Is there any real money in cafepress?

Adam said:

but the average is unknown to the community. Obviously, you get out of it what you put it like any business.

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Hmmm good point Adam.

Ive just been checking out CP and I am currently more bent on building and selling from my own website and the thought occured to me, whats to stop someone from opening multiple stores, hundreads of them in the hopes of getting a sale, but that to me seems a bit like dilluting the quality with meaningless quantity.

Im actually a fairly adept painter (acrylic on canvas) so im going to be taking the time to paint large portraits of some of my tshirt designs, take decent well lit squarely framed snap shots of them and print them out myself on heat transfers...

But still, the concept of CP's ease to sell does seem tempting.
Im reluctant to place my hard-worked painting designs on CP for fear of something silly like them "claiming the interlectual property as their own" and me not being able to resell the same design in my own indepedant ecommerce website.

But wow.... 10K ? How is this possible? Are these serious business people? Or are they run of the mill joe averages who have worked their butts of to make it big with CP?

Surely theres something amiss here...

Either way, very cool!

Does anyone really know how much others are making from cafepress? Unless you have first-hand evidence, I don't know how much credibility can be placed on the figures that have been suggested in this thread. I'd like to believe the claims being made, but I'd find it a whole lot easier if those who have posted actual estimates could back their figures with some explanation of where they got them from.

My experience is that people in business are, by default, engaged in a PR exercise regarding the state of their business. I've never heard a negative response to the question "so, how is your business going?" any time I've asked it, and have found it quite common some time down the track to bump into the same person, to be told that they'd sold or given up their business because they weren't making any money. It's human nature and good business sense to project a positive image, regardless of the facts. Hence the reason for my scepticism in regard to the claims being made by some about the incomes being reaped from CP. Not closed to the possibility, but I'd find it easier to entertain if someone could disclose the source of their income estimates. None of those mentioned in this thread appear to have come from people referring to their own CP store.

Ross B said:

I've never heard a negative response to the question "so, how is your business going?" any time I've asked it, and have found it quite common some time down the track to bump into the same person, to be told that they'd sold or given up their business because they weren't making any money..

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Interesting perspective and true in some cases, Ive often heard though many a time about how business men and women have been referred to as stubborn, never say no, never give up, keep falling down and getting back up, etc and the list goes on.

But its something ive mentioned in previous threads before. In fact my recent entry into this forum with the "welcome new members" thread I talked about how I actually started a toy business, which failed miserably... I spent $7000 in stock and another $2000-$3000 on a professional website design by a ecommerce company, complete with search engine submissions, adwords, forums, you name it and it didnt bring me a single penny back.

I then tried my hand at a certain auction store site to sell things there and well.... ouch.... auctioning wasnt a smart idea...

So I definatley know personally what failure is like, how bad you can fail and how tragically horrible and awful the feeling is, makes you sick to the stomach and you cant wake up and face the day knowing how bad you did.

But, here I am again, a year later. The most important thing is that I hope to learn from my previous experiences, and CP I think is a good platform to start.

Ive heard some people talk about how they have been making a killing on CP stores, but its hard to measure the success because the community is filled with both sucessful and unsucessful stores.

Interesting point though.... very interesting... food for thought!

Ross B said:

Shadowdragon

Don't beat yourself up for failing. Every failure is just a lesson on the road to success! Must admit, I'm a little sick of all these lessons, though, so can identify with your sentiments.

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Thansk Ross B

In some crazy way, im glad it happened. Im one of those people who have a very hard time learning something until I get my own hands dirty and dive right in. The consequences suck, but I feel I get some quality experience from it, even if its bad experience to be had.

Ive got about a dozen books on success stories including richard branson, and theyre all very inspiring and dandy, but these guys never talk about the horrible terrifying failures if any.

Still, somehow, somewhere i'll make it.

I estimate I am months and months away realistically speaking of setting up shop, but I just went down to my local k-mart store and picked up a nice white tee for $5.00 and 5 heat transfers (celcast brand) for $15. Im gonna experiment because ive never done heat transfers before and see how I go.

I know if done right and correctly, they can turn out to be really excellent tshirts, but I wont beleive its possible or realistic until I actually do one myself. So here goes. At some time tonight i'll print something nice out and do one up.

But im still going to stick with the "only print and make up what is ordered" rather than print up a whole batch of stuff all at once, that way I can hopefully minimize the loss of money.

My only concern at this stage about production of product, is getting an unexpected swarm of orders and having not enough tees or transfer sheets, so I think I have to find an equilibrium of blank-ready-to-heat-press tees and a reasonble stash of heat transfers AND at the same time not ordering more than i'll end up needing.

I've heard some guys start up these stores at next to nothing costs, I just need to make sure I have damn good designs, but im in luck because im an artsy gifted kinda guy so that's one strength on my side.

What I DO know is that if somehow... god knows how...somehow... low and behold I manage to get a sudden rush of orders and the pace picks up, that I DONT fall into a trap of suddenly splurging out a load of money and loosing it.

The way I see it at this stage, its pretty much `steady as she goes'

*fingers crossed*

Im reluctant to place my hard-worked painting designs on CP for fear of something silly like them "claiming the interlectual property as their own" and me not being able to resell the same design in my own indepedant ecommerce website.

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I can tell you first hand that this never comes into play. CafePress doesn't have any "exclusivity" clauses and many people use their designs that sell on cafepress in other places.

I've been using CafePress since they started, been to their offices, had lunch with the founders. I can tell you that they run a good business.

Like Adam said, there are people that don't put much into it that probably make $0 and there are people that treat it like a business, do the right advertising, have the right product, and make thousands. You can see some of the stories posted first hand in the cafepress forums. Like Ross said though, it would be impossible to KNOW an average unless you worked at CP, and most likely they aren't sharing that info

I can also tell you first hand that you CAN make thousands per month with the right designs and the right marketing

I've said this many times though. CafePress is just the "tool". You could make $0 or make thousands of dollars printing your own t-shirts. Same could be said using spreadshirt. Same could be said of getting t-shirts preprinted.

Those are just tools. They don't make/break/or define your sales potential.

What defines your sales potential is YOUR designs and YOUR marketing.