# Advertising on a zero budget?



## TDoodles (Jul 12, 2005)

I'm just starting out on a very small shoestring budget and was wondering what experiences you all have had with advertising/marketing your online t-shirt stores. What free services are out there? Have you had any luck/success at free advertising?

Thoughts and suggestions always helpful. 

Thanks


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## jdr8271 (Jun 16, 2005)

Ron,
even if you had money to spend, I wouldn't spend any money on advertising. What you need to do is totally free...First, youll need to focus on a few key words. Repeat key words that you think people who will like your website would be searching for about 8-10 times on your home page. I would focus on about 5 or 6 main key word phrases. Then, you should exchange links with as many people as possible...preferably people who have sites with your key word phrases, and preferably people who have a high google page rank already, but any link exchange is good. The third thing you should do is put your link in dmoz, which will provide you with tons of traffic once you get in. The fourth thing you should do is put your products in froogle. This should produce a good number of hits as well. I would also put your shirts on ebay, and put a link to your website from the ebay auction.


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## lawaughn (Jul 5, 2005)

Excellent tips.


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## aokusman (Jul 22, 2005)

I was thinking about putting inserts in magazines at stores. I can get the inserts done free at my college,go to a magazine store and insert them. What ya think?


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## ThWeems (Jun 7, 2005)

aokusman said:


> I was thinking about putting inserts in magazines at stores. I can get the inserts done free at my college,go to a magazine store and insert them. What ya think?


I would be wary of legal issues around that. It's kind of like using the magazine as advertising space without paying or getting permission. The store that sells the magazines probably wouldn't appreciate it either.


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## Rodney (Nov 3, 2004)

You can also list your t-shirt store in the various t-shirt directories and rating services that are out there. It's a good way to get free targeted traffic to your shop.

www.buy-tees.com
www.t-shirtshopper.com
www.t-shirtcountdown.com
www.t-shirtlinks.com

are some of the more established ones.


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## DMonkey (Apr 9, 2005)

Thanks for the links Rodney, oh and I can vouch for t-shirt countdown, they're the best! And you don't need to be anywhere near the top of the list to get hits and yea, even sales, thanks Rodney!!!  Marie


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## Twinge (Apr 26, 2005)

Hehe, Rodney's certainly got a solid foothold on the online t-shirt world; t-shirtlinks, t-shirtforums, t-shirtcountdown, circlerprinting, and probably some more I'm missing  Not that that's a bad thing though - each site is well done and provides a service.

Buytees really hides their free signup (for a single t-shirt) -- its at http://www.buy-tees.com/joinus.shtml (and very targeted at CafePress for some reason), and t-shirtshopper makes you put a horribly ugly and framed wheel on your site so I don't really like either of those from what I've seen.


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## DMonkey (Apr 9, 2005)

Thanks for trhe link Twinge, you're right...I couldn't find it before. ;-)


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## Adam (Mar 21, 2005)

You are welcome to submit a free listing at Buy-Tees. Granted it is very CafePress heavy, but that is because it started out as a CafePress marketplace. Since then it allows direct feeds from larger companies (on request) and listings for independent t-shirt vendors. 

The best free advertising (online) lies in the search engine. Google, msn, and Yahoo. Get yourself listed well in those and you will get multiple sales everyday. The majority of sales I make are from search engines, some come via directories I'm in like t-shirtlinks, t-shirt-directory and buy-tees. Other than that, PPC works extremely well for me, and if you look at it one way that is free traffic if you are still making a profit.

Hey Twinge you have certainly leaped ahead of me in the post count  I've been away a couple of weeks and have loads to catch up on!


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## Twinge (Apr 26, 2005)

Haha, indeed I have! I probably could have at least another dozen if I greeted every new member, but contributing to a massive line of 'hi, welcome' was never really my thing


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## bluefishtees (Aug 21, 2005)

I recently made a deal with the local Quizno's sub shop owner. We print 3x4 flyers with my tshirt ad on one side and a Quiznos coupon on the other. We are splitting the cost 50/50. M13Graphics.com prints them for us for $100 per 2500 batch. We hand them out everywhere, concerts, parks, and every store in Atlanta has a stack of them on their counter. People hang onto them instead of throwing them to the ground because they want to keep the sandwich coupon...then they visit our site later. We see a lot of our sales from the local Atlanta, GA area...and we are sure its from the flyers. My back pocket is always full of flyers and everyone I meet gets one. Find someone to split the cost with you and its not that expensive.

Froogle is awesome too...make sure you list on Froogle.


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## SpacemanFL (Jul 1, 2005)

Part of my initial plan is to email everyone I know with a short description of my business, along with the link, and ask them to forward the message to everyone in their address book. That should get at least 1000 people to at know my store is out there.


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## blairrev2003 (Jul 8, 2005)

bluefishtees said:


> I recently made a deal with the local Quizno's sub shop owner. We print 3x4 flyers with my tshirt ad on one side and a Quiznos coupon on the other. We are splitting the cost 50/50. M13Graphics.com prints them for us for $100 per 2500 batch. We hand them out everywhere, concerts, parks, and every store in Atlanta has a stack of them on their counter. People hang onto them instead of throwing them to the ground because they want to keep the sandwich coupon...then they visit our site later. We see a lot of our sales from the local Atlanta, GA area...and we are sure its from the flyers. My back pocket is always full of flyers and everyone I meet gets one. Find someone to split the cost with you and its not that expensive.
> 
> Froogle is awesome too...make sure you list on Froogle.


That is a very smart idea. Good marketing


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## bluefishtees (Aug 21, 2005)

Thanks blairrev2003! I'm trying to get more companies and stores involved so that I can print thousands of flyers, and hopefully at no cost to me.


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## busyqate (Oct 30, 2006)

Hi

Try adding your t-shirt to 

www.iloveyourtshirt.com i am getting hits from there so listing there won't hurt you at all.

_____________
busyqate


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## vegbyrd (Aug 27, 2006)

Adam said:


> You are welcome to submit a free listing at Buy-Tees. Granted it is very CafePress heavy, but that is because it started out as a CafePress marketplace. Since then it allows direct feeds from larger companies (on request) and listings for independent t-shirt vendors.
> 
> The best free advertising (online) lies in the search engine. Google, msn, and Yahoo. Get yourself listed well in those and you will get multiple sales everyday. The majority of sales I make are from search engines, some come via directories I'm in like t-shirtlinks, t-shirt-directory and buy-tees. Other than that, PPC works extremely well for me, and if you look at it one way that is free traffic if you are still making a profit.
> 
> Hey Twinge you have certainly leaped ahead of me in the post count  I've been away a couple of weeks and have loads to catch up on!


okay, i'm new to marketing so i need to ask: what is PPC?

i signed up for google adwords. it's not costing me much because i get almost no clicks! LOL!! i only owe them a little over $2 so far! well, my first SS shop is a very specialize thing and not really geared toward the general public. (that will change with my main site, though.)

since these shirts are so specialized and mostly text (no graphics to speak of), i'm thinking that tshirtcountdown.com and the others wouldn't really work. but i'm glad to know about them to use for my main site once it's up and running.

thanks!

veggie


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## Jasonda (Aug 16, 2006)

vegbyrd said:


> okay, i'm new to marketing so i need to ask: what is PPC


PPC means "Pay Per Click".


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## Rodney (Nov 3, 2004)

> since these shirts are so specialized and mostly text (no graphics to speak of), i'm thinking that tshirtcountdown.com and the others wouldn't really work.


There are many t-shirts at tshirtcountdown.com and other rating sites that are just text.


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## raptmonk (Nov 13, 2006)

Thanks for all the links!!


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