Hello, interweb! This is the first edition of TShirtCritic’s T-Shirt Countdown!
Today we will discuss Cafepress’ recently announced changes to the Volume Bonus program. Basically, CP is eliminating the volume bonus on all sales generated through their marketplace and calculating volume bonus from here on out only on sales generated through the designer’s store.
TShirtCritic understands CP’s rationale: they are spending $$$ on adwords, etc for the Marketplace, and want to save somewhere else to offset the investment. From a shopkeeper perspective, the SK is still being paid for his sale – as he gets the markup on the design – he just won’t get the volume bonus on Marketplace sales anymore.
Obviously this move is going to piss off SK’s anyway, because volume bonus makes up a significantly large chunk of many SK’s CP income – one medium sized SK that TShirtCritic spoke with claims his volume bonus is a third of his shop’s income.
Out of all POD companies, CP is investing the most in the promotion of its SK’s products (through the Marketplace), and the more they invest, it creates an opportunity for SK’s to take advantage of their largess by designing strictly for the sake of Marketplace inclusion and not for the sake of their own shop. Stop marketing your shop! Hit Marketplace niches and let CP do the work! At least that seems to be the message.
Another point in this regard is that CP has limited premium shops to 500 section presumably to curb spam in their products – but if a grey hat SK was to focus strictly on Marketplace sales – which TShirtCritic hears are the bulk of CP sales – then same grey hat SK could in theory just say “fuck sections” and dump 10000 products in each section and let the Marketplace sort it out. Not that any of you should do that, but if TShirtCritic thought of it, we’re sure those grey hat SK’s have thought of it too.
Probably that guy that lists every US city on the map under “I TOOK A LOOK AT”….
Posted by tshirtcritic 
TShirtCritic's T-Shirt Countdown 