You have to commit to year round advertising. Well, you don’t have to, but not doing so hurts.

There are reasons for this.

The biggest reason is the buying cycle. People become away of something, then they become interested, then they shop around, they commit to buying and then they buy. Sometimes this can take months. Sometimes it can take days or hours depending on the urgency.

For example. If you only advertise, say, at Christmas because “Christmas is the busy shopping season”, that is great. But the problem is that you are going to have lowwer name recognition and trust than the company that advertises all year.

If they have done a good job people will go to them first without even caring much about what you do. The only thing that you gather is what we call the “low hanging fruit” or people that are less likely to buy but might still be interested.

These are low potential customers and not really the best types to target.

Yes, advertising during slow times of the year might mean expending a greater percentage of your gross revenues on drawing in customers, but it is well worth the effort.

January/February are generally good times to get locked into advertising schedules for the rest of the year. Because fewwer people advertise and justify this because of lower sales. This means rates are often lower as people struggle to fill ad slots. And if you commit now for an entire year, you can usally work out lower rates than if you waited until later.

If you are in a business that is catering to people year round not advertising year round is absolutely foolish.

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J.J. Jackson is President of Land of the Free Studios, Inc. and Cafepress “Top Shopkeeper”. He has been selling t-shirts on-line since 2004 and is the owner of the T-Shirt Entrepreneur, a site dedicated to helping people get involved in the T-shirt Economy. He is also the owner of Funny When Wet T-shirts, American Infidel Tshirts, Uber Gamer T-shirts as well as many other online t-shirt and gift stores.

For large shopkeepers at Cafepress the added products are a blessing and a curse. It means more products but it also means for some of us adding new products to upwards of a thousand different designs. Time spent here can effect the time spent on other things like new designs, promotions, etc.

For shopkeepers at Spreadshirt that made more than their share of sales on mugs, it means losing a revenue stream that has to be made up.

This is the way of business. So always be ready and always have enough time set aside to deal with the unexpected.

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J.J. Jackson is President of Land of the Free Studios, Inc. and Cafepress “Top Shopkeeper”. He has been selling t-shirts on-line since 2004 and is the owner of the T-Shirt Entrepreneur, a site dedicated to helping people get involved in the T-shirt Economy. He is also the owner of Funny When Wet T-shirts, American Infidel Tshirts, Uber Gamer T-shirts as well as many other online t-shirt and gift stores.

No matter what type of design you sell, try to keep your store on one side of the proverbial fence. For example, if you have a site that is dedicated to designs about hang gliding, it would certainly turn off people who like hang gliding to see the equivalent of “hang gliding sucks” designs mixed in.

Sure, you might think that you are going to get more business by selling “pro” and “anti” this or that designs in the same store but one of the things that is going to help drive your business is if people can relate to you, your shop and your mission (which is to promote your passion and yes, make a little money too!). If you seem uncertain about which side of the fence you sit about any issue from a love to a sport to politics you will lose the hard core enthusiast who is most likely to spend and spend big by insulting them.

This is not a cut and dry rule, but it will be true far more often than not.

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J.J. Jackson is President of Land of the Free Studios, Inc. and Cafepress “Top Shopkeeper”. He has been selling t-shirts on-line since 2004 and is the owner of the T-Shirt Entrepreneur, a site dedicated to helping people get involved in the T-shirt Economy. He is also the owner of Funny When Wet T-shirts, American Infidel Tshirts, Uber Gamer T-shirts as well as many other online t-shirt and gift stores.

Main Entry: at·tri·tion
Pronunciation: &-'tri-sh&n, a-
Function: noun
3 : the act of weakening or exhausting by constant harassment, abuse, or attack <attrition>
4 : a reduction in numbers usually as a result of resignation, retirement, or death

Sticking with your plan for the long haul as your competition grows weary, disinterested, or generally over whelmed is a good way to gain market share. As time goes on the majority of your competition will fall by the wayside and if you remain vigilant you can steadily gain market share.

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J.J. Jackson is President of Land of the Free Studios, Inc. and Cafepress “Top Shopkeeper”. He has been selling t-shirts on-line since 2004 and is the owner of the T-Shirt Entrepreneur, a site dedicated to helping people get involved in the T-shirt Economy. He is also the owner of Funny When Wet T-shirts, American Infidel Tshirts, Uber Gamer T-shirts as well as over two dozen other online t-shirt and gift stores.

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J.J. Jackson is President of Land of the Free Studios, Inc. and Cafepress “Top Shopkeeper”. He has been selling t-shirts on-line since 2004 and is the owner of the T-Shirt Entrepreneur, a site dedicated to helping people get involved in the T-shirt Economy. He is also the owner of Funny When Wet T-shirts, American Infidel Tshirts, Uber Gamer T-shirts as well as many other online t-shirt and gift stores.

It could be something as simple as poor awareness because they are buried so deep in your site that no one can find them. But it could also be that the designs are simply not appealing to your customers.

In the case of the later, often times some simple tweaks to the design can be made to make them more appealing.

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J.J. Jackson is President of Land of the Free Studios, Inc. and Cafepress “Top Shopkeeper”. He has been selling t-shirts on-line since 2004 and is the owner of the T-Shirt Entrepreneur, a site dedicated to helping people get involved in the T-shirt Economy. He is also the owner of Funny When Wet T-shirts, American Infidel Tshirts as well as many other online t-shirt and gift stores.

For example, Cafepress recently made several new product available. Use the oportunity to increase your footprint on the web and also to promote your shop by sending out a newsletter or doing other promotions.

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J.J. Jackson is President of Land of the Free Studios, Inc. and Cafepress “Top Shopkeeper”. He has been selling t-shirts on-line since 2004 and is the owner of the T-Shirt Entrepreneur, a site dedicated to helping people get involved in the T-shirt Economy. He is also the owner of Funny When Wet T-shirts, American Infidel Tshirts as well as many other online t-shirt and gift stores.

Sales and success are often direct functions of the size of your footprint on the web. That means the more places people can find your products the more likely they are to see your products. Of course you still need to start with good designs first!

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J.J. Jackson is President of Land of the Free Studios, Inc. and Cafepress “Top Shopkeeper”. He has been selling t-shirts on-line since 2004 and is the owner of the T-Shirt Entrepreneur, a site dedicated to helping people get involved in the T-shirt Economy. He is also the owner of Funny When Wet T-shirts, American Infidel Tshirts as well as many other online t-shirt and gift stores.

Services like cafepress offer many items that you can put your designs on so take advantage of it. The last thing you want to do is lose a sale because you only put your design on a mug and a shopper would prefer it on a t-shirt. That means lost sales and lost revenues.

Just make sure your design looks good on the items you place them on!

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J.J. Jackson is President of Land of the Free Studios, Inc. and Cafepress “Top Shopkeeper”. He has been selling t-shirts on-line since 2004 and is the owner of the T-Shirt Entrepreneur, a site dedicated to helping people get involved in the T-shirt Economy. He is also the owner of Funny When Wet T-shirts, American Infidel Tshirts as well as many other online t-shirt and gift stores.

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J.J. Jackson is President of Land of the Free Studios, Inc. and Cafepress “Top Shopkeeper”. He has been selling t-shirts on-line since 2004 and is the owner of the T-Shirt Entrepreneur, a site dedicated to helping people get involved in the T-shirt Economy. He is also the owner of Funny When Wet T-shirts, American Infidel Tshirts as well as many other online t-shirt and gift stores.