| Opening a T-shirt shop online at a print-on-demand | | | | book to tell you how to get started with it. There is |
| site seems an ideal way for writers to pick up an | | | | information available on the web for free, but you |
| extra income stream. It costs next to nothing. All you | | | | may have trouble finding what you need presented |
| do is create a graphics file with your design, upload it | | | | simply enough. |
| to the site, and collect a markup when someone has | | | | One way to find out what customers want is to ask |
| your design printed on a shirt. You can do text-only | | | | people, but that may give you too small and too |
| designs if you're not comfortable with images. Alas, | | | | biased a sample. Another approach is to find what |
| there are five big frustrations you may encounter in | | | | keywords people type into search engines when |
| setting up your own T-shirt shop at a | | | | they're hunting for designs like yours. You can find |
| print-on-demand web site. | | | | this out for free, though at the cost of a little time, |
| The first frustration is paying more than you have to | | | | by using Google's keyword tool and the Google |
| to set up your shop. You should be able to do it for | | | | search page. The keyword tool will suggest |
| nearly free. | | | | alternative keywords and will tell you how many |
| A second frustration is fighting with your image | | | | times people search for particular phrases in an |
| editor. Too simple an image editor will be too painful | | | | average month. The Google search page will give you |
| to use. A full-featured image editor may be hard to | | | | an estimate of the number of web pages using the |
| figure out. | | | | keyword phrase. If you find this process is too much |
| The third frustration is not knowing what your | | | | effort, you can buy Micro Niche Finder or pay to use |
| customers want. These are self-expression products. | | | | Wordtracker. |
| You need to find out what sentiments people wish | | | | A way to attract customers to your shop is to use |
| to express. | | | | keywords effectively. You need to fill up your shop |
| The fourth frustration is not knowing how to attract | | | | pages with good keywords, for example, using them |
| your customers to your shop. Having what people | | | | in descriptions of your designs. More importantly, you |
| want doesn't help if they can't find you. | | | | need to get quality back links to your shop using |
| The fifth frustration is not knowing what designs | | | | those keywords in the anchor text. (That's the |
| people like. For example, people do not particularly like | | | | colored text in a hyperlink.) You can get free back |
| large, rectangular pictures dominating the design. | | | | links by giving away information. You can post helpful |
| The way to get around the first frustration is | | | | advice at forums, you can post comments on blogs, |
| twofold: first, get the GNU Image Manipulation | | | | you can put up pages at Hubpages or Squidoo, you |
| Program, GIMP. It's free and as powerful as you will | | | | can write e-zine articles, you can have your own blog. |
| ever need. Second, carefully choose the sites at | | | | The most important thing in all of these is to give |
| which you set up your shops. You might want more | | | | away useful information and not to try to sell. The |
| than one store if you have incompatible product lines, | | | | links to your web site in your signature lines and |
| family vs. adult-oriented for instance. For that you | | | | resource boxes will bring you some visitors |
| might prefer Printfection where you can create many | | | | themselves. More importantly, they will spread links to |
| shops free. Printfection has a reputation for high | | | | your pages around the Net, telling the search engines |
| quality, but has rather few types of merchandise. If | | | | both what's at your store and that your store is |
| you do not intend to set up many stores, you may | | | | important. |
| decide it is worth the $60 per year CafePress | | | | A good way to find out what designs people like is |
| charges for each "premium" (i.e. adequate) store: you | | | | to ask people. Join the forum at your host site. Post |
| get a wide variety of merchandise to put your | | | | your designs and ask for comments. The |
| designs on, and their advertising brings a large | | | | shopkeepers there are usually happy to offer |
| number of customers through their marketplace. | | | | suggestions and encouragement. You can also ask |
| Zazzle is free, has many types of merchandise | | | | people you know on- or off-line. |
| available, and does a reasonable amount of | | | | There are definitely things that can frustrate you |
| advertising. | | | | when you set up your own print-on-demand T-shirt |
| A big problem with a powerful image editor is that | | | | shop, but you can do things to relieve those |
| you can get lost in the features. It is worth buying a | | | | frustrations. |