Cafepress: Tiny Brain Pins

I have a shop on Cafepress called, incidentally, The Whole Wide Room (I'm so theme-y). It's filled with designs that come from my short tenure in printmaking (oh, damn you, expensive printmaking hobby!), and though it doesn't yield many sales, it's a fun little venture. Back in the fall, when I was producing lots of printmaking work, I'd add a new product here and there to the inventory with the new designs, and since then, the shop has been open with a random sale here and there.

The shop has bags and t-shirts, waterbottles and bags, etc. But by far the best-selling item is this guy:

It's a mini-button with my etching of a brain. Whenever I get a random e-mail saying I've made a sale, I would bet money (lots of it) that it's this guy. Never in my wildest dreams did I imagine that THIS is the item people would go for in the shop. Why not the brain mug, or the bear water bottle? (I mean, seriously, the BEAR WATER BOTTLE IS SO COOL! And ferocious.)

The moral of this story is that it's tough to market yourself. It's hard to know what people will want and not want. It's hard to put your own idea of what's awesome aside and understand what others think. My brain understands marketing, but my gut doesn't.