PrestoGifto.com is testing a mechanism that delivers contextual ads for CafePress. It’s developed by a fan of CafePress who likes their 20% commission and is developing the software for their personal use.
Now any well trafficked home business website or blogger working from home can sell personalized, context relevant items and earn a 20% commission on pages that for whatever reason aren’t appropriate for Google Adsense or other pay per click programs.
Now it’s being offered for TESTING purposes, if your website qualifies.
When I first discovered CafePress, they had no affiliate program. I had one of their shirts on one of my sites (and a link to them) just because I loved the product and it was so perfect for my niche. I really didn’t even know what CafePress was.
I was already involved in Commission Junction, Link Share, Amazon and other programs, but wasn’t making much with the 5% - 10% commissions they paid out. Besides, some of those products just weren’t great. It was a ton of work sifting out the junk, copying and pasting links and keeping the merchandise fresh (I certainly wasn’t going to put stock banners on my site). But it was all there was if I was to participate in the affiliate game.
So, CafePress announces their new affiliate program that was going to pay 20% commissions and, well, hallelujah! It was sort of like being involved with Amazon in the old days…I saw the highly contextual merchandise, the big commissions and the simple link structure and was all over that program right away.
It’s almost embarrassing to talk about now, but when I started selling CafePress affiliate products on my site, I went through a long, tedious process…something along the lines of this:
1. Search on CafePress (using my keyword/tag)
2. Find a product I liked
3. Navigate to the product details page
4. Copy the IMG URL
5. Paste into my html
6. Size it
7. Copy the destination URL
8. Paste it into my html
9. Add my affiliate ID
10. Add a unique PID
11. Plus, about 20 more steps…phew…BUT, my affiliate gift shop really picked up in October and by November sales were up 7x by December. I started moving away from the other affiliate merchandise in favor of the CafePress merchandise because it moved better and the commissions were DOUBLE what the others paid. After the Christmas season was over, my head was spinning. Wow. It was so much work copying and pasting links but the end result was fun, it enhanced my site and it made good money.
So why isn’t everyone selling CafePress affiliate merchandise right now? Mostly that’s because the tools aren’t there (yet) to help us out. So I did what any red-blooded, ex-corporate product designer, stay-at-home mother of a 1-year old would do in this situation. I went my senior VP of HR (Mr. Craig Slist) to find a developer and created a Modest Little Tool in PHP so that I could have a proper control panel to do my merchandising. I wouldn’t have to touch the HTML EVER AGAIN, and I wouldn’t make typos when pasting my affiliate PID into the code.
Thanks to Bob Bilson for the lead
Juna Duncan on June 20th, 2006 at 1:07 pm
Cafepress is wonderful. I like the fact we can make “real” money with not to much trouble. I hope you can more affiliate sales. Spread the word.
Jessie on June 25th, 2006 at 1:50 pm
FYI, the tool you’re blogging about, PrestoGifto, is going to be available to the general public in beta in the next couple of weeks. If you want to be alerted when the big release happens, you can can sign up at the site. Right now it’s an invitation-only alpha.
GetYerGoat on September 20th, 2006 at 7:03 am
Using Presto-Gifto is not only easy but a great way to see what is available at cafepress- as it scrolls through the items when you have entered your keyword- and it gives you the option of Which product with a particular desgin on it to showcase! I LOVE it!
Yeah for Presto-Gifto!
Dave on March 26th, 2007 at 11:52 am
Cafepress moving the affiliate program to CJ so
all the tools you are blogging about will be completly useless effective 5-31-07.