Comments on: CafePress Goofs With Squidoo Module Interface

By: njandjj

njandjj — Tue, 16 Jun 2009 02:52:15 +0000

thanks for suggestion of module squidoo

By: Renee

Renee — Mon, 15 Jun 2009 16:16:45 +0000

You’re welcome, Jim. Thank you for documenting the shop sales thing. I don’t know if there’s anything that can be done, but it’s still good to keep track of these things. We haven’t had a single shop sale all month.

My husband (who spends way more time in those forums than I do, says there’s supposed to be some way to affiliate without the marketplace, but I don’t know what that is.

By: Kimberly @ Squidoo

Kimberly @ Squidoo — Mon, 15 Jun 2009 15:24:05 +0000

Sorry to hear you’re having problems with the Cafepress module. I sent a note to our programmers, just in case there’s something we can fix or get together with Cafepress on.

Thanks for using Squidoo!

~Kimberly
Community & Charity Organizer
Squidoo.com

By: Linda

Linda — Mon, 15 Jun 2009 10:39:13 +0000

Why lump the two together? Why?

By: Jim

Jim — Mon, 15 Jun 2009 05:48:09 +0000

You’re right. Good point… and thanks for pointing that out.

By: Renee

Renee — Mon, 15 Jun 2009 04:30:32 +0000

Sales through Squidoo are affiliate sales, I think. They’d have to be, I suppose, for Squidoo to offer those modules. It sucks, but I guess it’s consistent with this:

Affiliate Eligibility Opt-out – I do not wish for this shop, its designs or products to appear in the Marketplace or be eligible for Affiliate-driven sales.

By the way, that didn’t occur to me when I first read your post–I was all ready to be outraged. But then I read something in a CP forum about affiliate links not working properly, and another person pointed out the language of the opt-out clause.

By: Jim

Jim — Mon, 15 Jun 2009 01:11:49 +0000

I'm not a big squidoo user, but I just tested the CafePress module by adding one on a lens and then trying to add items. If I try to add items from our non-marketplace shops like Irregular Goods or Time for Peace, the results come back like yours. If I try to add items from any other shop I can find that has opted out of the Marketplace (really just a fancy name for its own search engine), I get the same. Only if I try to add items from a shop that is still part of the Marketplace do full results come back. This is a point of discrimination that is really shooting CafePress in the foot, as you surf around the internet and find Squidoo lenses that are supposed to be linking to CafePress items for sale but only do so spottily, showcasing gaps where shops have opted out of the Marketplace. Here's an example: It looks really patchy and odd, meaning CafePress will get fewer completed sales. Also patchy and odd is the way CafePress hasn't managed to communicate the implications of withdrawal from its Marketplace for third-party software integration. It seems like a haphazard approach to public relations, to say the least.