New Shirt Shop on Zazzle

I've been on the fence about Zazzle.com for some time. I know it can't hurt to put some of my designs up on Zazzle and maybe get some sales, but does the Zazzle traffic justify the effort. Well, I was checking some POD traffic numbers today and decided that Zazzle really has proven that it is here for the long run and the visitor numbers are getting quite strong. Certainly as good as Cafepress's numbers a few years ago when I first started with them.
So I've decided to build out a Zazzle store...and stock it with some of my Cafepress designs. At least my successful design. Hell, the hard work is already done. All that's necessary is learning the Zazzle interface. And learning is a good thing, right.
Please visit my new Zazzle shop. I call it Cool Tee Shirts and it's the greatest t-shirt shop in the world, hyperbolically speaking.

New Metropolitan Design for Cafepress

Uploaded a new Nash Metropolitan T-Shirt design to RetroRanger. Like all my Cafepress items it is available on baby onesies, and I blogged about these on my new LittleMetro blog of Metropolitan stuff. Met owners tend to be older and I know that there are a lot of little grandkids out there that would be adorable in a Met onesie!

Cafepress Dropping New York State Affiliates

An excerpt from an email I received from Cafepress today:

As you may know, the State of New York recently enacted new legislation that addresses tax registration, collection and remittance, which challenges the CafePress affiliate business model.
Due to mounting uncertainly over these new laws we will no longer be able to support affiliates residing in the State of New York, effective July 1, 2008.

If you're not aware of what is going on in New York, the state enacted new tax law June 1st that requires companies to collect tax on affiliate business in the state.

I'm not a tax policy expert, but I know enough to see stupidity in action. If companies are forced to pay additional taxes to do business in New York, then they will discontinue doing business in New York. Doh!

Here's an excellent podcast by Affiliate Marketing Insider on the New York Affiliate Tax Law and how it aaffects affiliate marketers...Linda Woods moderates this discussion with Brian Littleton of ShareASale, Linda Buquet of 5 Star Affiliate Forum, and Cicely Lancit of Affiliopolis.

Favorite Bible Verses Tail is Long, Big and Fat

I came across this Bible Shirts Cafepress store the other day and immediately thought is was a great idea...every verse in the Bible on a t-shirt or mug or fridge magnet or whatever. So anybody can take one of their favorite Bible verses and can share it with the world.

I don't have a favorite verse. There are some sections of the Bible that I hold very dear but I don't have an actual "favorite verse." How many people do have a favorite bible verse? I was thinking 10 or 15 percent of the population seemed about right, but I needed to do further research. I posted a simple poll question to ask500people.com..."Do you have a favorite Bible verse?" Over 400 people responded and it came out that 28 percent had a favorite Bible verse. That's a huge number! That's close to 100-million Americans. I'm thinking the possible market for favorite Bible verses on swag is pretty lucrative.

In the old days, back in the last millennium, a marketer would only concern himself with the heavy hitters, the big-time verses...like "For
God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that
whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life," or "And Jesus said unto them, Come ye after me, and I will make you to become fishers of men". Do up a half dozen different designs of the mass-appeal favs and call it good. You wouldn't spend resources printing up a run of t-shirts emblazoned with "And Aram begat Aminadab; and Aminadab begat Naasson; and Naasson begat Salmon." Stick with the chestnuts and don't mess with the rest. That's the old way.

The thing about Cafepress, is that it doesn't cost a store operator any additional money to do an additional design for a product which may or may not sell. You don't have to commit to any initial press runs or even to any set-up fees. All your out is the labor of designing the product, which frankly isn't that tough, especially if you're just working with text. So now you could stock an "Aram begat Aminadab" t-shirt. You know who would think that is very cool? Aminadab! He would love it. Nobody makes stuff for Aminadab.

The Bible Shirts store has a lot of work to do...so far it looks like they've only swagatized the first four books of each testament. Its gonna be a big job. How many Bible verses are there? Unverified figures I lazily found on the web are that there are 31,103 numbered verses in the Old and New Testaments. So that's 31 thousand different verse layouts to be done, actually you can multiply that by 7 or 8 as different products need different layouts. I'm sure there is an appropriate verse to the situation...something about the virtue of slow and steady progress in attaining a goal. I didn't pay attention that day in Sunday School.

By the way, if the folks at Bible Verses don't get on the stick and get additional favorite Bible verses online, then I would suggest a church teen group take this on as a project. Start your own Cafepress store and get to work. Seriously, it would be a fantastic learning project for the kids and would at least fund the pizza.

Morris Garages, est. 1924, Oxford, England

Am starting to get some good sales on my Morris Garages items at my Cafepress store, RetroRanger.
A couple of interesting lessons here. First off, a design doesn't have to be complicated or overly artsy to be commercial. That's good because my artistic abilities are limited, at best. Secondly, the tighter the niche, the more likely the sales. There are millions of designs on Cafepress, but if you do a Cafepress search for "Morris Garages" my items are the only things to come up. The fans of early early MG cars may be few, but there are certainly enough to justify spending an hour designing a shirt.

Gnu Makins, or The Latest Fixins

Brand new blog where I can record and document the my latest creations...t-shirts, watches, clock faces, coffee mugs, whatever. These are designs from my Cafepress stores and also the work I'm doing with Artsnow and other suppliers yet to be discovered. I'll still keep TShirtWorks going and list new t-shirt designs there. And I suppose I'll blog them here too...the more the merrier.