CafePress.com offers cheap way to promote business

June 13, 2010 at 12:00a.m.

Offering products that display your company’s logo is a proven method of promotion. T-shirts that proudly exhibit your logo on the front and back can make an impression. Or how about a coffee mug that has your website’s address printed on it to garner some attention? Then there are bumper stickers, mouse pads, caps, spiral notepads, sweat shirts, coasters — the list goes on and on.

But typically it took more than one place to handle all of it. Finding a single place that had the products, did the custom printing, took customer orders, did the shipping and kept track of it all for you was a daunting task to say the least. But there’s a website that does all of that and even more amazingly, does a lot of it for free.

CafePress.com is a website that has been designed for anyone who already has a website and who wants to sell logoed merchandise. Using Cafe Press is surprisingly easy. I set up a complete web store for my radio show, “Computer America,” in under an hour. To begin, you first have to set up an online store. Cafe Press lets you choose either a free Basic Shop or a Premium Shop that costs around $6.99 a month or lower if you choose an extended plan.

But for now, let’s just choose the free shop, although you can upgrade it to a premium status at any time. After selecting a unique Shop ID name and some basic information such as the title of the store’s web page and your website’s address to which they will be returned after shopping, you are set to begin adding products.

The Sections and Products page lets you select the kind of merchandise you wish to sell at your online store. Cafe Press offers a nice selection of products including the ones I mentioned. There are also plush toys, bibs, aprons, calendars, a tote bag, audio CDs and yes, even a thong onto which you can proudly display your company’s logo.

After selecting a product by clicking on it, you are then taken to the design page. Next to a larger photo of the product is an image selection portion onto which you can place your logo or any photographic image or graphic. All of these images are held in your own personal virtual image basket. Initially the basket will be empty.

To upload your images, the page allows you to browse your computer’s hard drive to where your image files are stored. Once selected, Cafe Press will upload your selected images into its own system and the images will appear on the Image Basket page. You can add as many images as you like into your image basket. To help you keep things organized, you can create multiple folders into which you can store multiple images. Once uploaded, you can access the images at any time.

After you select your logo, Cafe Press will automatically place the image directly on to the product’s surface. It’s very cool seeing how the merchandise will actually appear sporting your graphics. Depending on the file type and resolution, some products will let you choose different image sizes and locations you can print on.

Cafe Press tells you what each item sold will cost you and even offers suggestions as to how much you should charge your customers for the items. And here’s the really nice part: You are only charged when an item is sold. So you don’t have to worry about inventory costs.

After selecting and creating all of the items you want to be available in your online store, Cafe Press will display your merchandise on your very own web page store. The URL which is the online address to your new store is cafeshops.com followed by a forward slash and then the shop’s name you created so making a direct link to it on your website is a snap. When a customer places an order, Cafe Press takes all of their information including credit-card numbers and shipping address information. Then they process the orders and ship it out. All you do is sit back and collect the cash from Cafe Press. They can even print out online retail sales reports if you like. To see the store I created for “Computer America” in just under an hour, go to: cafeshops.com/ccashop.

For the more adventurous, you can use the Premium service and customize your online store even further. Cafe Press offers a variety of templates from which you can choose, adjust fonts and even lets you add your own HTML coding for advanced personalization.

If you’re looking for a novel and easy way to make customized promotional merchandise available to your customers, you’ll do well to check out Cafe Press.

For more information, visit www.cafepress.com.

Craig Crossman is a national newspaper columnist writing about computers and technology. For more information, visit his website at www.computeramerica.com.

2010 McClatchy Tribune