CafePress has its highlights and lowlights as a marketplace, but paired with the right subject matter it may just compliment your Squidoo lens nicely. Seth writes on Squidooblog: “Not yet announced to the public at large is our hot-off-the-press module with CafePress. It uses CP’s new, powerful TopicAds program so you can feature the latest and greatest CP designs right on your lens.” An exciting prospect, to say the least.

I played with the CP module quite a bit last night, adding it to over ten of my lenses - with varying degrees of success. Here are a few observations for those of you who haven’t kicked the tires on it yet:

• Pro: Huge inventory of products to potentially feature and sell through your lens.
• Con: You can’t target specific products - you’re at the mercy of “TopicAds” - which isn’t very intuitive at present.
• Pro: The custom made graphic designs and multiple items make for a huge selection of hats, shirts, mousepads, coffee mugs, pillows etc. to feature.
• Con: The custom made designs are also often quite awful.
• Pros: The wide breadth of subject matter increases the likelihood of relevant niche products to sell on your lens.
• Cons: Again, the wide breadth of subject matter allows for an awful lot of crap.

I think this module has a lot of potential, but currently it is quite buggy (often only returning the CP logo) and I won’t be using it on a considerable scale until you can target specific designs and products. But when it gets to that level of detail, it will be a terrific module.

This entry was posted on Thursday, March 16th, 2006 at 6:42 pm and is filed under CafePress Modules. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.