Billishirts: Cool Designs for Creative Minds

Holidaysareus was my first ever shop (well premium shop anyway). My very first shop was something called "Billisaur" which is a pet name my wife calls me lol.. anyway that was a basic shop and I thought I would fool around by making Designs and putting them up there just to see what they would look like on t-shirts..

"Wow, this is cool" I thought.. so then I tried to think of something that everyone could use.. seeing as St. Patrick's Day was just around the corner, I decided that I would make St. Patrick's Day shirts.. I made a few simple designs and to my delight, I had some luck selling a few.. 3 on the very first day the shop was up.. I could hardly believe it, since I read on the forums that sometimes it can take shops a few months before they get even their first sale!

I am an education whore. I need to know how and why everything works.. for this reason I spent lots of time on the forums on cafepress just reading and learning all I could from the shopkeepers and the experiences they've had. In a very short time I have learned quite a bit..

First of all, my mistakes..

Trial and error.. learn from your mistakes.. well.. In order to learn from your mistakes you have to make them! and man, did I ever.. the first and most important thing that I have learned is..

1) Adhere to the CUP! seriously.. before I started on cafepress, I was under the assumption that I could just take any old picture off off google images and edit them and mutilate them and otherwise use them to my heart's content..

This is ***NOT*** the case. You cannot, under any circumstances do this. Google lists the images, but that does not mean that they yours! Lots of these images are copyrighted, and by using the image, you are stealing. It's no different than if you go into a store and take something without paying for it! DO NOT take images from google images. or off google for that case.. UNLESS:

It is public domain and you are allowed to distribute it! this goes for fonts, images, clip art, banners, etc. IF it is not free, you cannot use it. Just think of how upset you'd be if you spent a long time on something and somebody just ripped it off.. you wouldn't be very happy!

2)Make sure that your images fit the product! Yes, it's been said countless times before, but it's THAT important.. People will not pay their hard earned cash on a product that looks like crap.

3)Resolution.. when I put up my first images I was saving them at 72 pixels per inch (or 72 DPI) as this seemed to be the default that photoshop was using. You have to make sure, that if you want any sort of quality on your printed items that the resolution is at least 200 DPI. This is the amount of ink that will be used on the printing of your product. If you save your images any lower than that, you risk a pixelated image which does not look good at all.

4)Shop organization: When I first set up shop, I really had no clue as to what I was doing.. sure, I still sort of don't (lol) but I can at least notice what I did wrong. The neat and organized shop will outsell a sloppy layout. Potential buyers don't usually care about super fancy designs or animated .GIF images or Flash. They want it to be mostly plain and simple, with what they are looking for to be easy to find. Your shop needs to be "shoppable"! and yet attractive.

There are more mistakes that I have made, and I will continue to make them! As I discover more about this project, I will update on the do's and don'ts, based on my experiences!