dusk884

I love t-shirts. So several months ago I started my own CP store and went Premium ( $6 a month is a steal IMO ). I just started designing shirts that I wanted to wear but couldnt find and half of the designs were requests from local friends.

Then, about 3 weeks into it... I started getting sales from total absolute strangers. That's pretty exciting. Then they kept coming. Sometimes twice a day.. sometimes 12 a day! Almost every one of the sales was from the "marketplace". Some of the latest buys are from repeat customers and a few actually come to the "store" now. This is freaking exciting and fun, folks.

I wait about 2 weeks for a new design to be searchable leaving about a week for actual searchability. If there are no sales for that design, I take it off the site. ( LOTS )Probably a bad thing to do but I want my shop nice and clean for now anyway. Since almost all sales are from the "marketplace"... I really shouldn't care how clean the shop is I suppose. But I digress.

I recently read in the forums there that top sellers have THOUSANDS of designs. Wow... I had no idea CP would allow such space. For $6 a month?? I love these people. So... I decided to compromise with myself, I'm going to leave all designs online that I'm especially proud of, regardless of sales after 2 weeks.

Here's what I learned. So I saw that I had people buying.. so I started making shirts that have come and gone from the site. I noticed that every freakin shirt that I made for "others" didn't sell SQUAT. Apparently, I have no talent for predicting what others want. It ain't easy to come up with ideas when thinking about others either. Everything I have sold to date are all shirts that I wanted to wear on my own chest. Turns out those shirts are easy to design for, too. So maybe that's my formula to have more fun.

I took half my CafePress bucks that I earned through sales and bought everything I sell. My thoughts:

The Dark T-Shirt... Much better than I've read about and expected. They were generously cut and thicker than I thought. The print was better than I imagined. I would buy this tee and have much more faith in my dark designs. If you read too much you might end up like me wondering if your dark designs will not print well. 200dpi, CYMK colors with a transparent background... 10x10... good to go every time. The small tiny details could have been more clear for my taste but then I think I'm being too critical. My black designs will be more simple than they have been.

The mugs? Awesome. Better than any mugs I ever bought. Including official "NFL" mugs that I always buy. The quality of the print was exactly like what I put into Photoshop. Down to the pixel!

White shirts. Again, a really nice product, all of them. Graphics appeared cleaner and much more precise than on the Dark Tees. I wasn't AS impressed as I was with the Dark shirts but that might be because I was expecting sub par results with the Darks.

Anyway... having fun and I love these CafePress people. What a service. Spend 20 minutes every other day on t-shirt designs and they're sending them to me for free? Can't beat that. In a year, I expect to be forced to receive a "check"! Even more cool, I think.

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