Jul
11
Book Title: A Mini Guide to Using eBay & CafePress to Sell Your Photography
Author: Martin Hurley
Publisher: Hurley Pix Inc.
Publishing Date: 2008
Pages: 26
Website: http://www.howtosellphotosonline.com
Since I have an avid interest in eBay and my wife has an equally avid, yet much more expensive, interest in photography, I thought that purchasing Martin Hurley’s eBook, A Mini Guide to Using eBay & CafePress to Sell Your Photography might be a good investment.
Unfortunately, even with the low purchase price of $7.00, I was disappointed.
I was intrigued by the author’s concept. Sell framed prints of your original photography at auction on eBay and have CafePress print, frame and ship the order for you. This is a unique spin on the drop shipping business model which is especially effective for sellers who live outside of the U.S. to sell to the American market. (The book’s author resides in Thailand.)
The book claims to be 26 pages. However, there’s only 19 pages of content - the majority of which are taken up by screen shots of the CafePress account creation and product design process and creating a listing on Auctiva.
I’m used to eBooks taking the reader through the very basics of the process, such as creating an account, listing a product, etc. However, after laying the foundation required for a common understanding among all the readers, most eBooks attempt to add to that knowledge by discussing more advanced topics. Unfortunately, this eBook never gets past the basics.
The target audience here is obviously the photographer looking for a venue to sell and not the the eBay seller looking for an item to sell. If you are interested in learning how to set up a CafePress account (and for some reason feel that CafePress’ instructions are inadequate) and would like to see some screen shots for creating an Auctiva eBay template, then your $7.00 is a good value.
I was hoping the author would present some ideas on what sort of images would sell well on eBay and get a feel for the market. Again, I was dissapointed. The eBook only suggested what I already knew - search completed auctions in eBay’s advanced search function.
One of the things I like about eBooks is the ability to learn a proven technique from an expert author while the concept is still “cutting edge.” A quick check of this author’s feedback (his eBay user ID is visible in one of the 15 screenshots) shows that of his 21 positive feedbacks, only 3 are from selling. Although I realize that many sellers have multiple user ID’s, this is not the way to establish your credentials as an expert on the topic.
While appreciate the concept the author is forwarding - selling photography on eBay and using CafePress as a distribution method, I was hoping to learn more by purchasing the eBook than I could gleen from the sales page.
It’s still worth a try though. Hopefully, my wife’s photography hobby will start to pay for itself — just like my eBay hobby!
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3 Responses to “Review: A Mini Guide to Using eBay & CafePress to Sell Your Photography”
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Thanks for the great review. I was about to buy the book, but had a feeling it might be a bit basic. Your review is much appreciated.
Hi…
Thanks for the review.
I will take some of your ideas and try to add them to my guide, in order to make it a better read for all.
Feel free to contact me anytime.
Martin
Recently CafePress began competing with the artists for whom it acts as printer and shipper.
CafePress rents web shops to its artists. The artist creates a website page and manually loads the desired blank products. The artist imports his image onto each product, arranges the products on the page, describes the products, titles the products and tags the images.
Initially, the artist would set a markup and received the markup for each product sold.
However, recently CafePress began competing with its artists, using the artists’ own images. CafePress created a marketplace where a customer can search a keyword. That search brings up artist products. When the customer buys from the marketplace CafePress pays the artist 10% of the price CafePress set. Both the customer and the artist lose money. If the artist’s shop sells a t-shirt for $21, the artist makes $3.01. If the marketplace sells the same shirt for $25, the artist gets $2.50. The customer pays $4 more, and the artist gets $0.51 less.
CafePress tells artists to “promote your own shop,” but CafePress buys Google adwords using the very image tags the artist provided.
CafePress justifies this bait and switch of service terms by telling artists they can opt out if they don’t like the new terms; however, many have spent as much as 7 or 8 years creating as much as 88000 images.
In spite of their sweat-equity, many shopkeepers (content providers) are building shops at other print-on-demand companies and then closing their CafePress shops due to the broken faith and trust, the financial hardship CafePress has delivered into so many lives, and the huge amount of time and dedicated effort all lost in the momentum of their own businesses. Would you keep your AMOCO station franchise if AMOCO built a company store across the street from you?