# Marketing where does one start?



## anthony17

I've using this site to help jumpstart my business. This place has been wonderful. Words can not express the help I've received. Which brings me to this question. How can I market my shirts? I do custom shirts and am starting my brand on a heatpress machine. I can not afford a website like the ones I've come across and the stores are shopping at the tradeshows (way too expensive) Any ideas? Anyone? Please Help!


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## Adam

I was always taught to start with the Four P's, product, price, place and promotion


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## Rodney

Hi Anthony, if you are starting your own line of t-shirts with your own unique designs, then one thing you'll want to think about is WHO will be buying these t-shirts.

You may want to think about this part before you go any further. Who is your target market for your designs.

After you have that, then you'll need to come up with creative ways on how to REACH that target market. Some of it is going to cost money  Advertising and marketing a business costs money.

Once you have your target market figured out, you may want to figure out how much you have in your budget to spend on marketing and advertising. Even if you have the best t-shirt designs in the world, they will just sit on the shelf if nobody knows about them.

You could consider a website as part of your marketing budget. Many times, they are not as expensive as you might think, and given the returns they can give you, it can be a wise investment in your business. You may want to rethink the idea of a website:

A website can make sales and take orders while you are sleeping!
(I have a little O'Jays wav file that plays when I make a sale in one of my stores. My wife and I will be watching a movie in the other room and she'll just smile)








A website can answer lots of questions and be a great follow up to face to face meetings when you try to sell your shirts.








A website can generate low cost (or free) sales by making sure your site is search engine friendly and linked well by other sites. There are some people who make the majority of their income from referrals from free natural search engine listings. This doesn't happen overnight, but with time and work, it CAN happen.









Insert reasons 4-284 here








Once you have your target market, you can reach them by offline advertising (magazines, local events, stores), online advertising (banners on websites they visit, search enigine marketing (Google Adwords, Yahoo Search Marketing, natural search engine listings), newsletters, blogs, etc.

How to start is basically think of any and every way you can get your name out there to the people most likely to buy your product or service.


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## anthony17

I was quoted for a standard website of $1500.00 that includes the shopping chart, e-commerce etc. I've yet to find a provider that will create a site and maintain it for any less. I'm currently attempting to create my own site. (Big Mistake) It takes too much time and it's confusing. Are there any webmaster out there or that you could recommend?


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## anthony17

Adam your site looks great, who did yours? My site is Warriorsoath.com


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## anthony17

Thanks for all the info Rodney. I'm going to cut and paste your message and use it. I'm feeling better already.


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## dennymclain

anthony17 said:


> Adam your site looks great, who did yours? My site is Warriorsoath.com


Sites aren't that expensive to make. I made both of mine using ImageReady, within Photoshop CS, and set it up with GoLive CS. If you're a Mac guy, iLife has a great site construction package with pre-set templates. As for e-commerce, PayPal is a great way to start, and Google's upcoming system might be very interesting -- especially if it adds value to your Google search engine listing (2 for 1, can't beat that).

In the end, make sure you've got your URL on the shirt tag, and a unique shirt brand name which won't conflict with other similar names on a search (i.e., calling your shirt line "Awesome" will most likely place you on page 12,336 of a Google search)

I'm starting my own shirt label as well. It's a worry at first, like learning how to ride a motorcycle, but it gets so much easier as the days progress.

Good luck.


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## Rodney

> I was quoted for a standard website of $1500.00 that includes the shopping chart, e-commerce etc. I've yet to find a provider that will create a site and maintain it for any less.


Try a site with many freelancers like rentacoder.com, elance.com, designoutpost.com.

Hosting and domain name should be $75-$200 per year
Shopping cart ($0 - $200 per year -- $0 being the great free shopping carts like www.cubecart.com)
Having someone install/customize and give you the lowdown on how to use your shopping cart ($100-$300)
Processing payments through PayPal/Google Checkout ($0 per month)

So to actually get up and running, I'd guess you could do it for less than $500 if you shopped around.

But your real concern before you start a website is who is going to be the primary buyer of your products. To paraphrase a "badalouism":

"a good place to start is a business plan."

That will help you identify the different parts of running a business and help you get answers to the challenging questions before you get started.


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## anthony17

I'm currently working on my business plan, I must say it is a process within itself. I'll sell shirts to retail stores and organizations. Hey Thanks to all of you.


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## Solmu

Rodney said:



> Hosting and domain name should be $75-$200 per year
> Shopping cart ($0 - $200 per year -- $0 being the great free shopping carts like www.cubecart.com)
> Having someone install/customize and give you the lowdown on how to use your shopping cart ($100-$300)
> Processing payments through PayPal/Google Checkout ($0 per month)


Making your first sale - Priceless ?


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## anthony17

I just wanted to say thanks to all of you. I am currently working on my website using lunarpages (thanks Rodney) It's working really well. I haven't set up the shopping cart yet. Again Thanks Much!


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## Royaltygirl

Hey rodney,
How do you put that wav on your site to play when you make a sale?
I need that so I can stay off the computer. My site just launched about 2 weeks ago and I am religiously checking email.
Tara


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## Rodney

> How do you put that wav on your site to play when you make a sale?


It's actually not done on my website, it's triggered via the program that I use to check email (Outlook). What email program do you use? That way, I can help you with instructions for your specific program (if it's available).


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## Royaltygirl

I use outlook.


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## Vtec44

Where does it start? Like Rodney said, it helps a lot if you know who are the customers.


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## Rodney

> I use outlook.


Cool.

Go to Tools menu > Rules and Alerts > Create a New Rule

If you have an email address that your order confirmations come from, you can use that as the trigger. Check the "from people or distribution list" box . Down in the lower box that says "Edit the Rule Description", click on the FROM link and add the email address that your orders come from (you can also use a subject line or anything else unique to that email).

Click Next > Check the "Play a Sound" box and down in the lower box that say "Edit the Rule Description" and click on sound and browse your computer for a wav file that you would like to play when the order comes in.

Click next and next and save it and you should be all set.


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## jaiparis

Not sure if this will help, but we setup a web site through Sam's club, if you have a membership it's like $15 dollars a month and it includes a shopping cart feature, you would have to setup payments through paypal or get a credit merchant account which would be extra. They have some layout designs you can choose from and adding dept's and products is pretty straight forward.


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## digitalninja

There are many shopping cart software products out there. 

volusion.com
monstercommerce.com

Just to name a few. Obviously there are many out there these are just two that I have recently come across. 

Did anybody else notice this:
cracksmokingshirts.com
nerdyshirts.com
bustedtees.com

It appears that they all have the same shopping cart software. It is called Sun Shop I believe. 

But anyways I would def recommend having a shopping cart software instead of hiring a programmer/web designer to create it for you as it will be much less expensive.


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## farennikov

digitalninja said:


> There are many shopping cart software products out there.
> 
> volusion.com
> monstercommerce.com


I am planning to start an online clothing/music store and consolidate small vendors/labels, and I will probably go with Volusion, they seem to be the best.


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## Twinge

digitalninja said:


> Did anybody else notice this:
> cracksmokingshirts.com
> nerdyshirts.com
> bustedtees.com
> 
> It appears that they all have the same shopping cart software. It is called Sun Shop I believe.


Uh? I don't think so. CrackSmokingShirts is quite a bit different visably to begin with, and all 3 vary _significantly_ in the way they are coded. I highly doubt they are running the same setup.


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## digitalninja

My bad, I visually looked at the way their sites are layed out. At a first glance they appear to have a similar setup. (ie square images, 4 across, similar description page for the shirt, etc.) But looking at the code, they are different.


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## Twinge

digitalninja said:


> My bad, I visually looked at the way their sites are layed out. At a first glance they appear to have a similar setup. (ie square images, 4 across, similar description page for the shirt, etc.) But looking at the code, they are different.


It is certainly a pretty popular basic layout for a t-shirt store, and is used by a lot of sites. Several slight variations of course, but a lot of sites show rows and rows and shirt images right on the main page like that - it is pretty effective (depending on the market).


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## OffYaRocker.com

Hi guys, 

Well I am paying around 64.99$ a month and im in the UK and this gives me everything and more, yes i have some basic css and html skills to help put my touch on it, but the general shopping cart, templates etc are all pre-loaded, I had to get my own credit card merchant but thats only my choice you dont have to, you can just use paypal!

My website provider gives us , traffic stats, inventory control, best sellers, mailing manager, shipping calculator etc, its everything in 1, i love it and it is Search Engine Friendly, meaing it has meta tag wizards and easy to use product interface. 

check it out, hope this helps 3dcart.com


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## benthomas

Hi,

I think you should start it on small scale for now as you mentioned that you cannot afford to spend.
The best part would be that you would learn about it to manage better and prepare for the upcoming venture financially too.

Regards
Ben Thomas


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## eallen

dont forget about word of mouth. that is free and effective


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## adam.smsg

Sites can be cheap as hell if done right. My partner created our site using wordpress. Very functional, simple, gets the point across. Dont pay a lot of money if you dont have it.

Check it out www.smsg.us

As far as marketing goes, just look around at work "works" these days. Even on a grander scale. There seems to be a push right now for making the consumer feel like they are part of something. Mac is doing it by making the brand feel like something that needs to be "joined". Its a bit cultish and creepy but it works. And MS is doing it by making their customer feel like they are part of the development process. Theyve been doing it for years but they just started putting it in ads and making it known.

Look for things like this to do on a smaller scale. I have a few ideas myself. We'll see how they work out.


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## muneca

hey, 

thanks guys for this post. lots of valuable tips here.


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## Nikelover

there are web that lets you advertise in their site, also you can pay on forums to advertise your products.


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## chautaari1

inspiring discussion guys.
does this also works for overseas markeeting?

cheers!!!


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## codyjoe

Looks like @chautaari1 dug-up one of the older threads on this site. Started way back in '06.


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## OmniPrint Int.

Social Media Marketing is great. It will help you gain interest and you can get sales directly through your posts! Figure out your target market and use their interests to get them invested in you. This company did a great job... they market themselves as "I Want To Marry A Country Boy" and post lots of western themed pics... then will randomly advertise clothes and jewelry in between. https://www.facebook.com/IWantToMarryACountryBoy

This article also lists some different sites you can sell your products on without starting your own own website.  
Direct to Garment Printer | The DTG Experts | Omniprint International Technical Thursday: Where Should You Be Selling?


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## binki

codyjoe said:


> Looks like @chautaari1 dug-up one of the older threads on this site. Started way back in '06.


At least he used the search function rather than ask the same question again!


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## SoloStampede

I thought about putting together a marketing package, so people can find out where to market their brand for free. I just haven't gotten around to it. With all the social media avenues, social product search engines, social lists, and more; you really don't need to pay for marketing at all.

As for ecommerce hosting, I would go with bigcartel.com or storenvy.com They offer simple and cheap store hosting. My pick is bigcartel.com 

I'm currently working on my clothing line, hopefully sometime next year it'll be ready.


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## tristanphillips

OmniPrint Int. said:


> Social Media Marketing is great. It will help you gain interest and you can get sales directly through your posts! Figure out your target market and use their interests to get them invested in you. This company did a great job... they market themselves as "I Want To Marry A Country Boy" and post lots of western themed pics... then will randomly advertise clothes and jewelry in between. https://www.facebook.com/IWantToMarryACountryBoy
> 
> This article also lists some different sites you can sell your products on without starting your own own website.
> Direct to Garment Printer | The DTG Experts | Omniprint International Technical Thursday: Where Should You Be Selling?


Ain't that the truth


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## ukracer

anthony17 said:


> I was quoted for a standard website of $1500.00 that includes the shopping chart, e-commerce etc. I've yet to find a provider that will create a site and maintain it for any less. I'm currently attempting to create my own site. (Big Mistake) It takes too much time and it's confusing. Are there any webmaster out there or that you could recommend?


You can get Open source software installed and hosted for $249 including a theme.........then its just from $5.99 per month. depending how far and how much you want to add to it or take it.


Just pop across to opentshirts.com and find the forum. I can help you find the right person from there. 

So it is easy to get it done for a lot less and with decent SEO.........oh BTW that also includes an ONLINE TSHIRT DESIGNER. If you can find better value than that please tell me! 


Regards Andy T (AKA ukracer)


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## Alex Parker

How does one market their software? startup - please help


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