[Rodney]

moved to the "Member Introductions" forum.

Welcome to the T-Shirt Forums, theonerich. Please be sure to read the forum rules (we don't allow advertising posts in the forum )

 

[Rodney]

sorry, didn't realise. so whats the score? all the other posts seem to be talking about their own sites?

I'm not sure if you've read ALL the posts here, but many of them are not about one specific site, but are posted to help others with running a t-shirt business.

Yes, there is an area where people get feedback on their site, but this is one area out of the many forums we have.

can i post pretending i want feed back as to my site construction etc?

Point taken, and there will be some cleanup of that area in regards to shameless self promotion, but you are welcome to get feedback on your site.

As thin as the line may be, there IS a line between "Go check out my site and buy some shirts" in a forum that is about helping others find a specific shirt and a member introduction where you say a little about yourself and your site or a genuine post looking for feedback on a site.

 

[Rodney]

of course it was the idea that i might get to spread the word about my site that brought me here, i would think that is why alot of people visit this forum,

I'll probably need to revise the mission statement for the site then to make it more clear.

The purpose of the forums is to help each other in the t-shirt business, not to do business with one another or to gain link popularity.

We have the T-Shirt Gallery area as a free place to promote your t-shirt designs, and 2 forums where your own URLs are allowed (Member Introductions and Ecommerce Help). Both of these forums will be inaccessible by search engines in a couple of weeks so that URL drops will be fruitless. You can also put your URL in your signature. I think that is plenty.

the problem is when people start posting multiple across multiple subforums and reviving old threads to say 'oh you can get that at mysite.com' and such.

Agreed.

Sometimes URL drops can be counterproductive as well. These forums are well spidered by the search engines. You may not want your potential customers to find out your business issues (printing problems, pricing issues, wholesale pricing) while doing research on your company.

 

[Rodney]

fighting a loosing battle i think!!!! the way i see, as long as nothing gets out of hand, there's nothing you can really do other than ban all advertising? as soon as you ask for advise and the response is "see how i did it here, or check my site" there is nothing you can do.

Actually, that's the plan is to ban all advertising. That's the whole point

It's not unheard of for forums not to have advertising, and some of the most popular forums online do it successfully.

you're right about bad press, but some of the sites don't need any help with that, there are a few really bad shirts floating about your site, and a fair bit of bad advice too.

Everyone has a different opinion on things and not everyone is an expert Feel free to offer your own advice if you see something that doesn't seem right.

in my experince, forums seem to police themselves most of the time. if you act like a pri*k most people will ignore you and the kind of people who log onto every forum they come across just to post an ad for their site rarely come back.

I have no intention of acting like a "pri*k" as you call it, but I do hope to have a forum that is relatively free from spam and self promotion. I guess it's a lofty goal, but that's what I intend.

Those that are here to get and give help will stay and hopefully appreciate the lack of distracting URLs that increase the noise to signal ratio. From my experience, people tend to appreciate not having to wade through all types of unnecessary info to get to what they're looking for. That's the idea.

all in all this site is providing possitive advice and you have a community of manufacturers, novice buisness men, designers. thats a good thing.

Don't forget seasoned professionals, t-shirt veterans, and marketing experts.

if you start to ban individuals for mentioning their own business or a service they can provide, you'll loose the know how and people will look else where.

As I mentioned, folks are free to add a link to their business in their signature.

By being helpful and providing useful information, is one of the best ways you can promote your business/products/service. I think people will naturally follow your link if you are providing helpful information and they begin to build up a rapport with you through the ongoing discussions.

I think a helpful answer will go much further than "visit my site x and I can sell it to you". Those that are in it for the quick sale might find that this may not be the forum for them.

lets get back to shirts rather than this un-resolvable forum tennis!!!

It's quite resolvable But you're right, if this conversation is to continue, it should be in the Feedback forum or via Private Message (which is where comments about the site/feedback should go in general).

Sorry for taking things off topic. This has helped me solidify what the position for linking will be in the future though