CafePress, Zazzle, and PrintFection
A few months back I mentioned that my love for CafePress was diminishing slightly due several changes they made that resulted in my paychecks shrinking. I’m still not complaining because passive income is great, regardless of size. A thoughtful reader suggested I check out Zazzle. I had set up an account there some time ago and played around a bit but based on this reader’s comment I decided to really give it a go. I also found another POD (print on demand) site called Printfection and put most of my designs up there too.
Setting things up on Printfection was a royal pain! You can create multiple products at one time, but the tool to fine tune your design is less than cooperative and once you create the products you can only edit them one at a time. So if you create 20 products at once and have a type, or forget to put in a commission (it defaults to 0) you have to go back and fix each one, one at a time. Their selection is good and it doesn’t cost anything to have a store. According to Alexa they don’t see near the traffic that CafePress and Zazzle do.
Zazzle is probably the easiest of the three to set up products on. I’ve encountered a technical glitch here and there, which is frustrating when it happens but I’ve encountered those on all the POD sites. The store is free and according to Alexa they are running pretty close in traffic to CafePress.
I still use CafePress and still make money on it. Now that I have all my designs up on all three I hope to spend some time coming up with new ones, at least for CafePress and Zazzle. I’m not sure I’ll spend the time it takes to create much more on PrintFection unless I see it’s really worth it. CafePress charges $6.95/mo for a premium store, and you can’t do any real business without one. But the monthly check more than covers it.
In general shopkeepers took a 66% pay cut at Cafepress when they recently switched to a mere 10% commission in the marketplace. You’re taking it awfully well, some people are losing their homes over this.
This is no trivial difference between CP and other POD companies, it’s huge, and the greedy profit grab by Cafepress is appalling.
Paul – thanks for commenting. Obviously the change at CafePress didn’t hit me as hard as it did others who had a lot more riding on it. I can see how, in that situation, it could be devastating especially considering the short notice CP gave about their changes. I sincerely hope everyone that was really hit hard is able to make it through and come out on top.