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Basic Steps to Marketing your Spreadshirt Shop

by Justin Dean

 

PART 1

So you opened an online t-shirt shop? Welcome aboard the newest trend, there are only about 20 million others just like you. :) You might be thinking, how am I going to compete with all the other shops out there? It’s not as hard as it sounds, and this article will hopefully give you the basic steps to get out there and take your piece of the pie. I've split this into two parts for easier reading. Keep in mind this is just a brief overview and basic steps. Running a successful online business takes a lot of research and time.

The good news is that 90% of the t-shirt sites out there suck and don't make any money. It’s not that hard to get into that 10% but you have to have dedication, patience and a small bit of talent. Your first good decision was to choose Spreadshirt as your fulfillment partner; they really are the best at this. The next thing you've got to do is make your shop look good enough to sell. This is where most people fail. I know you are excited to sell, and you no doubt have some killer designs you want to show off right away. It will be worth it to take your time and make your site look good first. You could have the best t-shirts but the worst site and you won't sell a thing.

First thing’s first. Buy a domain. No one is going to remember your company when you tell them to "go to 1279865 dot Spreadshirt dot com." It’s much easier to promote "KickAssTShirts.com." Domains run from $5 a year and up, so it’s worth it.

If you aren't a web designer then hire one. We sell custom made templates, or you can find an web designer for $500+. If you are a web designer then you are already one up on everyone else. The first design decision you have to make is how your site will operate. There are many different ways to do it. You could get a web host and have your own domain pages that link to your shop, or you could simply forward your domain directly to your shop using your domain register's forward features (this is usually free).

Once you decide how it’s going to operate you need to make it visually appealing and professional. I will touch on some of the basics, but I'm not going to get into too much design tips here. It’s been my experience that simple is the best way to sell anything. Don't make your site complicated or overpowering. Choose some friendly, calming colors and stick to a theme. Do a search for the top t-shirt sites and see what they do. Don't steal their sites, but you can get inspiration and tips on how to do things on your site. Show your shirts right away, don't make customers dig for them. Most shops look like they are run by a 14 year old kid in his mom's basement trying to sell fart jokes on shirts. You may very well be a 14 year old kid in your mom's basement but you don't need to give that impression to your potential customers. You can sell anything, even fart jokes, if your site looks trustworthy enough to give money to.

Once you've got your site looking nice then you need to get some decent designs on your shirts. Others might disagree but I would suggest staying away from the tote bags, coasters, mouse pads, etc. Start with t-shirts and go from there. Read the design tips on the Spreadshirt site. Vectors are the way to go for your designs. I would stay away from the digital prints all together. They are cheap, restricting and are not hot sellers. We have a small selection of free vector designs to get your started. You can try to stick to a niche like only Football designs, or only designs for geeks, etc. Some have found great success with that, but you are limiting your customers to only that one group. Start broad and go from there. Offer a mix of men’s and women’s. Keep your prices under $20. Showcase your best designs up front. Don't sell anything you wouldn't wear yourself.

Pay the $10 a month for a Premium Shop at Spreadshirt. I know you signed up thinking this would be a quick, easy way to make money for nothing, but its not. If you are serious about making money with your shop then you will pay for a Premium shop. You'll get rid of the Spreadshirt banners and look more professional. You'll also open up a ton of useful features that will make your shop so much better, including unlimited vector uploads and the custom designer feature which customers love. If you don't have $10 then try and upgrade later, maybe after your first couple sales.

Before you even start promoting your shop you need to buy your own product. Even if its just one shirt. Try it on, stretch it out, wash it, etc. You need to know what it looks like in person so you can tweak your designs, colors, t-shirt styles, etc. Buy a digital print and a vector and see the difference for yourself. As your site grows and your budget permits, I highly recommend buying one of each of your designs so that you can quality check the design. Worse case you can give them out as promotional items, or sell them to friends.

Now that your site is up and running and has some cool designs in it you need to get some visitors to it. I will start with some simple and free/inexpensive ways to promote your site and then get into the more expensive ways later in Part 2. Remember that it takes money to make money - you've just got to spend that money wisely.


INEXPENSIVE MARKETING AND PROMOTION TIPS

• A great place to start is promoting your site on www.MySpace.com. You probably already have a MySpace page so start linking and talking about your t-shirt site on it. Create a new MySpace profile just for your t-shirt company and invite at least 25 friends a day to join. You'll have 1000 friends in no time. You can make one as simple as mine at www.myspace.com/bluefishtshirts or as killer as Tommy’s: www.myspace.com/nekkidtees.

• Link to your t-shirt site on your blog or start a new blog if you don’t have one. In fact, put a link to your new t-shirt site on any site you currently own. The more links you have the better search engine ranking you will get and the more people will potentially see your site. Its also a great idea to use links like Funny T-Shirts rather than just BlueFishTShirts.com, this is a very well known SEO trick.

• Go to SocialMarker.com and submit an article or bookmark for your t-shirt site to every social site that they offer. Then start over, and add a bookmark to your MySpace page, your blog, any other blog that has written about you, etc.

• Join any and all free t-shirt promoting site out there. There are a hundred of them - do them all and keep up with them.

• www.ThreadReviews.com is an awesome one and is owned by friend Tommy at NekkidTees.com

• www.TShirtWatch.com is a great blog that seems to favor Spreadshirt shops. They've posted about my site a few different times. (Advertising on their site is only like $50 too)

• ThreadChat.com is owned by the same company that owns this site. We offer a complete social community for t-shirt shop owners, including a forum, blog, and plenty of opportunities to promote your shop for free. We also offer free banner advertising on the site.

• Submit your product feed to www.Froogle.com. (Spreadshirt premium members can download a product feed for all of their products) It’s free and you'll get some decent hits and hopefully some sales from it. You'll have to resubmit about every month. Some people get good sales from it and some don’t get any. I think it all depends on how much you keep up with it.

• Buy 10 t-shirts with your logo and/or domain name on them and give them to your friends and family who you know will wear them and promote your site. Wear the shirt yourself and talk about your company EVERYWHERE you go. It will only cost you like $100.

• Make yourself some cheap flyers at Kinkos or on your home printer and pass them out everywhere you go. There are a ton of companies online that will sell you 2000 high quality flyers and postcards with your ad on one side and their ad on the other side for like $20 total. I've used www.m13graphics.com before and they were great. Get something like that and leave them everywhere you go. Ask local stores and restaurants if you can leave a stack on their counters. Hand them out at school, concerts, parks, etc. Better yet, get some stickers made and stick them everywhere.

• Avoid at all costs the Free hits sites, and anybody that promises you thousands of hits for $5, etc. It’s true that you'll get 10,000 visitors to your site for only $5 but absolutely none of them are interested in buying a t-shirt or telling their friends about you. It’s a waste of money.

• Wait a couple months and your site should start getting crawled by the search engines, particularly Google. Spreadshirt's web pages get picked up by Google very quickly. You'll no doubt start picking up a few sales once they find you. I'll post another article soon on how to optimize your site so that search engines will pick it up easier. It’s all about placement, keywords, and the text on your site. If you hire a good web designer they will hopefully design the site to be SEO (Search Engine Optimization) friendly. All of our templates are very SEO friendly and we spend a lot of time and money to keep up with current SEO trends.

I know you aren't going to want to spend a lot of money at first to get visitors to your site, so just be persistent and patient. Promote your site like crazy anyway you can think of. You'll get some sales, but when you are ready to start making real money - and ready to invest money then read Part 2.

Don't let your t-shirt site be like every other shop out there. This can be a real job for you if you put your mind to it. About a year after I started my first t-shirt shop it became a big enough source of income to be able to quit my job.

Go on to Part 2