Tips and Tricks for T-shirt Entrepreneurs

Photography for Business - Lens Hero Review

Posted on December 23rd, 2010 by thetshirtnexus.
Categories: Marketing, General Business.

What a clever site. LensHero is a website which helps a user pick a lens for their DSLR camera. You input your camera, the type of photography, you’d like and then your budget range and then the site comes up with a list of lenses that are suitable.

It’s a pretty nice starting point if you don’t know your lenses, and the quotes from other photographer’s help you get a sense of a lens beyond the stats. The clever part is the marketing going around the site, there are ads for lenses which I assume are affiliate links or at least paid advertising.

For the user of the site this could be helpful in highlighting other brands of lenses that one may not immediately think about if you own one of the big two company brands (Canon or Nikon) and tend to stick to investigating lenses made by them as well. I’ve written about the benefits of owning an SLR camera earlier, you can use this site to get quick recommendations for what lens you might want to go with that camera.

My own recommendation for a reasonable budget solution is to get a 50mm lens. And in fact this matches up with Lens Hero’s suggestions for a portrait lens.

They also have a suggest feature for you to input lenses you already own and if you are looking to fill out your set.

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HubPages - Squidoo Competitor Could Be Good News

Posted on July 19th, 2010 by thetshirtnexus.
Categories: Marketing, General Business.

I recently opened an account with HubPages, a Squidoo competitor with a similar model. Their main difference in terms of money is that you get paid directly for services under your account, in other words, your Google Adsense account, your Amazon account, etc. HubPages just gets in on the ad/impressions rotation. You get 60% of the ad impressions and are paid directly from the respective affiliate companies once you hit their minimum payment threshold.
A big difference though is in the community. “Hubbers” as writers there are called can get a percentage of a Hub’s ad cut (the part that would normally go to HubPages) for a period of 120 minutes after linking to them. You can link to them from Twitter or anywhere. This gives an incentive for folks to market for you.

I’ve been impressed with Squidoo so far, I’ve written less than 20 lenses and still get surprised with checks years later after having written them. The checks (Paypal deposits these days) aren’t very big but it’s the closest I’ve got to that elusive “Passive Income” as I usually forget I even have Lenses up. I figure it’s worth a try with HubPages since I’ve already done the research for lenses on Squidoo.
If you’d like to give it a shot, here’s my referral link to my first HubPage. Poke around and if you sign up let me know as I can help promote your pages!

If you don’t have a Squidoo account you can also sign up with my referral link.

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Quick Savings: Canon XSi Coupon code $60 off

Posted on September 24th, 2008 by thetshirtnexus.
Categories: Marketing.

Just a quick post since I’ve talked about my Canon XTi camera before (I still love it by the way).

However the newer version has been out for awhile now and has gotten great reviews (and some of my jealousy I must admit), its the Canon XSi and its got 12.2 Megapixels (great for making those calendar prints, etc).

If you’d like one for your business (see my past post about the XTi) Here’s the coupon code:

$60 off EOS Rebel XSi Black 12.2 MP 3X Zoom Digital Camera! Coupon Code: SZT8CS0RVR2HMJ

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eBay and your PoD shop - Making Auctions Do Double Duty

Posted on December 9th, 2007 by thetshirtnexus.
Categories: Marketing, Print on Demand.

I was an eBay seller before I was a CafePress shopkeeper, not a serious seller, just a casual person selling things I owned.

Once I had a few CafePress shops I tried selling some of my CafePress items and didn’t do that well (broke even or didn’t sell the item). I didn’t have an eBay store set up though, I just did normal listings with non html descriptions so the auction presentation admittedly could’ve been a lot better. So in the end it was not really worth it in terms of sheer profit on an item when I still had to pay the base price for the item plus eBay fees.

However, I still occasionally list things on eBay because I think of my auctions more as an advertising expense than a pure profit generator. Here are my reasons why I think of them this way:

1. I mention my store in my About Me page

It is not OK with eBay to put your store link in the auction listing itself but you can add it to your About Me page. By the way, it is also not OK to say in your auction listing “Go to my About Me page for a link to my store”.

2. When I ship out an item I include a link to my store on the packing slip

I use PayPal to generate packing slips for me and I put my thanks and my store url in the area they provide for a note.

3. When I ship out an item I include a flier / catalog type page that promotes related items in my shop.

I’ve created a few versions of a single sheet flier that showcases different items in my shop. I include a coupon code when one is available.

What I haven’t done yet is include information about signing up for my shop’s newsletter. I should add that to the flier I think.

Note that the above methods work even if you are not auctioning off items you actually sell in your shop. I am auctioning off collectible figurines related to my store theme. Chances are if they like an X figurine they may like a t-shirt or sticker or hat, etc about X as well.

At any rate, I tend to use eBay when I can sell things in a batch (less post office trips) and/or when they have a special going on. For example right now they have a free Gallery option until December 12th.

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Ebay No Listing Fees for a Month

Posted on August 31st, 2007 by thetshirtnexus.
Categories: Marketing.

If you wanted to try them out for selling your stuff, now till September 30th is the time to do it.

The “catch” is that you have to buy the Gallery feature to get the free listing and have the start price at $9.99 or less.

However, in my opinion, when selling a product, Gallery is an essential purchase. You also still have to pay a Final Value fee and you’re going to likely want to have the Gallery picture option, but still, free listing is nice.

They are also doing a 25% discount on listing fees if you want your starting bid to be $10 or higher as well.

I use eBay mainly to try to get my stuff in front of new customers so to me I look at it as a marketing endeavor as well as a way to sell off extra inventory I have.

Some more details:

When is it?

Starting Wednesday August 29, 2007 between 00:00:01 PT (12:00 AM plus one second on August 29, 2007) and ending on Sunday September 30, 2007 at 23:59:59 PT(11:59 PM plus 59 seconds).