When times get tough, you need to take matters into your own hands. That's what tech-savvy artists are discovering: they are turning to sites like CafePress and Zazzle to provide them with ways to package their work into saleable merchandise.

CafePress, which has been around for several years, takes your designs, photos, and art and prints them on mugs, tote bags, mouse pads, and other items that shoppers can buy. The site also allows merchants to open storefronts and list items in its marketplace. Zazzle does much the same thing, but with a lively user community and no monthly fee for having the site host a storefront full of items bearing your art.

Australian artist Karen Hull creates incredibly detailed paintings of animals and people; her works can easily be mistaken for photographs because they are so realistic. She operates her Miniature Art by Karen Hull as an eBay Store, on Zazzle, CafePress, Etsy, Bonanzle, and her own website.

Hull hasn't gotten rich by selling on Zazzle, but she has found customers from outside of Australia. She has only been on Zazzle since the beginning of the year, when she left her job to become a full-time artist. She had no sales until June. All nine of her sales since then have been from the U.S. "Selling on Zazzle is definitely a way of making extra revenue, but for me, not a way to make a living," she says. She loves the extra exposure for her work and the community of sellers, however.

CafePress also has a marketplace of artist-created items, but for items listed in its marketplace, it determines the commission and pricing, so sellers tend to make less money. Marianne Dow of Ms Dow Antiques says most of her sales have come from the marketplace and not from her CafePress storefront - a source of frustration to her.

"Earlier this year CafePress changed their commission system, and now they set a firm 10 percent commission from their marketplace, which is much less than the commission I set myself in my CafePress shop, so I removed my items from their marketplace, and my sales took a nosedive! I have recently relented, and added my listings back into their marketplace, but am sure it will take a while until I come up higher in their search rankings." Dow is much more enthusiastic about Zazzle.

Skye Ryan-Evans is originally from New Zealand and now lives in Canada. She travels into the wilderness to take wildlife photos of bears and other animals that she has sold online through CafePress for nine years. After two years on the site, she began making a "significant income" from selling her art and photo images. Competition is tougher these days. And like Dow, she is highly critical of CafePress' new marketplace commission structure, which has cut into her profits significantly. In the marketplace, prices and commissions are lower than in seller stores. Not surprisingly, buyers flock to the marketplace for lower prices, but artists make tiny profits, and they report that their stores fail to generate sales.

"My paid-for store was doing well for a few years at these 30% markup levels and then I found the sales were coming mainly from the CP marketplace source where I was paid only a 10% royalty on my work. So for instance a $20 t-shirt with my artwork on it only returned a horribly low $2 royalty. This wasn't what I signed up for and I could tell by the change in customer traffic that 95% of my customers were now coming from the Cafepress marketplace with the undercut retail prices and I sure can't blame the shoppers for preferring to shop there rather than via my store directly. So I opted out of the marketplace program a few short months ago and haven't had a single sale since." Ryan-Evans has opened accounts with Etsy and has multiple storefronts on Zazzle; links to all are on her website.

Pricing is a challenge for those who create their own work. CafePress lets sellers set their own prices in their stores, and Zazzle lets sellers determine their own pricing structure. "I have been told quite a few times that my prices are too low, but I prefer to have a higher turnover of work by keeping prices low, than to sell limited art at a higher price," says Hull. "Prices, for me, are dictated by what sells. If I increase my prices, and sales slump, then I tend to bring them down to a price where the artwork sells."

All the sellers I approached offer their work on multiple venues to maximize exposure for their work. And all have their own websites. My friend Kristin Lindner, who used to sell on CafePress, has found an innovative way to sell handmade works of art through her Uncle Envelope website. She and her fellow artists allow buyers to subscribe to their design work. For a $36 annual fee, a customer receives a one-of-a-kind paper object or craft each month.

All of these artists probably aspire to the level of success attained by Laura Milnor Iverson of Zen Breeze Gallery. She has been a full-time artist selling online since 2002. She gets business from customer referrals, visits to her website, and from her CafePress and other storefronts. She won't use Zazzle, however, due to printing and shipping problems with her calendars last holiday season. She charges a 15 percent commission for her work. "In this economy, I find that you have to spend more time online listing on a variety of venues," she says. "There's no single one that's going to generate enough income."

Because art is a luxury rather than a necessity, these are tough times for creative people who want to sell online. But Hull is hopeful. "I am confident (and hopeful) that things will pick up over the next 12 months."

Evans adds, "I find that selling online is an excellent way to generate a helpful income. Success will come if your work is of a high quality, is reasonably priced and is designed to meet the needs and preferences of most people."

Helpful Links

How to sell on CafePress (link)

How to sell on Zazzle (link)

You can find the sellers mentioned in this article on EveryPlaceISell.com
Karen Hull (EveryPlaceISell.com listing)
Marianne Dow (EveryPlaceISell.com listing)
Skye Ryan-Evans (EveryPlaceISell.com listing)
Laura Milnor Iverson (EveryPlaceISell.com listing)