National Handicapped Month

This crude design is sure to stir up some opinions in your direction. You're sure to find people who share your sense of humor with a shirt like this.



SOURCE: The Rift

Made In China With Lead Paint

Toy recalls abound - child safety is at stake! The Tornado Republic wants you to be sure of your exposure to lead paint. So, here's your shirt.



SOURCE: Tornado Republic

Cafepress: Revamped Look

At Cafepress, we're all about "Self Expression, Rewarded." (our mantra). Yet as you can see from teh note above, even our Co-Founder and CEO Fred Durham wasn't feeling it. So we put the wheels in motion for a rebranding.

Quick note from the team on our make-over:

It all started with a new logo. With a stamped-on feel, it's a tip-of-the-cap to our community's hand-crafted creativity. It says "do it yourself," which is what we're all about. It's also slightly distressed, which again speaks to the fact that none of us -- including folks in our community and the CafePress team -- are perfectly polished.

We've also added some fresh new colors to the palette, which we'll also be sprinkling in. Why? Because if there's one word that reflects our community, it's "colorful." You'll also notice that in some places we're keeping the palette very neutral. This lets your designs be the real heroes on pages, since enabling our Shopkeeper community is paramount.

Naturally, this is just the first leg on our new road to self-expression. It's our way of growing up, while staying fun.

Enjoy,
CafePress Team

MY THOUGHTS:

Some good, some bad, some what the hell were you smoking? There are some things about the overhaul I like (like how the Marketplace looks), some things I don't like (the text size increased throughout the site), and even some things that had me thinking, what the hell were you smoking? (The new CP logo is ugly and very unprofessional. It looks bad on CPs site and even worse when shrunken and blacked out on Premium shops). Alot of CP Shopkeepers are not pleased with the changes. Even some that are ready to pack up and head to the competition. I will ride it out for a while and see if I can adapt to the changes. I loved CP for its ease of use. If it stays easy through this change, I'll still be using it. If not, I'll be with others in exploring the other POD options out there.

SOURCE: Cafepress

Zombie Wants Brains

Halloween is right around the corner. To celebrate this most ghoulish of holidays, here's a Monster Design shirt. This design that depicts hungry zombies eating brains is from a fellow CPer, Brev87. He has more Monster type designs to go along with this Zombies Want Brains design. Happy Halloween Everyone. Hope its a great scare and the lil one's load up on neighborhood candy!

SOURCE: Brev87

Cafepress Partners With Pure Digital Technologies

From Cafepress:

CafePress is thrilled to announce a branded partnership with Pure Digital Technologies — makers of the wildly-popular Flip Mino Camcorders. By teaming up together, video lovers can now take their movie-making creativity one step further by customizing their Flip Mino camcorders. How fun is that?

Thoughts:

Only time will tell how this plays out. There's plenty of Pro's and Con's to this. A few pro's are: Perfect time for release (Holiday Shopping Season is nearly upon us) And Marketing is at teen's (which love customization). And A few con's are: The economy isn't doing so well, the regular white/black version can be found for much cheaper, And as with any electronic device, it'll be outdated before long. From a shopkeeper perspective, I love the out of left field that Cafepress went with. They are very fun to design for, but I myself have limited myself to just 21 designs due to not expecting to sell alot if any at all. I do hope the Partnership lasts and us shopkeepers get the opportunity to Create Designs for other Pure Digital Technology products in the future.

SOURCE: Cafepress

9-11 Never Forget

Remember the somber horror of 9-11-01 with this "I will Never Forget" design depicting the burning Twin Towers with American flag, bald eagle, and Statue of Liberty interspersed.



SOURCE: Right Leaning

I Rock With Barack

An original Punk Rocker design Pro-Obama shirt brought to you by Gobama. Become a unique part of the Barack Obama movement with this punk rock inspired design. Be a one of kind Barack Obama supporter!






SOURCE: GOBAMA

Google Insights: A look at POD Brand Awareness

[This is based on brand awareness. Each graph shows how many people in the country of U.S.A. are aware of CafePress, Zazzle, Spreadshirt or Printfection.]

Google just released a new product called Insights, a tool designed to helped advertisers gain a clearer picture of search behavior, aided by some very cool heat maps .

I decided to have a little fun by typing in the four main PODs, to visually see which had the greatest brand awareness in the U.S. Talk on WebmasterWorld suggests to take the information with a grain of salt (or two) - so I’m not sure how accurate it is, apparently it’s not yet tallying up with the Google Adwords Keyword Tool. But take from it what you will, it’s just a bit of fun And the results are what I’d expect anyway.

CafePress:
(I like how it clearly shows that CafePress need to do some work in Wyoming and North / South Dakota)

Zazzle:

Spreadshirt:

Printfection:

Go and have a play yourself - Google Insights >>>

SOURCE: TShirtChat

CafePress Changes Volume Bonus Program

Straight from CafePress:

A successful CafePress Marketplace is essential for us all, and as time goes on we’d like to continue its growth. Over the past few years we’ve invested lots of time and money into increasing Marketplace sales, and it’s been worth the effort; what was once just an “idea” is now an incredibly significant part of business for Shopkeepers and CafePress.

As a result of that success, we’ve now reached a point where the combination of Volume Bonus and advertising costs are exceeding Marketplace profits.

Rather than halting promotional and advertising efforts that drive Marketplace sales – which would result in significantly fewer sales for both Shopkeepers and CafePress – we’ve determined that we need to restructure the Volume Bonus program.

This will play both a positive roll for some CafePress shopkeepers and a negative for others. The Volume Bonus is being restructured to where Marketplace sales a no longer accounted towards the Volume Bonus. So if a shopkeeper gets most of his/her sales from the Marketplace they will no longer see that nice Volume Bonus they are used to. On the other hand, for shopkeepers that get consumers to buy straight from their shops, they will see a nice increase in the bonus. CafePress has upped the percentage on the Bonus with this change. A positive for all with this change though, is that Affiliate sales will no longer be taken from the shopkeepers markup.

For more information, CLICK HERE.

SOURCE: CafePress

8-Bit

Starting off kicking it old school. This great homage to the 8-bit gaming era is brought to you by Krushervision. Features a graffiti-esqe type design with the buttons from the old NES Controller and the saying "8-bit". Show your love for the days of the 8-bit renaissance... Mountain Dew-fueled all-night Zelda sessions, making Metroid maps, and the Contra Code.


SOURCE: Krushervision