CafePress has done many shady things in the past. Their "best selling" search sorting option is a complete crock. I have had designs listed in it that had never sold a single item. The main part of their "marketplace" is full of crappy designs and most are ripoffs of other companies' works. The first results pages are dominated by what has to be the "CafePress Employees" own shops and even they seem to be copying everyone else's designs. There is no way they can have "featured designs" which they claim is generated randomly and still be the same designs and or shops every single page load. Their print quality is absolutely horrible (even if you check the gamut), their products are cheaply made, and made poorly.
Before their "image tags", it was all meta based and their moderators always had their own designs as featured and nothing has changed. When they introduced "Image Tags" they had it where everyone could see what image tags you had used, and used them as "suggestions" for all other shopkeepers. This of course lowered relevancy, and defeated the point of having unique tags or "keywords" to be found for, since everyone had the same ones just because other people used them. Their base prices are outrageously high. They email everyone and try to get them to make stuff for each holiday and or event which makes more competition for the niches. They even give existing ideas and image tags as suggestions which screws over everyone already marketing towards that event.
Their affiliate program was designed where the commissions come out of the shopkeeper's pocket and to where the affiliate makes more than the shopkeeper. Now it's still the same except now Commission Junction gets a cut of the affiliate's commission. What is even more of an annoyance, is that the shopkeepers do not get a volume bonus credit for the affiliate driven sales. As this is the money they use to pay the affiliates. I lowered my markup for an after holiday sale to be just one cent and the affiliates ended up doing the only selling preventing me from making "tier 3" volume sales, that plan backfired. You can not opt out of the affiliate program without being punished and being removed from the marketplace too, making it even more difficult to get sales. Unless you have a site to send you lots of traffic, this is next to impossible.
They require a Social Security number from U.S. residents which there is no reason for this, since the shopkeeper is responsible for paying their own taxes. CafePress is not the shopkeeper's employer and this information really is not relevant to them, otherwise they would deduct taxes and Social Security from the commission paychecks. Another point is for people that sell just a couple things will have their earnings forfeited for not reaching $25 minimum in markup. Some people just do not have the time to keep up with CP and that is no reason those people should have what little they did make taken away. CP is just greedy. I know the point of a business is to make money, I know all about supply and demand, and I realize a customer ultimately decides if the product is worth the asking price. But I also know a bit about business ethics. Given the points mentioned so far, does CafePress seem ethical or even ran by anyone with common sense?
Premium shop fees are not worth the price of $60 a year or more if you pay by the month. They do not allow you to setup a "Referral I.D." to go to their main shop through their logo and link that dominates every press shop in the upper left corner. That "Referral I.D." is used to recruit new people to press, and are more set up in basic shops which are free than they are in premium shops. They tend to have maintenance at the worst possible times and in my experience during my niche season, two days within one week. The newest complaint is their "limit" on premium shop sections which started today. They really do not help nor care about the shopkeepers at all. They have forums where they encourage you to "trade tips" with other shopkeepers, which why the hell would anyone give away trade secrets in a capitalist society? They themselves only give the same regurgitated information over and over about SEO and expect everyone to give them suggestions to improve CafePress which does not help anyone but them. If anyone wanted to start a competing business against CP, I will be more than glad to coach you through it. The only reason I have stuck with them over the years was the startup was low. But it has gotten to the point that it is not worth putting up with their stupidity.
If you do use CP, keep in mind that everyone who buys from your shop is their customer not yours. CP has an over saturated market now and too many shopkeepers. People will copy and steal your ideas. There are a lot of people that suck up to CafePress and tell success stories etc., but you never hear the truths I have mentioned.
This was just a short list of what is wrong with CP, I could rant on about them forever.
Wednesday, April 30, 2008
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3 comments:
Good points.
If you thought Cafepress sucked when you posted this, see what they are doing to people now. Ripping off customers and their own contributors.They have stolen everything from their shopkeepers now. DON'T DO BUSINESS WITH CAFEPRESS, they are the most unethical company after Walmart.
Recently Cafe Press began competing with its artists.
CP rents shops to its artists. The artist creates a website page and manually loads the desired blank products. The artist imports his image onto each product, arranges the products on the page, describes the products, titles the products and tags the images.
Initially, the artist set a markup and received the markup when a product sold.
However, recently Cafe Press began competing with its artists, using the artists' own images. Cafe Press created a marketplace where a customer can search a keyword. That search brings up artist products. When the customer buys from the marketplace Cafe Press pays the artist 10% of the price Cafe Press set. Both the customer and the artist lose money. If the artist's shop sells a t-shirt for $21, the artist makes $3.01. If the marketplace sells the same shirt for $25, the artist gets $2.50. The customer pays $4 more, and the artist gets $0.51 less. CafePress justifies this bait and switch by telling artists they can opt out if they don't like the new terms; however, many have spent as much as 7 or 8 years creating as much as 88000 images.
Cafe Press tells artists to 'promote your own shop,' but Cafe Press buys Google adwords using the very image tags the artist provided.
Would you franchise an AMOCO station if AMOCO built a company store across the street from you?
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