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You can get lots of hits and even orders if you aggressively market your site. The items you mentioned above are all good free advertising. Keep doing it and good luck.
Kurt
Last edited by Rodney; December 8th, 2008 at 09:37 AM.
My website is 3-years old now and I do not use any marketing like Google ads. This year my site will break 750,000 visitors. Now my site has very extensive SEO modifications that I have spent over a year fine tuning.
After looking at your site for a few pages I can say that your site is not as "optimized" as you may think. Yes you have some meta data but only on your home page, and all your images are missing the "alt tags". Plus your URLS are broken in that you have spaces between file names and images...A BIG no-no on the internet...thats why you see the % tags in your URL's as the server has to place something there. Google and other search engines treat that as poor design and your site will suffer in rank for that. You should consider using Googles Webmaster site to get help with optimizing your site and learning what works, and what does not in terms of SEO (search engine optimization)
Nothing beats word of mouth in my opinion. Blogs, sponsoring bands, getting your customers to spread the word. There is so much you can do.
Johnny Cupcakes was built on word of mouth.
I was getting a lot of hits when I was running my how to start a clothing company blog on the blog for my clothing company but it rarely resulted in a sale. Having a high google ranking will get you traffic but you have to have qualified traffic.
Firstly, im realy glad to hear paying for marketing is not a necessity (not because im a cheapskate, just i stick to DIY principal as much as possible)
Kurt- aggressive marketing? any examples. i imagen a stratigic bombardment would boost 'brand power' (i.e if a potential customer sees your myspace page, then sees your logo in a magazine). You think this would have a significant impact?
Lance-i realise ive got a lot more optimisation to go, ive been reading up and seems that reinforcment of key words through page titles, page content, alt tags is king. Is this the case from your experience?
Jon-very good point, conversion to sales, personaly i get most my traffic from forums like this, and very little turn to sales (guessing traffic is not so much my target but fellow t-shirteers) Hmmm... finding my target. Sounds like you've just involved your brand(s) in relevant communities, you think this is the best way to attract 'qualified traffic?'
Its quality replies like these from a range of people which make this comunity so strong. Keep it up guys!
Actually lance, while content and alt tags are AWESOME to get a ranking through particular key words, BACK LINKS are king in my opinion.
A back link is basically a link TO your site from an outside site. Also, lots of links within your site to other pages of your site are good, but not AS good as an outside site. Google basically sees a link to your site as a VOTE for your site. Someone liked your site enough to link to it, therefore it should be good.. Also, the page rank (or PR) of the site that is linking to you is taken into account. If the page that is linking to you is a PR9 it would count more heavily than one that is a PR2. You will need to build those links over time.
There are programs like FAST BLOG FINDER lets to you search ALL blogging websites for blogs that do NOT have the "rel=no follow" tag, which means that the search engines CAN follow their link to your site, and you can also search by key word/relevance. Then, you find the blogs that are relevant AND have the uComment i Follow or the CommentLuv image (this tells you that they are a do follow blog) then you just comment on the blogs posts, put a link to your site in your comment and BAM, a back link.. Just make SURE your comments are relevent because people that own the blogs will just delete it as spam, which is not good, PLUS, they like comments as much as you like backlinks.
\Its called WHITE HAT SEO.. there is also BLACK HAT SEO which is more controversial and will likely put you on the black list on google eventually..
You also REALLY should think about a .com or minimally a .net domain name. your domain is just NOT memorable with the .co.nz
Also, BEFORE you put money in to marketing, you will want a more professional looking website. You got a great idea, but it needs to look more professional. Get rid of the basic PAYPAL account and get a PAY PAL WEBSITE PAYMENTS PRO account, or a different merchant account..
That is just my opinion.. I have a website that I have been working my BUTT off to get it on the top page ingoogle.. Currently we are page 4 when you search "CT wedding photographer". We want to be on page ONE.. HOWEVER< people have still found us on google.
I just searched cupp a t-shirts and i couldnt find you.. I'm SURE if i put in something like "robot t-shirts" i will also not be able to find you.
Pick your MAIN keywords of phrases you want to show up on google for, and work them. Put them in alt tags, put them through out your website, put them in links to other pages on your site.. Theres SOOO much more that you can do.. but the FIRST thing you should do is look into a more professional site.. if you did that yourself, then you can DEFINITELY try and tackle something like Zen Cart and Oscommerce.. It will look a WHOLE lot more professional
Oh yea, I forgot to mention.. Once you get your site to a place where people see it and go "Awesome Company" then you should start just adding your site to all sorts of online directories and such.. thats kinda like free advertising, and once you add it to one directory, others feed off of those so it automatically gets added to others and it keeps growing.. Just add add add..
but you REALLY should look into a more professional shopping cart. Right now, your site looks like a free tripod site with some buy now buttons added.. If you want some help with deciding which cart to use, where to look for infom, ect, let me know
just for the record i dont consider my site anywere near ready to follow up with all this marketing. ive just got my product up to scrath, and im currnetly redesigning the site and after that i will begin to market. so this is more research for the near future. but thanks for the input, some juicy and valuable stuff. I dont want to go off track and talk about my own site too much on this thread, but apreciate your opinions.
Lindsayanng- ok if i PM you with some more specific topics?
yea no problem. i got LOTS of ideas for t-shirt stores... If i were you though, i know you have PLANS for making your site better, but you will also want to look into merchant accounts instead of paypal. Just my opinion though. I like having people not leave my site to checkout.
I'm happy to answer questions via PM.. if its something that you feel others can benefit from the answers, you can post publicly and just shoot me a PM and ask me to check otu th forum.> there are other people on there who are also AWESOME at web design.
So as for marketing.. I REALLY think that if you can create a youtube "channel" for your shirts and come up with some really silly, or funny, or even serious videos. VIRAL MARKETING and it works. Make one of those videos that people pass from person to person and have your company name all over it.. THIS does take some creativity though.. I mean, LOADS of people make youtube vidoes, and only some are regularly watched.. Also, the more you post videos (especially at the begining) the more viewers you will get and faster too.
Social networking sites are OK, but i dont think theyre great. It might be a good way to get people to recognize your name so that when they see ANOTHER ad or youtube video, they will say "Oh yea, i think i have heard of those guys, lemme check it out" but on its own, i dont think its good for generating sales.
Forums, well.. If you can find a forum of people who specifically want your products, try it. I mean, WHO would those people be? Gamers? Geeks? Punks? I dont know, forums are pretty topic specific.
Search engines are GREAT, but people dont really GOOGLE tshirt designs do they? I mean, being #1 on google for the words "Cool T-shirts" or "Unique Clothing" or "Funky clothes" would be AWESOME, btu hard to achieve.. BRANDING is where its at..
Free web marketing, how far can it go? 
