The Magic Moments app is a new way to create and sell merchandise right from your iPhone. They are partnered with Cafe Press, the same people who host the ABC Shark Tank Store. Cafe Press has been in business for years allowing people to create tee shirts, hats, coffee mugs, and all kinds of other products from photos or their own art work. Cafe Press allows people who use their services to sell them in Cafe Press “Shops” or through affiliate links and earn 15% commission on anything they sell. Until now, there was no way to set all this up from your smart phone, that’s where the Magic Moments app comes in.
Essentially, the Magic Moments app takes the Cafe Press technology and puts it into a simple smart phone interface. The iPhone is now the most used camera in the world and people LOVE putting photos on shirts, mugs and the like to give as gifts. The Magic Moments app makes all this possible from your smart phone. Magic Moments takes the Cafe Press experience to another level by utilizing their own “market place” to help people sell their products as affiliates.
My Take on the Magic Moments App
I’ve been a Cafe Press Affiliate for years. It’s not a big earner for me, but I have ordered stuff from Cafe Press many times. It’s a quality operation that provides good service with edge of the art technology. The Magic Moments app guys were lucky to partner with Cafe Press. If the app makes creating products from smart phone photos simple, it will attract a lot of users who want to create products for personal gifts.
Cafe Press announced their partnership with Magic Moments in November, 2012. The partnership is real and having Cafe Press as a partner carries a fair amount of credibility and clout. I see a few issues, however. First is the Magic Moments app market place (called MagicMarket) only has 36 products in it as of this writing. That doesn’t seem like much for a year’s worth of work.
Second, the Magic Moments app only pays 5% commission (as opposed to the 15% Cafe Press pays). They’re obviously making their money on “the spread” in commissions. People who are serious about making money with Cafe Press would be fools to use this market place; they’d be giving up 10% in earnings if their products sell well. It would behoove the savvy Cafe Press product marketer to go direct with the Cafe Press affiliate program. I think the Magic Moments app will appeal to “in the moment,” spontaneous type buyers, but not to internet marketing types.
Do the Sharks see Magic?
The Sharks should be aware of Cafe Press. They host the ABC Shark Tank store, after all. I don’t think Magic Moments has enough real sales to create much excitement with the Sharks. The small amount of people selling in their market place could be a deal killer. The other thing is a smart app designer could put together a similar app, give a better commission, and kill these guys; I am actually surprised Cafe Press hasn’t just bought them out.
The other thing that makes me think there’s no deal is they aren’t promoting their appearance at all. They haven’t had a Facebook post in a year and the same goes for Twitter. While I was writing this post, their website went away; it’s not there anymore! This has all the makings of a serious train wreck.
While I think it is a good, and in many respects inevitable, idea, I don’t think there’s enough evidence that it’s a profitable business to create a feeding frenzy with the Sharks. I do think a lot of viewers will like the concept (I do), but the money is in the market place and there just isn’t enough there to get a deal.
