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.