This section of the forum is for discussing the business and finance issues of the t-shirt industry. Which business structure to use (sole proprietor, LLC, S Corp, etc), how to handle billing, where to register your business and get the proper licensing, etc.
I have a site that is in the making right now, I have all my designs ready to go, but I know that I can have the best designs in the world and they wont sell if nobody see's them. What can I do to market my site before I launch it. Also any help with marketing after the launch will be helpful to. Any help in this area will be great.
Hey, this is the stage I'm at...site up and running and trying to get some brand awareness...what I suggest:
- blogs - get one and blog away, submit to digg or similar if you're producing some useful content, on mine I just talk about how I'm setting up the business and what I'm learning
- forums - you're here so thats a good start, talk to people about what you are doing
- facebook/twitter/myspace - get down and dirty with a fan page. This for me has been the most beneficial thus far as you can interact with potential customers real easily. Ask your friends to invite their friends, give fans incentives to do so, run competitions, give discounts on purchases for comments, pre order promos
- analytics - keep track of where you are getting site traffic from, hone in what is working and improve where you're not succeeding
- website - make sure its properly coded and that you are ticking as many SEO boxes as you can, once you have it spruced up submit it to google and other search engines, directories
- other blogs - try get people to write about you and link to your page, can get a lot of (targeted) traffic to your page and also give you an all important link back..
Hope that helps in someway and the best of luck...
Before launch:
Get a MySpace, Facebook, and Twitter set up. Upload your designs on MySpace and Facebook and start accumulating friends that are part of your target audience. On Twitter, follow people belonging to your target audience and around 23% of them will follow back. Post links to your designs, links to cool shirts from other companies, and just all-around interesting stuff.
Then once your website is launched you should have a decent fanbase to be able to market to.
After the launch, just keep at it with getting more friends, fans, and followers on social networking sites. Also, getting your site reviewed on popular t-shirt blogs will help. You can also sign up to iamthetrend.com It's an indie clothing, music, etc. website that allows free website submission.
I going to have to agree with everyone else with the myspace, facebook, twitter. Also depending on how close you are to launching maybe put up flyers around town, pass out stuff at events.
Social Networking will be a HUGE part of getting traffic. So definitely make sure to Google articles on using these websites for marketing and such.
And having a blog will be great for your website too. Google loves blogs. They pretty much get crawled by Google every day since blogs are updated constantly.
Also, I have a few programs that make getting friends on MySpace and followers on Twitter A LOT easier. PM me if you are interested.
I agree with the previous comments. I would add a couple of things to the list - 1) write a press release. You can use a tool such as www.free-press-release.com to create a press release for free. I have used this tool as part of event promotion and it seems to generate hits. 2) give away some of your shirts to people who you know will get them exposure to the audience you are trying to tap into.
As you are working your way into the market, keep up with potential and actual customer comments; you can include these comments in resubmited press releases and on promotion material.
how to market site before the launch 
Re: how to market site before the launch 
