Saturday, 12 February 2011

POLL: Which "Print on Demand" site do you like the best? (Update #1)

Last summer I started a poll on Print on Demand - Resources for Artists to identify what people's preferences were in relation to different Print on Demands websites.
The popularity of the various 'print on demand' sites waxes and wanes. We know something about the traffic they get ( see the traffic charts below) but what do people think of them after they've used them and/or bought items from them? This poll set out to find out.
This is the situation some six months on.  44 people have responded to date.

Print on Demand Poll as at 12th February 2011

Print on demand - art prints/posters and other printed items

Clearly Zazzle is way out in front.

However looking at the preferences in the context of traffic enables us to get a better picture

Zazzle's premier position is echoed by the growth in traffic to their website.  Zazzle and Cafe Press are far and away the largest competitors with traffic peaking at nearly 7 millon a month in December.  However, since last summer, Zazzle has consistently attracted more traffic than Cafe Press.

Zazzle's traffic (blue) overtook that of CafePress (green) last summer
(January 2010 - January 2011)

Red Bubble is the newest website in this competitive marketplace.  It picked up second place in the order of preferences.

Again this is born out by the compete.com chart when comparing the traffic of Imagekind and Red Bubble - where it can be seen that Red Bubble has been beating Imagekine for all of the last 12 months.

Imagekind (blue) has been consistently losing out to Red Bubble (green) in the last 12 months
(January 2010 - January 2011)
Interestingly 20% of those voting preferred another site - but rather frustratingly didn't say which!

See Print on Demand - Art for more information, advice and tips about the different websites


Print of demand publications

In the print of demand publications stakes, Lulu is preferred to Blurb.  Again this reflects the relative position on traffic.

Lulu's traffic approximately three times that of Blurb (January 2010 - January 2011)


See Print on Demand - Publications for more information

Conclusions / your views

Overall, traffic is a pretty good indicator of preference - with the exception of CafePress.  This site has extremely high traffic but is not the site of choice for most people.  One can only assume this say something about people's experiences with the site or their reputation.
  • What's your preferred print on demand website - and why?   
  • Have you voted on the poll? - please update the poll if you have not yet voted

1 comment:

BobN said...

Katherine -

I'm wondering about Fineart America. I've written about them on my blog (link: http://www.digitalimagemagazine.com/blog/featured/marketing-a-review-of-fine-art-america/ )
and they seem to be doing very well (Alexa number around 8000). They could be your "other".

Best -
Bob Nolin

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