Zazzle Shutting Down Affiliate Program at Share Results
The rumor is (as of 8/14) that Zazzle is shutting down their affiliate program at
We wish to inform you that the Zazzle affiliate program will be shutting down in Share Results for an indefinite period of time.
Zazzle’s affiliate program will be officially closed on August 22, 2008. As this program will be closing within one week, we ask that you please take down all your tracking links being used to promote Zazzle, including banner creative, content and text links, and any other tools used.
Right now that is all the info I have but I will add more as I receive it.
Cafepress Updates Marketplace - Zoom Feature Threatens Image Security
Cafepress just updated their marketplace to allow users to view enlarged images while browsing the marketplace without having to click the product/image. A small orange magnifying glass was added to each image within the marketplace. When you click the button it shows you up to a 400×400 detailed view of the image. The zoom feature is great but I can see a lot of potential issues with image theft. The enlarged images are quite clear and large at 400×400 with NO overlay to prevent theft. While you can’t save the image it still allows for users to print screen the images.
Below is a view of the marketplace with the zoom feature and the enlarged “Captain Obvious” design.
Shopkeepers have the option to show the overlay for the design detail page but currently not on the marketplace zoom. To show how this might be an issue I did a print screen of the captain obvious design, cropped it to be just the image and I uploaded it to Cafepress to see what what an image of that size might look like on products. I didn’t resize or enhance the image, just uploaded it from a computer screenshot. Below is what the image of the design on a few products.
As you can see it is possible to create products that look like they are high resolution and ready to purchase. As someone who has experienced finding my Cafepress images taken and sold with low resolution copies on eBay, Zazzle or other sites the concern is real and Cafepress should add the sample overlay asap.
Printfection Launches Alpha Developer Platform and T-Shirt API
Printfection announced that they are opening their new developer platform and API for private alpha testing. The API will allow developers to make tools for both the creation and distribution of content. Printfection suggested that some of the tools that can be developed include a bulk uploader, desktop application, Google Base connectors, Amazon / eBay / and Google Adwords integration, or widgets to be used on your blog / Facebook / MySpace.
It is about time that someone created a open API system and we look forward to seeing the new tools that are created. Let’s hope that Printfection can handle whatever people create. For more information check out the Printfection Blog or signup for an API key.
Zazzle T-Shirt Review - Take II: Color Blind Printing
Almost two weeks ago I posted a Zazzle t-shirt review and expressed my disappointment with the print quality after spending over $40 for a t-shirt. After making my post I contacted Zazzle about returning the shirt for a refund (a Friday) and the following day I received my RMA number and was told to send the t-shirt back to receive the refund. Monday morning I received a call from a Zazzle representative who asked me what was wrong with the shirt and I explained just what I had said in my post about the misprinted white edges and very light ink. The rep then offered me my money back and a free replacement and of course I said yes. I am not sure if I got a call from the Zazzle rep about returning the shirt because of my blog post or if this is a standard procedure for some orders. Either way it was nice to have someone at Zazzle to take the time to find out what the problem was with the shirt and propose a solution. The rep informed me that he would make sure it would get printed correctly without the white edges.
The free replacement t-shirt arrived a few days later and it was much different than the first. The ink was much thicker and cleaner and there was no ghosting white outlines around the arrows. As you can see it still has the film that washes off that gives it a slightly shiny appearance gave a little glare in the picture. Check out the t-shirt design below.
The shirt looked really good for dark printing except for one problem. The colors that were printed on the shirt were not those in the preview. Below is an image with the preview on Zazzle on the left, the original shirt I received in the middle and the replacement on the right.
Below is a view of the first order then the second order results compared to the high resolution preview on Zazzle.
Zazzle T-Shirt Order #1
Zazzle T-Shirt Order #2
It really is strange that the grey turned completely blue, not a shade of grey but actually blue. The shirt looks okay because it is just arrows and there is no reason that the arrows can’t be blue. BUT the obvious problem is that I didn’t know I was buying a shirt with blue arrows. What if this was a graphic that required that colors be correct. This is not a complex graphic, it is only three colors with no gradients! Unfortunately this replacement order was also a disappointment.
Cafepress Acquires Imagekind.com for an Estimated $15-20 Million.
It was informally announced this morning that Cafepress purchased Imagekind.com for an estimated $15-$20 million. Imagekind is a marketplace of member created art that is printed on demand. The model is similar to Cafepress where the artists set their own price markup but it is focused specifically on prints. Prices of the artwork range from $5 to $500.
Imagekind was founded in 2006 with $300K used to purchase printing equipment, hire staff and web site development. In February 2007 Imagekind raised an additional $2.6 million in funding and was valued at around $7 million. Imagekind had turned down offers in the past to be purchased by Amazon.com. It is likely that both Art.com and Zazzle.com were also involved in recent negotiations to purchase the growing print on demand company. Imagekind has grown quickly to over 750,000 art images for sale by over 50,000 artists worldwide.
For more information on the deal check out Venture Beat or an older article with a few facts about Imagekind at the Seattle Times. You can also follow the story at TechCrunch.
Zazzle T-Shirt Review - $43.91 and all I got was this lousy t-shirt
It took me a long time to get around to buying a t-shirt at Zazzle. Last month I decided to order a t-shirt for my t-shirt packaging review and to check out their print quality. In general I prefer to wear simple artsy t-shirt designs without slogans or brand names so I had to dig pretty deep at Zazzle to find a design that I liked. I came across this simple design made up of grey and white arrows that start in the middle of the shirt small and get bigger as they move out.
I chose the Edun Live organic t-shirt that is made in Lesotho from 100% African cotton. The total price for one sided printing of these standard black organic t-shirts was $35.95. It was officially the most I have ever paid for a t-shirt.
The shirt arrived in a fancy shiny dark silver packaging with a small Zazzle logo in the top left corner. The packaging is indeed eye catching and the dark colored bag almost makes it look like you have ordered some type of suspicious.
Inside the package was my Edun live t-shirt, an invoice, a $5 off coupon and a card with a short letter suggesting that the t-shirt may have a film on it until it is washed.
The shirt itself was nice and fairly thick but unfortunately the print was a complete disappointment. Before I show you the printing here is what the image looks like on the Zazzle web site. The left is the design view and the right is what it looks like zoomed in at high resolution. The design has different colored arrows in two different shades of grey and white.
Below is the design closeup of the actual shirt printed by Zazzle. As you can see it has white outlines over almost every single arrow.
One more closeup to see how bad the white outlines are. When you compare this image with the design preview there is no suggestion of white outlines. It just looks plain sloppy when printed.
The design was created by one of their members so it is hard to know what the original resolution of the image is but it doesn’t matter. The “high resolution” preview showed one thing and the final print was not the same.
If this shirt was $12 I would be disappointed but not as disappointed as I was after spending $43.91 with shipping for a badly printed t-shirt. And yes, I did submit for a full refund and I am waiting to hear back if the “Zazzle Promise” will be kept.
What is so funny is that the t-shirt has a 5 star review based on 12 votes but who was voting? It was obviously rated by people who just thought the design was kind of cool but never actually bought the shirt. It is ridiculous to have and center design ratings from people who haven’t even seen the shirt before. People should vote with their dollars and not with a left click on the mouse.
Cafepress Drops all New York Affiliates
Cafepress announced that as of July 1, 2008 all their affiliates who live in the State of New York will be dropped. Cafepress is one of many companies who dropped NY affiliates due to new legislation passed in New York that has impacts on “tax registration, collection and remittance”. Before the NY legislation if a company didn’t have a physical location within a particular state then the state could not require that they pay state taxes. The changes in NY now require that companies from all ecommerce sites with affiliates (including Cafepress and other t-shirt companies) based in New York state pay state taxes. New York was estimating to raise $50-$70 million in taxes but the plan has backfired as many companies have pulled out of New York or filed lawsuits (Amazon.com) against the state.
I am sure other t-shirt companies will follow but I haven’t heard any specifics. You can check out a list of other companies who also have dropped their NY affiliates at abestweb.com and watch a video of Shawn Collins at Affiliate tip on how this whole mess started. Marketing Sherpa also has an article about whether or not the legislation will spread to other states.
Surprisingly there are NO designs on cafepress for “New York affiliate“. Not sure if there truly aren’t any designs or if the terms have been blocked to avoid controversy. But I did find a couple over at Zazzle.
Cafepress Raises Prices for (almost) the First Time in 9 Years - Minimal Impact to T-Shirt Prices
Cafepress announced that they are raising prices on a few of their products on July 28th due to the rising cost of goods and labor. Below are the new price changes and the percent that each item increased. Only two human t-shirts out of dozens in the Cafepress lineup were were impacted. The white and women’s t-shirt prices increased by 7% which is a minor bump considering these prices have remained the same for almost 9 years. The largest price jumps were for magnets and buttons which changed on average over 50%.
White T-Shirt - $14.99 (+7%)
Women’s T-Shirt - $14.99 (+7%)
Dog T-Shirt - $16.99 (+21%)
Rectangle Magnets:
• Single Rectangle Magnet - $3.49 (+40%)
• 10 pack - $19.99 (+81%)
• 100 pack - $139.99 (+64%)
2.25″ Magnet - $2.99 (+70%)
Buttons:
• Mini Button - $1.49 (+50%)
• 2.25″ Button - $2.99 (+99%)
• 3.5″ Button - $3.49 (+50%)
Black Cap - $14.99 (+7%)
Cap - $14.99 (+15%)
Stickers:
• Bumper Sticker - $3.49 (+16%)
• Oval Sticker - $2.99 (+20%)
• Rectangle Sticker - $2.99 (+20%)
Journal - $9.49 (+26%)
Single Greeting Card - $2.99 (+20%)
For more information check out the Cafepress announcements page.
The World’s Best T-Shirt Packaging - Ongoing Review
I thought it would be fun to do an ongoing t-shirt packaging review of the best t-shirt packages in the world. As I discover new packages or if t-shirt talk readers post comments of companies packaging I should check out I will edit the post to highlight/reorder the best t-shirt packaging. This post will cover just the “outside” packaging and hopefully later this week I will post one for “inside” presentation that would include any additional packaging of the actual shirt and other included goodies. For now I have not included those companies who use the standard white bags with a company sticker but will consider adding some at a later date. What would a “world’s best list” be without creating a numbered list. If you believe that some of these are out of order let me know why as comments and I will consider your feedback.
1. Design By Humans
Design by Humans definitely has a wow factor with full-bleed dropout/printing on a clear bag. On one side the bag is see through in parts allowing the customer (and others) to see the shirt design before the packaging is even opened. The other side of the bag uses a metallic shiny style (not sure what it is called). The bag has a very large design logo, the company name and web site address which is great for the branding. The see through bag really is fun unless you were buying someone a gift or bought a design that was sensitive/offensive/adult in nature.
2. Oddica
Oddica had the most artistic bag. It has a full-bleed print with the Oddica logo being very visible in white over a maroon header. The main part of the bag has one of the Oddica designs for sale called “Bluebird Migrane” which has the design title and artist name. The back of the bag has two edges in the maroon with the light blue in the middle along with an Oddica logo and another t-shirt design called “Sheltered” along with the artists name. The Oddica bag is the most artistic and intriguing with the full bleed multi color design.
3. Spreadshirt
The Spreadshirt shipping bag has very subtle unrecognizable pattern at first glance but if you look closely you will see a repeating pattern of mini t-shirts. It isn’t strong in branding but is unique and fun to find in your mailbox.
4. Shirt.woot
Shirt.Woot is the most fun bag with a bunch of little characters wearing t-shirts across one side of the bag. It also has the shirt.woot logo in white surrounded by a black background. This bag is sure to get the attention of the mailman or the person opening the bag. The other side of the bag is all white with no print.
5. Threadless
The Threadless bag is a simple blue bag with the Threadless logo and url addreses for threadless.com and threadlesskids.com. The bag also has a shopping cart character with a talk bubble with the text “You’re awesome and this pack is proof!” The back side of the bag is mostly blue with a white outline.
6. Cafepress
Cafepress uses a few simple types of packaging for t-shirts that are both paper and plastic. They have the cafepress logo with the Cafepress trademarked flying green star that takes up a lot of the packaging. The packaging is fairly conservative but does a good job of branding. [This is one image that isn't mine because I have not received a Cafepress t-shirt in their small packaging in quite some time so it is being borrowed from Kimiskustoms until I get my own image.]
7. Zazzle
The bag is all dark grey metallic and if you look close you can see a relatively small Zazzle logo with the phrase “infinite one of-a-kind-ness”. When the bag was in my mailbox it got my attention but the logo was actually less apparent in person than in the photo. While I really like the bag the logo just doesn’t pop off the bag.
8. YOUR BAG HERE - If your t-shirt company uses awesome bags or if you know of one who does please let us know as a comment to this post. Thanks!
Document Your Company History With T-Shirts - Mozilla History on 53 T-Shirts
Many companies release t-shirts for product releases, events, or memorable occasions and over the years the number of t-shirts really adds up. But what usually happens to company shirts is that they get worn to gym or to do yard work and get to rag status and soon become a distant memory. But John Slater, the Creative Director at Mozilla has compiled 53 Mozilla t-shirts including a few Netscape t-shirts for context and posted them on Flickr. According to John this will be a work in progress and hopes others will send him images of any of the missing t-shirts.
Check out John’s blog at Into the Fuzz or Flickr for more info.
