A CafePress Resource

A bit of advice from learning the hard way.

Keep focus on the niche markets

• Decide on a theme and stick with it. The best themes come from something you are passionate about. A theme allows you to target specific traffic that will be more likely to purchase your work. Added bonus, if you're already an active member of forums and community web sites related to your topic, you'll have a captive audience to grab traffic from by adding your shop address to your signature. Not to say you can't have more than one theme in a shop, but keep like things together for easy navigation and searching.
• If you are using a Premium Shop, create a Master Section you can import from for all other sections. Start with a hidden section of products with either your logo or a filler design. Place and size each image to the specification of the majority of your designs and add your desired mark up for each product. When you open a new section you'll be able to import all of these filler products from the master section and with a few clicks you can switch out your filler image for the new design, add your new product name and description and voila your newest design will be up in running in less than 5 minutes.
• Search engines like Google are eerily good at picking up text. Use this to your advantage by being as descriptive as possible with every single product you place. Utilize header tags and descriptive labels rich with product specific keywords. This is extremely time consuming but will help send customers to your designs from the search engines. Mislabeling your products will get you traffic, but rarely customers.
• Hidden sections can work to your advantage by using HTML in the section description. Use hidden sections to create entire pages full of affiliate information displaying your shop banners, create a favorite shops page or display an article. The possibilities are endless, just don't forget to manually link to them from your unhidden shop landing page.
• Do not forget to sign up for the Affiliate Program. It's a separate sign up from the sign up for a CafePress.com shop. Then attach your PID number to absolutely every Cafepress.com related link you dole out.