How to Make Money with CafePress

Step 1

Do You Have Something to Say?
If so, CafePress could be a nice way to express yourself to the world and to make money passively online. But is it really possible to make money with CafePress, and how much money can you make?

Step 2

If you've have ever designed or sold printed products on your own, you will understand that it takes time and money. After making the design (which is the easy part), you have to find a place that will sell it for you and market your product. You also have to pay for advertising in most cases and you have to but the shirts and products plus the printing costs. This is a great deal of overhead and if you have limited amounts of money, this will limit the amount of product you can make and sell. In turn, it limits the amount of money you can make.

Step 3

An Auto-Pilot Solution
One day, in 2006, while searching for online stores
to sell my shirt designs to, I ran across a website
called CafePress. I read about it, and decided to
give it a try. If you haven’t heard of CafePress, it is
basically a website in which you can upload your
design and put it on t-shirts, mugs, hats, bags, etc.
and instantly begin selling your products online for
free. The idea seemed fabulous...no more searching for vendors, haggling with printers, no shipping
or inventory, and no risk of losing money on shirts
printed that didn’t sell or were printed incorrectly.

Step 4

Getting Started with CafePress.
The process was easy to sign up, and within about a
week, I already sold one of my t-shirt designs. The
system worked, and I couldn’t believe how easy it
was. I began doing more designs and selling more.
The great thing was that after making my design
and uploading it, I didn’t have to do anymore work.
There was no upkeep, and the system basically ran
by itself. My shirt quantities never ran out, and I
never had problems with the printing, because I was
able to preview all of my designs before they were
posted online. My very first month, I made $22. I
also only had 3 designs uploaded. My shop was very
basic, and I simply used CafePress’s default shop
design. Eventually, I added a logo to my web shop,
but other than that, the only necessary work involved
is uploading your design and choosing products to
put it on.

Step 5

My First CafePress Paycheck!
I had to wait until I broke the $25
limit to receive my first check. Overall, I was pleased
with my first check considering the small amount
of work I put in and the fact that it was ALL profit
with no risk and no inventory to worry about. Plus,
it is passive, so I will continue to earn money every
month!

Step 6

Immediately, I saw the passive income
earning potential, and I eventually decided to
add another free CafePress niche shop to sell dog
t-shirts. After this free shop began producing a con-
sistent profit, I decided to shell out the extra $6.95
a month to upgrade my shop so I could customize it
and add more products:
http://www.CafePress.com/FashionPug

Step 7

After adding my niche shop, I started to see my income quickly increase. These are my earnings from month to month:
September $65.43
October $109.27
November $147.09
December $112.67
January $323.38
February $539.39

(My earnings do go up and down mostly by about $50 here and there, sometimes there are spikes in sales around the holidays, but overall the income is stable and I've made profit every month since I started selling on Cafe Press.)

Step 8

If you were wondering if you can really make money with the site, I would definitely say yes. I have contacted the support team a few times over the years, and they always got back to me with a helpful reply. So I would say you can make money if you have an idea that you think other people would be interested in wearing or buying.

Step 9

If this sounds interesting to you and you’d
like to start selling your designs online, follow the
steps below:
1. Go to CafePress and do a few searches of things
you are interested in. Browse the designs and prod-
ucts. Check out some of the stores.

Step 10

2. Sign-up. If CafePress seems cool to you, and
you think you would like to sell some of your own
design ideas, sign-up. If you found my information
helpful, you can enter my “Referral Store ID” in the
space provided when signing up.

My “Referral Store ID” is: fashionpug
Thank you, I appreciate it.

Step 11

3. Start with a basic shop. It’s free and you
can always decide to upgrade your shop later if you
find that your designs are selling well. By upgrading
your shop, you will be able to customize it and add
many more products.

Step 12

4. Use Photoshop, Illustrator, or some other
computer art program to make your designs. Design
them to CafePress’s specifications of file type and
size according to the products you choose.

Step 13

5. Upload your designs and be sure to enter
keywords so that people can find your designs when
they do an online search.

Step 14

6. Choose the products to put your designs on
and enter a price amount.

Step 15

7. Sit back and watch your designs sell.
It may take a few days until your designs show up
in the CafePress search, but after a while, they will
appear and if people like your designs, they will buy
and you will begin to make money.

Tips & Warnings
I have tried other websites to sell my custom designs on such as Printfection and Spreadshirt, but did not have results close to CafePress. In my opinion, you would be better off focusing your designs on CafePress. If you have an extremely popular design, you can try to upload it to one of the other websites. But I think you will find that they do not bring nearly the amount of traffic and earnings that CafePress will.
If you have a design idea, it is good to do a search and see what similar designs pop up. Make your own original design that you feel people will be interested in buying. Remember, most people aren’t going to buy a picture of your dog. Would you be interested in buying a shirt with a photo- graph of their dog? You get the picture. It has to be something that attracts the general public. Put yourself in your customer’s shoes, and you will reap great earnings!