CafePress to Offer Women’s Plus Sizes & Kids Dark Shirts

Posted on February 22nd, 2007 by thetshirtnexus.
Categories: CafePress.

Announced in a community chat today, CafePress says they will soon offer Women’s Plus size shirts. Two different styles. They will be new products so we will have to add them to our shops ourselves.

The new print area allowed will be 12″ x 12″.
Kids dark and new light colors are also coming. Infant / toddler and Kids shirts. Dark shirts will be a new product to add.
Predicted date, for all of this, “March”.

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Google’s New Link Reporting Tools

Posted on February 8th, 2007 by thetshirtnexus.
Categories: Google, Website Tips.

So, thanks to a tip off from reading this article, I delved further into Google website tool land.

First, you need a Google Webmaster account, this is easy enough, if you have a Google account (for instance, you made one for a Gmail account) then you can sign up for this program as well.

To access the new information you will need to verify your website. Fortunately Google allows you to do this one of two ways. The first way is a common method that sites like Sitemeter and other link trackers use, you embed a bit of code into your home page. The second way, which I really appreciate, is that you create an html file and upload it to your website’s server. Google then checks to make sure it is there under the name it gives you. I appreciated this method because it is one less bit of code to clutter up my home page.

Now, on to the new tools.

You may or not be familiar with Google’s already existing shortcut. You simply type “link:www.yoursiteurlhere.com” into the normal Google Search bar and it brings back results for sites linking to that url.

The trick is that it only shows you some of the sites.

With this new tool, you can see much more.

Why is this interesting? Well, it helps to see how well your word of mouth campaign is doing, and it helps uncover places that link to you that you didn’t know about before. In general, it is also just good sense to know as much as you can about who is reaching you and what they are saying about you.

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It is what it is - A reminder today of why I love CafePress

Posted on February 1st, 2007 by thetshirtnexus.
Categories: CafePress.

So yesterday I started getting back to back sales on a particular design of mine that I put up a long time ago in a Basic Shop. The design is “It is what it is“. I thought it was just coincidence and got busy doing other things.

Today I went on a mountain bike ride with two friends of mine, we started at the beach then went up into the mountains and back again. It was a pretty day and a great ride.

I came home and checked my sales. More sales for that same design, but in particular, for the design on the Women’s Long Sleeve Dark shirt.

I had done some preliminary searches earlier to see if I had any links coming in, but no, I didn’t find them, of course it takes a while to show up in Google. Searches for just the phrase brought up a variety of results, it is, after all, pretty common.

Finally though I found an article which I think explains it… Olivia Newton John apparently wore my shirt as a guest judge on American Idol! I only saw a tiny picture of the group of judges but it sure looked like my brown shirt! I couldn’t believe it.

Well, maybe I shouldn’t believe it. I found a post that says Olivia’s shirt was from a different website. I looked and they have a very similar shirt to mine but it’s not exactly the same. Their version costs $52!

Frankly, in the small picture I saw, the shirt does not seem to perfectly match my shirt or their shirt but I think Olivia’s microphone pulled the shirt a little out of shape making it hard to see. But hey, I’m not complaining, I put up a design in a basic shop, it made sales, I let it sit for the most part but I kept it up to date.

Now the phrase gets renewed interest because it’s worn by a celebrity.

I go on a mountain bike ride.

I come back and discover my sales have been higher than usual and it seems like this design is what is causing this unusual spike.

I still haven’t found a direct link to the shop, if there isn’t one then I have an increased respect for the power of the CafePress Marketplace because that would mean that when I only had my basic shop (I have since included the products in one of my premium shops) then shoppers were finding the shirt on their own, most likely just searching for it using the Marketplace search function.

I believe the term for the phenomenon demonstrated here is “passive income”, I call it, “I’m glad I found CafePress!”.

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