Basic or Premium? It's a question that arises quite frequently so instead of repeating ourselves, here is a 'mother load' of info.
This list of pros and cons, personal opinions/experience and other pertinent information was created by some of the Shop Keepers (new and old) here at CafePress.
If you have any other thoughts that you feel should be added to this resource, please send me a PM.
Happy Selling! P:Art
Darice
Wandering re-establishes the original harmony which once existed between man and the universe. Anatole France
PREMIUM if you can afford it, simply for the fact you can have lots of one item (or a class of items), which makes it nice to have a specialty shop or section.
For instance, if you want a panty section... a golf shirt section.... a mug section, even. All kinds of possibilities open up when you want a product niche. You can cater to people looking for a specific product, and search by product, in a premium store.
I switched to premium relatively fast when I realized that I had ideas for 10 designs, but they'd have to be on 10 different shirts. So what happens when Suzy wants that graphic on a maternity tee? Either the whole shop has to be on one design, or Miss Suzy is out of luck, because Design A is on 5 tee styles , none of which are the maternity tee! While I still have many basic shops, some with lower markup than the premium, I have ultimate control in my premium in product choices (If I wanted to, I could have 3 jr ringer tees with the same design, different colors, so a customer can look immediately at the design side by side and pick the right color).
On the other hand, a Basic shop is good if you are offering One design at a time... Say a fundraiser for your Scout Troop. This year's shirts can have one message, and next year, same store, you can have the same shirts with a whole new design. It's good for game prizes, online scavenger hunts, and custom orders as well as fundraisers and limited time specialty deals. When a friend of mine asks for a certain shirt, I can put it in one of my basic stores (that has the same name as a section in my main store) and lower the markup... that was really handy when my friend wanted a maternity tee that SHE had the idea for and wanted ME to make... When people asked her where she got it, she gave my premium URL... but gave her sister the basic URL when she asked me about it, so her sister got a deal too! (and how cute is matching maternity shirts with your sister?)
There are many many possibilities and a plethora of directions your shop can go in. Many people have both basic and premiums, and upgrade the basics when they do start to sell well, so they pay for themselves.
JudiQue aka Judi
For me, I only considered a basic shop for about .02 seconds once I figured out what the differences were. I decided since it was only $6.95/month, I wouldn't be out all that much if it didn't work out. After only 2 months, my Cafecash has paid all the "rent". (Would have been only one month but I spent my Cafecash!)
One reason for choosing Premium was the fact that it looks better ... much more professional looking than basic, even when using CP's templates. With the basics, there's no way to change the layout, or the order the products are shown where you can arrange any way you wish with the Premium.
Then there's the fact that you can make changes to your shop, even with a limited knowledge of HTML ... can't do that with basic shops.
I DO see the value in the free shops -- they can be a good testing ground for new designs that might not fit in your existing Premium shop.
Lekker Jen aka Jen (http://www.lekkerblog.com/)
Another thing with a basic shop... sometimes you have a design that's maybe a little to "offensive" for your own shop or brand. Basic shops have a degree of public anonymity that can be beneficial in protecting your brand while still designing to you heart's content. Of course, you could open a whole 'nother premium, but believe me, multiple premiums is a lot of work. A lot. Why am I here? I have work to do!!
ninaPA (http://www.cafepress.com/hometownshirt)
We started with a few basic shops but were frustrated with how time consuming it was to link them all together. It took less than 2 weeks before we got our first premium shop, and now we have eight of them.
Why? - our sales are much higher now that we have 'niche' shops. We can advertise each premium shop to a particular market. - we loved being able to customize the look of our shops example: Milestones Books (http://www.cafepress.com/milestonesbooks) - we found it helped a lot with SEO to be able to add lots more text to our shops, and site indexes and such. Customers spend a lot more time browsing all our designs and often buy more than one. ex: Milestones Music (http://www.cafepress.com/milestonesmusic) - the monthly fee is paid for by selling one item, basically. Well worth the investment. - we still have some basic shops, for custom designs, for 'current topic' designs and such, that just don't fit in our premiums anywhere. Sometimes we sell a few, sometimes not. And like Jen said, they are more anonymous. If you are targetting a specific market, you don't want to mix family friendly/non family friendly in the same shop if possible. I personally have passed up a lot of great designs I wanted to add to my affiliate shops because the shopkeeper had offensive designs mixed into the same shop with darling kids designs. So in that sense, basic shops would have allowed me to pick up just the designs I wanted and not the offensive ones.
mystic aka Caroline
Reason #1--You CAN afford a premium shop. Yes you can. At only 6.95 per month it is only 2 less mocha latte things, one less trip to the video store, etc.. Sell one shirt and you have paid your fee for the month. You can still keep you basic shop at the same time. So if you change your mind down the road you can close the premium. (trust me, you wont change your mind)
Reason #2-- If you are worried about it being complicated... It is not, but if you struggle there are some great shopkeepers in the premium shop section just waiting to help you out.
Reason #3-- The ability to add 3rd party tools to your shop. You can add a statcounter for example and be able to track the traffic to your shop.
ShopaholicChick (http://www.shopaholicchick.com/)
i have both premium and basic - some of these may be repeated from above - but they are worth repeating
as mentioned before basic shops are good for designs you want to make but don't want to put in your premium shop
i have 2 premium and over 20 basics - i have only had 2 sales off of basic shops - in 18 months - and i avg about 75-150 every month on my premiums...
premium shops give you more freedom to customize your shop - and allow for multiple sales - i ofer have shoppers buy 4 things from my shop each with a different design - they would not do this if each design is in a different basic shop
Mish
Quite simply a basic shop works for a once off design. If you have any intentions whatsoever of actually making any money off your hobby then you MUST get a Premium Shop.
I would estimate that anyone with 30 - 50 or more designs will cover their shop cost with no problem. Just remember to tag your images with Cafepress Keywords. Use the maximum of 20 allowed.
This is about a 3 to 4 month process to get your money back and thereafter you will be smiling and naturally want to add more designs.
Learn how to import products to save time. You will have to mass change 3 things for each image after importing.
1. The image itself 2. The product description 3. The product name
Michigal
Pros of a premium shop: 1. You can have as many products and as many designs as you want in your shop. You're not limited to one of each product. Want an entire section of mugs? You can do so. Want to have 20,000 designs on every product CP sells? You can do that with a premium.
2. The premium shop will pay for itself if you can sell one T-shirt a month. If your T-shirts have are priced $6-7 above the base price, selling one a month pays for your shop.
3. CP has said that premium stores ALWAYS outsell basic stores. That in itself should tell you something.
4. Premium stores in general look more professional.
5. You can use CPShop or such if you choose to. You can't do that with a basic store.
6. SEO SEO SEO SEO SEO!! This in itself should be a HUGE reason to open a premium. If you are serious about making money you absolutely need to be able to help the search engines find your products. You have sections, section descriptions, etc. in a premium store that you don't have in a basic store, you also have a lot more potential to have the search engines find you because you most likely will have more products with more product descriptions.
7. Promotion. Say you want to pay for advertising space on a popular blog pertaining to your store. It's going to look a whole lot better, more professional, than a basic store which pretty much looks like you are in the CP marketplace.
8. Branding. If you ever want to make a name for yourself, it's going to be a whole lot easier to do with your store looking like "YOUR" store than like part of cafe press.
Pros of a basic shop: 1. Having designs that don't work in your premium stores, wanting to remain anonymous, etc. Say you want to make an R rated design and your shop is a children's shop...the basic works well for that. Say you want to add just a couple of political designs but don't want to have them in your regular premium store. The basics are good for that.
Sag aka SagArt
Wrote this for Hectic's 2nd CP book and since it looks like there won't be one, it'll work for your sticky.
Premium Shop Vs. Basic Shop
Oh me, oh my … do I open a Premium CP Shop or stay with the Basic CP Shop? Bet I’ve heard that question in the CP forums no less than a thousand times. And, when that perpetual question pops onto the forum, I have this fanatical urge to answer it with a one word response of … Duh????? It’s like asking if you should cross the ocean blue in a tiny paddle boat or board a luxurious ocean liner for the trip.
When I borrowed enough nerve to start my adventure at Cafepress.com, it took ole’ SagArt about 23 hrs.to switch from a basic shop to a premium shop. I may not be a techie, but I am smart enough not to sew my wild oats in a Basic Shop and then stand back waiting for a crop failure.
I’ve got a four-pocket backend and I fill those pockets up with cold hard cash each month because my Premium Shops give me the best tools to compete in the marketplace. So what do the Premium Shops offer that ya’ can’t get in a Basic Shop?
• I’m not limited on product offerings; • I can SEO (Search Engine Optimization) till I’m blue in the face; • I can manage my shop and make necessary updates in a matter of minutes to all my products; • I can customize my shop to look “purdy” for my customers and create a comfortable shopping environment with custom layouts to showcase my newest designs; • I can launch advertising campaigns to address thousands of products in one shop; • And, so much more!
Yes, the basic shops are free, but Sugar … you can slap all the perfume you want on that pig and she still ain’t a gonna’ take no ribbon at the fair. Whereas, my Premium shops cost me the measly sum of a “Bag It N’ Gag It” burger meal each month, they pay their own way because I have the right tools to turn hits into buying customers.
Yeah, I hear tell stories of some folks who create a ton of Basic shops in hopes saturating the marketplace to the level of making a few sales each month. I’d rather sandpaper a bobcat’s butt in a telephone booth than to try to manage and market a barn full of Basic Shops that limit your product offerings, SEO opportunities, and ultimately your sales and profit potential. Seems to me that your cracker has slipped off the cheese one too many times when you take the Basic Shop avenue of trying to compete in a highly competitive niche market. That’s about as easy as nailin’ Jell-O to the wall.
If a Premium Shop isn’t the best fork in the road to travel … then grits ain’t groceries, eggs ain’t poultry, and Mona Lisa was a man! When ya’ll get your Premium Shops up and fillin’ your four-pocket backend with some green, come on over and sit a spell. I’ll be out on the front porch, sippin sweet tea and shootin’ those pesky flies with my BB gun. Life is sweet!
Uncle Frog
One thing I do like about the basic shops (besides price) is that it organizes the product into logical sections automatically (e.g. apparel, baby, housewares).
One thing I like about the premium stores (besides that things sell better in premium stores) is the ability to reproduce entire sections and keep the image formatting adjustments exactly the same. If one is using a standard square image and tweaking the image on certain products, creating a series of basic shops can become unnecessarily tedious.
fifilaroach
And really, why spend a lot of time trying to find a way around the small cost of a premium store? If you are willing to put time into your shop, it seems to me that spending $7 a month on it so you can have a better chance of selling the things you work so hard to create would be a very easy decision.
tkepner (http://www.cafepress.com/kepnersdesigns)
If you aren't sure that CafePress is the way you want to make money, or if you're worried that your ideas/designs won't sell, then the Basic shops are the ones to explore. That's how I started. Not being able to have more than one maternity tee with a design wasn't a significant worry for me at the time. And I only had about a dozen designs at the start, so a dozen free Basic shops made more sense than wasting $60/year on a premium shop that might never pay for itself.
However, if you are confident your designs will sell, and that you have enough of them to actually make it worthwhile to have a larger shop, then the Premium is the way to go.
It was when I reached the $500 in sales per month that I decided a Premium shop might be a better alternative. Moving my 300+ Basic shops into one Premium was a major hassle and took me over two months to complete. I added in the "pocket-sized" variations while I was doing this, effectively doubling the size of each shop as I moved it into the Premium shop.
Of course, if I hadn't been adding shops at a rate of four or five a day, I wouldn't have had so many shops to migrate! On the other hand, having so many designs made it possible to have those sales. Which came first, the chicken or the egg?
Anyway, that's how I ended up with a Premium shop. By the way, if you are going to go to Premium, make the one-year payment of $59.95 instead of paying $6.95 a month, it's cheaper.
Melhi Ink (http://www.cafepress.com/melhi)
Use premium when you want to:
1. House many designs under a single brand
2. Design to a theme or set of related themes
3. Advertise many designs with a single, relatively simple URL
4. Group products by topic, item and/or design
5. Customize your store to better suit your theme, market's personality or your design style
6. Carry products not available in the basic package.
7. Carry multiples of the same product in one shop.
8. Offer variations on a single design. Example: "I love my dog" on the white tee in a choice of red, blue or black letters.
9. Offer more than one design in a single shop.
A basic shop should never contain more than one design choice (excluding variations that exist solely to fit the design to specific products) and should be used when:
1. You have a one-off design in a single version and you don't intend to upload new designs, regularly.
2. You have a design to offer that you don't want or can't have associated with your premium brand(s)
3. You want to continue to offer a design or version of a design that you've retired from a premium shop.
4. (in regards only to having *multiple* basic shops) You don't intend to actively market/advertise the URLs of your basic shops.
5. You want to offer a design that is ill suited to the theme of and/or market for your premium shop(s) -- regardless of whether you'll slap your brand on it.
Additional Tips...
Premium - *Go with the yearly subscription. *Do customize, at least with a CP template *Make good use of the ability to section *Advertise your one simple URL - even if only in your e-mail sig.
Basic - *If you don't like leaks, basic is probably not the option for you.
Palmetto (http://cafetoolbox.com/)
Here's what I wanted to add... Short Version: Yes, $60 is a lot up front for something that might not work out, but find a way to pay for 3 or 6 months ($18 or $34) up front and commit to building your shop. Once the cash starts filling your pockets, you'll be more than able to fund a full year at $60.
Long version: I know that the roughly $60 for a year of premium can be tough to swallow when you're first starting out, but that's what the quarterly and semi-annual options are for. Pay for 3 months worth - $18.45 less than a night out at the movies, and commit yourself to building your shop. Unless you have a built in audience from a web site or blog, expect to break even or lose money during those first three months.
After three months, you will need to find another $20 to keep yourself going for a bit longer. However, if you've been working on building and promoting, by 5 months or so, you should start to see sales trickle in. First it's only 5-10 a month, then 20 a month...
Once you've got a steady stream, you can use some of that cash to pay for your shop a year in advance and get the best deal.
Janray
Premium shops are free. The way I see it, when I can get a website with a choice of some pretty nice templates, or the capability of designing my own template, unlimited gobs of megabytes to store design images, unlimited traffic, great flexibility for product offerings, layout, groupings, SEO, unlimited products, identity and branding for 6 or 7 bucks a month I say "What a deal!"
If I'm serious about the profitability, I'll get something going and sales will happen. Once the sales start the fee is just a penny ante deduction from the CafeCash. out of sight out of mind. That's "Free".
I'm not giving up any cafe latte, nights on the town, or any other little pleasure. My dilemma is not whether to open a premium shop, but rather how many premium shops can I manage?
Linkin Mall - This Suggestion is Currently Not Working
If you do basic shops, don't try to spread three or four designs across the products.
Put one design in one shop. Modify it so it fits the mousepad, tiles, mugs, etc. without asymetric white borders.
Put another design in one shop. Modify it so it fits the mousepad, tiles, mugs, etc. without asymetric white borders.
Visit this link and notice the website address at the top. Then scroll down and see how many products are displayed on a free site. Also notice that the banner (logo) at the top of each shop links to the comma string.
This message has been edited. Last edited by: P:Art,
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