Scheming

I keep trying to find a good money-making scheme I can do from home to supplement the grocery budget. I've considered eBay, but I don't have much of my own crap to sell and I'm not convinced I could find decent enough thrift store items around here to net me a profit if resold.

They had a sidewalk clearance sale at the mall last weekend -- I saw dresses with original price tags of $125 going for $10. They were beautiful special occasion dresses; I'm sure I could have made my $10 back and then some, but I didn't have $10 at the time (or $20 or $30 or $40 to buy a few) so I missed that boat. Dangit.

Then on Sunday night, I stumbled across CafePress.com. What a perfect opportunity! They have a catalog of blank products to sell; you use your design and computer skills to whip something up and open a store on their site. They charge a base price for each item (say, $5 for product X) and you set your store's price somewhere above that ($7, maybe). When someone buys product X, CafePress prints, processes, and ships the order, keeps the $5, and sends you the $2. Opening a basic store is free; your only responsibility is to create the products and market them to paying customers.

"Hey!" I thought. "I can totally do that!" Sure, I don't have any actual design training or talent, but I do have Photoshop, lol. So I decided to try it out.

Problem is, with the basic (free) store, you're only allowed one design per product. You can't, for instance, make one onesie design in girly colors and have another of the same design for boys. You get one shot at the onesie, one for a t-shirt, one for a tote bag, one for a journal, bla bla bla.... Hmmph. So now I'm a little soured on the idea. I could pay them some money, of course, to get more variety in my store, Leonine Designs -- but I'm not willing to do that yet when money is so tight and I'm really only testing the waters.

Still. What can it hurt? All it costs me is time and I seem to have plenty of that in the middle of the night while my insomniac baby plays. So I made a journal pimping out the toddler's gorgeous lashes.

Consider this my effort at marketing.

You get a fairly decent idea of the product on the CafePress site, but their close-up pic is a low resolution version of the original that doesn't do it justice. So on the off-chance you'd like to buy this oh-so attractive journal for yourself or for a loved one (it makes a great gift!), here's a better view of what you'd be getting:




~RCH~