A few questions/suggestions

[ricklondonwear]

1. Enjoying it here. Nice atmosphere and I see a lot of leakage onto
Google.

2. I have several other store/sites and in them, I am able to capture
the name, address, etc. of the buyer. It's a no-brainer that sending them a coupon or some discount quarterly or seasonaly works. In fact works close
to 35% or so in my other stores. Is there a place to find this in my sales
overview? If not, might you make it available.

3. Everything I read is that merchants, not just on Cafepress, but others as well make the majority of their sales through associates. Do you plan this
as part of your business agenda? For instance I own an indepedenant store elsewhere, but offer the items through my manufacturer on Amazon for affiliiates. The store has 65,000+ items and would you believe close to 99% of the items are sold through affiliates on Amazon? And that is even with offering thousands of them on Shop.com, Ebay, etc. Something to think about.

4. Can PF money be converted back to cash if we prefer? If so, how?

Otherwise everything looks to be running smoothly and well managed.

Thanks!

ricklondonwear.com

[Cartesian Bear]

2. I have several other store/sites and in them, I am able to capture
the name, address, etc. of the buyer. It's a no-brainer that sending them a coupon or some discount quarterly or seasonaly works. In fact works close
to 35% or so in my other stores. Is there a place to find this in my sales
overview? If not, might you make it available.

I'm still waking up, and getting over one of those "space cadet" colds, but I think I remember a thread on this quite a few months ago ... it was a dialog between "we need the data for marketing" and "I wouldn't like it, it violates my privacy". I'm in the second group.

What you could do is put a "Sign up for Newsletter / Special Deals" on your web pages, and have interested buyers send you their info.

--Liz

[ricklondonwear]

Liz,

To me, that would be just as good. NP. I just wouldn't know how to set up such a opt in newsletter box. Is there room for it on the main page? I don't have a special template, wish I did, but am pretty cyber-illiterate. Any remedy?

[gp1628]

Im afraid that the idea of getting the email addresses of customers is simply NOT going to happen. No online system nowadays is going to be a 3rd party to gathering an address then passing it to someone else. There are just too many lessons learned on that.

However, there is an alternative. Become a first level gatherer yourself. The shop setup at PF does not allow that like some others (but you gain way more benefits). There are sites that will let you create a signup form that you can link to in your shop. The signup can be for newsletter or anything else you want. Pitch it however you want to get people to signup.

Its probably best to do it on your own domain name (you can get one now for as little as $6 a year) and host it off of PFs servers (can be done for free).

Im not saying its the answer. Just that it is an option.
Gandalf Parker

[grizzlebeans]

I'm actually working on setting up a system like that in my shop. I've been using Aweber (http://www.aweber.com/?285672) for over a year now and love their setup. As soon as I get my shop in order I'll show everybody how I did it! :)

[ricklondonwear]

thanks gp and grizzle. gp, that would work fine; i am not quite sure what kind of service, though to look for to provide that, that is, a sign up prompt for a newsletter.

i have had another store; my own domain for a number of years. at checkout, it asks to check a box if they want to receive occasional promotions before they are advertised on the website; about 80% or so check yes; so (early on) i was just testing it, and sent out emails about 3-4 times a year with these promotions and the response was okay but not great. then i decided to spend a bit of money and test post cards (not really that expensive): they agree to sign up and put their name/address when checking yes (i was surprised how many actually want to see the promotions enough to do so); the postcard response was phenomenal; well worth the few hundred dollars spent on it. (we back it up with an email as well).

i dont think this kind of promo would work that well if done too often; overkill, scents of spam, etc.

and i agree anything like this has to be opt-in or its invasive, and they'll
never come back.

thanks grizzle for that site. it looks like it has some interesting services
that i could use both here and my own domains. i will check it out when
i have more time (on my way out of town).

appreciate it much, all.

www.ricklondonwear.com