Five Long Years

This post kind of serves two purposes, being that I have been doing this for five years and post number 1,000.

Not sure why I took so long to get into making designs for t-shirts, I knew about CafePress for a number of years, just never did anything about it. Until one day I decided to create a design an upload it. I caught the bug and have been trying to make funny/humorous designs ever since. I enjoy doing this, it is my very own creative outlet without boundaries. Weird ideas pop into my head, so I make a shirt. If if sells, it sells, if it doesn't so what. I'm not losing anything on it.

Unfortunately at this point I thought I would have been making enough for me to buy some of my own basic equipment to make my own t-shirts at home for possible giveaways, or for friends and family. I do not though, between $30-40 a month is all a get. It was sweet a few years ago I was raking in about a $100 for a few months, then CafePress changed how they did things and I never got back to that. But I really don't want to get into that, this post is not about that.

A lot of designs have come and gone. Some were crap, some I've hidden, some are still there just modified a little. I do my best coming up with funny designs, most are something I find extremely funny. That may be my downfall a little, but whatever, I know somewhere out there a few people have my sense of humor and maybe they'll buy a shirt or two.

As for post number 1,000. That's just great. I started this blog sometime in September, since a few days after opening up a free shop my son was born. So I did not have the time to really put much stock into anything with this. Eventually a routine was formed and I got to the I guess marketing side of promoting my shop. I mean I blog, but I'm not sure how effective it is. I get hits to the blog, but hits do not translate into actually going to my shop and buying something. I think that has happened once or twice in the life of my blog. Not all that great. But I will continue to blog away.

Over the years I have done different kinds of blog posts. At one point I took decided to take away my random rants from this blog and put them into a different blog. That didn't last too long. I just brought all the posts back here, since I should have just kept them here in the first place. I went from the Awesome Image of the Week to the Gnome of the Day. I have also been back and forth with how I featured products. I used to do a monthly post, a weekly post, new design post (I still do now and again), to doing a featured product of the day. That is a little easier since CafePress and Zazzle both have tools on their site to easily featured an item.

I have to say, doing this has become a chore, especially when feedback/sales are not there. Then I get one every so often and this no longer feels like a chore. I do enjoy doing it, I do wish I could just do this, but that is just not in the cards.

So here's to five more years. Thanks for reading.

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