Thanks for all the valuable info!

Lina V. Photography shop

Of course my shop isn't making any sales. Thanks alot for the information, I'm somewhat of a new kid on the block and I'm still putting designs on my products but when I really had no idea what to do when I was done. I guess it would help to read. Ok and here's my shameless plug www.cafepress.com/whatevauwant

That post is really useful, there was also another post that i found useful for promoting my site www.selfpromotion.com, after using this site I made my first sale after about 3 weeks of being on cafe press! I was a happy bunny.

www.cafepress.com/asianarthouse
www.cafepress.com/daviddaviesart

I've been reading through this thread and I just have one simple question. When you refer to "product descriptions" are you saying there should be a unique product description for each type of item and referencing the type of item in the description by using words like "hoodie" or "mug" or would using the same generic description on items that bear the same image be just as effective? I have scanned several shops and I am seeing it listed both ways. So my question is:

Is it more effective to promote the type of item (shirt, mug, hat) or to describe the image on the product. I am leaning towards the answer being "describe the image" and if that is true, then I could just use the mass editing feature to add a generic description to all items with the same image. Correct?

I have been making sales daily without using the product descriptions, but I am going to add them to see if this increases my sales and gets me ranked higher in search engines. Thanks for such a detailed post.

Gretchen,

What I suggest doing is putting together a general description of your graphic and then changing out the product name within the description. So, for example, if you had an image of a drummer girl you might come up with something like this:

"Rock and roll with this rockin drummer girl (item name)! Also would make a great gift for any girl who's got music in her blood!"

Then just change out the item name for each product. It will help you if someone searches in google, msn, yahoo or whatever if they search for something like "drummer girl t-shirt" or something. That way you get the product name in there and improve your rankings. You do spend more time doing it that way but also may boost your targeted hits. If you don't put in the item name though it probably won't be that big of a difference, but hey, every edge you can generate for yourself is worth considering.

Good luck!
Andy

THANK YOU for taking time to do this. I have actually been making money in referrals due to my line of work. But I am going to focus on MY shop now! Thanks again!

thanks for the great info! I am new to all of this and it was very informative!

Thanks for this great info. I'm about to change to a premium shop...but first I think I'll get all my descriptions and titles fixed up.
http://www.cafepress.com/starlingshop

Excellent post! You answered many of the questions I had.

Thanks.

Wickham Stone Park Gift Shop

Very helpful info. I am trying to install statcounter to my shop and I can figure out where to place the code. Can you help?

You can place it in the footer code when you 'customize' your shops html. That's where I have my code.

Thanks. I placed it at the top of the footer stuff. Is that ok? Do I need to add anything other than the code before & after it?

Sheryl@checkmandesign.com

Sheryl,

Once you sign up for Statcounter, there is a piece of code that is generated for you to use. As long as you are using the entire piece of code that it generates and says to place then you should be fine.

Be sure to create a blocking cookie for yourself (that's in the statcounter options) so that you aren't logging your own visits (which will skew your results).

Then just check back and if you see that you are getting visits then you know it's working. If you are a new site and don't have any real visitors yet, have a friend or relative go to your site and fish around to make sure that it's working.

Good luck to you!
Andy

Thanks Andy,
I just put the code into the footer (I mistakenly had put it in the sidebar area and wasn't getting anything) and I went to my shop before I put the blocking cookie in to see if it worked and it did. Thanks for your help. Now I just need to figure out how to drive traffic to my site! :-)

Sheryl

Thank you very very much