| The t-shirt business is a very saturated one but can | | | | of sites to show that you are a good contributor to |
| become a nice commercial opportunity if you can | | | | the community. Once you have a nice group of |
| capitalize on the laziness of the industry. While there | | | | mutual friends you can share your website with |
| are many great online t-shirt companies many | | | | them. If they like it you will receive more traffic. |
| succumb to stealing the same idea that others came | | | | Reviews are worth more than stumbles. |
| up with. When trying to effectively brand a new | | | | For forum marketing the process is similar. Find high |
| t-shirt business it is imperative to have original ideas, | | | | traffic forums with a nice mixture of overall traffic |
| learn from successful competitors, and separate | | | | and forums that relate to your niche. Participate in |
| yourself from the pack. | | | | discussions and provide useful information. Do not |
| The first way to brand your new t-shirt business is | | | | spam. Use a signature so that you can leave your |
| to go after a defined niche. For example you could | | | | web url. You also want to join communities where |
| simply do cartoon animal t-shirts or cartoon clowns. If | | | | you can promote your website as well as a blog. A |
| you want to be general such as humor based t-shirts | | | | great example of a community such as this is Make |
| you must be capable of coming up with hundreds | | | | friends with those in your community and comment |
| upon hundreds of original ideas. The humor based | | | | on their blogs so as they will be more likely to want |
| t-shirt market has many more solid competitors and | | | | to visit your site. |
| the competitive keywords are taken by the | | | | Another way to brand your t-shirt site is to copy the |
| companies that have been around for years. Coming | | | | ones that have success. See how they operate their |
| up with a t-shirt idea is easy. Look for everyday | | | | site and what features they use. You might want to |
| signs, phrases, etc and then change something to | | | | get the email a friend feature for your site so that |
| make the artwork witty or come up with a funny | | | | your designs can spread. See what keywords they |
| pun. If you are artistic make up as many creative | | | | are using in their meta tags. Meta tags are headlines |
| designs as you can. Something will stick. If you have | | | | at the top of the page that are indexed in search |
| a screen printer you can print shirts up yourself. If | | | | engines. Don't use their exact meta tags as you |
| not go to a third party site such as cafepress.com, | | | | might want to go for keyword terms a bit less |
| etc to upload your designs. The downside to this is | | | | popular, or those that relate to your niche. Try to |
| these third party sites get most of the profit, but if | | | | find your own special feature that will lead to more |
| you throw out hundreds and hundreds of designs and | | | | sales and traffic. |
| promote well you can still have a profitable online | | | | Another thing you can do to increase brand |
| t-shirt business. | | | | recognition of your t-shirt company is to submit to |
| The best way to promote your t-shirt business online | | | | free directories such as and Google so that your site |
| is to use online resources such as stumbleupon, | | | | will be crawled. Of course their are many other ways |
| forum posting, and SEO. will send you lots of unique | | | | to brand your t-shirt company and I will cover some |
| traffic if you get people to stumble and review your | | | | more in future articles such as offline branding |
| website. To be effective at stumbleupon you need | | | | techniques. |
| to build a mutual friends list and stumble/review a lot | | | | |