Advertise Your Band Through Merchandise

I have always set up my shops on Cafepress or Zazzle but sometimes you need a local shop. Just make sure you shop around. Don't take your first t-shirt company.

When using an offline shop; The more you keep your design's color count down, the cheaper the t-shirt costs will be.

The added benefit? When you photocopy your fliers, a simple logo design, copies better, unless you can photoshop and do a manga style screen technique.

Simplicity is the design of the day, but make sure you have a design that will hold up for brand recognition. Yeah, some more advertising jargon, but if your going to make it to the next level, you have to sell your product.

Also, don't forget all of the other stuff. Stickers, window vinyl decals, badges, koosies, ringtones to be traded at the gig through bluetooth, USB thumb drives with a couple of unofficial songs that they won't get anywhere but your gig. Lots of ideas out there. Play around with some of them. Also, later I will showcase a killer new site that does the temporary tatoos! Then of course, selling your CDs!

Photo courtesy alvimann on Morguefile

If you want to save a ton of money, you need to create your band's images yourself. What you do with that image is up to your imagination and how it fits with your plan for your music. Cartooning, Vectorizing, and Poser-like 3D are all options. But the most common unless you can do those yourself, is to use a Photoshop-like program to do the filters on your own.

I'm going to provide a list of some very easy programs to get started with, and most of them are free or ad-ware. I'll make another page sometime about how to create the images for each different photo idea, but for now you need a design.

Brainstorm with your band members and come up with about 20 to 30 if not 100 ideas on photos, logos, images with your band name, and some album cover art ideas. Then sort through them, even the corny ones, until you come up with a solid representation of your band.

"Why don't you give me some ideas?"

Well, it's your music. I can't define what you are going to need with out hearing your music. My suggestion is to go through some other bands in you genre, or maybe even a genre totally different. In other words, a trip to the local CD shop and a browse through the aisles, and maybe not so quick of one either. Take a notebook! Take notes! You will not remember every killer idea you have if you don't.

Then go to a bookstore. Yeah, those things you read...

Browse a big bookstore, Barnes and Noble, Hastings, Waldonbooks, etc. Look through the art books, the artsy magazines, the sci-fi books and zines, anything that might give you a new perspective of ideas. That's not cutting it, go browse Deviantart.com, Zazzle.com, CafePress.com, or do a Google search for logo freelancing sites and browse them. The possibilities are endless, you are likely going to have too many ideas rather than not enough.

If after you have checked about 5 places and you still haven't come up with any ideas, you may be hopeless. You should have a notebook full of ideas!

Now, go eliminate those choices. Don't throw any away, as you may want to use them for later t-shirts and stuff. But we want to narrow the choices down to a small handful for now.

Start building up your idea. Don't stop with just throwing together the first thing that comes to mind. Sketch it, photo-manipulate it, cartoon it, 3D model it. Do what ever it takes to mold the idea into your image and make it fit your music.

The image above is the main logo for False Hope Band. I designed it based on an album cover that we may never use now, but the logo itself has become our hook. It's on our cards, we have t-shirts, coffee cups, a guitar, even underwear and clocks with this logo on them. It is available in either this white back ground, or a white lettering for black t-shirts and vinyl decals.

CafePress makes it easy as 1-2-3 to build a free online logo store. First, prepare your logo or artwork. It can be a full color photo, a monochrome graphic, stylized text, hand-drawn artwork, whatever. Scan it and upload it. It's as easy as sending a digital image from your camera to an online photo processor.

Next, pick the products you want to sell. They are broken into groups such as apparel, prints and cards, mugs and ceramics, home decor (wall clocks, mouse pads, pillows), and more. They can even print your audio CDs!

Last, launch your online shop. CafePress even hosts it for you for free. Just link to from your MySpace, blog, or band home page.

Simple as that. You can upgrade to the premium shop to design multiple designs of the same item, but you can also own as many shops as you want. They also have an option for adding your premium shop to your own website, so you can make your swag shop look like the rest of your site!

Zazzle is called a Print-on Demand company which means that like CafePress, you don't have to retain a stock of products to be in business. You simply upload a digital image made with software like the one's listed above. You can also scan your original artwork as well.

After you upload your image to Zazzle, select a product, size or customize with text, then post for sale in the public marketplace. It's that easy. People can then purchase your work online. Zazzle prints, ships and deals with the customer service. You collect a royalty of 10%-99% on the sale (you set the Royalty amount).

Put a design on even more products than CafePress. Like Sketchers, skateboards, even ties and U.S. Post Office approved stamps that you can design!

Zazzle isn't as easy for the beginner as CafePress, but once you have set up a few shops on CP then Zazzle should be no problem.

Getting Started

The first step is to sign up for your free account. This will allow access to the My Account section. Here you are able to upload images, customise your store, check earnings and start creating products.

Setting up a store is easy and quick. Choose from one of the many themes provided, or technically minded users can create a custom look by using XHTML and CSS coding. The Store tab, Google Analytics and or StatCounter.com can be used as the store tracking option.
Creating a Product

Creating products with Zazzle is easy and quick.

Help and Support

Anyone can open a store, create products and start selling easily and quickly on Zazzle. The website provides a comprehensive help section (which contains design guides) and a great community of forums. Don't be afraid to interact with other Zazzlers, ask questions, and take a moment to read the NEW to Zazzle - Start Here forum. Zazzle also replies to emails sent directly to the company quickly and promptly.

Read more at Suite101: Getting Started with Zazzle for Free http://hobbies.suite101.com/article.cfm/use-zazzle-to-produce-your-very-own-consumer-products-for-free#ixzz0wbcul8Zx