T-shirt PODs - 10 Points about Bountee

Posted on April 13th, 2007 by thetshirtnexus.
Categories: Print on Demand.


It seems like there’s another new Custom / Print on Demand t-shirt service opening up every other month now. Newcomer, Bountee joins the list of shops looking to profit off of DTG (Direct to Garment) Printing.

It’s a little tricky to get to their details without making an account or watching their movie but for those who want the quick version here’s the nitty gritty I gleaned from various pages on their site, blog and video:

1. You can set your own prices by typing in a percent markup when you design your shirt.
2. Bountee seems to be aiming at having a brick and mortar presence some day… they say that they will strive to give the designer a commission mark up in that situation that is the same for what they have set for online purchases.
3. They only accept SVG files.
4. Payment to designers is currently via PayPal only.
5. You can *not* submit a design you have already submitted elsewhere or is already available elsewhere.* SEE UPDATE NOTE BELOW
6. Their product designer is pretty nice, shirt print area is large and designs can be placed very close to the bottom hem (though not on the shoulders or sleeves).
7. Upload of images is done one at a time and there are no bulk tools at all.
9. You can use their own tool to make text only designs.
10. They are in Beta.

Note on item number 2: this is both good and bad. It’s good because a designer may find another venue that their shirts can be sold in, with possibly no extra work on their part. It’s bad because on other sites you can use your online store as a testing ground for designs and if something “catches” you can make your own deals with brick and mortar stores and make a bigger commission on each shirt than you would by using your POD service of choice. With some negotiation you can easily make more per shirt than you would by having your shirt sold online.

Note on 5: This was written in their with language specifically mentioning voting sites (Treadless is an example of a voting site) and their desire to not “steal” designs away from those sites. However, I believe it also means that you can not submit a design you have up on CafePress. And once you submit a design to Bountee you can not then sell it using any other service, not even your own. I noticed; however, that you had the option to make your shirts “Limited Editions” at Bountee by specifying how many to sell. UPDATE: I re-read the Terms and I now think that you CAN have a design up on CafePress AND this site… however you can NOT have it up on Threadless or other sites which prohibit you having it elsewhere available.


All in all, I think Bountee is a good entry into the POD market but it will have to prove itself as a good starting point for t-shirt entrepreneurs who are looking to build their own brand.

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Calculating Your Hourly Wage

Posted on April 13th, 2007 by thetshirtnexus.
Categories: General Business.

When I first started my shop I remember wondering how much I made per hour doing this crazy thing. For those who might wonder the same thing here’s a fast way to figure it out if you know what you made for a full year.

To find your hourly rate, divide by two and drop the thousand. So $50,000/year becomes approximately $25/hour.

This is based on a general 40-hour workweek and doesn’t include taxes, but it’s a good general back-of-the-napkin trick.

Of course you will have to adjust to reflect your own working hours.
Thanks to Ramit for the calculation!

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eComXpo Last Day

Posted on March 22nd, 2007 by thetshirtnexus.
Categories: Marketing, General Business.

Sorry for not posting earlier. This online conference is here: http://www.ecomxpo.com google around to see if you can get a free pass. They have presentations where you can ask live questions but they also have on demand presentations and show and booth prizes. This is my third or fourth time attending.

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CafePress Class in Los Angeles Area

Posted on March 12th, 2007 by thetshirtnexus.
Categories: CafePress.

Long time CafePress shop owner and graphic designer, Jean Roth is again teaching a course on CafePress at West LA College. She posted this on the CafePress forums:

Hello Fellow CPers

I will again be offering the college extension course I did in October on how to kick-start a CafePress shop. I know whoever reads this is already is on your way already :) but do feel free to pass this info on to friends in the LA area who might be interested. And please excuse the shticky wording — its from the catalog!

Do you have great idea for an original t-shirt or putting your art on a poster? Have you ever thought of starting your own online business? Rotem Gear creative director Jean Roth will once again be teaching a class at West LA College where she will show you how to design and create your own products and sell them online through CafePress–with little or no overhead.

Find out what products you can sell (see sample products to check out the quality!), how much money you can make, the type of investment required, print methods, how to upload images, how to attract shoppers to your webpage and much more. **Students will actually set up shops of their own online during class. **

The 3-hour class is perfect for artists, graphic designers, hobbyists, business owners, non-profit organizations and self-employed people who want to bring in some extra cash or create a full business.

Wednesday, March 21, 6:30-9:30 pm
West L.A. College’s Westside Extension (310) 287-4475
Direct link to course info

How to Register

The course is not by CP, so it’s from the point of view of a veteran shopkeeper, but it does have CP’s blessings :)

BTW if this is helpful for anyone — this is the list of resources I give out on a CD to the students .. feel free to use and share!
CafePress Resources

http://www.rotemgear.com/CPCourseCD.html

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Easy Visual Site Statistics - Crazy Egg

Posted on March 10th, 2007 by thetshirtnexus.
Categories: Marketing, Website Tips.

So I’ve been testing out statistics tracker, Crazy Egg for a few months now.

I’ve been quite happy with them and have been meaning to do a positive write up on them, but with a recent addition to their service they have gotten even better!

In a nut shell (or should I say eggshell?) Crazy Egg gives you statistics you can find through other services, but it does it with a great visual interface which shows you visitor habits in a very intuitive way. There are three main tools, all are shown first over a live picture of your website page.

They have a heat map overlay, a list of what links got clicked the most, and then an overlay with clicks and stats coming off as “flags” from links. The new addition to their service is also on this “flag” — it’s a “More” option which shows referring links. So, for example you can see a “flag” on a link to a t-shirt and then be able to conclude that, “People who clicked on this came to the web page because they typed in “T-shirts” in google.

It’s a brilliant service and the free version allows you 5000 visits a month. The whole thing works like other trackers, you insert some javascript and then visit their website to view the overlays.

I’ve used it to test two versions of my homepage and found it quite easy to see the impact in my changes.

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Online Encrypted File Backup - 2 Gigs Free

Posted on March 5th, 2007 by thetshirtnexus.
Categories: Website Tips, Deals.

Mozy is an online backup site that allows you 2 Gigs for free personal storage and has pricing for unlimited and business storage as well.

A feature I like is that data is encrypted on your computer before it is sent online. You can even use your own encryption key so not even Mozy can see what it is. PC Magazine and the NY Times give the service positive marks.

While the 2 gig deal is for personal use only, I figure I can use this for personal file back up and that will mean more room with my other back up system for business files.

Mozy’s website is: https://mozy.com but if you’d like to throw me a referral (you and I will get an extra 250 Mb in our free accounts) please use this link: https://mozy.com/?ref=43N4QB

Thanks to Tony for the heads up on this company (I used his referral link).

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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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CafeTool Box Now Free - Create a Feed for Google Base

Posted on January 22nd, 2007 by thetshirtnexus.
Categories: Marketing, Google, CafePress.

CafePress Premium Shopowners, you now have another free option for creating a Google Base product feed, CafeTool Box.
Previously the only free option was Adam’s Instant Cafe Feeder.

I’ve not used CafeTool Box yet but the word is that it works great. I have made feeds with Instant Cafe Feeder and was quite pleased with it, especially on how it handled my largest shop.

If you’re not sure about what these tools are for, they are for creating feeds to submit to Google Base, Google’s shopping and user submitted information website. You can get a great response if you have items titled well and on topics that folks often search for. You can read more about Google Base here.

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