Discuss the fun task of marketing a t-shirt shop. Where to advertise, link building, word of mouth, press releases, search engine marketing, keyword advertising, magazines, etc.
I've using this site to help jumpstart my business. This place has been wonderful. Words can not express the help I've received. Which brings me to this question. How can I market my shirts? I do custom shirts and am starting my brand on a heatpress machine. I can not afford a website like the ones I've come across and the stores are shopping at the tradeshows (way too expensive) Any ideas? Anyone? Please Help!
Hi Anthony, if you are starting your own line of t-shirts with your own unique designs, then one thing you'll want to think about is WHO will be buying these t-shirts.
You may want to think about this part before you go any further. Who is your target market for your designs.
After you have that, then you'll need to come up with creative ways on how to REACH that target market. Some of it is going to cost money Advertising and marketing a business costs money.
Once you have your target market figured out, you may want to figure out how much you have in your budget to spend on marketing and advertising. Even if you have the best t-shirt designs in the world, they will just sit on the shelf if nobody knows about them.
You could consider a website as part of your marketing budget. Many times, they are not as expensive as you might think, and given the returns they can give you, it can be a wise investment in your business. You may want to rethink the idea of a website:
A website can make sales and take orders while you are sleeping! (I have a little O'Jays wav file that plays when I make a sale in one of my stores. My wife and I will be watching a movie in the other room and she'll just smile)
A website can answer lots of questions and be a great follow up to face to face meetings when you try to sell your shirts.
A website can generate low cost (or free) sales by making sure your site is search engine friendly and linked well by other sites. There are some people who make the majority of their income from referrals from free natural search engine listings. This doesn't happen overnight, but with time and work, it CAN happen.
Insert reasons 4-284 here
Once you have your target market, you can reach them by offline advertising (magazines, local events, stores), online advertising (banners on websites they visit, search enigine marketing (Google Adwords, Yahoo Search Marketing, natural search engine listings), newsletters, blogs, etc.
How to start is basically think of any and every way you can get your name out there to the people most likely to buy your product or service.
I was quoted for a standard website of $1500.00 that includes the shopping chart, e-commerce etc. I've yet to find a provider that will create a site and maintain it for any less. I'm currently attempting to create my own site. (Big Mistake) It takes too much time and it's confusing. Are there any webmaster out there or that you could recommend?
Adam your site looks great, who did yours? My site is Warriorsoath.com
Sites aren't that expensive to make. I made both of mine using ImageReady, within Photoshop CS, and set it up with GoLive CS. If you're a Mac guy, iLife has a great site construction package with pre-set templates. As for e-commerce, PayPal is a great way to start, and Google's upcoming system might be very interesting -- especially if it adds value to your Google search engine listing (2 for 1, can't beat that).
In the end, make sure you've got your URL on the shirt tag, and a unique shirt brand name which won't conflict with other similar names on a search (i.e., calling your shirt line "Awesome" will most likely place you on page 12,336 of a Google search)
I'm starting my own shirt label as well. It's a worry at first, like learning how to ride a motorcycle, but it gets so much easier as the days progress.
I was quoted for a standard website of $1500.00 that includes the shopping chart, e-commerce etc. I've yet to find a provider that will create a site and maintain it for any less.
Try a site with many freelancers like rentacoder.com, elance.com, designoutpost.com.
Hosting and domain name should be $75-$200 per year
Shopping cart ($0 - $200 per year -- $0 being the great free shopping carts like www.cubecart.com)
Having someone install/customize and give you the lowdown on how to use your shopping cart ($100-$300)
Processing payments through PayPal/Google Checkout ($0 per month)
So to actually get up and running, I'd guess you could do it for less than $500 if you shopped around.
But your real concern before you start a website is who is going to be the primary buyer of your products. To paraphrase a "badalouism":
"a good place to start is a business plan."
That will help you identify the different parts of running a business and help you get answers to the challenging questions before you get started.
I'm currently working on my business plan, I must say it is a process within itself. I'll sell shirts to retail stores and organizations. Hey Thanks to all of you.
Hosting and domain name should be $75-$200 per year
Shopping cart ($0 - $200 per year -- $0 being the great free shopping carts like www.cubecart.com)
Having someone install/customize and give you the lowdown on how to use your shopping cart ($100-$300)
Processing payments through PayPal/Google Checkout ($0 per month)
I just wanted to say thanks to all of you. I am currently working on my website using lunarpages (thanks Rodney) It's working really well. I haven't set up the shopping cart yet. Again Thanks Much!
Hey rodney,
How do you put that wav on your site to play when you make a sale?
I need that so I can stay off the computer. My site just launched about 2 weeks ago and I am religiously checking email.
Tara
How do you put that wav on your site to play when you make a sale?
It's actually not done on my website, it's triggered via the program that I use to check email (Outlook). What email program do you use? That way, I can help you with instructions for your specific program (if it's available).
Marketing where does one start? 
Re: Marketing where does one start? 
Advertising and marketing a business costs money.
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