[spidersoncider]

Hello

can anyone point me in any direction for promoting psychedelic t-shirts?, can anyone recommend any forums I can post to that has good traffic?

ta very much

 

[Rodney]

Who did you have in mind when designing the t-shirts? What type of people are they?

 

[spidersoncider]

Hello

People who like strange psychedelic artwork really.

Have been trying to find some forums for persons who like this type of art, will still try google some more.

thanks

 

[Rodney]

You may have to think outside that description a bit to help locate your target market

What other kinds of things would people who like strange psychedelic artwork probably like? What kind of music? What kind of blogs? What kind of searches do they do on search engines? What kind of magazines do they read? See where I'm headed

Finding forums is a start, but many forums won't allow commercial posts, so you may want to find some other ways to get your artwork out there.

 

[spidersoncider]

Hello

Yep I see what you mean now, have been finding some psychedelic music and graphic forums and posting on there, have been getting some good feedback, but no one is buying at the moment

oh well, will try and find some more outlets and try and get some sales

thanks

spidersoncider

 

[Rodney]

Yep I see what you mean now, have been finding some psychedelic music and graphic forums and posting on there, have been getting some good feedback, but no one is buying at the moment

One thing you have to remember about trying to promote your website on a forum (and I learned this the hard way):

People on a forum are like people huddled together in a quite restaurant, having a nice conversation about a topic they love, over dinner. Or like a group of folks hanging out on on the corner, talking about current events.

A person who just registers for that forum and the same day makes one of their first post saying "hey, check out these t-shirts I have that's about your topic" or "oh, you were talking about current events, check out these current event t-shirts" -- a person like that is like someone interrupting the dinner party and yelling, hey, I have a band, buy my CD. Or a person interrupting the conversation with a big yellow sign saying, "wanna buy a watch!"

In general, folks on a forum are not there to buy stuff. That doesn't mean that they *won't* ever buy stuff. I'm sure lots of sales are made through forums (there are forums for all different purposes). But I think that a sale is more likely to happen when YOU have established yourself in that community. Then you are seen as a fellow community member, not just a big signholding spammer.

Think about it. Who are you more likely to buy from, one of your friends at dinner who happens to also sell a t-shirt you like, or some person that interrupts your dinner trying to sell you something out of the blue.

There's a process to advertising on a forum (when it's allowed).

When I first started selling online, I remember "newsgroups" were the big thing. You would read web promotion pages that say "post your link in a newsgroup and you'll see an increase in traffic. Just make sure the newsgroup is relevant to your topic".

Man, was that wrong advice. It wasn't until I actually became involved in a newsgroup and saw a community grow out of that newsgroup did I realize that it's annoying to have folks join for one day just to make a post about their website and never hear from them again. It basically was spam.

I'm not just talking about your case though I have no idea how you handled your promotion. I'm mostly talking in general about forum promotion for anybody that happens across this thread

 

[spidersoncider]

Thanks for the advice, I am starting to see the problems you were seeing with forums.

At least forums are not as hostile as newsgroups

Well the problem lies in conflicting advice, on one hand another forum is saying post on forums about your site etc and this will bring in traffic, others like yourself are saying do not do this straight away.

I knew selling items was not going to be easy, but never knew it was going to be this hard

I am going to research a bit more into free advertising before I think about the adwords kind of campaigns.

thanks for the advice.