I recently finished a series of baby animal t-shirts.

Check them out at myCartoonShirt.com.

This post was written on IllustrationInfo.com. Content copyright 2008 Cory Thoman.

I thought it would be a good idea to review some of the different services I use. This review is for Cafepress, a print on demand shop.

Cafepress allows you to upload your designs and illustrations on a variety of products (t-shirts, mugs, buttons, etc.). Once your masterpiece is uploaded, you can purchase the products for yourself or set up a shop to sell to others.

I’ve used Cafepress on and off for a number of years with little success. A few months ago, I decided I would open a premium store and try make a stable income with it. I filled my store with 50 or so designs and started promoting. Well, I still couldn’t get any sales and ended up closing the store because I really didn’t think it was worth the minimal price.

Overall, I wouldn’t discourage anyone from trying out a free store at Cafepress, but I can’t really recommend the premium store based on my experience. I wasn’t expecting huge riches from it, but I was at least hoping to match the minimal income I was having with my Zazzle store.

This post was written on IllustrationInfo.com. Content copyright 2008 Cory Thoman.

I started a new blog to promote my Zazzle store. You can check it out here.

This post was written on IllustrationInfo.com. Content copyright 2008 Cory Thoman.

Well, I broke down and opened a premium shop at Cafepress. My Zazzle store had been doing decent, so I figured I’d see how the other half lives. You can check it out here.

This post was written on IllustrationInfo.com. Content copyright 2008 Cory Thoman.

I frequently and shamelessly pimp out my Zazzle Gallery, but I haven’t mentioned that you can earn money by promoting Zazzle stores (hopefully mine) on your site.

Whether or not you’ve created products on Zazzle, you can still earn money by referring new customers. Zazzle will pay you a 7% referral fee for each sale that you refer to Zazzle.com from your site or offline marketing. If a customer you refer purchases Zazzle products that you’ve contributed, then you earn your full royalty and the 7% referral. Click here for more info.

This post was written on IllustrationInfo.com. Content copyright 2008 Cory Thoman.

It’s been a couple of weeks since I joined Zazzle and I just sold my first product. My ice cream cone t-shirt sold. I’ve done a little promotion, but not very much. I put an announcement link in the Zazzle forums and a few links on some Squidoo lists.

This post was written on IllustrationInfo.com. Content copyright 2008 Cory Thoman.

Since I’ve got a sizable stock art portfolio, I thought I would try selling some of it on one of the on-demand print stores. I chose Zazzle because it was free to open up a larger store or gallery. Here’s my gallery:

create & buy custom products at Zazzle

I’ll try to post on my experiences with Zazzle as I get a little more familiar with it.