[skulltshirts]

For everyone who runs a t-shirt related website, I was wondering how long your site has been up and what your average visitors a day is.
My site has been up for over 2 years now. I dont pay for any kind of advertising, just use link swaps and sometimes I add the link to link dumps. I have an average of 73 visitors a day, at the moment.
How long has your site been up and what is the average number of visitors you get a day? If you pay for advertising, where do you advertise?
I sold my website and just recently bought it back. Before I sold it I was getting over 300 visitors each day. But now I cant get the average over 100.
So wondering what others do to get traffic.

 

[TeeShirtSamurai]

Out of the 73 hits a day you get, how many of those people buy a shirt? 1? 5?

 

[skulltshirts]

Some times none, I dont get sales every day. Sometimes one, sometimes two, maybe three if Im lucky. Any suggestions?

 

[Comin'OutSwingin]

Try some advertising. Banner ads on related sites. I don't know too much about that kind of stuff, but I'm looking into it for my site. I'll be starting a thread on it soon, so look for that!

 

[jdr8271]

One thing that most people dont realize is that if you want your website to be a full time job, you need to promote your website constantly. You cant just do link exchanges and then stop. I would suggest buying a book on website promotion, or reading about it online. There are tons of different approaches to take (link exchanges, google ads, press releass, etc...). It should be a constant effort though.

Also, before using paid advertising, I would make sure that I had exausted all other non paid advertising possibilities. It is possible to get thousands of hits a day without ever paying a cent.

 

[Comin'OutSwingin]

Also, before using paid advertising, I would make sure that I had exausted all other non paid advertising possibilities. It is possible to get thousands of hits a day without ever paying a cent.

This is true, but hits don't necessarily equal sales. It would depend on what one's goals are. If all you care about is getting visibility, then hits are great. But if your objective is turn visitors into customers, then just getting hits don't mean much.

Sure there are lots of ways to get people to visit your site, without having to pay, but, what "kind" of hits are they. If you want people to go to your site to buy your products, then I think a combination of paid and non-paid is the best way to go, instead of saying "Let me see if the free stuff works the way I want it to, then if not I will try some paid stuff".

Targeted advertising that's paid for and that's reasonably inexpensive has the potential to get loads more "quality" hits, than non-paid advertising that will send lots of people to your site, but not care about what you are selling.

 

[statc]

I launched my site about a month ago and I get about 40 visitors a day and about 400 page views, but I've only had 3 sales. Given i've only have one design up.

Do you guys think that starting with something as small as one printed design is good as long as you plan to print more as you go along? Or does doing that and free advertising, get people to go once and then not visit again?

 

[Comin'OutSwingin]

You mentioned on the other thread that you were trying to build a brand. If I were you I would try more targeted advertising.

I am marketing my products to the urban wear market. I am currently trying to find online advertising that will work for my products. I have found a number of sites that people in my target market visit, and am contemplating advertising on them. Getting your site and "brand" in front of those that buy your type of products is key, and shouldn't be overlooked just because you have to pay for it.

There's some other things you can do, like some good SEO, also. But getting those 40 visitors to come back, and/or tell others about your site is something to strive for too. You might try putting up more on your site about what it is you are trying to accomplish with your "lifestyle". I don't think having the one design in itself is a bad thing, either. Just give them a reason to come back and to tell others!

 

[statc]

Yeah I'm prob going to print another design first before going for paid advertising.. Don't really want to spend money on advertising before there's the potential of making it back( 400$ to advertise on purevolume.. about $200 profit of sellin the rest of the shirts i have of that design.) I think SEO I'm doing rather well. My alexa ranking for this week is 1,172,560 which is pretty good and my users per million today is 4.5 .

For the whole lifestyle thing I'm planning to have a couple of Hedonist parties and document them for the site and get most the people who attend to join and try to participate. This summer I'm also plannin to maybe backpack around Europe, so I can always document that and spread the word.

 

[Comin'OutSwingin]

I personally don't think you need to have another design to spend money on advertising if your site can get your message across clearly.

I don’t know if you’ve seen my thread about my “under construction” site or not. If not you can check it out here:
http://www.t-shirtforums.com/showthread.php?t=2382http://www.t-shirtforums.com/showthread.php?t=2382&highlight=construction

But, I’m working on a “coming soon” (thanks everybody) site and will tell what my line is about. I’m hoping that what I’m able to tell them will generate enough interest for them to sign up for my newsletter, and keep them abreast of the going’s on while the I finish up work on the main site.

I fully intend to spend money advertising this coming soon page, and even more when the site is fully operational. I believe that spending money even on a coming soon page will help me achieve the “brand awareness” I hope to one day have, or at least bring my message to those interested and create interest in what my company is about.

 

[statc]

Ok I guess I see how it can build up your brand. I'm going to look for some inexpensive targetted advertisment to help build up the brand. Thanks

 

[jdr8271]

The way I see it, is that there is no such thing as a bad hit. If you have a good product, all that you need to do is get people to see it. Paid advertising doesnt always work better, or even as well sometimes as unpaid advertising.

 

[skulltshirts]

Maybe one of you experienced t-shirt/website owner would look over my site, and give suggestions as to how i can increase my sales. Are my prices to high? What about my site design, is it to cluttered? Any advice would help
Thanks
Thomas

 

[Comin'OutSwingin]

The way I see it, is that there is no such thing as a bad hit.

I agree that there's no such thing as a bad hit. But hits for the sake of hits, doesn't do you any good either.

all that you need to do is get people to see it.

You need to get the RIGHT people to see it. My target market is urban. If I got a 1,000 hits from women aged 65 and older that came from a sewing site, and the advertising was free, it won't do me as much good as 100 hits from males age 15-28 that I paid very little to have see my ad. It didn't hurt to have the older women as hits, but it helped more by having the 100 males.

 

[lawaughn]

Comin out Swingin I'm going for the urban market also. Have you tried posting on sneaker forums? If kids can spend $150-$500 for shoes then they can afford to buy your tees.

Try www.hypebeast.com and www.sneakerfreaker.com

I hope this helps you a little.

 

[jdr8271]

If I were you, I would make it my goal to come up #1 on google for skull t-shirts. To start with, get as many link exchanges as you can, with people who come up when you search on yahoo, google, msn, etc. for skull t-shirts.

Then, I would update the site to include text and alt descriptions that say skull t-shirts, skull shirts, skull tees, etc. If there are no alt tags on images the search engines have no idea what the images are.

Next, I would ditch the flash navigation. Google cannot read flash. All of your navigation should be text or image based, with alt and title tags.

Next, I would name rename the page that has your t-shirt designs on it from http://www.skulltshirts.com/designs.html to http://www.skulltshirts.com/skull_t-shirts.html, and I would make several text based links from your home page with the works "skull t-shirts", "skull shirts" and similar key phrases leading to the page http://www.skulltshirts.com/skull_t-shirts.html.

From a usability perspective, I would also put all of your t-shirt designs on the main page. If you can reduce the number of clicks it takes to place an order...do it!

With your meta tags, and keywords...you are focusing on too many keywords. I reccomend focusing on three keywords for most people. For your site, I would focus on one: "skull t-shirts". Change your title tag to something like Skull T-Shirts by SkullTshirts.com.

If you need more, pm me.

 

[skulltshirts]

Thank you very much for the review. I really am grateful for the advice. I will have to go and make those changes. I hate to get rid of my flash navagation though. Would it be ok to do the rest but leave that? I get hits from google seach engine, but like you suggested Im sure I could improve my ranking on there.

 

[lawaughn]

Jdr when are you writing a book?

 

[skulltshirts]

Well jdr I have spent alot of time making the changes you have suggested. I will let you know if it helps in search engines. Which I am sure it will. Thanks alot for the info!
Thomas

 

[jdr8271]

There is no quick solution with SEO. Doing well in search engines starts with designing a webpage that is search engine friendly. You need to do much more than that though.

a quick search on google (http://www.google.com/search?q=link:www.skulltshirts.com) shows that google has recognized 15 links into your site. You need to get more quality links from related sites, to improve your google page rank (which is currently a 3).

Links are the #1 factor in determining google search engine results. for instance, bustedtees.com does not have any search engine optimization on their site. Heck, their navigation at the top of the page is made in flash. Nonetheless, they still come up #8 on google for "t-shirts". The reason...google recognizes 8,860 pages that link to them. My guess is that most of those pages contain descriptions of busted tees that have the phrase "t-shirts" in them. Becuase of this, google has coorelated the term "t-shirts" with bustedtees.com. You can do the same thing on a smaller scale with link exchanges. Contact other t-shirt companies and skull product related sites and ask them if they will exchange links with you. Make sure to ask link partners to include a description that you have written, which is keyword heavy. Google will then coorelate your key word phrases with your site. The best thing for a link exchange would be something like:
Skull T-Shirts by skulltshirts.com - Your source for skull shirts. Google counts every link into your site as a vote which improves your google page rank. A good page rank to aim for is 5 or 6.

One thing that you really have going for you is a great domain name. Google looks at domain names too in results. http://skulltshirts.com/skull_tshirts1.html has two keywords right in there. You cant get a better combo if you are optimizing for that key word phrase.