Changes at CafePress
The following is a word-for-word reprint of what I wrote in the CafePress forums regarding changes to the CafePress volume bonus and the resulting discussion. I’m not saying I’m posting it here in case an over-zealous moderator decides to edit me, but… okay, that’s exactly what I’m saying. I have a great relationship with the majority of the moderators. Here we go.
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Most of you know me. Most of you know my history with CafePress. I’ve been a Mod, I’ve been on the “inside”, I even did a presentation on CP book publishing at Connect in 2006. During a particularly rough patch last year, when CP was making all the wrong moves, I left. Quite simply, there were things going on both behind the scenes and with SK/CP relations that I could not support.
In recent weeks, I was told that things were changing for the better. A certain someone who used to be running the show (and who had personally lied to me about major issues on more than one occasion) was no longer with the company. I’ve spent the past couple of weeks inching my way back into CP life. I was hoping that things were more like they used to be, before it all got derailed last year.
For the most part, it is a lot better than it was last year. There are elements of this latest communication that are far and away better than what would have happened last year. A chart that actually shows someone’s income will be going from $278 to $40? Unthinkable, had this happened last year.
Communication from CafePress has gotten more honest. More forthcoming. Maybe this news of the volume bonus didn’t go down the best way it could have. Maybe it could have been handled better. When you’ve got tens of thousands of active shopkeepers though, it’s impossible to please all of the people all of the time with things like this.
Like I said, most of you know me. Would you expect them to call me? Did I get a phone call? Nope. Should I have? My sales are very, very weak right now. I haven’t done any significant CP stuff in over a year. I’m not active like I used to be. I would have been more concerned if they had wasted time talking to me about this because it doesn’t affect me in a major way.
I got an email today - the same email that most everyone got - on the day of the announcement. What’s wrong with that? The email notice [i]should[/i] go out on the same day as the announcement is made. That is all the communication I expect. They sent out an email, there’s an announcement on the blog, the forums, and the account pages. What more can they do? Drive a rep out to my house to tell me in person?
Now then. About this change.
I support it.
I don’t support it because of the lame rationale that it was originally intended to blah blah blah. Wrong. In the world of comic books and fiction, that’s called a [i]retcon[/i]. It’s retroactive continuity. It’s changing history to fit how you’d like the story to progress. There was never, ever any mention of “the volume bonus is there to reward SK’s for driving traffic [b]to their shops[/b]“. Ever. To say that it was always like that is a retcon.
I don’t support the change because it has the potential to make people even more money. That’s disingenuous at best. This move is going to cost a lot of people a lot of money. To say that it’s actually a good thing for SK’s is not the truth. It’s good for some SK’s - the ones who make the majority of their sales in their shops or off-CP sites. As we’ve seen in this thread (and yes, I read all 11 pages of it up until I started typing this) there are people reporting 70, 80, 90% of their income is marketplace sales. It’s going to absolutely destroy those people’s incomes. There is no way to sugar coat that.
So, why support this change? Because in the end, it’s fair. No, it’s not going to be easy on a lot of people. No, I don’t think 8 days’ notice is responsible - in fact, it’s probably the most reprehensible thing I’ve seen out of this company in a long, long time. But at the end of the day, rewarding shopkeepers for going the extra mile to drive traffic while not rewarding those that “accidentally” pick up sales in the marketplace is fair.
Those that say they’re actively driving traffic to the marketplace… why? Why on earth would you do that? Okay, fine. If you’re actively linking to the marketplace, stop. Change your links to your shop. Seriously - there has never, ever been a reason to link to the marketplace instead of a shop. In all likelihood though, this paragraph is aimed at a very small number of people.
So, I support this change. It makes sense from a financial standpoint, regardless of what CP intends to do with the extra money they’ll have from not paying people for marketplace VB. The money isn’t going into buying Ferrari’s for the staff, folks. It’s going back into the company, reinvested into new technologies and improvements. Take some solace in that, at least.
Now, a word to my former colleagues on the mod team (and by extension, the Voice reps).
Don’t marginalize the shopkeepers. Far, FAR too many of you have responded in this thread with little more than “suck it up, start driving your own traffic and stop whining”. Seriously. That’s exactly how some of you are coming off today. Try to understand that people are going to be losing hundreds, sometimes thousands of dollars a month over this. You can try to say that you’ve had time to come to grips with this, and that’s fine - nobody else has. Some of you are acting like this is no big deal, that it’ll be an easy recovery. It won’t be. Honestly, I’m embarrassed by some of the responses that have been made here. I’m not going to name names; there’s no need.
Regarding the link in the marketplace, for example (and forgive me for not wading back through the 11 pages to figure out who was involved in this exchange) - a “solution” of sorts that was offered was basically “hey, it works both ways, there’s a link to our shops in the marketplace”. True. It’s not a very distinctive link, and it’s not extremely noticeable, but it’s there. That’s not helpful in the least, though. When the SK came back with “okay, but it goes to the homepage of the shop, not the item the visitor was just looking at” - that’s a very, very valid point. The response to that was, “well that’s just one more reason to make sure your storefront is well organized and helpful”. *I’m paraphrasing that exchange*. That, to my mind, was not only not helpful, it was downright rude. It was talking down to the SK. The points made were valid. That response basically rang of “too bad, suck it up, deal with it”. To me, that’s not a response any mod or Voice rep should have given - and it’s indicative of the overall tone that has been offered by the mods and Voice reps so far. Not all of them - but enough.
Trust me, I know what I’m talking about. I used to talk like that myself. My reputation as the CP cheerleader was earned, not given.
Don’t marginalize the shopkeepers.
Last point.
I am EXTREMELY upset that people’s posts are being edited with no reasons given and even MORE upset that responses are being made by editing a post. Maybe things have changed in the past year, but when I was a mod, we were supposed to supply a reason for an edit, not just edit and run. And editing a post with a response was just never done. I don’t know if that’s commonplace, but Angela did that twice in this thread, and I can’t say I support that kind of editing.
Okay, I’m done. Whew. Welcome back, Daniel. 
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