load of dough when Mother Nature doesn’t want to play nice and rain ruins your prod-
ucts. Think ahead. This stuff starts to take up space rather quickly.
E-commerce, Selling Online And On The Road
There are simple solutions to all the points mentioned earlier. They’re CafePress.com and
Paypal.com. No doubt, right about now you’re cursing my name and wishing me to Hell
for making you wade through all the stuff you had to read that preceded this section. By
the way, “Hell” is a (supposed) place and therefore a proper noun, so it should be capital-
ized. Remember that the next time you shoot off a testy email.
CafePress.com is a site that makes stuff. Stuff you can sell. Most of the items men-
tioned in the list I wrote above are available from them. But here’s the really slick part.
They, unlike your local screen printer, print on-demand. That means if somebody orders
one t-shirt, CafePress prints one t-shirt and ships one t-shirt. This is handy. No dealing
with printers, minimums, additional costs such as shipping and storage. CafePress han-
dles all that for you and taxes.
Here’s how they work. You set up an account; pick your products; upload your de-
sign(s) that you got from your designer; position it where you want it to appear on the
item and set a selling price. CafePress charges a wholesale price for its products. You
mark that up to your selling price. CafePress keeps their wholesale amount. You make the
mark up. For example, a standard t-shirt from CafePress costs on the order of $15.99
USD. You might mark that up $10 USD. You make the ten and CafePress makes the
$15.99. But they also offer a one hundred percent guarantee and usually ship in twenty-
four hours. You set up how you prefer to be paid. It can be by check or Paypal and pay-