and keywords. I cannot find anything and it seems like hours before I can find anything, and I can't even find my own stuff (so I have no idea how customers do!). I get so many customer complaints about their new "searching" process. I don't even understand it. I type in a word and cannot find it on the product I want...I will type in a few words now and it just flicks my words into the words they want and items they want..when before a keyword was very important. I can't even help my customers who ask, the search process is beyond riduclous.
I've seen things go in and out of stock over the years. They'll go and offer a new product such as the throw pillow and then go out of stock for 2 months, I've seen this happen to travel mugs and so on.
I've seen them bring and take away good products! They didn't offer zip or dark hoodies before and FINALLY after many, many requests, they do. They still do not offer a wide array of dark colors especially for women. They finally in around 2006 got plus sizes for women and men up. But the plus-sized women's t-shirts are terribly undersized. A 2x ends up being a large, they almost always get returned (at least all the ones I've sold). If you wash them, they will shrink too (so about 2 sizes too small).
Now the pregnancy tees are a great plus. I am a shopkeeper (I pay to own a couple shops/sites through cafepress) and this has been a big seller for me. Luckily, these came right after I started and I just used my huge imagination when coming to pregnancy shirts (they are baby-doll style where it flares at the stomach)...so I drew up hundreds of them and became a best-seller in this area. I was very proud and still am. I have the option to place the drawing on the belly area, the upper left corner of the shirt or the top by the chest area. Of course, I prefer the belly area...so the pregnancy tees are fun to work with. At first they only offered them in white, then expanded to black and now pink. They go up to 2X, which is good for expanding bellies. This is their best (in my opinion) item that they added to their product line. I've sold hundreds of tees all over the world and that was very exciting to me (every country you've ever heard of!).
The grey hoodies (non-zip) are great and I like to order up in sizes. They offer up to a 2x and mostly are made for men, but women can buy and wear them. They hold up well over the years and washings (I notice Cafepress prints will hold up well (it's heat transfer). Women's shirts (base prices) are higher than men's (why?). Darker shirts go up about $5 in base price than white or light (yellow, pink, light blue) shirts (is that entirely necessary?).
Some of their items are great (throw pillows), some are useless and not very popular (like embroidered hats). It's not worth it to me to design (it's really difficult) a bunch of embroidered polo shirts, fleece jackets (in a small area only) or hats when they sell almost never. They are cool, a little bit nerdy and very expensive (plan on spending over $40 for a polo, over $50 or $60 for a fleece jacket). The bibs are cheap, onesies are nice (and got more colors: blue, white, pink and yellow now). Women's shirts in light and dark are nice. Organic tees are awesome, but plan on spending about $10 more per shirt than the average shirt. Average t-shirts for even kids are $15-20 on up to $30...so be prepared for some sticker shock! Toddler shirts shrink massively. A 4t shrinks (no matter what) to a 2t, and they don't wear well (stain easily and the stains don't come out). The kid's dark shirts are great..but as a designer can be difficult to design (you have to clear out the background otherwise you get a big white patch on the picture). I don't know how many times we have asked for better toddler shirts, dark toddler shirts and toddler hoodies to no avail. They now offer Flip Mino Mini Videorecorders and odd things like that. Journals are cool, but the price skyrocketed (from base price of $8.99 to base of $12.99). Ridiculous for a little journal (not adding the 10% profit they add now for designer). So most prices went up the past couple years when they were already phenomenolly high.
Cafepress customer service is always great. They make 1 out of 3mistakes (trust me I have ordered a lot for myself and gifts for others) and every 3rd item: mistake on their part! It's almost a guarantee this will happen. I just email or call and get a replacement (but it seems so high to get 1 out of 3 things wrong as my family members and customers have also told me from one out of three or one out of five items is a mess-up). I've had items too blurry, the wrong item totally, or wrong design/picture on the right item. I'm not sure why this happens; I'm sure they train people, but maybe so many orders and accidents just happen. They usually replace items right away. Shipping is quick and they package it well.
As far as postcards and cards are pretty good. I like that you can design your own cards (personalize them). I have made invitations (like for Birthdays/Halloween) before and you can even put colored pictures on the INSIDE. But unless you know how to work some paint programs or something, you won't be able to do this well (it's better to shop then what you're looking for, but good luck with their new search system!). I always did well at Christmas, but summers are slow as a designer/seller. I love this being offered to the average Joe, though. It's really nice to send my husband a personalized card from me for no more than $2.99.
I also don't like that they support big wigs now (before it was little people, like me)...like Twilight gear, TV Shows, Snoopy and so on...it seems to take over the site now. I liked the cool, different, unique personalization from the regular guy (mom and pop shopkeepers/designers). The WHOLE POINT was for mom and pop shopkeepers to design unique things (not big companies) and for mom and pop designers to make a bit of money (I've seen people make up to $10,000 per month (but have taken a HUGE hit with Cafepress's new pricing system). Of course any designer that imitates a TV Show, famous name, etc, won't be produced (but some of these do slip through the cracks). People do get around it, but no one ever turns these people in. I guess Cafepress invented a newer system of searching because of all the constantly repeated items. There would be 3,000 of the same designs with a different kid's name on it and would be really difficult to sift through 300 pages before you get to a decent design. I understand that, but now it is 10x harder to find anything and I can't understand their search system no matter how many times I read about it.
Overall a decent place to buy some items. Great customer service. Their policies have changed a lot and have been a shopkeeper/designer's nightmare. Some products are lame, some better (it's sort of like hit and miss). Printing is good. They make it easy to see the picture and on the product (important) but sometimes the designer can make the design a little "off" and you can't see it until your item arrives. Dark shirts fade easy. Prices even at Cafepress's base price are expensive (but compared to Zazzle, they are also expensive). Pregnancy shirts are awesome if you can find a cool design. It seems to me like Cafepress isn't interested in the "little guy" anymore, but more on their profits (I know is the bottom line in businesses, but also they used designers as their step ladder). I'm sad. I've had quite the love-hate relationship with them. Their forums used to light up with enthusiastic people, but now seem dead. Many people have left over their new rules. But I'm sure shoppers still come. But it was a good side income and fun while it lasted! I still will buy things from them from time to time and sell, even though I barely make anything these days (due to their new policies).
Recommended:
Yes
|
|
|
|
Epinions.com ID:
bablondie25
|
|
Member: bablondie25
Location: Seattle Area
Reviews written: 501
Trusted by: 22 members
About Me:
My new blog is up with fun tips/funnies/ideas/money-savers/photos/art projects and so on! www.bablondie.blogspot.com
|
|
|
- Add to My Yahoo!: 
- Add to Google Homepage: 
© 1999-2009 Shopping.com, Inc.