For customized merchandising fulfillment , Cafepress and Zazzle are pretty much the only games in town if you consider their range of products and personalized store front capability. So which one? It’s six of one, half a dozen of the other. Consider this: The Star Trek franchise is with CafePress and the Star Wars franchise is with Zazzle.  Soooo…you decide. 

CafePress has been in the game longer than anybody BUT they charge a fee for your customized store front (about fifty bucks a year). I went with Zazzle because I’m a newbie and its FREE. You dig?

• Here’s the process essentially for flooding the market place with your useless crap:
  1) Create your store front. Easy.
  2) Create your branded graphics per given templates for T-shirts,  mugs, bumper stickers, etc.
  3) Upload your images and slap them on the product where you can see how they look in 360 degree preview and adjust placement and size accordingly.
  4) Determine what you want your price mark up to be and then put it in your store.
  5) Embed the code for “products widget” on your website or blog (see the side bar).

They take care of shopping cart, payment and shipping. Products are manufactured as they are ordered. They mail you your profits.

It is important that I add here, if you are serious about making money from your products none of these full fulfilment services is the way to go. All of their base product prices are fairly high to begin with so your profit margins are going to be very low. More importantly, as you generate sales you’re not getting the direct contact with your “costumers”. This is key. Your sales are being brokered by a middle man who is building their own relationship with the costumer not you.

Soooo…this is only phase one for me to quickly get some products out there. I don’t want to be tripping over coffee cup boxes in my living room and standing in post office lines regularly at this point.

 I’ll post results as they come in-Allen

This is a great article  by Peter Broderick about the new world of distribution.  If you’re 15 years old and grew up on computers, you can probably skip it. Chances are, you already have the proper mindset. If you’re old enough to remember drive-in movie theaters then forget it dude, it’s over. You’re done.

Seriously, no matter who you are, if you’re interested in reaching audiences directly, making bread AND holding onto creative control then check it out.

Stay tuned-Allen