Be A Twitter Star?? 20000 Followers Free!

admin    T-Shirt Marketing     T-Shirt Marketing, Twitter, free advertising, get tweets, marketing t-shirts, t-shirt twitter, tweet, tweeter getter, tweetergetter.com, twitter.com

Okay you have all heard of Twitter right? No? Well then you must be living on another planet! Twitter is a fabulous way of getting an enormous fan base fast, I use it for my graffiti site and will be promoting it in a big way very soon! The thing is most ideas for promoting Twitter are rather expensive and so I’ve joined Tweeter Getter and if you know what’s good for you you will too!

If you explode your following on Twitter you can almost guarantee it will increase the popularity of your t-shirt blog, site, store or in fact any kind of blog or site you can imagine!

Hope on board here and gather up to almost 20,000 Twitter followers for free!

iTouch Giveaway at Uneetee

admin    T-Shirt Marketing     Commission Junction, T-Shirt Marketing, t-shirt sales, uneetee, uneetee affiliate program, uneetee.com

Now, you may or may not have heard of Uneetee.com, think Threadless but more funky, anyway, I thought I’d pass on this opportunity to all you budding t-shirt entrepreneurs out there who’d like to make an extra buck or two. We’re not too hot on affiliate marketing here at Buy-Tees.net, we generally only blog for the love of tees, but we do know a lot of our readers are either t-shirt designers or fanatics and so this little gem of advice should stand a lot of you in good stead, if only to make a few extra bucks on the side (to buy even more t-shirts I dare say).

If you own a website or blog and know your readers would appreciate a discount or two like this one:-

Then hop on over to the affiliate application form here, or if you’re a member of Commission Junction you can simply login and search for “UneeTEE” and sign up to their program from there, either way get yourself some link and banner codes and slip a few of them into your blog or site and keep your fingers crossed, who knows you may qualify for a free iTouch – which is essentially Apple’s latest and fanciest schmanciest iPod incase you weren’t aware.

Here’s what UneeTEE have to say about the promotion:-

“Double your February’s referred sales to UneeTEE and win a brand new iTOUCH! Double the volume of sales you referred to UneeTEE in February during the month of March and get a chance to win a brand new Apple iTOUCH to help you relax after a hard month’s work. All you have to do is to give it a push throughout the month of March and once the number is doubled you have a chance to win a brand new Apple iTOUCH – on top of all those well deserved commission bucks! This promotion applies to all joined affiliates on all commission offers. The winner will be announced on or before April 10, 2009. Consolation Prizes would also be awarded. You need to refer at least 10 sales transactions this March to UneeTEE in order to be eligible for the raffle draw”

Now if you’ve never promoted the site before you’ll (only) need to hit 10 sales, if you can manage that you’ll be in for a healthy profit and a chance at winning an iTouch. Not bad eh?

If you don’t have a blog or site and would rather just save a few dollars at the checkout just click the banner above. In case you’re wondering, no Commission Junction don’t offer a referral program for their site, you can make a little cash from sales of their advertisers’ products but nothing from other affiliates – which isn’t the greatest deal in the world – still as I said – we leave the marketing to the experts and stick to what we’re good at, writing t-shirt reviews

T-Shirt Advertising With a Twist

admin    T-Shirt Marketing     T-Shirt Marketing, advertising, eyeearn, iwearyourshirt

Now I don’t normally put the terms “genius” and “marketing” together in the same sentence, but if you’re after something a little different, no matter what your business, t-shirt related or not, here’s something out of the ordinary for you. Essentially Jason Sadler of Iwearyourshirt.com is renting out the upper-half of his body for the next year. You will be disappointed to find out that just about every day for next January (2009) has been sold out, and in a moment you’ll understand exactly why.

The beauty of Jason’s idea is simplicity, unlike the awful multi-level marketing scheme EyeEarn.com (I won’t even link to it :/) which seems to have a master plan of forcing the world to wear it’s grotty logo, yes everyone, the same shirt, (isn’t that more communist than capitalist?), Jason is prepared to do the modelling and marketing for you. read more

JukuPop.com – A Refresher Course In Style!

admin    T-Shirt Reviews     Harajuku Lovers, House of Mental, JukuPop, Junk Food, Local Celebrity, Loungefly, Mighty Fine, T-Shirt Marketing, celeb tees, celebrity t-shirts, famous tees, jukupop.com, t-shirt PR, t-shirts in magazines, t-shirts in the media

If you’re looking to add a little more pizzazz to your t-shirt collection, then you should head on over to JukuPop.com - a British-based urban clothing store for the highly glamorous and ultra fashion conscious amongst you, which should at least include all our female readers! If you’re looking for a revamp this Winter Juku Pop are guaranteed to school you in the fine art of street style, featuring some of the greatest international and underground labels on offer, if you’re into celebrity spotting you no doubt have seen a few of their best sellers in the gossip magazines! read more

T-Shirt Scammer

admin    T-Shirt Marketing     Africa, Nigeria, T-Shirt Marketing, con artist, fake orders, liar, spam, t-shirt scam, t-shirt scams, t-shirt spam, warning

If you receive an email written in BOLD CAPITALS from Nigeria without any proper contact details you should most likely throw it in the trash. Take a look at this latest example of the dodgier side of the t-shirt industry. As I’ve mentioned before in this recent post if you’re running an independent t-shirt store and you happen to find your inbox filled with the following kind of urgent requests for stock ignore it, it’s just the latest scam, to be filed in your never to be read again trash, along with all those offers of a percentage of millions of dollars from Nigeria and other regions that need you to place their incredible valuable cheque in your bank account (for a small fee) before their king, president, or oil tycoon is shot by rebel forces. read more

Shirt City – Want Your Videos Now!

admin    T-Shirt News     T-Shirt Marketing, Threadless, scribtee, shirt city, shirtcity, t-shirt competition, t-shirt video, t-shirt videos

If you’ve ever fancied yourself as a filmmaker, this may be your chance to make it big… in the t-shirt world :p ShirtCity.com/Scribtee.com are offering a whopping $1000 and a big heap of t-shirts to the winners, so get your cameras out now and start filming anything to do with tees! How about painting a large bucket like a teacup and filling it with t-shirts, call the video ‘Nice cup of tee’ and you should have a stab at winning. Then again you could try getting a load of bare chested friends to paint t-shirts on each other, if you feature SC’s designs you’ll probably get in their good books too. If you design t-shirts there’s always animation to consider, who knows, Teezilla attacks Tokyo? As stated at their blog they’re looking for short clips, fake ads, stop motion animation, mini dramas, experimental movies, flash animation ‚Ķ anything goes as long it’s cool, creative and features T-shirtsWhatever you decide, I’m sure your creative juices are already bubbling at the thought of all that lovely money. read more

ShirtSeek.com – Redressing The Balance

admin    T-Shirt Marketing     PleaseDress.Me, T-Shirt Marketing, T-Shirt Votes, shirt seek, shirtseek.com, t-shirt community, t-shirt rating sites, t-shirt search

Paul Grzymkowski has poured his heart into the creation of ShirtSeek.com and I must admit that his Email pulled a few heartstrings too, reading the all too familiar story of yet another net visionary stumbling at the first hurdle. I’m hoping I can pull something inspirational out of the proverbial hat to recharge this guy’s batteries, but I have a feeling this review is going to be a long hard slog.

It’s true we have similar services out there, there’s Rumplo.com for instance, a very popular t-shirt voting site, although I’d say it was a lot thinner in the ‘t-shirt community’ department, it’s still a mainstay with many t-shirt designers to get their works out there. Paul’s biggest gripe is the competitor site PleaseDress.me which turned up a few months later with a virtual ticker-tape parade as it arrived on the scene, compared to the rolling tumbleweed reception that ShirtSeek.com has received. read more

Do You Twitter? Then Twellow!

admin    T-Shirt Marketing     T-Shirt Designers, T-Shirt Marketing, T-Shirts, Twellow, Twitter, Twitter search

I’ve mentioned the advantages of Twitter before, but just to make life easier I thought it’s worth mentioning a new directory site called Twellow. If you’re a member of Twitter you’ll already know the advantages of this free social networking and micro-blogging service that allows its users (also known as twits) to send updates (otherwise known as tweets) which are text-based posts of up to 140 characters in length. There are over 2.2 million members now and to make it easier, Twellow has taken the platform one stage further.

Essentially sign up at Twitter.com (if you haven’t already), then use your login details at Twellow to search for like-minded ‘twits’ be it for networking with fellow businesses in the fashion industry, or simply to meet and discuss ideas with fellow designers. If you’re more a fashionista than a designer then this is still the perfect place to find new and undiscovered designers to make that little extra impact and originality for your wardrobe.

Right now there are only a few of us on Twitter specifically in the t-shirt industry, but I think this format and simple networking model could be the making of many designers out there. It’s fast and friendly, and the ability to pass instant updates could be potentially enormous with the right following. Plus you’ll find that Twellow will speed up the process of others finding you, i.e more prominence for your twitter page on the net (remember to update your categories at Twellow to get full exposure). read more

High PR Linkbacks in the T-Shirt Industry or Any Industry!

admin    T-Shirt Marketing     Free Google PR, High PR Linkbacks, SEO t-shirt industry, T-Shirt Marketing, marketing t-shirts, ranking t-shirt sites

I was handed this on a plate from my SEO guy – yes I do have one but I keep it quiet – he might be useless and I won’t know for six months (isn’t it always the way?). I do know he’s using my main email address to submit to a whole heap of directories, which means I’m signed up at all sorts of sites and get the odd annoying directory newsletter, fortunately I use gmail and just dump them in my spam folder (which must worry a lot of successful newsletter types out there. I’ll show you his trick in a minute, I just have to slate newsletters first.

The truth is newsletters are old hat, not black or white hat, just old hat. Feedburner amongst many other RSS web feed management services have made sure no one has to hand their email address over to another mailing list, unless of course they’e getting some freebies and then they only hang around long enough to collect on the goodies. Those goodies were probably always free or very cheap on Ebay, the few successful mailing lists out there are really for product updates, not advice, people don’t want to read generic advice in their inbox, they want it personal. read more

Google has bad taste in t-shirts

admin    T-Shirt Articles     Google, T-Shirt Marketing, bad design, bad taste, google spam, licensed t-shirts, seo tricks, t-shirt business, t-shirts that suck

Trying to find the Coolest Newest T-Shirts Via The #1 Search Engine in the World is a fruitless task. Never let Google buy you a t-shirt for Xmas, you will most definitely want to return it, or even burn the awful thing in disgust.

I put in the search phrase “cool new t-shirts” in Google and I was surprised at just how archaic and “spammy” or “keyword loaded” the following results were. It’s all very well getting a thousand sites to link to you, employing an SEO expert to hit those essential top ten keyword results; buying advertising space, Ad-words, banner placements, newsletters and so on and so on.

Here’s the problem, the world is lazy, I am lazy, and so are you. If something appears to be doing a reasonable job overall, what is the use in knocking it? I’ll tell you, the rise of niche marketing, social bookmarking, the plethora of choice in all manner of product lines, and the fact that tastes change far more rapidly than Google’s search engine ranking algorithms.

Initially I wanted to research a few new t-shirts and designers for my latest review, and other than a hundred social bookmarking sites in my favourites list, and all the independent t-shirt designers, stores, labels and blogs I’ve added, I like to spread the search for new sources as soon as they arrive on the scene. In recent weeks I’ve found myself having to scour Google far beyond the first ten results to find anything I haven’t seen before. Perhaps popularity is a curse, or perhaps Google just isn’t doing its job right anymore?

#1 result at Google.co.uk for “cool new t-shirts” is -
http://www.streetshirts.co.uk “looks” like a very professional set up, yet beyond the nice web site template, their store holds a surprisingly light selection of t-shirts. They focus on slogan t-shirts, and in truth I’ve read most of them before. I was disappointed to say the least, is this unremarkable and rather bare t-shirt collection honestly the best that the UK can offer? I very much doubt it!

#1 result at Google.com for “cool new t-shirts” is no surprise -
Busted-Tees.com – I’ve mentioned them plenty of times before, not as impressive as they once were, bordering on offensive but never truly overstepping the line as say “TShirtHell.com” do with almost every t-shirt they churn out. Busted Tees are big, they have hundreds of domain names that link to their site, many of which they own themselves, they know how to market their goods professionally, their designs aren’t as original as they used to be, but their market dominance is understandable. Until you remember I had searched for “cool new t-shirts”, which they have very little to show in that department.

Many of the designs have been around for years, tons of their ideas are ripped from “The Simpsons”, many others feature as mainstay tees in a plethora of competing sites. Who created what first? Who cares! If these are new designs I must be stuck in a time loop here, I know when something is old, and most of their jokes are nearing decrepitude. Busted Tees have an enormous affiliate network, if enough of their affiliates use the term “cool new t-shirts”, the only first choice you’ll ever get from Google is this popular but not groundbreaking t-shirt store.

#2 result at Google.co.uk for “cool new t-shirts” is -
http://www.itiswhatitis.co.uk – this site is relatively new, or at least its appearance in the top ten over the past few months. With bleary eyes after a late night out I managed to scope Google UK for a whole heap of t-shirt related search terms and kept seeing IIWII at the #1 position. I’m rather stumped as to why this site is so popular. Firstly the site looks awful, and not deliberately awful as in T-shirt Hell’s rather gross conception of site design, but in a drab and boring “I’m too scared to tinker with my shopping cart script’s template” approach. For a lesson in how not to design a t-shirt store take a look!

Beyond the ugly home-page filled with some less-than-average looks models both wearing their hilarious trademark design, IIWII, I’m being sarcastic obviously, it does freak me out when a relatively nobody decides to push the branding before all else. If you don’t understand how to redesign your web site, don’t expect people to buy into your branding! Worse still these are boring designs, mainly old slogans, some wordplay, but essentially you’ve seen it all before and better! My overriding impression is that this company are essentially a print shop looking for a profitable sideline in t-shirts. I think the truth has been borne out by the gradual descent of their rankings as surfers readdress this Google approved popularity.

#2 result at Google.com for “cool new t-shirts” is -
http://www.80stees.com – I really can’t stand licensed t-shirt stores, I’ve mentioned that pet hate before, but this site and its sister sites contribute to some of the worst t-shirt related Google spam I’ve encountered to this day. Remember I searched for “cool NEW t-shirts”, licensed t-shirts are by their very nature OLD! I am sure that 80sTees.com is from the same people who run TruffleShuffle.com and its clone TruffleShuffle.co.uk. When I first defected from web design to t-shirt design I foolishly contacted these sites in various ways looking for advice and perhaps a back-link. I did indeed procure one 0 PR fact from them which points to my Cafe Press scraper site RetroGod.com. Although it’s only via one of their less well known keyword-domains, which seems to have slipped out of the search rankings, probably pulling down the PR of all competitors foolish enough to trade links with them.

What angers me, besides the unnatural advance in popularity of reprinted licensed bands’ and movies’ merchandise over new design and talent, is the extreme misrepresentation towards all t-shirt buyers. These are NOT new designs, how can an old A-Team or Knight Rider or Road Runner logo be new? They can’t, that’s just how Google works, if you have the money, a lot of domains, an unlimited advertising budget, a warehouse full of printing equipment and a large stock of blank tees, it seems you can tell the public anything you like.

#3 result at Google.co.uk for “cool new t-shirts” is -
http://www.retroclobber.co.uk Now I can’t confirm this, and if you have real evidence to prove otherwise I would be very interested to see it, but I have a very strong feeling that this site is in cahoots with the likes of Truffle Shuffle and 80s Tees. The Whois information for most of these sites is scant, but when I entered the search term “retroclobber owned by truffleshuffle” in Google, I found each site filled with quotes from happy and satisfied (if not a little unimaginative) customers referring to each others site in some twisted and rather incestuous marketing pact from the devil. Essentially someone behind these sites is a marketing genius, or rather the people they pay to do the marketing, because in the UK you can’t escape these sites. Even Google.com gives their 80sTees.com site high rankings, yet they are all the same old t-shirts you’ve seen a thousand times. Retro Clobber are selling the same tired t-shirts you’ll see at everyone of their other sites. At least Busted Tees produces original content (just about), and new titles (now and again). What on earth is Google doing ranking this site so highly, it is definitely not relevant to the search term “cool new t-shirts”.

#3 result at Google.com for “cool new t-shirts” is -
http://www.noisebot.com should be the first exception to the rule, they actually deliver on all counts. They provide “cool new t-shirts” for a start, or rather they try to. I still suspect there’s a big corporation hiding behind the funky exterior, Noisebot LLC even mentions its lawyers in the about page, so I’m guessing this is far more than a guy in his garage. Besides that minor niggle*, we seem to be on the right track so far!

*Yes corporations can create “new”, but they often spend far more on market research and marketing than R&D, I’m rather impressed with the selection though, I’m guessing they haven’t been taken over by greed quite yet.

They have gone for the Busted Tees format with gusto, I’m not sure about the site’s wallpaper, seems to have been chivied from an old blog template, but the cart layout is clean and friendly. (Take notes IIWII). I rather enjoyed their selection, although the experience was marred by a few incorrect links leading to a Yahoo Store’s 404 page, obviously their host, which seems to be popular with quite few new t-shirt stores out there. Perhaps it’s my Firefox browser, perhaps not, but whatever t-shirt thumbnails I do like the look of I seem to be lead to another Yahoo 404 error. Oh dear. I just clicked the on “When Milk Goes Bad” which looked a kinda fun tee, I get the same Yahoo warning message at the time of writing “Sorry, Unable to process request at this time — error 999″ with a message that my MacBook might have spyware or a virus, or that my ISP is experiencing unusual network activity, which are both b.s. If every other site I’m reviewing works, then this is most definitely a Yahoo problem. I had a brief problem with ShortBus Clothing when I first opened their site a while back, I believe they have their store hosted at Yahoo as well. Truth be told I think that Yahoo Stores have some serious bandwidth problems to contend with if they ever want to be taken seriously as an E-commerce provider!

It’s not going to well is it, how on earth can a site that can’t sell its wares rank so highly? How can sites that sell t-shirts over 30 years old be described as “new”?

Let’s move on and keep your fingers crossed!

#4 result at Google.co.uk for “cool new t-shirts” is -
http://www.djtees.com – what they have to do with DJ’s is anybody’s guess, what appears to be yet another vast collection of old licensed t-shirts, this time focusing on music merchandise and nothing else. They seem to have a wide collection, I love vintage gear to a degree, I’m always in the market for a rare Bape, or something trippy from the early 1970’s. But when I search for “cool new t-shirts” I don’t expect to find a 25 year old Frank Zappa tee staring me in the face. No new designs, no original content, just old bands and singers from the last 30 years or so. This is getting depressing. I’m hoping they have nothing to do with 80sTees.com and TruffleShuffle.com. If you buy a lot of licensed t-shirts, why not buy a license, print your own locally and sell a few to friends to make up the costs? If you’re desperate to license images, try this site http://www.licensemag.com – seems to be the authority.

#4 result at Google.com for “cool new t-shirts” is -
www.retroclobber.co.uk again…

#5 result at Google.co.uk for “cool new t-shirts” is -
http://www.8ball.co.uk – yes another licensed t-shirt site filled with old music, TV and film merchandising product images. Is this part of 80sTees.com? I’d love to know more but the site doesn’t even provide an about page! Okay you could argue that adding the text drum and bass to an old 1960’s image of the Beatles is a step in the right direction, it’s “partly” new, if we stretch the truth here. Licensed tees are starting to make me shudder.

#5 result at Google.com for “cool new t-shirts” is -
http://www.panic.com/goods/ – a badly designed subdirectory of a very popular Mac Software site. Shouldn’t bode well should it. Ironically it’s the best collection I’ve found in the top 5 results for “cool new t-shirts” in either Google UK or Google USA!

There aren’t many of them, they aren’t presented particularly well, neither is the cart, but damn do they have some nice designs!

Check these out:-

These really are great t-shirts, featuring Keita Takahashi and Ryo Kimura designs from the Katamari Damacy collection, as well as some of their own including Spinner which I really like. I’m not surprised seeing as the owner works with on a Mac all day, but essentially if it wasn’t for the massive popularity of the Panic.com domain, I’d never have found these t-shirts. This guy isn’t spamming Google, he isn’t dressing up old designs as new, he’s showcasing them, and I like them!

Google needs to get its act together, the public are lazy, but if this phenomenon is spread across every major keyword in the engine, their service won’t be half as popular in a few years from now. People power, be it groundbreaking t-shirt sites like Threadless.com, or the rise of social bookmarking and networking, no company can maintain their image as an authority site unless they know how to deliver both fairly and with relevance. With so many new designers struggling to rank in Google, how long will they take before yet another market is dominated by most wealthy and least talented of us all.