whats your opinion selling through fulfillment sites (cafepress or other smaller ones) as opposed to doing your own website, checkout, etc.?
Personally, I'm against it. Most of us need to start small, but I think there are better ways to accomplish that (like selling to your local market, or using mid-ground options like BigCartel that aren't as good as your own site or as bad as a Cafepress site).
The only fulfilment site I would use would be a multi-service one like PrintMojo that screenprints their product, or a traditional fulfilment centre where you provide the product that you source yourself. But I wouldn't use a site like Cafepress.
Plenty of people will tell you it worked for them, so it depends on what you're doing. Personally I'm trying to build a quality brand, and they don't fit with my business model.
I think there's almost nothing that works on a site like Cafepress that couldn't have worked better somewhere else (their marketplace search means that's not necessarily true 100% of the time... hence
almost).
A couple of exceptions would be something very of the moment like "George Bush doesn't care about black people", which might do better on a site like Cafepress where it takes less time to populate search results. Also, really atrociously designed product - it won't sell anywhere, but it's more likely to sell on Cafepress than a standalone site no-one will ever see. Or something you only ever expect to sell a couple of (in which case I probably just wouldn't do it, but that's me).
These are low-end exceptions for dabblers and hobbyists though. Cafepress can also work for business orientated people who want to make a buck in any way possible (i.e. not designers). Great if that's what you're doing, but not otherwise.
What I'm getting at is if you just want to get
a product,
any product out there, use a fulfilment centre (in its favour, it will do that efficiently). If you want it to be at all finely crafted, don't.
Not everyone focuses on the things I focus on though, so not everyone will see it the same way.