Cafepress vs Printfection vs Zazzle Part 2

OK, for those of you who are in POD, or are considering getting started in POD, this is another in a series of random observations regarding the online POD opportunities.

November is over. We find out today that we are in an official recession, and have been for a whole year now. Duh. I certainly didn't need a committee to tell me that. However, November's sales were somehow promising, if only temporarily. Here's how it racks up.

On Cafepress, I made sales of items in the following designs:
Psalm 139:14
Don't Make Me Break Out in Tourette's
John 3:16 Czech
Guitar Boy
Unsocialized Homeschool Children on Board
I Love My Norwegian Elkhound
I Love My Flock
We are Unsocialized
Obsessive Cockatiel Disorder
Obsessive Catfish Disorder
I Love My Toy Manchester Terrier
I Love My Nubian Goats
Tasmanian Devil in Tutu
John 3:16 Hungarian
I Love My Alpine Goats
Obsessive Chihuahua Disorder

OK, that's not great, but considerably better than any month in recent memory.

On Zazzle, I made sales of items in the following designs:
None. No sales.

And on Printfection?
Zero. Nada. Zip.

Interesting. I checked what was going on between the three websites over on Google Trends. Here is the result.

The blue line represents search volume for Cafepress, and the yellow line represents Zazzle. Printfection's numbers are so small, they don't even make it to the chart.

Of course, you could make the case that since I have more designs on Cafepress, that accounts for much of the discrepancy. However, I don't have that many more designs on Cafepress, and Zazzle and Printfection offer a number of items not available on Cafepress.

All of this suggests that, although galleries are free on Zazzle and Printfection, you may get exactly what you pay for. We'll see how December stacks up.

See Cafepress vs Printfection vs Zazzle
See Cafepress vs Printfection vs Zazzle Part 3

St Joseph Will Help Sell Your House

I am trying to sell my house so I can get out of Arizona. Could I have picked a worse time to do so? I doubt it.

My real estate agent is of the opinion that I have about as good a chance of being hit by lightning as selling my house. I can't decide if I appreciate his candor or not.

Some friends advised me that the thing I needed to do was to bury a statue of St. Joseph upside down in the front yard, and a sale would surely be forthcoming. Being as how I'm not Catholic, this was news to me, so I looked it up online, which is pretty much how I start anything these days.

St. Joseph refers to Joseph, the adoptive father of Jesus. If you will remember, he had a lot of housing issues. There was no room in the inn, so they took up residence in a stable. Then, they fled to Egypt, then they returned, but this time to blend into the quiet of Nazareth. So if you think about it, he should be plenty sympathetic to people with housing issues.

I researched online, and found that most authorities on this subject say that you should bury your statue of Joseph upside down in the front yard, with him facing your house, and in close proximity to the For Sale sign. If he faces the street, then the house across the street may sell instead of yours. However, if you have neighbors you don't like, you might try burying a statue of St. Joseph upside down pointing toward their house, so that maybe St. Joseph will get them packing instead.

Needless to say, I now have his statue buried in my yard, accompanied by many prayers. Now what I need is a good thunderstorm.

The drawing is Library People #116. 

Illustration Friday: Pretend

I am back to drawing Library People. This is #112 in the series. It is a graphite drawing on the inside of a discarded library book. Since my husband is between jobs, like so many other Americans, it seemed like a good time to go back to these, as they usually sell. I'm not going to pretend this will get us through the current hard economical times, but we'll all do what we can.

We are trying to sell our house here in Phoenix so we can move back to North Carolina, buy a farm, and do more recycled art. Anyone looking for a nice home in Phoenix? Have I got a bargain for you.

Our family has decided to all paint rocks this year for Christmas presents, since we're trying to save for the aforementioned move. There are a lot of rocks in Arizona, so you can pick them up just about anywhere, and they're free, which is a big selling point, since even discarded library books cost money. It will certainly make for an interesting holiday.

Or not.

Return of the Library People

Library People return. It's been a long time since I did any of these. Not that they are all that difficult, but I got a little burned out on them. These are Library People #107-111, and they are, like all the others, drawn in graphite on the insides of discarded library books.

Ed Begley would be so proud.

Anyway, they are up for auction on eBay beginning tonight at 9:00 Pacific, so if you click on the picture you like, it will take you to that auction. I'm offering them in a block so you can save on postage if you buy more than one. They make unusual Christmas presents, perfect for the person who has everything.

Designing Skateboards for Zazzle

I started designing skateboards for Zazzle. I looked for a long time through the seven trillion designs they have there before I started. It's pretty incredible some of the designs they have. The long, thin design surface of a skateboard requires that you think creatively about your design composition, as some images just don't lend themselves readily to the skateboard layout. Realistically, I'm not a skateboarder. In fact, I've been bedridden for several weeks with a back injury, so jumping on my son's skateboard is pretty out of the question. But if I could, I'd probably want the one with the eyes. You can see my skateboards at my new Zazzle store, ottoblotto. Real original idea, huh?

Payloadz and the World of Instant Information

Internet marketing people are everywhere; you can't throw a rock on the web without hitting one. They've all written the definitive book, whitepaper, webinar, podcast, or whatever about how you, too, can make a bazillion dollars on the web, and for a mere $495.72, you can know their personal secrets. Yeah, whatever.
Some of them have written actually published books. I usually peruse them at my local Barnes and Noble for free, and if I find them interesting, I check them out of my local library, which is also free. You can learn a lot for less than $495.72.

One of the interesting things I learned about was a service called Payloadz. On Payloadz, you can upload your information product, be it how to compost with worms or how to make that aforementioned bazillion bucks, and make it instantly available to the entire world, day or night. You simply build a web page for your product, provide a link for them to pay through Paypal via Payloadz, and that's it. Payloadz handles the payment and download stuff. All you do is transfer the money from Paypal to your bank account and go merrily on your way.

It sounds too good to be true, and to some degree, it is. First you have to produce an information product, presumably on something about which you know a little bit. Secondly, you have to key into an audience that is actually interested in the information you've produced, be it worm composting or Internet marketing, which, when you think about it, are pretty much the same thing.

I wrote a study on Homophones for teachers and homeschoolers, which sells occasionally, although I think the actual number of people with a keen interest in English Homophones is likely pretty small.

If you have no real body of knowledge, and no inclination to produce an information product, it's not a problem. Lots of products on Payloadz have an affiliate option, so all you need to provide is enthusiasm and a web page with the appropriate links. Then just sit back and rake in the money. Or not.

There is still the issue of finding the significant number of people out there who are desperate for information on homophones or worm composting or Internet marketing, which is discussion for a different day.

Cafepress - Which Shop is Right for You?

I have 4 different shops on Cafepress. One shop is totally customized, two shops make use of the Cafepress templates, and one is a free, basic shop. Let's take a look.

My Basic Shop is Horriblescopes. It features a "My Life Sucks" design that goes along with the website it promotes, Horriblescopes.net. Horriblescopes is a free horoscope website I write that is of a decidedly spoof nature. The Basic Shop allows me to use any number of designs, but I can list each product only once. For example, if I list a Women's Plus Size Scoop Neck T-shirt with the "My Life Sucks" design on it, then I can't list another Women's Plus Size scoop Neck T-shirt in my Basic Shop. I can put a logo header at the top of the shop, but I can't use any kind of fun template to spruce up the shop any further. You can have as many free shops as you want. So, if you have 50 designs, you can have 50 different shops. It's a pain in the rear to keep up, though, and because your content won't be changing, it's not going to be the darling of any major search engine.

I have 2 Cafepress Premium Shops that use the Cafepress templates. The first shop is Biblical T Shirts. It features a series of t-shirts with scriptural quotes, many in multiple languages. For example, the scripture John 3:16 has designs in 16 different languages. Strangely, I have never sold an English version of this design, although I have sold it in other languages. Go figure. This shop uses a custom logo the same as the Horriblescopes shop, but because you can do so much more with the templates and customization, it looks much spiffier.

The second Premium Cafepress Shop I have is my ottoblotto shop. This was my first shop, and its focus has evolved over the years. It is about due for a facelift; I'll let you know when that happens. Anyway, it does not use a custom logo, and goes pretty straightforwardly off the template. You can see that it is possible to make a good shop using the template even if you have no HTML skills. But I think a more custom shop looks better.

My 4th Cafepress shop is the Happy Nest Site Shop. It is a shop that uses all custom stuff: custom background, colors, logo, etc. It is made to go along with another new site I am working on, The Happy Nest Site, which features bird articles, reviews, etc. It is just getting started, so there is a lot of building to do with it. Everything you read about making POD work for you says that having sites away from the POD site that offer other information and such will help drive sales your way. I guess I'll see.

So I hope this helps you if you are looking into POD sites as a way of making a few extra bucks. My advice still is that you not quit your day job just yet.

Cafepress vs Printfection vs Zazzle

Print On Demand Companies. Is this a great idea or not?

I have had a Cafepress shop for a few years. In those few years, I have managed to sell enough to actually cover my shop fees a few times, and once, last Christmas, I actually earned enough to receive a $28 check. So as a way to make a living, it hasn't exactly happened.

The Cafepress site says that they have shop owners who make 6 figure incomes from this stuff. I have tried to figure it out. I believe it is a numbers game. If you have 2 million products out there, you're bound to sell something, right? Another aspect of making Cafepress, or any of these sites work, is to write A LOT of keyword rich copy so the pages get indexed by the major search engines. This is the most boring part of it. Having to come up with all this copy can really stress one's imagination. Quite frankly, I hope no one reads all this stuff.

If you compare the three sites on Google Trends you will see that Cafepress is getting the most traffic, followed by Zazzle, and then Printfection. However, Printfection and Zazzle are showing increases in search volume while Cafepress is decreasing somewhat.

It seems to me that Cafepress has so many designs on it that it is hard to get seen just in their Marketplace. It's pretty much the same on Printfection and Zazzle. I somehow doubt many people search beyond the first 5 or 6 pages of designs, so your only options are to write obnoxiously keyword saturated copy for your designs so they will appear in natural search, or heavily promote your shops via blogs and outside websites.

I have had my shops on Printfection for a couple of weeks now, and opened a shop on Zazzle a couple of days ago. From examining my stats, I can conclude one of two things; either:

A. No one is going to these sites
or
B. My designs suck.

Of course, hardly anyone has visited my Cafepress sites either, despite the use of Google Adwords [a topic for another day]. So it might be option B.

I have 2 shops that have Biblical designs; Biblical T Shirts on Cafepress and Biblical T Shirts on Printfection. Half of my sales on Cafepress in the last 3 months came from the Biblical T Shirts shop there, and the other half came from the ottoblotto shop. The Printfection shops have had no sales.

My ottoblotto shop has a number of the items I have shown here on my blog, including numerous Library drawings.

I also have 2 shops that feature bird designs, Happy Nest Site on Cafepress and Birds of Paradise on Printfection. I have made only one sale on Cafepress from the site there, and nothing from Printfection. I am working on the creative copy stuff.

The good thing about Printfection and Zazzle is that their shops don't cost anything to have. You can upload a bazillion things there, and if nothing sells, you aren't out anything but your time. It only costs like $6 per month per premium shop on Cafepress, but you can only have 500 sections per shop. Of course, it will take you awhile to fill that up. Apparently, there are no limits with Printfection and Zazzle.

All these companies offer similar items for you to customize to your heart's content, and each offers a few unique items as well. Cafepress offers Print on Demand books, Printfection has glass cutting boards, and on Zazzle you can get skateboards and tennis shoes. All of which is time consuming. So maybe it will work out eventually, but I'm not holding my breath.

I have made an order from Cafepress. I can't say I was wowed by it. The printing was good, but the colors were not as vivid as they were on my monitor, specifically the aqua. I thought the printing on black was pretty good, though. I haven't tried Printfection or Zazzle yet. When I sell something and have some cash built up, I'll probably give them a try, too.

Maybe I'll be there next year...

See Cafepress vs Printfection vs Zazzle Part 2

Soul of the House - Clutter

I did some miniature art quilts some time back. This one was called "Soul of the House." It seems peaceful. Uncluttered. A fantasy. I think about houses having history, much like the history that I find appealing in my drawings on discarded library books. It is, on some level, the remaining remnants of the romantic in me that find some strange sense of connectedness through all this. My current house, while being a very nice house, is somehow not a home. I like it. It's very servicable, but it tends to attract clutter from out of nowhere. [At this point, my mother is pointing out to me in her mind that EVERY home I have attracts clutter.] This house, however, is somehow worse, being the lack of closet space or just the accumulation of stuff over time. Or perhaps the junk mail is breeding while we sleep. That's certainly possible. I am trying to get this house ready to put on the market, so I do, in a sense, create clutter even as I try to remove it. The endless sorting through one's stuff leads to such melancholy thoughts, I suppose. I'm sure it is folly to put a house on the market just now when NOTHING is moving in the Phoenix market, but the longing for green landscapes and a general inability to grasp the culture here has made us all ready to run back to the east coast without ever looking back. And run we will. Someday.

A Man May Know

What I find most difficult with my life currently is that there are just 24 hours to a day, and I usually have enough work on hand to fill about 36. I get a lot done, but I still fall short of the goals I have set.

*

I did a few pieces recently, which I sold directly to the Canadians, and therefore didn't auction. This is one called "A Man May Know." Sounds important, doesn't it? [I love art that sounds important, don't you?] I actually glued a bunch of stuff over the rest of the quote without bothering to analyze exactly what it is that a man may know.

*

Yes, apathy is a dreadful thing.

*

I am not usually all that apathetic. I think some of it has to do with the forthcoming of menopause. Or is it mentalpause? I get confused. All I know is that it is hard to get really excited about anything when the temperature outside is hovering at about 108, and you are having a hot flash, which is a pretty fair assessment of my life just now. I should have packaged myself with my artwork and mailed myself to Canada.

*

And as for men knowing, I imagine that it is just as well that the rest of the quote is covered. We all need a little mystery in our lives.

Illustration Friday: Hoards

I did a lot of these library book drawings; more than a hundred of them. They all sold, but I eventually burned out on doing them, and with the economy tanking, I took a second job and laid "art," such as it is, aside in favor of keeping on top of the bills. I have not done any art for a few months. Besides, who could afford to buy this stuff anyway?

But I got this call Wednesday evening from a man who had bought many pieces from me over the last year. He had opened a shop somewhere up in Canada where a lot of cruise ships come in, and he had some of those pieces in the shop.

His shop sells just recycled art stuff; nothing new. He was so excited to tell me how a man had come in and fallen in love with this piece and bought it for his mother who was a librarian at the Detroit Public Library for twenty-some years.

It reminded me that sometimes you do something that makes someone happy. How great is that? There have never actually been "hoards" of buyers for my work. It is just drawings of dead people on trash. But making someone happy is renewing.

He wants some more work, so I guess I'd better get on the go and do some stuff.

Ilustration Friday: Wide

I've been a little busy. I have been tutoring students after school in an underperforming school in the Phoenix area. It is occasionally rewarding, despite the volumes of paperwork required by No Child Left Behind. It's nice to get a little money back from the government, especially since my own kids have never made use of the public school system. I could make a long and wide blog post on this subject, but I won't bore you with that.

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I've also had some other projects going. You can take a look at Horriblescopes.net. It's horoscopes with a twist, and like the economy, the news is all bad.

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The drawing is titled Go Long, and is lithocoal and watercolor.

Pinewood Derby

Tomorrow is my son's Pinewood Derby race for Cub Scouts. It is a long, tedious affair that is well suited to the male mindset. Consisting of mostly guys hanging around, racing these little wooden cars down an inclined track with the help of only gravity, it is only mildly more exciting than watching paint dry.

*

Towards the end of this day-long ordeal are the open class races in which anyone can race. My husband and daughter always enter these races while I sit quietly in a corner knitting or otherwise nodding off. The weigh-in for this event is tonight, which includes meticulously weighing and measuring each car and putting them in a vault somewhere so you can't alter them in the hours before the race. Whatever. This is way too serious for me.

*

My husband, who works about 400 miles away all week, didn't get his car done, so it was just a big block of wood and four tires. He asked if I could help him out, so I transformed it into a sleek and stylish racer. OK, maybe not sleek. I emerged from the shop and called my children to come and look at my creation. They eyed it with great consternation. Right now they are calling the local mental health line for advice.

*

They have suggested to me that I may be a little depressed. This is possible. In the meantime, I will look forward to tomorrow's Pinewood Derby with the anticipation I usually reserve only for things like root canals and visits from my inlaws. Please wake me when they announce the winner.

Illustration Friday: Multiple

I have been playing around with Photoshop this week. It's been fun for me, since it requires only the computer and no paints, pencils, or other supplies.

I took a job tutoring part time in a public school in Phoenix. It is an interesting job. All my kids are really sweet, and very motivated. My kindergarten class yesterday chose to continue doing math rather than have a story read to them. So either I am a fantastic math teacher or a lousy storyteller, take your pick.

The unfortunate subjects of my recent diversion into Photoshop have had the great embarassment of having their mugshots displayed on the web for all to see. It is a common practice here in Arizona to do that with drunk drivers. I don't know if that deters them any, although being the subject of my art might. Anyway, if you are interested in multiple prints of one of these for your guest bathroom, let me know. I may put them on cafepress if I think anyone cares.

Yeah, who am I kidding...

Illustration Friday: Blanket

The Super Bowl is happening right now. I am one of only 3 people in the United States not watching it. The other two are in comas. The Super Bowl is taking place only a few miles from my house. I took that as a good sign to not leave my house today. I can only imagine what traffic must be like around the stadium, and afterwards, the sheer volume of drunks on the road would seem to make all forms of travel unadvisable.

I played around with an old drawing and some pages from a Heloise book and my photocopier. It stands in my living room.

Why? Where do you keep yours?

I haven't done any work for Illustration Friday recently, as I have been sewing. My children think I need to update my look. I know they are right. I have become aware that I look OK in purple, which is a sure sign I am getting old. I think I will buy a red hat.

Buy it now on eBay http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&rd=1&item=370019927543&ssPageName=STRK:MESE:IT&ih=024

Illustration Friday: Stitch

I was working on an idea I saw in a recent issue of Altered Couture. They used old t-shirts to make new ones. Kind of like a serial murderer crossed with a 70 year old seamstress. I decided to stitch up one of my own from the abundance of free movie t-shirts collecting dust in the house. It is my favorite passage from Proverbs. I think I'll wear it to church. It suits me.

See some of my other stitched amusements @ http://www.etsy.com/shop.php?user_id=30971