Signing up and looking around

So, you picked out an awesome name and are ready to signup for a shop.  I signed up for a shop name of:  FromPinkSlip

The shop web address is going to be:  www.cafepress.com/yourshopname

So mine is: www.cafepress.com/FromPinkSlip

See how I capitalized my shop name in the web address to define each word?  The web address doesn’t care about capitalization so if someone typed it in with or without the capital letters they would both end up at my site.  This little trick just helps people define the words easier.

If you click one of my banners, you will be sent directly to the sign up page.

The signup was pretty easy.  They had me read and accept their terms, etc. as normal, fill out a short questionaire (don’t worry if you don’t have a website already) and I typed in my email and chose a password.  This email address that you typed in is going to be your username on CafePress from now on.   They also ask if you want to have a basic or premium.  You can always upgrade to the premium, you can’t downgrade to a basic.  I would just choose the basic for now, and once you get the hang of things and have a lot of designs to load, upgrade to the premium.

A couple of other things:  ShopID (no spaces - like this:  FromPinkSlip)  Shop name (spaces - like this: From Pink Slip)  You can leave the “return page” blank so it will return to your home page once people check out.

Affiliate Opt-Out.  If you would rather not let other shopkeepers promote your designs (and thus you would probably have less sales), then you can opt-out here.  Affiliates are other shopkeepers that promote your products and receive a commission if they do.  This commission does not come out of your commission though.

Private - if you don’t want anyone else to see your products.

Now, just look around the site.  There are some templates for designs, some getting started sections, but most importantly a community forum.  This forum is a treasure trove of information.  If you have time now, just go in there and click around and read some of the questions other people ask.  These questions are answered by other shopkeepers and also by CafePress representatives.  Don’t worry if you don’t understand a lot of the questions or answers, we will get there soon enough.  Also, if you haven’t signed up for a CafePress shop yet, you can still view the community forum, so those of you who are just following along for now can still read the info there.

It looks like there are a lot of questions posted by new shopkeepers and a lot of people have referred them to a starting up tutorial by a Tanith.  If you haven’t found these posts yet, I will put up a link to her site next week.  I am going to re-read her tutorial now and will post next time on its contents.  I hope you have the opportunity to read it as well so we can all compare notes and discuss the next course of action.

 Is there anything you need help on?  Any problems along the way?

Slippy