The easiest thing to do is to sign up with a "print on demand" (or POD) service like Cafepress or Lulu where you upload your artwork and then just choose what you want it printed on. But keep in mind that this is a definite "you get out of it what you put into it" sort of deal. In essence you do very little work, and in return you get very little money back.

Cafepress, for example, does have a large selection of items you could get your artwork printed on (as long as you want it printed on white pretty much). They offer posters, lunchboxes, clocks, magnets, etc. But keep in mind that the average customer won't typically buy one of everything you offer. They are most likely to buy one or two items, typically a T-shirt or mug or mousepad. But keep your options open. Perhaps there is something in particular that would tie in well with your strip. Like if you had a talking clock as a character, a clock with the characters "face" on it might do well.

Cafepress does go to the trouble of printing the merchandise, taking the orders, fulfilling and shipping the order, and doing all the grunt work. But you do pay for it in the relatively high "base" cost of their items. For example, let's look at their coffee mugs.

The base price for a Cafepress mug is $10.99. That's the base price without any markup. If you were to sell your mugs for $10.99 on your site (which is pretty damned expensive for a mug to begin with), you would get no money back for yourself. Well that certainly won't work. You need to make a little profit to make it worth your while. How about $5 profit per mug. Well now the mug sells for $15.99. YIKES! Let's take it down a notch. $2 profit per mug seems reasonable. So now the mugs sell on your site for $12.99 (not including shipping and handling).

So if someone orders a mug off your Cafepress store, they essentially pay about $16 for the mug (the original $13.99 plus about $3 S&H).

And you get $2.00. Out of the $16 the customer pays.

It has been my experience that people buy stuff to support their favorite comics. They not only want a little item with their favorite cartoons characters on it, they also want to know they are supporting the creator. Do you think they would be happy paying an outrageous amount for an item, knowing that you only get $2 out of the deal? I can already tell you (according to some of the emails I've gotten) that they do not.

One thing Cafepress offers is a "Premium Storefront" with more options for selling, a more customizable storefront, and other neat little features. But to get this "premium" service you need to pay. You can pay monthly or you can pay annually. But you do pay.

So while in the past Cafepress was good for one-off items or very small runs of things (like T-shirts for your EverQuest guild, or personalized coasters for Christmas gifts), the general buisness model of a print on demand service make it a terrible pain for even the simplest items. And its "premium" services are targeted as EXACTLY the type of merchandiser who shouldn't be using the service. People selling large numbers of items that they could easily purchase cheaper in bulk (more on this later).

From my own personal experience, in one month of using Cafepress I generated $251.85 on store purchases. Guess how much of that income I got to keep?

$30

"But Barry, what other options do I have?"