Comments on: Latest Uproar at Cafepress – Changes to the Volume Sales Bonus

By: DC

DC — Sat, 02 Jul 2011 23:55:32 +0000

I been on CP since 2002. Just 3 months ago I worked hard on my shop with many new graphics and got it to top of Google search page.. Now I see it is not their anymore. Only a link to CP Marketplace showing my designs at real high prices. So now my designs are very high priced and I was working to get volume sales. Even searching for the names of my designs the Google links are only to CP marketplace. Why even bother working on a CP shop, and paying the fees?
I’m going to Zazzle also, and others. Then later I will remove my designs from CP and close my shop.

By: Karen

Karen — Sat, 22 Nov 2008 03:38:20 +0000

Our shop is private where we always generated our own sales. Cafepress now is claiming the sales are from their marketplace. Oh how can that be since none of our products are in their marketplace. Talk about liars & cheats. Our sales are down 85% with the recession and Cafepress wants to take away volume bonus as well. Good BYE Cafepress, you cheat and lie too much

By: Kayla

Kayla — Wed, 05 Nov 2008 21:49:32 +0000

Cafepress is claiming sales driven by google base listings shopkeepers post themselves are marketplace sales. Plus email links shopkeepers send from outside the cafepress domain to friends and customers are considered marketplace sales. You do all the legwork and cafepress credits the sale as coming from their marketplace. Without ads we place we lost 95% of our sales. Obviously cafepress is not really marketing here just making up stories. Response from cafepress was that pricing should be increased to offset lost sales volume. Use to love cafepress but their reshuffling the deck to change volume bonus changed that. Our jumbo shop with over 1000 sections is scaled back to just a handful. Its not worth it to spend all the time designing and promoting where cafepress nickels and dimes you. Our staple designs that sell we have the shirts printed at a local printer now.

By: Freebird

Freebird — Sun, 17 Aug 2008 06:05:44 +0000

I just calculated that my profits will go down by 22.5% if next year’s sales are identical to this year’s. If my shop continues to grow (which it will) the profits will be down even more than 22.5%. I currently get less than 5% of my sales from my shop (used to be more) – over 95% are from the Marketplace (thanks to CafePress promoting their Marketplace so heavily). Thanks for stealing almost a quarter of my profits, CafePress. I will now be diversifying my items to Zazzle and Printfection so I don’t rely so heavily on profits from one POD source. Screw you, CafePress – you’ve definitely screwed me.

By: Cafepress User

Cafepress User — Mon, 11 Aug 2008 05:12:00 +0000

Cafepress has arbitrarily changed its volume bonus rules, costing me at least 3K per month in marketplace bonuses. If anyone from Cafepress reads this blog, get ready for the class-action lawsuit coming your way if you go through with these changes. If Cafepress wants to tweak bonuses for all new designs & shops then fine, but you can’t induce people to put up designs and market shops with promises of a particular bonus system and then pull the rug out from under them.

I’m only one user, but if CP’s grand claims of the numbers of shops, users, and profits are true, then this adds up to Cp screwing users out of millions in bonuses.

Happy litigating.

By: Jonathan Nolan

Jonathan Nolan — Sun, 03 Aug 2008 13:13:07 +0000

All of this and much more is why my cafe press sits there still, at least as far as i assume… never to be touched by me again. they are an appalling business. my books etc. went to lulu and the rest never sold worth a damn anyway.

By: Bradley W. Schenck

Bradley W. Schenck — Sun, 27 Jul 2008 03:06:32 +0000

Kristen, I think that would make all sorts of sense if they didn’t still have to track affiliate conversions in order to pay the affiliates their commissions. Which they still *do* have to do. At a minimum they have to tell Commission Junction that yes, such-and-such a session did end in a sale.

So they really haven’t made anything simpler by covering the costs of the commissions themselves. Which is why I still scratch my head.

By: Kristen

Kristen — Sun, 27 Jul 2008 00:30:49 +0000

It’s my understanding that the affiliate commission change was included in this bundle under the goal of ‘simplification’, as running an affiliate program in a company that isn’t just products but is products and shopkeepers too ran into a whole other ball of wax that was much more complex, and EXCEEDINGLY hard to track. Probably something also connected to their new method of labeling sales EITHER shop OR marketplace, period. (That’s as clear as I get on it though – hope I didn’t muddy things further here – LOL!) FWIW.

Always something fun to do….