i would advise anyone doing this to order one of your own items to see the quality. I have a couple friends who tried it and got a lot of complaints about the printing quality being very poor.
My worry as well.
However,,the only print shop near where my husband works.. Kinkos.. I can email them my paintings which then would be turned into 20 cards. My Cost of 20 cards is $30.00!! I do not know of many people that will pay $30.00 for 20 note cards. I concider the quality midline at best. If I just put enough money on the top to just pay for postage to ship and car gas..I would make no money at all.
There are two other print shops..right now I am house bound and the help that was to be...never showed up. Their prices are a little better "IF" I can pre buy 5K of product. I do not have that kind of money up front.
Other opition... buy all the equpiment yourself.
A good,, scanner one that can handle heavy use.. $3,000.--- good top end printer to do high quality prints on very good quality card stock and or Print paper...about the same.
I do have a source of basic card stock..prices are not too bad. Plus all the ink..and boy ink is spendy.
This does not cover the prints I would need to do, matts, Frames to go with.
Postage, time, customers that never are happy..what ever. No matter how careful you are, how nice you are,,someone is always going to cause problems.
Have done a whole lot of rsearch. While Cafe Press is not perfect..it is a jump off/start up point.
I am making sure the DPI is off the scale..so the Quality should be very good.
Many the problems that happen is when people put to low of a dpi in their product and it does not come out as well as it could.
The Min..I like to see is 2200xthe same amount. Best is 4,800x96000dpi.... I have some that are even more. I hope that will insure the quality.
My limited health,, this makes it a good start off point. I do plan to offer some things Cafe Press does not and 1 or 2 customs a month at most. They will come to me in person for that.
This might not be right for all folks...but it will,, I hope..give me a foot up on my dream and maybe others too. :bgrin