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There are a number of sites on the internet that offer print-on-demand production of merchandise: shirts, mugs, iphone cases, refrigerator magnets, widgets, what-have-you. You upload your designs to their specifications, and when a customer orders, the object is manufactured and shipped to them. You pay no inventory cost, no warehousing, and earn a percentage of the sale. Of all of the sites offering similar services, I have the greatest amount of experience with CafePress.

Cafepress was founded in 1999, and currently has more than 13 million users. The site produces over 250 different types of products, ranging from poster prints and banners, to drinkware, to all manner of clothing. The process is simple — you create your storefront (which can be customized to match your website), upload your custom graphics (following the free downloadable product templates), set your price (Cafepress will tell you the cost of production, and you set your mark-up above that price — which is the amount that you earn per sale), and activate the product for sale. Cafepress handles the sale, the production, and the shipping, and pays you your monthly commission within 45 days of the month in which it accrued.

If you wish to run sales entirely through your own website, Cafepress also allows you to buy your own merchandise at cost, with price breaks for bulk ordering — so you can order inventory if you prefer to handle all aspects of the transaction yourself. Given the ability to customize a Cafepress shop to match your own, and embed it using simple HTML (iframe, for example), though, there’s not many drawbacks to simply letting Cafepress handle most of the back-end. If you follow the templates provided, I’ve found that the quality of Cafepress’ production is excellent. The poster that we did for THRILLING TALES, featuring the artwork originally used for the classic Justice, Inc. cover, turned out so well that I had a copy framed at a local art store and it now hangs in my living room.

The creation and sale of merchandise isn’t likely to be your primary focus as an Insurgent Creative — I suspect there are few of us who say “I want to design and sell original T-Shirts, gifts, stationery and more” (and those of us that do want to will probably figure out some way to traditionally produce inventory, as it brings the costs down significantly). However, for writers, artists, musicians, game designers, etc., the ability to have merchandise available that is branded for your property serves not only as a nice way to market your main property, but also acts as a good source of additional income. Whether you’re looking to have merchandise available online, or you’re interested in having some stock produced for sale at conventions or other events, Cafepress is a good option with minimal headaches.
 
 

The internet is the “killer app” that enables the Insurgent Creative life — it levels the playing field by offering audience aggregation, tools for production, distribution and more. As I’ve stated a number of times during this series, the best way for a creative to make a living is to get their products out to as many high-traffic platforms as possible. Even with this wide presence, though, it is best for you to have a single central site for your efforts. Your website can serve as a secondary sales source (behind the market-leading sites), an informational source for news and updates, and the center for your marketing efforts, by offering a single location to which you can direct customers. With hosting as cheaply available as it is today, the only remaining hurdle for the Insurgent Creative is the design of the site itself. If you have coding skills in HTML, CSS, Javascript, etc., you can take care of the nuts-and-bolts of this yourself. If you don’t (or even if you do, but prefer to rely on an open-source framework that you can then customize), your best option for content management is, in my opinion, WordPress.

WordPress is a PHP and MySQL-powered platform, free for download, using customizable template system and plug-in architecture. It currently is the most popular content management system on the internet, with a huge user base, and a vibrant community producing add-ons, plug-ins and templates that can meet any need you might have. This blog is run on WordPress, as are all of my sites (Adamant Entertainment and the Far West website, for example).

There are themes available for every conceivable site use, from magazine-style websites to artist’s portfolios. Many of these are freely available, although, to be honest, I tend to use premium professional themes, because they usually are more robustly tested, more stable, continually updated to reflect the latest iteration of the WordPress software, and offer support as part of their purchase price. My favorite premium theme company is Viva Themes, who charge $45 per theme. This blog is built from their Method theme, Far West is customized from the Amantina theme, and Adamant’s site was built around Republica. I’ve found their coding to be easily understood and adaptable, and the support forums covered any questions I have had.

There are plug-ins for a nearly countless variety of functions available for WordPress, and again, some are free and some are premium. One of the more important tools you should look into is some sort of eCommerce platform, allowing you to run a webstore on your site. Even though most of your sales will most likely occur via the market-leading site in your particular niche (Amazon if you’re writing books, for example), it’s always a good idea to be able to sell through your own site as well (not the least of which is because you earn a greater percentage of the sale price).

The eCommerce plug-in that I use (currently on Adamant’s webstore, and coming soon to the FAR WEST site as well) is Cart66. Cart66 costs $89 per year for a single-site license, integrates with most payment processors, and enables the selling of everything from digitally-delivered product to physical products and services. Here’s an overview of how it works:
 
 

Cart66 Overview from Lee Blue on Vimeo.

 
 
There are more ways to adapt WordPress than I could possible cover in a single blog entry — in fact, there are dozens of books that have been written about it, with more coming every month. I’m sure that some of you reading this have recommendations for really useful plug-ins, great themes and more — and I invite you to add them via the comments below.

Back on Day Nine of this series, I spoke about the Amazon Kindle Direct Publishing program, and it’s importance to Insurgent Creative writers, as it represents 60 to 70% of the total electronic publishing market. For a writer to make a living without a traditional publishing deal, it is essential to be available via the market-leading site. To thrive, however, it makes sense for a writer to have material available via as many platforms as possible. Otherwise, you’re just leaving money on the table. Rather than cover some of the other options as short individual entries (and given that we only have 4 more entries in the series), I’ve decided to cover some of the other publishing options briefly in this entry.

PubIt! is Barnes and Noble’s rather unfortunately-named electronic publishing platform, specific to the Nook ereader. Barnes and Noble is one of the top three sites, sales-wise (Amazon and Apple being the other two). Unlike Amazon, which uses the Amazon-proprietary Kindle format (based on MOBI), PubIt! uses the open-source standard EPUB format. Files can be imported ranging from Word, HTML, RTF and TXT and covered to EPUB via a free tool offered by the site, and can be error-checked via a Nook simulator before submission. From there, the process is fair standard to pretty much any epublishing platform. FAQ and instructions can be found here.

One thing to keep in mind is that PubIt! requires a U.S. Bank Account, U.S. Credit Card, and a U.S. Tax ID (either Social Security Number or Employer Tax ID number), that are ALL tied to a U.S. address. In addition, books released through this platform will only be offered for sale in the U.S (which, bluntly, puts Barnes and Noble at a serious disadvantage to Amazon KDP, which offers books world-wide).

Smashwords is not only a (fairly negligible) sales site, but also an aggregator, allowing authors to have their material sent via the platform to other sales sites, including the Apple iBookstore, Barnes & Noble, Sony, Kobo and the Diesel eBook Store (and Amazon too, starting next year). Generally, speaking, I would recommend that a writer deal directly with each sales platform — but that’s because I prefer more direct control. If you don’t want to be bothered with that level of involvement or maintenance, then going with an aggregator makes sense. Expect to be paid somewhere in the neighborhood of 60% of your book’s retail price, and payment is also only issued quarterly.

Apple’s iBookstore is one of the big three, and you can submit your work directly, or go through one of Apple’s approved aggregators (including Smashwords and Lulu). Apple uses the EPUB format exclusively. Books sold through the iBookstore earn 70% for the writer (even on books priced outside of the $2.99 to $9.99 range, so here Apple has an advantage over Amazon, albeit one which is pretty much entirely negated by Amazon’s far larger market share).

Lulu is a publishing option that’s been around for a while, and primarily offers print options, although electronic publishing is also available via your Lulu storefront. They also offer print distribution to bookstores via various paid programs. I’ve used Lulu for years for a handful of RPG titles, and sales have never been stellar — but steady. I suspect if I spent more time exploiting all the tools that Lulu offers, my results would be better.

Speaking of RPGs — another option for those of you producing game books, or books which might have a large crossover with the gaming audience — as I mentioned in Day 12 of this series, OneBookShelf now offers a print-on-demand program. (The procedural FAQ is here.) The program does not offer distribution outside of the OneBookShelf sites (RPGNow, DriveThruRPG, etc.), but integrates with the electronic publishing sales, and is a worthy option for writers who produce material of interest to gamers.

There are many other sites and services out there, and as always your best bet is to educate yourself as much as you can about all of your options, and to make the choices that benefit your career. If you’re going to make a living on your own, it makes sense to have as many tools as you can at your disposal.

Storm the gates!