In any event, I said a couple of years ago, before there was any viable competition, that this is exactly what Cafepress needed to get off their butts and start making changes, although these latest changes aren’t exactly what I had in mind.

The only thing I really love about Zazzle right now is their very sweet signup bonus. I’m in the process of having my fourth gallery setup there now but so far sales of my first two galleries, which have been there for a few months, have been very soft, although I suppose it’ll be just enough to help offset the money I’ll be losing at Cafepress with their bonus changes. My only wish would’ve been that they’d put off those changes until January 1 so it wouldn’t hurt our holiday sales so much, but what can you do? Greedy people can only be reasoned with so much. =)

I’ve been telling them the exact same thing for going on the past seven months now ever since we have been sort of working together on getting my galleries expanded over there. I keep sending people there to get their opinion of the layout and the biggest complaint I get is first that they cannot find the design they want and second that the way of picking the exact t-shirt they want is too complicated and there are too many choices and they don’t like it.

I don’t know how much faith I have in Zazzle though to over take CP any time soon and make these important changes. They seem very happy with all their exclusivity agreements with big name brands.

Having been with Cafepress for about 5 years, it’s an unforunate thing to have to say that the reduction of the volume bonus and the 8 day notice we received is par for the course. If Cafepress had done this in a way that showed respect or consideration towards their SK’s, I would’ve been shocked and wondered if the company had been taken over. This is just another in a loooong series of slaps in the face from Cafepress and I’m just so grateful that there are other POD’s now that are developing their interface and SK service to a level that I hope will soon outshine Cafepress.

In the past, when I’ve criticized Cafepress in the message boards for their inconsiderate actions, sloppy programming, and generally amateurish behaviour, I’d be immediately slammed by the Cafepress Defense League (AKA the moderators) and told how wrong I was to critize them, how they’re such nice people, yada yada yada. On at least one occasion I was told, and I’m quoting here, that if I “didn’t like it here I could go to another print on demand service” (oh how prophetic).

Thanks to the competition, Cafepress now seems to be in “reaction” mode by finally, after years of begging, providing us with some new (albeit, often half-baked) tools and other changes. They were sitting on their hands for years and with each update to fix bugs introduced 6 months earlier during a previous update, they’d introduce a whole new bag of bugs that’d take them another 6 months to a year to fix. Unfortunately the sloppy programming and lack of thorough testing still exists but they seem to be squashing the bugs faster now.

All in all though, I have a love/hate relationship with Cafepress. I’m self-employed now because of them, and I’m forever grateful for their existence because the’ve allowed me to fulfill a desire to start a t-shirt business that I simply couldn’t do on my own because of the time and expense, but dealing with their internal decision-making that’s shown time and time again that the SK’s are more of an afterthought, has been truly maddening. The reduction of the bonus for marketplace sales is yet another nail in the coffin for any loyalty I may have had for this company because so much of my SEO is indexed through the marketplace and that’s what usually shows up ahead of my shops, but I’m working now on more offsite development that I hope will change some of that. But I agree, they throw us bones, and usually only after enough people raise enough hell. It’s a terrible way to do business and I think if Zazzle can make some important changes, like making their galleries more customizable and design-centric, then Cafepress may someday find themselves scratching their heads and wondering why they’re in 2nd place.