A T-Shirt Reviewer Reviews T-Shirt Review Sites!

Some people have said I’m committing SEO suicide with this post, but seeing as I don’t have a clue how the mind of Google decides these things, I’m sure it won’t make much of a difference. So here it is…

A T-Shirt Reviewer’s Review of T-Shirt Review Sites.

If I’ve missed any out don’t take it personally, I welcome any “mini-reviews” in the comments page, (but at least get one of your readers to write it), no hype or spam please). I won’t be placing the sites in any order of importance either, (I’m treading on enough toes here already!), but I will say that many are easily found in most major search engines and blog directories. Some are major players, others are just starting out (…ahem), but most show a passion (or is it fanaticism?) for t-shirt design and all that our weird and wonderful medium entails!

TshirtReview.com seems like a very logical place to start, I’m jealous of the domain name already! I don’t know much about these guys except that beyond the rather bog-standard blog template you’re sure to find loads of discounts, vouchers, freebies and specials on t-shirts from most of the major t-shirt stores out there online. Their latest post refers to a Threadless.com promotion, when aren’t they running a promotion, makes you wonder if there may be troubles ahead for what seemed to be a perfect marketing method. For instance what percentage of people who vote on their t-shirt designs actually buy them? It’s all a numbers game, they make a fortune as it is, I’m sure they can afford some wastage, I suppose I am only considering the bruised egos of past winners watching their beloved creations sold off to the lowest bidder. TshirtReview.com have plenty more great offers including a $12 sale at PrintLiberation.com, a Free Delivery Special at BustedTees.com, and of course some short but sweet reviews of what appears to mainly be BustedTees.com T-Shirts

T-Shirt Legends is run by a very friendly woman called Dana (must get her surname sometime!) and a few of her pals, she hails from Ireland and has an excellent editorial style. Dana writes her blog in her spare-time, concentrating mainly on other commercial projects that actually bring in the readies, (I must try to make some money myself one day lol). Despite the time limitations Dana has forged ahead with her insightful reviews of all the latest snazzy designs out there. I particularly appreciated the review she gave of my Cafe Press store, and even learned a thing or two about how to promote my own work in a more commercial style. I thoroughly enjoyed her post on Brev87 at Cafe Press. He has a fantastically funky eye for design, read about his exploits further at Dana’s T-Shirt Legends Blog.

T-Shirt Reviews at Wordpress.com is another standard looking blog, thankfully there are some great finds here, and I have to admit I totally see where the owner is coming from (Although I only know he’s from Cali, another near anonymous reviewer - starting to make me think there’s a t-shirt reviewer killer on the loose). He’s even reviewed one of my faves, Smurfs Attack T-Shirt By Split Reason, a great spoof of those freaky French cartoon elves with blue skin, white boots, and a sickeningly positive attitude towards life. The mysterious reviewer guy from Cali has some rare finds too, I hadn’t seen this site before, including BedlamClothing.com who seem to have sold out half their stock and reduced the price on the rest to just $6, they’re even offering 3 for the price of 2, yep 3 t-shirts for only $12 (mad!). Let’s hope they’ll stock up on Road Trip again soon!

You’ll find plenty more original choices there, they have no real affiliation to a particular designer or store, and besides they’ve got a great tagline for their blog - “Because getting dressed up is too much work”. If you’re looking for something a little different in t-shirts, but you want a straightforward bare bones review so you can just get on with the business of buying tees, this is a great place to start.

ShirtsonSale.info offer concise and thoughtful daily t-shirt reviews from sites you’d usually have to hunt down. If I ever ran a “futurology agency”, I’d want this blogger on my team, they are streets ahead when it comes to picking out the future high fliers in the t-shirt design world; plus the fact that they’ve managed to gain decent rankings, traffic and Google PR with a .info domain, which in itself is a minor miracle. Beyond that, the featured t-shirts I viewed there were truly excellent, I’d say a close tie with TShaped.com in quality. Ironically my favourite featured tee shirt there is UneeTee’s “Scream” by Yoshi Andrian Amtha which absolutely rocks as far as I am concerned. Perhaps I’m just an old hippie at heart, though I do appreciate Shirts on Sale taking a stand on a point of principle. I love disco, kitsch, retro, hippie psychedelia, they don’t, and that’s a good thing. The general public know that there is no such thing as an expert t-shirt reviewer. Most bloggers who dip their toes in list a bunch of affiliate links (I’m not saying we don’t all do that - but most of us try provide entertaining content too!), churn out a few glib responses (if you’re lucky) and Digg the poor blog to death. Like I say you have to love t-shirts to even bother writing about them, and I believe that almost all, including Shirts On Sale, have a whale of a time doing it, which is just the way it should be.

T-Shirt Casserole is a well established T-Shirt Reviews blog with posts reaching back as far as 2005, however the posts seemed to have stopped in 2007 so I’d treat this as an archive. I have to admit I didn’t wade through many designs here, and although there are a few pithy one-liners, I’m not too enamoured by most of the designs. I have a feeling many of Kristen Fox’s featured designers had trouble working within the tight constraints of Cafe Press. I am torn when it comes to CP, they have an enormous site with a lot of t-shirt buying traffic, I’ve sold quite a few there myself (at a miserably low profit margin), but even I struggled when I first joined them. The main problem isn’t the quality of their printing (I’d hazard a guess they’ve one of the most expensive DTG - Direct to Garment - printers in the world), I’ve had quite a bit of positive feedback on that count. It isn’t a matter of picky editors complaining about the width of vector image shapes or image formats. Even their delivery seems relatively reasonable in price and speed. Nope, none of the above, only this; the maximum print area they allow on most of their clothing is just 10″ by 10″. Now that maybe a great figure if you’re bragging about yourself, but for a t-shirt it really does limit the directions you can take any idea. For instance, the dreaded rectangular image one eventually learns to avoid. The lack of detail that can be feasibly included in the space allowed. I’ve seen some fantastic silkscreen printed tees out there, some with images over double the size, some with over-the-hem printing, shoulder details, some completely covered with design (although the few I’ve seen like that sell at over $100). Let’s take it a step at a time, Cafe Press, if you want to be taken seriously, offer screen-printed tees that “think outside of the box” or rather “print outside of the box”. So my advice to T-Shirt Casserole is to get posting, why not try a few other t-shirt stores like Threadless and SpreadShirt for more inspiration? I checked the host domain and found a Cafe Press scraper site (I have done the same thing at RetroGod.com), I’m suspecting the blog is still there to help their Google rankings, rather than a genuine passion for reviewing t-shirts. Although I can’t blame them, you’d really have to be a fanatic to want to keep reviewing t-shirts ever week ad-infinitum (call the doctor somebody), besides you have to give them credit. Cafe Press or no Cafe Press, 2 years of reviews is a very healthy t-shirt archive by anyone’s standards!

Rated-T.com is a great idea and in essence it only needs two elements for it to work. It’s essentially a forum where members’ reviews determine the site ranking for each design. Good. There isn’t any traffic and hardly any members. Bad. Besides it’s a rather ugly site to look at, I can see they’re using a specialized forum script to do the job, unfortunately it looks like they can neither find a decent template, or have the knowledge to adapt the one they do have. I suspect these two factors maybe connected, i.e very few members and a faceless forum design. Creating a thriving forum is tricky no matter what it looks like, I’d recommend this site find some scallywags on MySpace or somewhere similar, pay them to invite and sign up a few hundred of their “friends” and reward each with a buck for making a few posts to complete the deal. It’s far cheaper than SEO and it means potential members won’t be frightened off by the apparent lack of activity. Incidentally, I’ve just managed to secure the domain RateTshirts.com, so I’ll probably be getting in on the act, although I’l most likely stick with the more traditional “Hot or Not” type of t-shirt rating site. Yes, yes, the script I’d use for the site was most probably created with pervs in mind, but what can you do?

Tshaped.com is cool! Simple as that, they pay due care and attention to their choices for reviews, they definitely know what they like and although there aren’t too many posts, what they do review is worth reviewing. A nice layout in this blog, which makes a nice change, and I especially enjoy the mix of t-shirt and t-shirt store reviews, I’d class myself as a little more in-depth where the reviews are concerned, but you will be knocked back by the Über-Cool Tees they do feature. I especially love this one:-

There are a few fab Anti-Bush tees at Tshaped too, then again I think it might be time to move on, a lot of Brits still can’t stand Tony Blair (Ex-PM of The United Kingdom), however I haven’t seen anyone ever wear a t-shirt depicting his ugly mug to this day.

I’d have at least expected a “Lapdog of Bush” T-Shirt by now, I’ll leave you to imagine just how gross the design would’ve been :p We have to contend with grump Gordon Brown (the Ex-Chancellor), he comes across as a guy who hates his job, hates people, hates life in general, yet no one has bothered making a t-shirt ridiculing him either. I’ve even seen quite a few Barack and Clinton Tees now, so perhaps it’s time to move on once and for all.

Tshirt-Reviews.com is a domain name built for high Google Ranking, unfortunately once you get there you begin to regret it. Like I’ve mentioned before, there are limitations to what a t-shirt voting system can do. Whatever script I do eventually choose I’m going to do my absolute best to make the site as attractive to the eye as possible, simply having an outdated and cumbersome layout is enough to put most visitors off voting for anything, t-shirts or otherwise. They make a point of reviewing “Funny Rude T-Shirts”. Seeing as “funny t shirts” is the second most popular t-shirt related search term on after “t-shirts” it doesn’t surprise me. I just wish their submissions could qualify the claim. Essentially this is not a reviews site, it’s a ratings site, it’s a quick way for what appears to mainly be yet more CafePress.com designers to promote and once in a blue moon, sell a t-shirt or two.

Tshirt-Reviews is very very similar to the Grand Daddy of all t-shirt sites, T-shirtCountdown.com who’ve been using a very similar script since 2005! Essentially every vote button is placed next to a prominent link to the t-shirt designers cart. Like most “Top List” sites they rely on a constant supply of banner clicks to work out the most popular tees. I’d say that neither site represents the market as well as say Threadless.com that actually produce and sell their most popular tee shirts based upon ratings, but I suspect most sites are beginning to realize how fickle the average Internet user is. Cash counts, clicks are ten a penny.

T-ShirtJunkies.com has a great ideology, one t-shirt a day fix! I’d like to think I could manage that myself but as you can see from this one review, I’d probably have to sleep at my Mac to achieve that. However I was kind of stunned at how far their latest post digresses from the subject. I’m sure you can point a thousand holes in my writing, I don’t claim to be a professional, I doubt any t-shirt reviewer does, this is for love not money. I am a self-confessed wandering arguer, I like to slide off in all kinds of tangents, but I reign it back in, that’s my style, that’s what I do. T-ShirtJunkies also like to wander, however apart from a few scant details about their latest find, Synchronicity, (I won’t even bother showing you it, it’s that lame), the reviewer goes on to fill their homepage with a long yet rather sketchy example from their own life. Essentially it involves a confusion with an Ebay order for an MP3 charger. Moving along…

I feel far more at home at a blog like TroundUp.com - they describe themselves as “The T-Shirt Lover’s Blog” and you can certainly see why. They have the passion I was talking about earlier, a true eye for a good design, and a wide spread of different designers and stores on view. I especially enjoyed their selections from DesignByHumans.com, UneeTee and Fantastic Bonanza. They also have a penchant for Threadless tees as per usual for most reviewers. I like the friendly writing style and the simple clean layout to the site is very relaxing, concentrating on design classics of the future and the occasional bargain is what this site does best! What’s more they’ve reminded me of one of Threadless.com’s discount codes - if you’d like to save $3 on your next t-shirt purchase there - use the coupon code “facebookcoupon”.

It’s 5am and I’ve been reviewing T-Shirt Reviewers all night, I’m going to paste the rest of the list and let you make your own minds up on who you’d like to bookmark, and who you’ll be avoiding. For the most part it’s simply a matter of style and taste, some want critique, others discounts, who knows what my readers want, the meaning of life? Either way, from now on you’re sure to find more t-shirt reviewers on your travels so do post a comment and let us all know about your online travels.

http://blog.fantasticbonanza.com
http://www.tshirtreviewblog.com
http://www.best-tshirts-ever.com
http://www.shirtlog.com
http://tshirtisland.blogspot.com
http://omgtees.com
http://www.teeshirtblogger.com
http://tcritic.com