The T-Shirt Blog

I don’t think that Myke from NerdyShirts is quite proud that some of his shirts are now selling themselves for 5 bucks, but with the economy as bad as it is, and the winter as cold it is, there is not much he can do about it. Also, NerdyShirts.com will be launching a new site within days, so I’d snatch up some of these shirts before the sale is gone, especially Whatchutalkinbout.

Every Tuesday JunaD puts out a new batch of his favorite Cafepress tees on his blog/review site, TuesdayTeez.  Looking at today’s featured designs, I quickly noticed “Power Tools,” a slick play on words about some of Photoshop’s most used tools.  On second thought, did Photoshop ever have two selection tools, and would you consider them to be power tools?

All of the shirts pictured above are from a site called GeekyTeez, which has a predictable potpourri of themed shirts ranging from video games, coding humor, nostalgia, video game nostalgia, and the obligatory pirate inspired panache.  There’s even a romantic t-shirt about chess, which my dad would probably appreciate.   [Cafepress via TuesdayTeez]

The geeks shall inherit the earth.. if only because of the extra lives.  Get this shirt on sale from Threadless for only $9.  Sale ends today (sorry, I would have blogged it sooner but I was too busy playing Homm V).

[Via Technabob and Tcritic]

I’ve been working hard on a couple of my own t-shirt designs lately, and a part of my ispiration is a site called One Horse Shy.  You might not notice just by looking at it, but OHS fully relies on Cafepress‘ on-demand printing and ordering platform.  What’s amazing is how seamlessly the Cafepress ordering system is integrated into the website, and how professional the t-shirts and the site’s design look.  One of my absolute favorites is “bad grammar makes me [sic],” and there plenty more shirts organized into topical categories, such as  Political, Religious, Topical.

So far I’ve mainly written about t-shirts from a consumer point of view, but I’ve secretly wanted to create a subsection of this blog that deals with issues faced by webmasters, t-shirt designers, and anyone involved in selling or publishing t-shirts online, in particular because that’s something I am involved in myself. I run several other t-shirt related sites, actively work on advertising campaigns, and have created several t-shirt designs (with more on the way). Given that a significant part of my visitors are actively involved in running t-shirt related sites I feel like I have a ready made audience who could benefit from the topic, and vice versa. So expect to see more posts about things like search engine optimisation, website promotion, search marketing (ppc), and other issues pertaining to running a website and attracting visitors.

My first topic for webmasters has to do with Alexa.com and and the issue of measuring a site’s populary relative to other websites. (If you already know all about Alexa you might want to skip the rest of this post). Before I explain to you what I find so useful about Alexa’s website rankings, let me ask you a question:

Have you ever looked at another website and wondered how much traffic it gets?

It might be a competitor’s website, an industry leader like Busted Tees or Threadless, or maybe a blog who’s readership (or lack thereof) you are wondering about. The reality is, that, short of asking, there is no real way of knowing how much traffic another website gets, and here’s where Alexa comes in. Alexa is a tool that ranks websites sites in order of traffic. So, for example, Yahoo.com is number #1, Google.com is #2, YouTube.com is #3, and Facebook is #6 as you can see for yourself at Alexa’s main page. The rankings are straightforward - while we don’t know exactly how many visitors or pageviews these sites get, we can see that Yahoo gets the most visitors, Google is just behind, and YouTube follows in third place. A quick search for my site reveals that thetshirtblog.com is ranked… #533,515 as of this minute.

Personally I use the Alexa toolbar for Internet Explorer and the Alexa plugin for Firefox to instantly see the Alexa ranking of any website I visit, just like in this screenshot:

So at this point you are probably wondering, how does Alexa gets it’s rankings? Furthermore, are those rankings accurate and are there any caveats? Well, hold those questions until the end of the article, because it’s time for some tees! Did you really think you were going to read through a full post from The T-Shirt Blog without seeing a single t-shirt? Don’t you realize, t-shirts are the glue that holds the universe together, and permeate everything we see and do! Ok, maybe not, but these customized Alexa tees showcase your site’s ever changing Alexa ranking with the help of Zazzle’s API:

And now for the nitty-gritty on Alexa’s rankings.

(more…)

For some reason t-shirt makers are starting to make shirts that you can read from the upside-down position. The obvious reason for this is so that you can cheat during science…

…and history exams.

If only they realized that it would be a lot easier to cheat if they printed everything on the inside, right side up of course.

Remember the days when T-shirt Hell used to be really offensive, got itself into numerous lawsuits and all sorts of controversy?  Kotaku, a gaming blog, even got a C & D letter because they posted a T-Shirt Hell tee! 

Well it ain’t your grandma’s T-Shirt Hell anymore.  I’m not saying you won’t find a bunch of seriously offensive tees on their website, but some of the newer designs are funny in an almost wholesome sort of way!

If you are already a fan of the Guitar Hero franchise/gaming cult here’s your chance to take your fretwork to the next level: 

Step 1. Order the amazing Jimi Hendrix Guitar Hero shirt from NerdyShirts.com

fromStep 2. Get the Guitar Hero Encore: Rock the 80’s from BestBuy for only $39.99 and get a free $15 gift card.

Step 3. Finally, buy the XFPS Mini Guitar Controller and rock out with a controller made from real wood!

Step 4. Watch this training video on YouTube.

(Via Technabob and Fatwallet)

Ok, I get it, Transformers is kind of a big deal. The movie grossed $24.7 million on it’s first day, and NerdyShirts released not four but five new Transformers t-shirts this week. To top it off one of my coworkers actually showed up to work wearing a Transformers voice changer helmet.

You see, I hadn’t set foot in the good ol’ US and A until late in 1991, and as such have not seen a single Transformers episode. I had seen Plenty of M.A.S.K., Conan the Adventurer, and TMNT, and lots Transformer toy commercials in between. Maybe, just maybe I’ll go watch the movie and see what I’ve been missing. Should I?

I’ve written about Threadless on several previous occasions, and I’ve already been criticized for writing about them too much. I have to admit, they are pretty easy to blog about considering their fresh monthly releases and reasonable prices. Also, judging by the Street Team points I’ve accumulated so far Threadless has exactly the kind of unique and creatively designed tees people want to see, and buy.

I do have one pretty serious beef with Threadless. Most of the guy’s tees are printed on a Fruit of the Loom 50/50 blend, not 100% cotton like most of their other products (maybe that’s the reason why Girl’s tees cost $2 more?). Although some people don’t have a problem with this, I find the material rather coarse and the polyester blend wears warm over a full day. That’s why I am devoting this post to designs fully available on 100% cotton products.

Threadless Select tees are designs submitted by professional artists and designers, and unlike the regular competition winners they are printed on !00% cotton American Apparel t-shirts for both guys’ and girls’ sizes. The downside is that they cost $10 more than the competition winners, but if you are wannabe geek like me you’ll definitely want to roll the dice on this Revenge of the Nerds styled tee before the limited stock runs out. Accept no imitations!

There’s actually quite a lot of hoodies now available at Threadless, but not everything that looks good on a t-shirt works well on a sweatshirt, like this emo cyclops on a bright blue hoodie. That’s why I’m eagerly awaiting the arrival of this brand new skeleton-on-dragon action hoodie - the zippered cut and the two-tone graphic should make for a stylish look. Besides, it’s about time I have something white in my wardrobe besides a t-shirt.

Interested in more Threadless cotton offerings? Check out the rest of the Select tees, or head on over to stock chart to see which hoodies and long sleeve designs are available in your size.

I thought of this as one of the better t-shirts on TshirtHumor, even before I ever started blogging. Hopefully, I’ll be able to avoid this kind of narcissism. I am going to devote this post, however, to the elusive �blog t-shirt,� but before we get to the predictable blog swag drivel, here�s another blog t-shirt that�s actually good, from who else, but Threadless.

Not to say that this tee isn�t without blogtroversy, or that you won�t get sued (shot?) by your local Bloods chapter for ripping off their gang sign. If you�d rather avoid all that, here are some shirts inspired by the pure, unadulterated angst of blogging.

Ahh, nothing like an attractive female telling me that she doesn�t want to read my blog. Finally, here is an interesting site that manages to create a word cloud for your blog, or website, and print it on a t-shirt. This is what my word cloud would look like.

Now time for one last bit of geekyness, as promised in my previous post. If you check the Overture Keyword Suggestion tool (a very useful tool that includes data from the second largest search network) for the keyword �t-shirt blog,� you will see that the term gets about 100 searches a month (much more on Google). Since the tool doesn�t differentiate between �tshirt blog� and �blog tshirt� it�s impossible to tell who was looking for what. Either way, I am likely to see hits from both searches because I have the two words in my domain name, and why not? I deserve the traffic!