SOME TEMPORARY STUFF: I'm getting tired of seeing all the spam when scoring. Danielle and Hector have made blogs about it recently. It would be great if we could create a blog that not only explains about spamming but gives some positive tips to help noobs promote their stuff. "Neat! Check out mine!" Critique is mostly doing its job but more and more lately people are refusing to listen and stop. So I'm trying to make this blog that not only tells people not to spam, but also gives them some tips how to promote their stuff properly and I'd like you all to help out.

Blog Begins here:

If you are new to Threadless, or to the blogs, hi and welcome.

mew mew

We really are happy to see you here and love new talent. We look forward to seeing your work in the future.

This blog will help you out by discussing the best ways to promote your design here and elsewhere on the internet.

First things first,

A Note About Spamming

You have probably been directed to this blog because someone has accused you of "spamming."

You are probably familiar with seeing designer's link to their active Critiques while commenting on other Critiques in the Critique forum and this may have led you to believe that this is OK on active Design submissions, but it is not.

It is a sad fact that there are not many active users on the Critique forum and this practice has become necessary to get Critiques attention. But, there are literally hundreds or even thousands more users actively scoring designs. What's more, Threadless ensures that your design is exposed to all these voters, as every time someone votes on a design, they are automatically redirected to another design.

So while promoting your Critique on other Critiques in exchange for constructive and useful advice is considered appropriate, any kind of promotion on a Design up for scoring is considered to be incredibly rude and inconsiderate. In short, it's spam.

This is because a designer and the Threadless judges must know that all the comments on their design are made honestly. If there is an ulterior motive for making the comment, the comment as a whole cannot be trusted.

While I'm sure you only left your link after making a genuine, sincere comment, if we encourage people to leave links it ultimately encourages people to leave generic comments that they copy and paste. I'm sure you've seen comments on Critiques that are very unhelpful and just say "Cool! Check out mine!" and that this has been very frustrating for you.

Comments on a design should be reserved for that design, not your design. It's disrespectful to the design. Comments are valuable. They are a great indicator of a design's success. Spamming cheapens comments.

Lastly, it only works because very few people do it. If everyone did it, there'd be five-hundred comments on each deisgn all vying for attention for their designs. It would be a mess and it wouldn't get your design any attention.

So, how do you get the attention that your design deserves? The next section will hopefully provide you with some ideas.

Use the Tools That Threadless Gives You

When Threadless approved your design, they should have sent you an email with a link to your design's "Share Design" page.

This is an example of a Share Design page.

Firstly, Threadless makes it easy for you to email your friends and let them know about your design. You can enter their addresses into the form manually, or you can import from your gmail or Yahoo address books.

Underneath, on the right hand side, there are buttons that will automatically promote your design on many popular websites.

These websites can basically be divided into two groups. "Social networking" sites and "social bookmarking" sites.

The Social Networking sites on your Share Design Page are Facebook, MySpace and Twitter.

"Social networks" let you keep in touch with your friends.

Although it can sometimes seem the most perplexing, the most simple of the social networking sites is Twitter. All Twitter asks of you is the answer to the question "What are you doing now?" in 140 characters or less. This is called a Tweet and other Twitter users who follow you can read your Tweets. so if what you are doing now is a submission for Threadless, Tweet it.

Add your username to the Threadless Twitterpool so that other Threadless users can follow you. Remember the best way to promote your design is to people who regularly use Threadless.

If the url of your submission is too long to fit on your Tweet, you can use tinyurl to easily create a shorter one that will redirect to your design.

Facebook and MySpace have much more functionality than Twitter to interact more directly with your friends. You can send messages to your firends directly about your sub, or you can mention it on your page itself.

Remember when using Social Networks not to send out promotions for your sub at random as this could also be spam and don't make it the only thing you use them for. The main purpose of Social Networks is to socialise. You know your friends and you know which ones will want to hear from you about your sub so target your messages to those who'll want to hear them. Better yet, make some friends on Threadless, they'll definitely want to hear about it!

The Social Bookmarking sites on your Share Design page are Delicious, Digg and StumbleUpon.

When you find something cool on the internet, instead of using a regular bookmark in your browser which only you can see, sending it to a "social bookmarking" site will let everyone see it, meaning you can share the cool thing you found with users all over the world.

The homepages on these websites look much like those of MSN or Yahoo, directing you to news and entertainment content. But whereas the content on Yahoo or MSN is all generated by those companies, the content on social bookmarking sites is chosen by the readers.

Delicious and StumbleUpon are geared towards suggesting you websites you will like based on your bookmarks and ratings, so the more you use them the more accurate their suggestions will be for you. Using them a lot will also help them suggest your design to people with similar interests to you and you can suggest to your friends websites for them to try.

Digg is more geared towards sharing cool stuff and they have an active community there who will discuss things. If you submit your design there, it will appear in the "Upcoming" section, where people can vote if it's worthy of becoming popular. So if enough people think your design is cool, they will "digg" it and it could end up on the front page where it will be seen by a lot more people.

Post Your Own Blog on the Main Forum

Use the Embed Code found on the left-hand side of your Share Design page or under the scoring buttons on your Submission, to easily place a link to your design in your blog, that looks like this:



If you have a couple of subs up at once, you may want to put them together in the one blog. Some people like to start a new blog for each new design while others will keep all their designs in one blog. You can edit the title and the first post in your blog at any time. But please, only one blog per design.

Also, please do not use this embed code to leave off-topic comments on other people's blogs. It's also spamming and you'll look like a tool. However, if (and only if) the topic of the blog calls for you to post your Designs, then go ahead. One such blog is discussed in the next section.

To bring attention to your blog, you may bump it a few times a day. Bumping your blog means making a comment on your blog to bring it to the top of the blogs list.

Ideally, what you want is for other people to bump your blog for you. The best way to do this is to run a "Guess the Score" competition.

In the last few days your design is up, use your promotions blog to ask people to guess the score it will get. This encourages people to view and score your design. When they type their answers and bump the blog, more people will see it. The person who comes closest to guessing the correct score will win.

The prize doesn't have to be huge. People who have won Threadless before may offer a free t-shirt or gift card to the winner, as they may have store credit left over. You might want to add the condition that they will win the prize only if the design prints so that you can use your $500 store credit. Or you could offer your next STPs. Or use your artistic talents and offer to draw a portrait of the winner.

Join the Alumni Wannabe Club

The Alumni Wannabe Club is a blog where it is appropriate to post your own design.

Promote it on your own website

Use the Embed Code on your own website, or your non-Threadless blogs. Plus if you refer people from outside Threadless, you will earn Street Team Points (STPs) if they make a purchase!

Here is a great article from Emptees about using your blog to promote your designs.

Join Emptees

Emptees is a place where the world’s best designers and tee enthusiasts can come together on common ground to show off, talk about, and love tees. It is not another t-shirt competition or store, but a place where you can promote your designs up for voting or sale at any website, or just talk and learn about tees.

Fatheed explains Emptees in this blog and you may also link to any design you have up on Emptees from there.

Emptees is full of resources to help you get started in t-shirt design. They collect articles from experts from all over the net and they're a great read.

You can upload your t-shirt there when you submit it here. This works much like using a blog on Threadless to promote your design. People can see it and be directed to Threadless to vote for it and leave comments if they like it but it has a few extra advantages. By having your tee up on another site besides Threadless, you can get attention for your design from people who browse Emptees regularly but may not browse Threadless regularly. Emptees is also a much more "on topic" forum. A promo blog on Threadless can sometimes get lost amongst all the Threadless blogs on seemingly random topics but the Tees page on Emptees filters all that out and just leaves tees being promoted by people.

There is a simple scoring system on Emptees. People can either "Love" your design or do nothing. If you get a lot of Loves on your design, then it will be featured on the front page. If a tee gets enough love, it will win "Tee of the Day" and be featured at the top of the page. This means extra exposure for your design and more votes.

Use your blog on Threadless to ask for Loves on Emptees to give your design extra exposure there and use your Emptees account to send people to Threadless to vote for it.

Fatheed has also created a button you can use in your blog or on your profile to ask for Emptees love.



Join Flickr

Flickr is a website that lets you upload and share pictures. Post the same picture that you will use for your Submission to Flickr and link it to your Submission's page on Threadless. Your Flickr contacts will see it and come vote for your design. You can also use Flickr to show close-ups and larger images than Threadless allows in your Submission which is pretty valuable if you have a design with a lot of detail. It's easy to add your Flickr to your Threadless profile too. Simply click Edit Your Profile and add your username to the box.

This is all I feel like writing right now but I'd love your comments on stuff I've forgotten to include or things I need to change etc