I’ve been working on the cart side of Democrat Swag today, which means fiddling with html in CafePress. Well, I accidently hit the template page and saw that CP released a new template on the sly - or I just completely missed the announcement. Take a look at the new Expression template demo store
My best friend in the whole wide world has entered a short film into some sort of contest on MySpace. I am completely confused, but it has something to do with getting a web series, the eyes of Fox execs… it’s all on the DL it seems, as I can’t find word one on the site. Granted, I really don’t visit MySpace often, and always get cranky when I go there, so that may be more my problem. Anyway, if you would be so kind to view the short and rate it good or bad (we hope good), we’ll send good thoughts back to you.
Thanks 
I may not make many friends with this post, but I feel it really has to be said. And I hope the few friends I have at CP understand my position. This isn’t directed at any particular shopkeeper, just a portion of the SK community at CP.
As some of you may know, I recently redesigned the navigation for Lekker Bride. I wanted to go ahead and add some more designs from other shopkeepers while I was at it (it had been a while since I had), so I started looking around the marketplace at wedding and bridal items. Why, oh why, do so many shopkeepers just copy the general theme or idea of a popular seller? How does that shopkeeper feel? Can you honestly tell me that they can find no other image than a martini glass to represent a bachelorette party? I couldn’t find one single new design that I felt was original enough to feature. I have sites that get tons of targeted traffic that I am willing to share with other designers - yet it seems everything new is just another version of a design on the first few pages in the MP. Do these designers honestly think that you’ll ever rise above a design that has been a proven seller for years? It’s doubtful. And then the same person will come into the forums and complain that they aren’t getting any sales. Originality sells. Quality sells.
I am so tired of people just feeding off popular designs and thinking it’s cool. It’s not. You can’t call yourself an artist if you can’t come up with one stinking original idea. I understand inspiration - especially in fashion. Whole lines have been inspired by a movie or one crazy sequined unicorn sweatshirt. But the marketplace at CP is beginning to look like a dern swap meet, with everyone selling their version of a popular design. All this time people spend complaining about things not in their control yet they can’t spend a few minutes brainstorming their own ideas. Everyone acts as though they care about the customer and their shop - yet they are perfectly happy copying designs of other shopkeepers, which I think is a disservice to the customer.
I’ve seen comments about people getting “tons of great ideas” from the CP Newsletters. Uh, newsflash - those newsletters aren’t made so you can just ride on the back of someone else’s hard work. The marketplace should not be a place you should troll for ideas. Why not, instead of just copying “what sells”, you create your own brand and/or your own style and go from there? Why be so content to just follow in the footsteps of others rather than blazing your own trail?
I have absolutely nothing to base this on, but I wouldn’t be surprised (or unhappy) if CP did start limiting what designs they offer in “their store” (the marketplace). In fact, I would be much, much happier, because I think that design quality in the MP is lacking in many areas and it would only improve the image of CP.
Feel free to give me your 2 cents.
I have been meaning to post about this fabulous little tool for a while. I always thought the one thing cool about basic shops was the layout - how the products are always in the same spot, in their category. It’s been a wish of many SKs for quite some time. Jim, a mod on the CP forums and the SK behind teesed.com has made this big wish a reality with his CafeWish Categories Script. I am behind on adding it to all the Lekker Shops, but you can see it in action at Lekker Politics - like in this section featuring super cool Barack Obama T-Shirts.
Here’s some of the things the category script can do: Organize products by category, change or turn off the “more colors available” graphic, find missing products in a section, “Browse by Category” just like “Browse by Product”, reorder or hide categories for specific sections (put women’s apparel first for a feminine design, baby apparel first for a baby design, etc.) & “Plus” account users can even create their own categories.
Setup is pretty easy. Theres a little piece of code you put in your section description that does all the work. It does add another thing to do when you add a new section or update a section, but updating is pretty easy and the code can be created for you by a tool available at the CafeWish site if you aren’t comfortable changing it for each section.
The plan is to eventually have the script in every section at our stores on CP. We’ll see how that goes
I am sure I’m not alone in saying we’ll miss you while you’re gone and hope to see you back again real soon.
And now for one of our favorite Alan Partridge clips that’s oh so fitting right now…
The theme at the Lekker Shops this year is “automation”. We are sick and tired of busy work, and aren’t gonna take it anymore!
Are you planning on building an affiliate site? Don’t want to keep track of a thread in the forums? Can’t take one more minute of the marketplace? Keep forgetting what shops you have looked at? Well, we had the same issues. We decided to use the wonderful Wufoo service to create a form that SKs can fill out to submit their designs for possible affiliation in a Lekker Brand shop. You can check it out (and submit your shops/designs) here. Now we get the submissions sent directly too our inbox. We can look at them as soon as we get them, or check our entries at the Wufoo site. And we know what we’ve seen and what we haven’t.
Wufoo is just awesome. You can easily create forms for users to fill out without all the hassle. They can be placed in your CP hosted shop using iframes (that’s how we have our Affiliate Submission forms set up), or you can modify the code and host it yourself. No longer do you need to worry that spammers will find your embedded email. They also have reporting capabilities that will prove to be very happy in the coming year. We have a premium account, so there are a few more goodies, but it’s well worth it to be able to set up something like our affiliate submission tool in no time. Oddly enough, the company is based in Tampa. Who knew good things could come from Tampa? (I kid. I love Tampa. It’s the cultural hub of Florida!)
Many thanks to Adam of Buy-Tees for pointing us to Wufoo.
