Cafepress Free Trial Over...

4914 Views 20 Replies 8 Participants Last post by Rodney, Sep 18, 2006

skulltshirts

Discussion Starter · Aug 14, 2006

Well today marks the end of my free trial. I have to decide whether to pay the fee or let it go.
Today also marks my first 2 visitors from a search engine. My first visitor from a search came from msn and my second was a google search. I was very glad to finally see my link on a search engine.
I was hoping I would get at least one or two sales so it would pay for my fee. I know alot of you have viewed my site, do you think it looks good enough to pay for the next month, or should I let it die?
Thanks
Thomas

1 - 20 of 21 Posts

MotoskinGraphix

· #2 · Aug 14, 2006

Are you still supporting your website or just playing in the cafe?

skulltshirts

Discussion Starter · #3 · Aug 14, 2006

MotoskinGraphix said:
Are you still supporting your website or just playing in the cafe?

I only have the cafepress shop right now. The free trial has ended and i need to pay or let it go. It hasnt made a sale yet. So Im wondering if I should let it go. Looking for opinions.

MotoskinGraphix

· #4 · Aug 14, 2006

I am a bit bewildered why you let the website go.

skulltshirts

Discussion Starter · #5 · Aug 14, 2006

MotoskinGraphix said:
I am a bit bewildered why you let the website go.

Well I was in a finacial bind, and sold it (website and all the designs) to a relative, and he run it into the ground. He didnt send out orders and gave the site a bad name. So I bought it back after things improved for me. So I could have my designs back. I had wanted to start up something new but just went with a cafepress store for the time being.

jdr8271

· #6 · Aug 14, 2006

Personally, I would leave cafepress and start your old site back up. I am certian, that your designs will sell if you get them in front of the right people. If you dont want to print yourself anymore, I remember your site having tons of skull designs. What happened to all of them? Can you still put them on the cafepress site. If you had more selection, maybe that would help. Do you still own your old domain. Why not use the old domain to redirect to this site, and give the new site the same company name as the old one. That way, you would also pick up the search engine traffic from your old site.

skulltshirts

Discussion Starter · #7 · Aug 14, 2006

I would just have to renew the website name is all. I still have all my old skull designs. I have like 85 designs, but only about half of them are "sellable" designs. The other half was from my early days of designing and dont look to hot.

MotoskinGraphix

· #8 · Aug 14, 2006

jdr8271 said:
Personally, I would leave cafepress and start your old site back up. I am certian, that your designs will sell if you get them in front of the right people. If you dont want to print yourself anymore, I remember your site having tons of skull designs. What happened to all of them? Can you still put them on the cafepress site. If you had more selection, maybe that would help. Do you still own your old domain. Why not use the old domain to redirect to this site, and give the new site the same company name as the old one. That way, you would also pick up the search engine traffic from your old site.

I agree!!! I thought your domain name was worth its weight in gold and established as well. I have no idea what the fees are for cafe press....I thought it was free to tell ya the truth. On the second cafe url I only see the one design on like fifty different products. That looks repetitious and silly. Come on Skully...I like your gear and market we just gotta help ya get back on your feet. When you get your website back up let me know and I will link with you.

skulltshirts

Discussion Starter · #9 · Aug 14, 2006

Right on, thanks for your support! You know, my skulls website is still intact and sitting here on my hard drive! Im really out 2 things that prevent me from getting back in.... 1. I need a new printer. When I sold site, I sold the press and printer with it. I got the press back, but the printer had tore up under his management. 2. Because he was a relative... I let him use my paypal account. And it got all messed up as well. So another form of payment gateway and cart would be required. When i get this things worked out, I can get back in with a full website.

andocobo

· #10 · Aug 14, 2006

hey thomas,
In my experience one month is a very short time in the life of a website, you should definetly keep it going if you can afford it. You should learn to customize your storefront a little and give it a more unique look and style so people remember it and are attracted to it. I think some of your designs are cool, so my advice would be keep plugin away and working on it. I dont think one month is long enough to even give the site a chance to fail. Keep us posted!

All the best,
Andrew

Rodney

· #11 · Aug 14, 2006 (Edited)

Thomas, it's WAY too soon to decide whether or not to keep a free trial based on search engine visitors and sales. 15 days will get you nowhere when starting from scratch.

The 15 day trial is more for you to see how the system works, learning how to create products in bulk, mess with the custom layout of the store and for you to see the potential of what you could do. You could be on vacation for a week and still sell 100 t-shirts and never have to worry about printing a shirt or getting backed up

There is something to be said for the fulfillment model (not in all situations of course, but if you don't want to print anymore and you don't want to worry about shipping, customer service, then it seems perfect).

For example, I just got a phone call today from a customer that saw a cool t-shirt design on t-shirtcountdown and wanted to order "a bunch". I was going to redirect him to the actual merchant's store that sold the t-shirts and noticed a big alert on their page that said they were "CLOSED FOR THE MONTH OF AUGUST BECAUSE [THEY] NEEDED A VACATION". All emails and orders would be answered in September! I was shocked at this (looks like they had some recent press as well). If they were using a fulfillment service, they could keep selling and shipping as usual.

As I mentioned before, you definitely should renew your domain name. It's worth something

As you said, it was established and had links everywhere. That's free traffic that you could send to your cafepress store or a section in your cafepress store with all skull designs).

Your first step is renewing that domain name TODAY. Right now so that you don't lose that search engine traffic. Redirect it (most registrars offer free redirection) to your cafepress store. Instant traffic.

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normalbrains

· #12 · Aug 16, 2006

skulltshirts said:
Today also marks my first 2 visitors from a search engine. My first visitor from a search came from msn and my second was a google search. I was very glad to finally see my link on a search engine.
I

hey thomas, how did you get your site show up on the search engines in less than 2 weeks? did you submit them yourself? got any more since then? i was under the impression it took closer to two months. any info i appreciated. im a newb and also have had my shop about two weeks. later

allyn

skulltshirts

Discussion Starter · #13 · Aug 16, 2006

normalbrains said:
hey thomas, how did you get your site show up on the search engines in less than 2 weeks? did you submit them yourself? got any more since then? i was under the impression it took closer to two months. any info i appreciated. im a newb and also have had my shop about two weeks. later

allyn

I did submit my links to the search engines myself. I havent got to many hits from search engines yet. I guess I might need to tweak my keywords a little better.

Rodney, you are 100% correct, I do need to get my site back up. Im thinking I will redo my site and have cafepress do all the printing and shipping, but showcase my designs on my website. And link it together for a cafepress checkout and purchase. I did go ahead and pay my fees to keep my cafepress store open.

Rodney

· #14 · Aug 16, 2006

I'm thinking I will redo my site and have cafepress do all the printing and shipping, but showcase my designs on my website. And link it together for a cafepress checkout and purchase.

Check out cpshop (http://cgi.marty.net) for a way to keep the showcase and front end shopping on your domain and only use cafepress for the checkout.

It's an awesome script with awesome support (written by a great guy who now works for cafepress).

skulltshirts

Discussion Starter · #15 · Aug 16, 2006

Rodney said:
Check out cpshop (http://cgi.marty.net) for a way to keep the showcase and front end shopping on your domain and only use cafepress for the checkout.

It's an awesome script with awesome support (written by a great guy who now works for cafepress).

Very interesting. Im not sure what alot of that is about though. I know html pretty good, how easy is that to install on a website? Have you used it before Rodney?

Adam

· #16 · Aug 16, 2006

Yeah I'm sure he's used it before. cpshop is relatively easy to install. Well worth the small fee. I've used it. Lots of pro CPers use it too.

Rodney

· #17 · Aug 16, 2006 (Edited)

how easy is that to install on a website?

It's pretty easy if you have ever installed a php/perl/cgi script on your site before.

The instructions are pretty good and the support behind it is great too. Marty may even ofer installation services (I'm not sure).

Have you used it before Rodney?

Yep, I've used it before. In fact, I think I'm one of the reasons why the script is for sale (I bugged Marty about it alot when I saw it on his site

).

Here's a couple of great examples of cpshop in action:
http://shop.webomator.com/
http://www.evisionarts.com/portal/earthandmoon/index.htm

skulltshirts

Discussion Starter · #18 · Aug 17, 2006

http://shop.webomator.com/

Thats a nice site. I like it how they have their site set up!

Thanks for the link Rodney.

skulltshirts

Discussion Starter · #19 · Sep 16, 2006

Thought I would update this thread a bit. It is at the end of my first month at cafepress. Time for my dues for the second month and just today I made my first sale!
It was just for one womens capland top, and I only had my mark up at 1.00$ but it is enough to give me encouragement to keep it going!

vegbyrd

· #20 · Sep 16, 2006

skulltshirts said:
Thought I would update this thread a bit. It is at the end of my first month at cafepress. Time for my dues for the second month and just today I made my first sale!
It was just for one womens capland top, and I only had my mark up at 1.00$ but it is enough to give me encouragement to keep it going!

hey, thomas! love your designs. i see you have a black tee on your site. i checked out cafe press and was floored at what they charge for a black tee! are you doing a low markup on that one, too?

thanks!

veggie

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