Threadless T-Shirts - Profile for GumEverywhere

GumEverywhere aka Grimelda is 24.41 years old, has been a member since June 18, 2006, has scored 1431 submissions, giving an average score of 1.78.

Jul 09 '08 by GumEverywhere

12 Comments

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How to get a shirt made

So I've been doing a survey of successful vs. unsuccessful design submissions over the past few weeks. Success, the way I judge it, is also partly measured by the design making it past the first day. Strangely, the only statistically valid predictor of design success is the number of blog entries the artist has made. Many times, the comments on the designs are made by people who also frequently respond to the artist's blog entries.

So, the moral of the story is... post lots in the blog forum, make lots of Threadless friends, and make them $5 you.

Destroy the Imposters - Threadless, Best T-shirts Ever

$5 me for cracking the mystery of how to get a shirt made.
Plus I REALLY want a tshirt with a sketchy penguin on it.
I'm thinking of running an actual statistical analysis on this theory, but Threadless makes it tough since it doesn't have an easily traceable "friend" feature.

BlameTheSuburbs on Jul 09 '08 at 12:45pm

You're absolutely wrong. Its good to get to know what scores well and what doesn't, but its about quality of execution and strength of concept, not popularity. There are so many people voting on designs that what happens in the blogs, or whose "popular" in the blogs doesn't even effect scores at all.

Its important that you realize this. The only when to get better scores is to make better T-shirt designs.

Yes, I know the voters can be biased or wrong, generally cute witty stuff does well and some more interesting stuff might get looked over. But overall, I think you really can trust the feedback you get from voters.

ISABOA on Jul 09 '08 at 12:45pm

you conclusion is bologna

Malcolm Man on Jul 09 '08 at 12:46pm

I misread this as. "how to get laid"

Bramish on Jul 09 '08 at 12:48pm

Even if every blogger who knew/liked me gave my design a 5 that would probably only account for about a 10th of the votes, which, if the rest gave my design a 0, would leave me with a final score of... what I'm saying is I think you're wrong.

FRICKINAWESOME on Jul 09 '08 at 12:51pm

Most submissions get about 1,500 votes, and bloggers probably account for no more than 200-300 of those votes maximum. That leaves 1,200 people who have never heard of you that hate/love your design to impress with what you have submitted. Can i see your statistical breakdown please, or have you by any chance read the book "how to lie with statistics" which i has to read in a freshman sociology class?

bafocomics on Jul 09 '08 at 12:58pm

34% of people I know lie about 59,5 % of the scores they give in my subs.

This make me 47%sure that 100% of your theory are just a cry for attention for the 3% of top bloggers that can make your popularity 56% higher

Phiffer on Jul 09 '08 at 1:00pm

Not a single blog about this shirt

Egyptronic! - Threadless, Best T-shirts Ever

againstbound on Jul 09 '08 at 1:01pm

What everyone said.

There are quite a few designs popular among the bloggers that score less than 2.

wotto on Jul 09 '08 at 1:01pm

oh dear oh dear

ISABOA on Jul 09 '08 at 1:03pm

wait!

I get low scores cause nobody likes me!

AHA!!

GumEverywhere on Jul 09 '08 at 6:31pm

I wasn't claiming that designs popular among bloggers score higher, I was claiming that designs by bloggers who are popular are more successful. Big difference. If someone blogs in the forums a lot, their designs are far, far more likely to last more than a day. Since final score is a subjective measure of taste, it's less reliable to determine degree of success. How many designs last for the full week of voting is more mathematically based.

If, as Bramish said, 1/10 of the voters are friends and give his score a 5 while everyone else gives it a 0, his overall score would be 0.5 instead of 0. That's a huge difference on this site. If all of his friends give it a 5 on the first day of scoring, then the score coming out of that first day would probably be made up of about 1/3 his friends, giving it a 1.67 at the end of the day. Since lasting long was one of the parameters for success, I'd say making friends makes a pretty significant difference.

I'm not trying to whine about low scores or bad feedback... at the end of the day, the Threadless Overlords and the community in general have enough taste that only great designs get printed... it was just something I thought was interesting and felt like sharing.