Wasn't SmartAssProducts.com anti-Bush/anti-Republican?

We've gotten a lot of inquiries regarding our apparent switch from pro- to anti-Democrat, and finally decided to just write a blog entry explaining what happened.

First some background. When SmartAssProducts.com started, its main focus was anti-Bush merchandise, along with some anti-Republican and anti-conservative stuff thrown in for good measure. We were lifelong, die-hard Democrats; we despised Bush II and everything he represented. We had a countdown clock on the site ticking off the seconds until Bush would finally leave office. Then came 2008's Democratic race.

We were OUTRAGED last year at what we saw happening: Howard Dean, Nancy Pelosi, the DNC, etc., jumping on the bandwagon of an untested, under-qualified phenomenon instead of supporting the truly QUALIFIED, and deserving, Democratic candidate, Hillary Clinton. I personally did fundraising for Clinton, attended meetings and rallies and phone banks, contributed to her campaign, etc. When she was pushed out of the race--despite having more popular votes than Obama--I simply could not switch my allegiance to him. NOT because he forced Hillary out of the race--although I was extremely bitter about that!--but because of how unqualified he was, the terrorists and slumlords and racists he's associated with for decades, etc. I couldn't imagine how anyone could sit in a church for TWENTY YEARS listening to venomous hatred against whites and others... So I said, "party loyalty be damned!" and voted for McCain.

We started focusing on coming up with more anti-Obama slogans and designs. That's been VERY easy! And it sells. We now have anti-Obama merchandise on Zazzle and Printfection as we branch out from our original CafePress shop.

In the process of all this, people started jumping to the wrong conclusion, i.e., that we are now anti-Democrat, pro-Republican. Simply not true--in general, anyway. Anti-Obama? You bet! Anti-all Democrats? Nope. Pro-Republican? In general, no. In specific cases? Yes. I'm proud to say that I did the morally and ethically correct thing last year by choosing not to vote for Obama, and voting for McCain instead. At least with McCain we have an honorable person, a war hero, a veteran, a person with a long history of serving this country in various ways. I feel good about voting for him. Now, if Hillary Clinton hadn't been railroaded out of the race, my vote unequivocally, definitely would have gone to her, and voting for McCain wouldn't have even crossed my mind.

If Obama continues proving what an unqualified dolt he is--as he's done thus far in his first year--I fully expect that the Democrats will come to their senses in 2012. I hope to see Clinton run again, although she's indicated that's not very likely. As long as the Democratic nominee in 2012 is qualified for the office of POTUS, and does not have a multi-decade history of associating with racists and terrorists, I'll vote for her/him. But if it's Obama again? I guess I'll be voting Republican again!

In closing, it's simply incorrect to think we've switched from pro-Democrat to pro-Republican. We've only focused on the office of president, not other elected offices like governor or senator, so the only Democrat referred to on our site is Obama--and we're anti-Obama. Likewise, the only Republican referred to on our site is John McCain--to a very limited degree, i.e., our Don't blame me, I voted for Hillary...and McCain and Don't blame me, I voted for McCain merchandise. We're pro-McCain over Obama, and since McCain is the only Republican we address, it comes out looking like we're pro-Republican. The only way I'd ever consider becoming a Republican is if they became pro-choice, pro-gay marriage, pro-sex education, etc. And that's most likely NEVER going to happen.

So, don't worry, we'll be back to our regular political views once Obama leaves office. Until then, anti-Obama all the way!


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Fuck you, CafePress! [part 2]

As noted in previous posts, CafePress recently made what will likely go down in history as its worst decision ever. Specifically, they decided to screw their shopkeepers by reducing our commission to a disgusting, appalling, pathetic 10% for products purchased in their marketplace. A mass exodus of shopkeepers ensued, with other print-on-demand (POD) companies reaping the benefits as throngs of us started, or expanded, shops with them.

If I haven't already, I'd now like to officially say "thank you, CafePress!" for making the pricing change. Surprised? Don't be! That change was the catalyst for SmartAssProducts.com to branch out to other PODs, something we had failed to do before. The reasoning was, hey, sales are great!, let's concentrate on adding new designs, adding more products, etc. It was easy...way too easy...to become complacent and bank on one POD.

We're happy to say that our Zazzle shop is doing very, very well in its brief lifetime. (The account is actually several years old, but because of that aforementioned complacency, nothing was ever done with it until a few weeks ago.)

We're even happier to say that--by FAR--our bestselling design at Zazzle is this one on anti-Michael Vick merchandise:



Ironically, our Printfection shop--which has been worked on more and for a longer period of time than the Zazzle shop--has yet to make a single sale! I really have no clue why this should be, as the designs are the same whether they're on CafePress, Printfection, or Zazzle. But, yeah, not one sale yet at Printfection. But the Zazzle shop is doing great, so we'll patiently wait for sales to start at Printfection.

We're still at CafePress, although we're pulling out of the marketplace for good at the end of this month. So any sales we make there will be directly from the shop, not the marketplace, and we'll get the markup we decided on, not a paltry 10% of the selling price as CafePress would have it. The challenge is figuring out how to drive traffic directly to products in our shop, since CafePress has the resources to do MAJOR advertising and, well, we don't! Certainly not on par with them.

Google recently put an end to individual shops uploading their own data feeds to Google Base, and that makes things even more difficult. They're now only accepting feeds from the company itself--such as eBay, CafePress, and Zazzle--for products in their marketplace. Unfortunately, for those of us no longer in the CafePress marketplace, we're screwed. We can't upload data feeds that lead potential customers directly to products in our shops, and since we're not in the CP MP we no longer exist on Google Base. That really sucks. I hope Google will come to its senses and realize that their logic is very flawed. They actually thought they were doing shopkeepers a favor! Little did they know that, in fact, they're screwing us too, just like CafePress.


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