Tag: cafepress

  • Trump Pence – Make America Crap Again

    Trump Pence – Make America Crap Again


    Trump-Pence-Make-America-Crap-Again-Bearman-Cartoons-Beartoons

    Donald J Trump has decided that Indiana Governor Mike Pence should be his Vice Presidential candidate.  Much like no one checking Melina’s speech before it was delivered at the convention for potential issues regarding plagiarism of Michelle Obama, did no one think that Trump Pence could be shortened to TP which is itself a acronym for Toilet Paper.

    Well I did and to parody Trump’s famous, Make America Great Again, I now give you “Make America Crap Again”  And even better it is now available on tshirts, bumper stickers, drinkware and more at Cafepress.   Whether you are a #nevertrump personon the left or the right, you can express your thoughts on this duo.  Just head over to

    http://cafepress.com/donaldjtrumpTrump Ad

    And if you feel the need to laugh at Hillary Clinton too then head over to this cartoon.

  • Battery Hog Tshirt

    Battery-Hog-Version-2

    So you know what I did last night.  I drew.  Not because I had to or felt an obligation to but because I wanted to.  One of the things I wanted to do was beef up my tshirt shop and start doing more designs.

    This Battery Hog was inspired by apps like Facebook and Google Plus which seem to drain the hell out of my cell phone battery.  So I thought it would be fun to make an iphone or android case that had this image.   But I figured there are a bunch of “battery hogs”  Slap the shirt on an infant who drains you.  Slap it on your spouse who we KNOW drains you.  Get them on a bunch of stuff available here.

    See and you all thought I was giving up completely.

     

  • Happiness is a Clean Wipe

    Bearman-Cartoon-Happiness-is-a-Clean-Wipe

    It is the little things in life that they always say should make you happy.   When the urge to poop comes along, and you are finished with your business, nothing is worse than having to use half a roll of toilet paper to get yourself clean.  Happiness is indeed a clean wipe.

    I have also made this beauty available as a poster to adorn your bathroom, dorm, or surgical unit.

  • Milk Milk Lemonade Shirt

    Milk, Milk, Lemonade, Round the Corner Fudge is Made

    Two years ago my wife taught my then 9 year old nephew the famous Milk, Milk, Lemonade, Round the Corner Fudge is Made chant along with the associated movements.  Sadly for him, he couldn’t make it through it without cracking himself and everyone else up.  So this one is for him.  Available now on my store.

    What were some of your favorite childhood chants?

  • Election Bumper Stickers

    Obama or Romney Bumper Stickers

    It is election season in the United States.  Your choices (not including 3rd party candidates) are either President Obama or Mitt Romney.  You can decide in the comments or decide with your wallet and show your support to the world because I have put these images on Bumper Stickers for a limited time only.

    If you are for President Barack Obama and Joe Biden, you might want to show the world that Mitt Romney is a notorious flip-flopper (where is John Kerry to attempt to keep his crown)

    Or maybe you are for Mitt Romney.  In 2008 many people joined now President Obama in his quest for “HOPE”, a slogan of his campaign.  Now I am hearing many who voted for him in 2008 have simply “LOST HOPE”

    What say you?   Of course politics can get heated so if you prefer to just say “nice bumper stickers” in the comments, I’ll understand.  And if you choose to vote with your wallet, I won’t give up your vote.

  • Beartoons Shop is NOW OPEN!

    Beartoons Cafepress Shop

    So for the past few weeks I have alluded to the fact that I am working on some projects that have kept me from drawing cartoons.  I am happy to say that I have completed one of these projects by creating the Beartoons Shop!!  

    Way before I ever started drawing cartoons, I created a little store on Cafepress called WackSack.com where I posted images for sale on tshirts, mugs, bags, etc.   Several years later I started Bearman Cartoons and ultimately this site.  As beartoons.com took off, it seemed disjointed to keep pointing people to wacksack.com for my tshirts etc so for the past couple years I have been thinking it was time to rebrand. 

    And now it has happened.  Cleaned out some of the non selling items out of wacksack and rebranded the store to give it a feel more in line with the website.  You can access it directly at http://cafepress.com/beartoons or as always click on the Shop link at the top.  Thanks for your continued patience.  I’ll have a few more designs in my head that I will be posting in the next several weeks.

  • I am the 1% T-shirt

     

    It has been a while since I created a new shirt design for my shop.   This one screamed to be done.  The great thing is it works whether you are part of the Occupy Wall Street (or Elm Street) crowd AKA the 99% or if you are part of the 1% crowd.  See how democratic I am.  Appropriate for all political spectrums and income levels.

  • I’m Just a Healthcare Bill Tshirt

    Schoolhouse Rock - I'm Just a Healthcare Bill TshirtDon’t know about kids outside the USA, but in the US we were exposed on Saturday mornings to little blurbs between cartoons called School House Rock.

    These little ditties taught me the different between an adjective and an adverb, what the preamble to the US Constitution is and one of my favorites, was Bill.  It told the story of how a bill becomes a law on Capit0l Hill.

    Unfortunately many bad bills get made into law and many good bills sit forever never becoming law. 

    Those of you who remember School House Rock…what was your favorite???

  • Is it Time to Divorce Cafepress?

    Let’s play the game “Spot the Differences”  Can you spot the differences between these two shirts?>Got Hole 
    Well if you said nothing except the seller and the price, you would be correct.  No this isn’t a case of someone stealing another’s design, but rather an issue that my partners and I will have to decide whether or not to continue hosting our designs from WackSack.com on Cafepress.

    First, an aside for those wondering what this shirt is all about.  It is designed to promote the game cornhole.  Cornhole is a popular game in Southwest Ohio that is essentially horseshoes with bean bags and a box with a hole in it.   Considering the proximity to Kentucky, you would think horseshoes would not be in short supply.   Anyway to get all the info you ever wanted on the game go here. 

    Back to my story.  Cafepress is one of the largest Print on Demand companies for t-shirts on the web.  It is a great service that for $6.95 a month, we can post as many different designs on as many products as we want.  Typical screen printing companies make you order a minimum quantity but Print on Demand doesn’t fufill an order until someone actually buys something.  Now the downside is that instead of my costs being a couple dollars and being able to mark up the price considerably, I must take a much smaller commission.

    For example, the base price that Cafepress charges me on the above pictured ladies long sleeve is $19.99.  I can then set the retail price based off that and earn the commission on the difference.  My typical up-charge on t-shirts is $4, thus the $23.99 retail price that you can get on WackSack.com However, you can also find the same shirt on Cafepress’ Marketplace simply by doing a search on Cafepress.com.  They had the same product at the same retail price we set and we got a $4 commission whether it was sold on our site or in the marketplace.

    Everything was great and we made a small profit in 2008 and started out well in 2009.  That was up until June when Cafepress decided to change how they ran and upcharged the marketplace.

    • Beginning June 1st:  We’ll start setting prices in the Marketplace, and Shopkeepers will receive a 10% commission off the final retail prices from all Marketplace sales.  This change provides our shoppers with consistent pricing that’s competitive with other online retail stores.  It also allows us to better invest in a quality retail experience and continued growth…
    • With the Marketplace, we spend a great deal of resources to drive quality traffic through marketing and search engine marketing.

    So now they set the retail price of our designs in their marketplace and we only get 10% of the commission.  So as you can see from the above example, they are charging $28 for the same shirt I charge $23.99.  Now instead of a $4 commission I am only getting $2.80 and they are getting a $5.20 profit on top of their base $19.99.  What’s more, they can undercut our retail price as well encouraging people to buy from the marketplace versus from us, thus causing a loss in commissions as well.   In the beginning we figured it would be ok because we would make up the difference in volume as they were updating the search algorithm thus driving more sales.  In fact the opposite happened.  Sales since June have dropped off considerably in the marketplace.

    We spend money on Google Ad Words to drive traffic directly to wacksack.com but being on a limited budget it’s not much and we certainly can’t compete with what a company the size of Cafepress can do.  Besides their shear size means they will take up most if not all of the first page of search results.  Even when I do a specific search on Google of “cornhole ‘got hole’ tshirt”, you have to go through four pages of mostly Cafepress links to get to one that has WackSack in it.   The best analogy of the situation would be renting kiosk space from Walmart but they put you in the back of the store while promoting and selling your products in the front.  It’s too hard to compete.

    So now we have to make a decision.  The first obvious response is to remove the ability of CP to sell our designs in their marketplace.   This may move us up in the search rankings.  The few sales the marketplace has been making won’t be missed, but we keep holding out hope that the algorithm will finally kick in.

    The bigger and more drastic decision is whether or not to drop using Cafepress all together and go with a competitor like Spreadshirt or Zazzle.  This is like a divorce because the decision will invariably mean a lot of time, effort and angst.  Between work and trying to post a few times a week, my time is limited as it is.  The thought of redoing all those countless hours to remake our site somewhere else is not something we are looking forward to.

    I know there are webcomic writers that host their own stores.  Do you use a Print on Demand service?  Which one?  Good and Bad?

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  • Dexter T-shirt

    So I finally posted a new t-shirt design after about 6 months to Wacksack.com.   One of my favorite shows is Dexter on Showtime.  Cafepress put out a call for shopkeepers to create designs promoting the series return on September 27.

    For those unfamiliar, Dexter stars Michael C. Hall (previously on Six Feet Under on HBO).  He plays a forensic expert for the Miami police but he is also a serial killer.  The twist is that he only will kill those who are more evil than he is. The new season has John Lithgow coming in as another serial killer.  Can’t wait.

    Click the shirt to go directly to the listing on the site.

     

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