CafePress.com an easy way to promote your business

Published 2:36 pm Friday, June 11, 2010

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, sweatshirts, 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.

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. 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.

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.