They seem to forget where they get all of the designs they sell, form us artist/shopkeepers who design them in the first place.

I too am looking to expand with out CP.

CafePress rents web 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 would set a markup and received the markup for each product sold.

However, recently CafePress began competing with its artists, using the artists’ own images. CafePress created a marketplace where a customer can search a keyword. That search brings up artist products. When the customer buys from the marketplace CafePress pays the artist 10% of the price CafePress 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 tells artists to “promote your own shop,” but CafePress buys Google adwords using the very image tags the artist provided.

CafePress justifies this bait and switch of service terms 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.

In spite of their sweat-equity, many shopkeepers (content providers) are building shops at other print-on-demand companies and then closing their CafePress shops due to the broken faith and trust, the financial hardship CafePress has delivered into so many lives, and the huge amount of time and dedicated effort all lost in the momentum of their own businesses. Would you keep your AMOCO station franchise if AMOCO built a company store across the street from you?

regards,
Joe
adult internet business

LOL I have to agree! BUT dontcha know the addition of the new clocks and travel mug is supposed to make All better- OR is it to keep us busy since they require new templates so we don;t spend our time adding our designs to the other PODS? HEY! Shoes at Zazzle now.. Id rather make shoes than clocks.

I just switched all of my advertising to my shops on another PoD (no not Zazzle either) and will be growing my business in that direction.

UNPROFESSIONAL!

Speaks loud and clear that CP believes they don’t need us any more.

Think you hit it dead on when you say how their ad costs are only getting bigger as they piss of shopkeepers and we give other sites the same designs to sell.