Sorry for more or less dropping off the face of the earth, but I've been busy with moving Purple Ducky Designs to Zazzle and have been rather depressed in regards to Cafepress.
What happened with Cafepress is they have decided to change how they do the marketplace where shop keepers display their wares. Long story short, those of us who have paid premium shops will get seriously screwed by CP come June 1. CP, in their infinite wisdom has decided that they will determine prices of anything in the marketplace and the people who designed the images will get a whole %10 cut of the purchase price, regardless of what they have their stuff priced in their shops. In other words, products in the marketplace will have a price determined by CP and products in the shops will have prices determined by the designer/shopkeeper, effectively making shop keepers compete with themselves if they with to opt into the market place.
CP is thus far refusing to talk to the shopkeepers outside of periodic announcements which don't explain a damned thing or answer any of the questions posed on the shopkeeper's forums. I decided to join CP because they were the biggest POD site and the other shopkeepers on there were wonderful to talk to and get advice from. When I first joined CP also listened to the shopkeepers and there was lost of communication going on. But now more it seems. CP only cares about money, not the creative people who made the designs that brought people to CP to shop.
There is a good write up on CNN's IReport done by a Zazzler who looked into it: The Cafe Press Blunder
Cafepresses bullshit = Zazzle's gain.
So in the meantime I am moving things over and will be shutting down my account with Cafepress all together at the end of the month. I've paid for a year, so will inform them I will be expecting the bulk of my payment returned and any money I have made in the meantime sent (tho since the new marketplace search algorithm went into place a couple weeks ago, traffic to my shop from there has tanked). I'll be creating a gallery portal under the purple-ducky.com domain to get more web exposure. Zazzle has software that will help me build the outside shop and they are going to be giving us HTML on our galleries in a few weeks to let us custom design the galleries better.
So needless to say, I haven't gotten much else done. Icky weather on the weekends isn't helping any. I still haven't gotten anything in the ground (okay, I did get a flowering plant transplanted from a pot into my front flower strip on Saturday), but nothing in the food garden yet. Hopefully this weekend I can get some seeds in the ground. My poor tomato seedlings aren't doing to well, it is looking like I will have to pick up some seedlings from a nursery if I am going to have any tomatoes at all.
If the weather picks up in the next couple of weeks, we are going to start painting the trailer. We'll start in the back so if it doesn't work (will be using a paint sprayer), we won't have a horrendous looking paint job where it can be seen from the street (tho I will apologize in advance to the neighbors on the other side of the fence LOL).
SO in the meantime, I will be puttering with my new shop, house and garden and hopefully get things organized so I have time to do other stuff. Haven't taken any pictures in a while and my designs for the shop are in serious need to being done so I can upload them to the new galleries.
What happened with Cafepress is they have decided to change how they do the marketplace where shop keepers display their wares. Long story short, those of us who have paid premium shops will get seriously screwed by CP come June 1. CP, in their infinite wisdom has decided that they will determine prices of anything in the marketplace and the people who designed the images will get a whole %10 cut of the purchase price, regardless of what they have their stuff priced in their shops. In other words, products in the marketplace will have a price determined by CP and products in the shops will have prices determined by the designer/shopkeeper, effectively making shop keepers compete with themselves if they with to opt into the market place.
CP is thus far refusing to talk to the shopkeepers outside of periodic announcements which don't explain a damned thing or answer any of the questions posed on the shopkeeper's forums. I decided to join CP because they were the biggest POD site and the other shopkeepers on there were wonderful to talk to and get advice from. When I first joined CP also listened to the shopkeepers and there was lost of communication going on. But now more it seems. CP only cares about money, not the creative people who made the designs that brought people to CP to shop.
There is a good write up on CNN's IReport done by a Zazzler who looked into it: The Cafe Press Blunder
Cafepresses bullshit = Zazzle's gain.
So in the meantime I am moving things over and will be shutting down my account with Cafepress all together at the end of the month. I've paid for a year, so will inform them I will be expecting the bulk of my payment returned and any money I have made in the meantime sent (tho since the new marketplace search algorithm went into place a couple weeks ago, traffic to my shop from there has tanked). I'll be creating a gallery portal under the purple-ducky.com domain to get more web exposure. Zazzle has software that will help me build the outside shop and they are going to be giving us HTML on our galleries in a few weeks to let us custom design the galleries better.
So needless to say, I haven't gotten much else done. Icky weather on the weekends isn't helping any. I still haven't gotten anything in the ground (okay, I did get a flowering plant transplanted from a pot into my front flower strip on Saturday), but nothing in the food garden yet. Hopefully this weekend I can get some seeds in the ground. My poor tomato seedlings aren't doing to well, it is looking like I will have to pick up some seedlings from a nursery if I am going to have any tomatoes at all.
If the weather picks up in the next couple of weeks, we are going to start painting the trailer. We'll start in the back so if it doesn't work (will be using a paint sprayer), we won't have a horrendous looking paint job where it can be seen from the street (tho I will apologize in advance to the neighbors on the other side of the fence LOL).
SO in the meantime, I will be puttering with my new shop, house and garden and hopefully get things organized so I have time to do other stuff. Haven't taken any pictures in a while and my designs for the shop are in serious need to being done so I can upload them to the new galleries.
Comments