I've been having a lot of difficulty marketing my cafepress store... I'd be really grateful for any suggestions of ways I could improve traffic.
www.cafepress.com/anupwardspiral
Right now the store generates roughly one sale per month and generates not quite enough commission to cover the store fee.
I've been through several iterations of changing the layout and text on the store itself. I've added keywords to all the images in the store, which is responsible for most of my sales but really doesn't generate traffic in my store because of the way cafe press is designed. I've copied most of not all of my images to my tribe photos, and to my Deviant Art gallery ( smolderingremains.deviantart.com ) and I've linked to the store in the description of every image. I've purchased advertising on Deviant Art which unfortunately can't link to the store directly, it has to link to the Deviant Art profile, so it hasn't really generated any traffic to the store. I've posted a number of images to the photo galleries in a number of tribes here like the Puns tribe, again with links to the store in the description.
Thanks. :)
ike
www.cafepress.com/anupwardspiral
Right now the store generates roughly one sale per month and generates not quite enough commission to cover the store fee.
I've been through several iterations of changing the layout and text on the store itself. I've added keywords to all the images in the store, which is responsible for most of my sales but really doesn't generate traffic in my store because of the way cafe press is designed. I've copied most of not all of my images to my tribe photos, and to my Deviant Art gallery ( smolderingremains.deviantart.com ) and I've linked to the store in the description of every image. I've purchased advertising on Deviant Art which unfortunately can't link to the store directly, it has to link to the Deviant Art profile, so it hasn't really generated any traffic to the store. I've posted a number of images to the photo galleries in a number of tribes here like the Puns tribe, again with links to the store in the description.
Thanks. :)
ike
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Massachusetts
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Re: Marketing
Tue, April 15, 2008 - 8:44 AMI've pretty much given up on my cafepress shop. With the ability to produce your own stuff right there at your fingertips, there comes the unfortunate loss of possible sales. However, I've also noticed that the cafepress "trend: has dropped off the face of the earth. Seems noone is interested anymore. Don't know what to suggest though. ~sigh~
Well..you could spam te e-mail populations of the world...but you know how that goes, too. -
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Re: Marketing
Thu, April 17, 2008 - 5:18 PMThanks Mojo... Well I'm not ready to give up yet. :) The quality of the CP goods has improved (they don't use heat transfer for shirts anymore) and I do get 1-2 sales per month, so I know there are people willing to buy from me, I just need to find a way to reach that audience, so I gather I just don't have enough traffic. And most of the folks I talk to off-line haven't even heard of CafePress (or Threadless or DeviantArt), so there's gotta be a whole bunch of untapped market out there. But I realized today actually that they've now created a way for premium store owners to create meta tags on their store for the search engines, so that might help. I know I've seen SEO techniques legitimately work quite a lot to improve traffic on other sites, but until recently I didn't have much ability to do that. -
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Re: Marketing
Fri, April 18, 2008 - 5:32 AMI can't help thinking maybe the question you should be asking is not "how you should market your work" but "who you should be marketing your work to"? Know who your market is is half the battle in trying to sell to them. It looks like your stuff is in a cartoon-style but deals with religious/spiritual themes. That would make it a tough sell in general. Since people who are interested in religious art may be put off but the cartoon style irreverence (and vice-a versa). If you can build a clearer idea of who you are trying to reach, then you can build a better plan on how to reach them. -
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Re: Marketing
Fri, April 18, 2008 - 2:37 PMThere's actually very little in the way of religious type content in the cp gallery -- and actually I just hid what little was there the other day while I was working on the store. Out of roughly 100 or so images I think there were like 3 with religious themes.
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Re: Marketing
Fri, April 18, 2008 - 6:08 AMIke...you ever consider purxhasing some of your stuff from cafepress at your shop keepers discount and putting in a couple of local shops in your area? I did that with a few of the mermaid items, and they sold rapid fast. -
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Re: Marketing
Fri, April 18, 2008 - 2:39 PMYeah, I thought about it, but at the time when I was looking for places to put them up in Austin, I was flat broke and couldn't afford to order the prints... But I may very well do that soon when I have a little money to order them in the upcoming months. Thanks MoJo. :)
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