Hey guys, I recently launched a funny t-shirt website, Shirt Fight (http://www.shirtfight.com) and have begun the long and arduous (yet fun and rewarding!) journey to market it. I used to do "internet marketing" back in the day, but it's been so long that the game has changed completely. Blog wasn't a word, and the trick of the day was hidden 1x1 pixel images with keywords stuffed into the metadata I'm not looking for a "get tons of traffic quick" scheme, because I know that this will all take time...but I would like to formulate a solid plan of attack so I can work on it every day. That's where I'm hoping you experts can help me out. So far I've created a links page at http://www.shirtfight.com/t-links.aspx. I've gone through and found some fairly decent google PR'ed sites, linked them on my site, and requested a recip link from them. It's early yet but I've already had a couple of successful trades. I've also emailed a couple of t-shirt specific blogs to see if they would write about me, and again a couple have agreed to do so. so, what's next? If you could create a task checkoff list of mini projects to do, what would you reccommend be on it? Much thanks in advance! We have 750 shirts waiting to be sold!
Here are a couple of ideas: -write a few articles that your target market would enjoy (not necessarily about t-shirts) and distribute them to article directories wiht a bio at the end of the article (you'll get back links this way, without having to ask for trades) -give away a few t-shirts at popular sites and blogs your target market frequents -of course, gather email addresses, and start a newsletter (you can send things like new t-shirt of the week, the most popular t-shirts, monthly specials, etc.) I hope this gets your juices going. Good luck.
Those are some really good ideas adriana, thanks! Any recommendations of good article directories? that's all new to me. I guess something that would be seen by the college crowd?
Spend 15 minutes a day in the directory area of this site and submit your site to all the free ones for the day. Over time that will increase your traffic from the search engines.
before the days of mass spamming, i used to promote my clothing lable on myspace, it was actually a huge huge success, make a page, dont add just random people, dont be scared to ask for peoples support, because they will put you banner on their page if you make it look good that was a couple of years ago now, but definatly worth going for.
Yep, got the myspace page up http://www.myspace.com/shirtfight of course still not sure what to do with it, I just have a few of my friends on there for now. Will have my wife work on the directories, any more tips? How about paid advertising? I see on sites like ebaumsworld, fark, collegehumor, break.com etc there's t-shirt sites advertising there...so it must be a profitable investment, right? just a test link on ebaum's world is $300-$370 a DAY, or like $8700 for the month. I would have to sell like 40 shirts a day to break even...you think I could really expect to do well with paid advertising like that? Does it help my natural search engine ranking as well?
Good luck with that endeavor. I was thinking about doing the same thing recently. I created about 12 designs (which I thought were catchy and would sell well). Then, I started looking into the marketing and real numbers involved in actually making money. I ended up contacting BustedTees.com and just submitting my ideas to them instead. Seemed like too big of an investment up front for me right now. Wish ya nothing but the best!
Have someone write you a press release and submit to www.prweb.com or any other press release site. I believe JHMattern is still having a $25 special on her press release writing services.
I would also suggest posting on other forums with a link. I think local promotion would be nice too. If you have a large local college or university, you're really in luck. Go on campus, or close to campus, set up a stand and give away about 20 shirts with graphics and name of the website on the back. Buzz spreads on college campuses like fire. If people like your shirts you will be getting plenty of customers soon.
Hi Hexane! Thanks for the suggestions man! I'm definitely going to start finding some college oriented forums to post on...i like chatting anyway I've been doing marketing similar to what you mention...i wear the most obnoxious of my shirts (usually the Butt Sex is WILD and don't cause no CHILD one lol) when we go out partying. people always ask me where i got my shirt, and I happen to have some business cards in my pocket