Tips and Tricks for T-shirt Entrepreneurs

It is what it is - A reminder today of why I love CafePress

Posted on February 1st, 2007 by thetshirtnexus.
Categories: CafePress.

So yesterday I started getting back to back sales on a particular design of mine that I put up a long time ago in a Basic Shop. The design is “It is what it is“. I thought it was just coincidence and got busy doing other things.

Today I went on a mountain bike ride with two friends of mine, we started at the beach then went up into the mountains and back again. It was a pretty day and a great ride.

I came home and checked my sales. More sales for that same design, but in particular, for the design on the Women’s Long Sleeve Dark shirt.

I had done some preliminary searches earlier to see if I had any links coming in, but no, I didn’t find them, of course it takes a while to show up in Google. Searches for just the phrase brought up a variety of results, it is, after all, pretty common.

Finally though I found an article which I think explains it… Olivia Newton John apparently wore my shirt as a guest judge on American Idol! I only saw a tiny picture of the group of judges but it sure looked like my brown shirt! I couldn’t believe it.

Well, maybe I shouldn’t believe it. I found a post that says Olivia’s shirt was from a different website. I looked and they have a very similar shirt to mine but it’s not exactly the same. Their version costs $52!

Frankly, in the small picture I saw, the shirt does not seem to perfectly match my shirt or their shirt but I think Olivia’s microphone pulled the shirt a little out of shape making it hard to see. But hey, I’m not complaining, I put up a design in a basic shop, it made sales, I let it sit for the most part but I kept it up to date.

Now the phrase gets renewed interest because it’s worn by a celebrity.

I go on a mountain bike ride.

I come back and discover my sales have been higher than usual and it seems like this design is what is causing this unusual spike.

I still haven’t found a direct link to the shop, if there isn’t one then I have an increased respect for the power of the CafePress Marketplace because that would mean that when I only had my basic shop (I have since included the products in one of my premium shops) then shoppers were finding the shirt on their own, most likely just searching for it using the Marketplace search function.

I believe the term for the phenomenon demonstrated here is “passive income”, I call it, “I’m glad I found CafePress!”.

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