These past two weekends I have been very busy rearranging items in the CafePress store as well as creating and uploading many new ones.
First priority was to create a selection of Christmas cards. CafePress offers well-printed cards, on good stock, in sets of 6 and to date we have created sets using 8 designs. Each design is available with the cards blank inside and in addition there are up to 3 other versions incorporating either a text from the Bible which corresponds to the subject of the stained glass or a Christmas greeting. Time and resources permitting we will probably add to this section before the Holiday season is finished and I also plan to explore the economics and logistics of offering a wall calendar via CafePress.
In addition to adding Christmas cards we also greatly expanded the "Quotations" section and created a sub-section for each of the featured quotations. This was done partly to give them more visibility but it also means that there is a full range of items for every quotation which was not previously so.
In case you were wondering, the reason why all items are not necessarily available for every design is because groups of items require images with different sizes and aspect ratios. For example, an image which will work perfectly well on apparel may show up with white lines on either side when used for a Christmas card design. Similarly, not all designs can be adapted to work as oval Christmas ornaments. The work of resizing and uploading images to fit all of the templates is quite time-consuming but we do plan to go back and selectively add new items within the existing array of designs as well as continuing to add new designs.
CafePress have just launched an affiliate programme. What this does is to reward sites and organisations (and individuals) who refer people who end up buying product. At its simplest, if a site refers a customer to CafePress and that customer buys something CafePress will pay a referral fee of 20%.
So, why am I mentioning this? Well, first of all if anyone who reads this is from a church, a school, a choir or just about any organisation - especially non-profit - then we highly recommend that you consider joining CafePress as an affiliate. It is free and whoever updates your website can easily insert the necessary code to allow visitors to your site to get to CafePress and be identifiable as having come from you. Even if you do not have a website you can paste the code into emails below your signature and either email it specially or as a matter of routine. To get started or just find out more click on this link:
CAFEPRESS AFFILIATE PROGRAMME
Secondly, if you visit CafePress and end up buying something from another vendor there, StainedGlassPhotography will still benefit provided that you began your journey here and so if you plan to visit CafePress and buy something we would ask you to start your journey on this site if you can remember to do so.
Also if any not-for-profit needs help getting the affiliate programme working, or if you would like us to create some custom designs just for your organisation please contact us, we may be able to help you.
I will not show individual items or designs here but I will post a link direct to OUR STORE AT CAFEPRESS where you can view the new products if you are interested.
I would also like to announce that we plan to upload more content in the coming weeks. There are some images from several locations which for various reasons I have not uploaded but plan to do so soon. Gradually our intention is to focus most of the commercial aspects on the individual sites such as MQGifts and CafePress and develop StainedGlassPhotography.com as the content site which it was originally intended to be. Of course, plans might change!
