The One Man Corporation: A blog to bookmark

You know it's good marketing when I hear about something because a friend told me about it.

I mean, isn't that the most trusted source? "I heard it from a friend."

Well, Mike from The One Man Corporation got it right when he sent out an email to his competitors (other Cafepress shopkeepers) teasing us with some valuable information and an invitation to forward it to more friends. And so, a friend forwarded it to me.

It worked. I got the email and actually didn't delete it! That's a feat in itself. I hate forwards. I always delete them. But, hey, if the first few lines grab my attention, I'll read on.

So check him out. I'm going to add his blog to the sidebar here for future reference. He's got some great tips on making money from home, valuable resources, and insight that can only be learned from experience. After all, he does work from home. And he's sharing his experiences for everyone to benefit from.

3 reasons to cross link your Cafepress stores

I've been wanting to cross link my Cafepress shops to one another for a while now and finally have. Since they've been added, I have already seen an increase in traffic and sales in all of my stores.

What did I do? I made several little footer graphics with my shop logos in it (see above), brought the JPEG images into Dreamweaver, made an image map over it, and copied/pasted the HTML from Dreamweaver into my the footer section of the "custom HTML" section of the shop manager for each shop. I made each shop's graphic a little different so it would be consistent with the look of it's shop.

Why did I do it? Here are three reasons why I put cross links in my shops and why your own self-contained web ring might be a good idea for your Cafepress business:

1. To use a little corporate speak: you're leveraging your traffic

By far, my most successful shop has been BusyBodies. And I have yet to define exactly who my customers are in one, nice little definition. They are scrapbooking women, Dads buying Christmas gifts, cancer survivors, kids on a swim team, surgical technician students, dog lovers...and the list goes on.

Because of this diverse audience, it only makes sense to offer up links to my other shops, in case one of these visitors is interested in T-shirts with geocaching humor, signage for their mother's room at work, a shirt sporting their favorite food, or a stylish, modern pillow for their apartment. Without the cross links at the bottom, none of my BusyBodies customers would know I have other shops with more products to choose from.

2. Objects in the footer are larger than they appear

By putting your cross links in the footer of your store, you're not only ensuring they won't interfere with your store's layout or confuse shoppers, but this will also ensure easy navigation to your other stores, from EVERY PAGE in your store. The same holds true if you put your links in your side bar or any other element that will appear on every page in your shop.

This is important because most people will not enter your store from the home page, they will likely find your shop through the Cafepress marketplace or a search engine search that will dump them in the middle of your store. Hopefully Suzy Shopper will find just what she's looking for, but in the event that she doesn't, a quick glance to other pretty links at the bottom of the page, will gently lead her to browse your other stores before she leaves, all without her having to visit your shop's home page.

3. You're keeping visitors longer

It's a sad fact, but most visitors to your store will glance at it and leave. Web surfers are impatient (I'm one of them!), so every second counts. Think of when you're wandering the mall, walk into a store, browse around, and are on the way out and see some great product near the door that catches your eye. Make your cross links catch the eyes of your visitors and they may stop, click, and browse some more...and, if you're lucky, even buy something!

So why wouldn't you cross link?

There are some instances where you may not want to cross-link your Cafepress shops. For those of you who have an adult-themed shirt shop and a kid clothing shop, cross linking may only offend one group of shoppers, while turning off the other group.

Another reason may be aesthetics. My ModPillows store I try to keep a more "high-end" clean-design look and feel. I don't want the pages cluttered up with anything that looks like an ad, so I deliberately put my cross link section in the "about" section of that store.

If you want to cross link several web sites that are not Cafepress stores, there are theories out there that this could hurt your Google rankings. Say, for example, you had 20 different domains all linked to one another from the same hosting company, this may look bad to Google and have an adverse affect on your rankings. But in Google's eyes, and correct me if I'm wrong, your Cafepress store (or Shop ID) is merely an extension of the Cafepress.com domain, so I can't see cross linking Cafepress stores as having an adverse affect on your Google rankings, and it certainly won't do anything to your Cafepress marketplace rankings.

So use your judgement and don't be afraid to experiment a little. In most cases cross linking your Cafepress premium shops will help your traffic and increase your sales over time. Visits to my Statcounter account and Cafepress sales reports are proof of that.

And if you don't have more than one shop to link together, consider signing up for the Cafepress affiliate program with Commission Junction, link up to a few of your favorite shops and earn money on those sales, too!

Cafepress' migration to Commission Junction

I mentioned earlier this week that Cafepress is going through some...well...crazy times.

I'm not even sure where to start.

Maheesh's recent post on the Cafepress message boards at least conveys what he's going through.

And numerous posts on Great Gear sum up a lot of us shopkeeper's opinions on the matter.

So what is the matter?

The recent announcement by Cafepress that they would be terminating their existing in-house affiliate program and replacing it with an outside network called Commission Junction.

It's been a messy few weeks since the announcement. I've had more time to digest this because I heard rumor of this in Jan (Apparently it wasn't a secret at Affiliate Summit). I, too was a little shocked to hear that Cafepress had made the decision to go with Commission Junction. Why? CJ doesn't have a great reputation in the affiliate world because of their practices, mainly loyalty programs and parasites. Here's just one thread on A Best Web Affiliate marketing forum discussing Cafepress' migration to Commission Junction. I admit I still have a lot to learn about affiliate marketing, but I have yet to learn why Cafepress thinks CJ is a better choice than, say Share-A-Sale, an affiliate network with a stellar reputation and loyal members who will tell you all about it. The only reason I see so far is the traffic CJ will pull in. But at what price? I guess we'll find out soon enough.

Cafepress had a couple online chats recently to try and answer questions from shopkeepers, but discussions on Great Gear will reveal all the tough questions were avoided completely and most questions were answered vaguely, at most.

Complaints of poor communication between CP and it's shopkeepers and affiliates is prevalent and for good reason. Many of us felt there was no warning of this in time to even react. Cafepress pulled their forum discussion board from A Best Web with little explanation. And, true, Cafepress has the right to make whatever business decisions they feel benefit their business and I respect that, but this could've been handled much better. There are affiliates who built many sites around the old program as well as newbie shopkeepers who are now very confused.

The one good recent change they made last week is to allow shopkeepers to cross link to other stores, including their own and still participate in the affiliate prgram. As someone who is a shopkeeper AND affiliate through Cafepress, this is important to me.

So, I'm staying open about it for now. I can't make a final judgment until I've given the new program a try. I'm entering it with caution...I've been warned (thanks, Loxly!) and also encouraged (thanks to various CJ affiliates). I've been asked to be a beta tester for the new program and will let you know how it goes as events unfold. Stay tuned...