Unique T-Shirt Designs that Exude Personality

An understanding of unique T-Shirt design can be arrived at by getting a clear picture Read more

VIDEO: Building a Screen Printing Dry Box

An easy do it yourself screen drying cabinet which is essential to any shop Read more

How to Sell T-Shirts Using Twitter

Twitter.com has become very popular in today’s internet world. A February 2009 Compete.com blog entry ranks Twitter as the third largest social network (behind Facebook and MySpace), puts the number of users at roughly 6 million and the number of monthly visitors at 55 million. Those are numbers that are hard to ignore and is why it’s a great time to get a foothold in promoting your brand.

Twitter is a social networking and micro-blogging service that allows its users to send and read other
users updates (known as tweets), which are text-based posts of up to 140 characters in length. Updates are displayed on the user’s profile page and delivered to other users who have signed up to receive them.

If your new to twitter or want to get going on promoting your t-shirts it’s pretty straight forword but there are some choices that will give you better results.

Sign up for a free account at http://www.twitter.com . It’s effortless and takes a couple of seconds.

The username you choose is very important. Everyone will know you by your username. You will be
passing your link around so choose your business or brand name.

Put up a picture or your logo. You’ll have a much better chance of gaining followers than if you use the default picture. I usually use a larger version of my website’s favicon.

Create a profile. Tell people about your brand. I myself don’t follow anyone that doesn’t have some kind of profile.

Put your website’s link in your profile or if your brand has an interesting blog use that URL. After all, what you’re doing here is promoting your brand so you need to make it noticeable. By far most of my twitter traffic comes from people checking my profile and clicking on my link.

Now, tweet something. There is nothing worse than when I check a new person who is following me, to see if I want to follow them back, is when they have no tweets. Why would I follow anyone when there is nothing to follow?

While many twitter users will follow everyone and anyone, you’ll be in a better position to make some
sales if you set it up right from the start.

Now that you have everything set up and ready to go you need some followers to promote your brand to. First thing is to tell your current customers and visitors you are now on twitter and link them to your page there. Put the link up on any social network profiles you have out there like myspace, facebook, etc.

To grow your followers outside of where you are already known there are three methods you can use to do this.

1. Non-Targeted Fast Approach. If you don’t care who’s following you on twitter, go find someone’s twitter list, click on “followers” and click “follow” on every one. The followers are more likely to follow you back because they are already following someone else. While this will build up your followers list you will have many, if not most of the list, not interested in your brand.

2. Semi Targeted Approach. This will give you a little better targeted crowd of followers. Find people that already interested in similar t-shirt brands. Find their twitter accounts, the easiest way it to try http://www.twitter.com/brandname. Since they have a similar style, it’s likely their followers are also going to enjoy your creations. Again, click on their followers and follow every one of those people. While this isn’t a perfect approach it will get you going.
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3. Super Targeted Approach. Use the same steps as number 2 above, but check each profile that your thinking about adding, to double check that they might be interested in your stuff or have similar interests. This one is going to take the longest, but will have a better chance of paying off in the long run.

Now that you are on your way to creating a highly targeted twitter list are need to provide some
maintenance. Twitter has some limits. You can only follow up to 2,000 others until you get 2,000 followers. You need to prune your followers regularly. A few days after you follow a bunch go to your account, click on “Following” and unfollow those who did not follow you back. How can you tell? If it says “direct message” under their name, it means they are following you. If not, click “remove”. Do the same for each page till you reach the end.

As your following grows, the more new people you’ll get following you. In reality you could stop doing the work and they will come to you. It also seems to help if you get and stay on twitter users who have bigfollowings.

Now, you have your account set up, profile in place and are getting others to follow you. This is when the fun starts. You have 140 characters to get your messages across about your brand. Send direct
Messages to those that follow you thanking them, mentioning your website and maybe offering a coupon code. You can post updates to all your followers about sales, giveaways, contests, new products and so on. Make sure not to bombard your list with only sales messages. Let them also know about cool things you come across and let your own personality show through which will build a more loyal following.

Anthony Marsh is the owner of Popular Threadz and Crack Smoking Shirts. He runs the online resource TeeBiz.com and the t-shirt community TeeBurb.com.

VIDEO: Overview Of The Making Of A T-Shirt Graphic

An overview of the design process of creating a t-shirt graphic. Read more

T-Shirt Printing – Evolving Over The Years

In 1959, a more stretchable and durable ink, called plastisol was invented, which allowed more styles and variety in T-shirt designs and T-shirt printing. During the 1960s, screen-printing and tie-dyeing on basic Tshirts caught on and became a huge success. The commonest form of decorating commercial Tshirts is screen-printing. Screen-printing involves separating a design into individual colors. Plastisol or other water-based inks are then applied to the Tshirt through special screens, which limit the area where the ink is applied and deposited. In all commercial T-shirt printing, specific colors in the design to be printed are used. Few companies continue to use the water-based inks on the printed Tshirts that they supply. Most companies manufacturing Tshirts and providing Tshirt printing facilities prefer using plastisol because it can be used on varying colors without needing to make color adjustments at the art level.

T-shirt printing companies keep up with the trends, fashion, and demands and use Specialty inks, which include puff, shimmer, discharge, and chino, based inks. Metallic foils too can be stamped and heat pressed on plastisol ink. When this is combined with the specialty shimmer ink, the metallics provide a mirror effect wherever the screen-printed plastisol ink had been applied. As these specialty inks are quiet expensive they are used more on garments available in boutiques. Some other methods of decoration, which is used in Tshirt printing include airbrush, embroidery, applique, embossing or impressing, and ironing on of flock lettering and heat transfers.

In the late 1980s and 1990s, Tshirts with logos of prominent designers became popular, especially with teens and young adults. With these Tshirts, consumers could flaunt their liking for particular designer brands in a very inexpensive way. Some designer Tshirt brands include Calvin Klein, Ralph Lauren, FUBU, and The Gap. Major consumer product companies like Coca-cola have used printed Tshirts and Tshirt printing for product advertising since the 70s. Since 1990s, companies of all sizes prefer Tshirts with their corporate logo and message as a part of their advertising campaign.

By the end of the last century, designing of custom T-shirts on a Tshirt companies website became very popular. Many Tshirt companies with websites started using digital printing such as DTG printing or Direct to Garment printing, allowing customers to design Tshirts online without the compulsion of having to place a minimum order for T-shirt printing. Customers can place an order for even one custom design. Customers can even select branded Tshirts and get their custom design printed on the Tshirt. They can not only select the brand, style, color, and size, but also the printing method with features like Foil, Metallic, Glitter, and Vinyl. Some companies even provide free graphic designing for orders of 50+ t-shirts, making it a win-win situation for even a small company.

If you want to know more about T-shirt Printing or want to custom design and place an order for Tshirt Printing, please do visit our site or write to us.

Article Source: articledashboard.com

Web Design That Gets Results, Not Just Traffic

Let’s say that you have a website that has been around for quite a while, that you have done some SEO and now you are getting thousands of visitors every week. But you are not making money. Visitors come to your website, browse, and move on. You have a conversion problem. And there are few remedies to a conversion problem than a website re-design.

When you re-design your website, don’t make the same mistakes. Design a website that will get you results, not just visitors.

BUILD TRUST. Show what you know by writing articles concerning your sector of activity. Demonstrate your know-how and submit to ezines. Include feedback from customers on your services or products. Show that others have used your services and that they were satisfied. Include your address, phone number, your names, photos of your business, videos, and a quick and easy contact us form. Use SSL certificates on pages that handle sensitive information, create a privacy policy, and tell your publicize both. Make your design look as modern as possible. Web savvy visitors do not trust bad looking websites.

GIVE ANSWERS. Create an FAQ to provide answers to questions that have not yet been asked. Make your navigation simple and accurate. Do not have pages with no content just because you think you should have a page entitled “such and such”. Use easy-to-see calls to action to further give people what they are seeking on your website. Have a search bar so that people can get what they are looking for by by-passing your navigation.

BE QUICK. Nothing is more annoying than a [http://www.bluefountainmedia.com]website design that takes forever to load. Increase your page load speed to improve your retention rate. Make any of the forms on your website quick and easy to fill-out. Online users do not want to take a lot of time to do anything. By the time they wait for your pages to load or if they see a long form to fill-out they will already be on your competitor’s web site.

Al Keser is a New York web designer, journalist, and video producer. He recommends finding a New York web design firm that makes websites that will bring you results, not just traffic.

Article Source: Al Keser EzineArticles.com

VIDEO: Making A Screen Printing Registration Guide

Make a perfect screen every time. Avoid exposing images too high, too low or crooked. On multi-colored jobs, expose images so they register exactly. A Screen Registration Guide is required to laminate capillary films for 3-D ink printing. Build this out of materials you probably already own in about 10 minutes, but avoid many hours of work and costly mistakes.

VIDEO: T-Shirt Layouts In PhotoShop Part 1

Part 1 of creating t-shirt mock-ups for emptees.com

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