Advantageous Relationships = inexpensive, effective advertising

Re: Advantageous Relationships

yep, you are right about that. I dont know why people spend all kinds of money advertising when you can simply use the goods you make as give aways for example to promote and generate sales revenue.

This is nothing new mind you. It's been done in the imprint buisness since the begining.

Like, why not drop a few shirts at your local restaurant with their logo and a cool design. Get the owner to display it and tell the owner if they sell it costs you x$ and we can keep you stocked as you need.

Remember that $ 500 is nothing for a restaurant owner.

Good topic poster.

you might try thinking of approaching sites that have something in common with one of your designs (ie., a motorcycle club if you have a motorcycle design), send 'em an email and tell 'em that you'll supply a couple of free shirts if they want to do a giveaway. Then, offer that you'll do the fulfilment of the giveaway for them. They're probably not going to turn you down

Click to expand...

Very good tip! This is how "knowing your market" will help you find creative ways to advertise your products.

If you know who is likely to buy your products, you can find sites/blogs/forums with good traffic that you can offer to give free products to in exchange for advertising on the site.

Works VERY well.

It definitely works. I could kick myself for not thinking of it sooner. I've tried it on two different sites now and both places were completely enthusiastic and delighted to partner up.

I understand the concept, however how would you know what sites are worth advertising with and which ones are not? There are millions of sites out there in your specific genere. However how do you effectivly know which sites would be optimal. I have thried this on a few occasions, sometimes it would be benificial and others a complete waste of time.

I understand the concept, however how would you know what sites are worth advertising with and which ones are not? There are millions of sites out there in your specific genere. However how do you effectivly know which sites would be optimal.

Click to expand...

You can get an idea of traffic/activity on "community" websites by looking at how many posts/members/recent posts there are. Just monitor it for a while.

For more "static" sites, you can always ask to see their stats to see if it's worth your time. Also, if you are doing google searches for terms that people normally use (like "motorcycle forums" if you are selling motorcyle shirts), then the top sites that show up are probably good candidates since they are probably getting a lot of traffic from search engines.

You could also try Alexa.com, although it's not the most accurate of data sources,it can give you a very rough ballpark.

We own our own forum, so usually people just approach us in regard to advertising rate. We offer click through stats for all of our sponsors, including the last 12 months of detail statistics if you must know. Although with our own Google Adsense, we have basically stopped accepting new advertisements.

Per Sunny's comment, I agree that something like this might backfire into nothing. However, it's well worth trying due to the small amount of money involved. I think if you do some careful hunting around you can find a site (whether it's a blog or a forum or a trade association or a club, etc) and get a really good match between the aims of that site and one of your shirts. Case in point, I just did that with my We're All Danes Now t-shirt and a conservative site that specializes in tracking Muslim activity. Very high-trafficked site that I wouldn't want to be paying ad prices on, but the guys running it were delighted to get some free shirts to give away. I'm not sure what the long-run effect will be, but I'm happy to take the chance.

good idea
keep up the good work.