Introducing my little shop front.

Well, after some struggle I have created a small storefront that is hosted by Cafepress. If you glance below the mini poll at the left, you will see the link to my store front. In it are mugs, a variety of clothing ranging in size from enfant to adult and from t-shirts to sweat shirts as well as some note cards, post cards, and a calendar. I believe the quality of the clothing is very nice as they are using the Hanes brand. As time goes by I will be adding more products as I become more proficent at adding cartoons created by Anna, photographs by the children and other pieces of art work by the children. We are trying to keep the images we use to decorate the merchandise pro life and pro family oriented. I need to take care when adding the images to product choices that they come out clear on these items as I would hate to have anyone dissapointed by something looking blurry or not perfectly clear.

If this storefront goes well, I will go ahead and upgrade it for a small fee of 4 -5 dollars a month, which will allow me to offer a greater selection. Right now I have to opt for one picture per item instead of being able to allow customers to choose from a variety of pictures on the t-shirt of their choice. At this time, my store front is completly free and unless I see that is somewhat successful, I do not feel I can afford to do more than just invest my time into the store.

Now - how does Cafepress make money if I am allowed to have this store front for free? Well - the prices you see listed are not total profit for me as cafepress is providing the merchandise while I provide the images to be displayed on the items for sale. For instance, the postcards have a base price of about 6 dollars. I am allowed to raise the price and the difference is my profit. There are 8 postcards in a set so I have the price at about 8.99 I am trying to keep my prices in line with what it would cost one to purchase a similar item in your local store. My profit line varies from a dollar to 10 dollars. On average most items will net me 2 - 4 dollars profit. So I would need several sales to make even 100 dollars.

While that does not seem like a lot of money, if people share my store front with friends and family members, I could actually start to make a little money from this. I prefer this to adding pay pal button for donations as I do not feel that I can justify that. Some bloggers truly can justify doing this as they are actually earning a living writing. While this is my goal, I am not there yet, so I do not feel that I can justify asking you to support my writing on my blog at this time. Even though my time is very tight, I am not having to make the choice between writing an article I will get paid for VS writing on my blog. Instead I have to choose, will I get up early and try to post before the business/school day starts or will I steal a little time from the business to write.

I love writing, and my children are also quite talented in various ways, as you have seen hints of on my blog. I see this storefront as an opportunity to use their talents to earn some family income. Ideally - we would love to be able to get away from the current business we are in, which we were forced into by my husband being laid off. The current business is lucrative but the hours extremely demanding and the physical demands on all of us immense. It makes being a normal family very difficult as it requires so much of every ones time that even just accomplishing the daily chores of every day life is almost impossible. I have all day been meaning to put on a load of laundry, so far the basket has made it to the top of the stairs...

So - if you would like in someway support mum2twelve's blog and her endeavors to become a paid writer or you would just like to have some comfy apparel that sports a great cartoon depicting what life in a large family it like, or a mug with a prolife message, take a look at my shop, buy something you like and SPREAD THE WORD!

Mum2twelve's Country Cupboard is open and ready for business!!

Blessings to you all!
Christi aka mum2twelve