Free Anonymous Phone Number Service

Posted on June 23rd, 2007 by thetshirtnexus.
Categories: Offline Promotion, General Business.

What a neat application. Initially invented for use on Craigslist, numbr provides a free number that will forward to the phone number of your choice. The additional options surprised me. For instance:

  • You can pick a number from a selection of US cities
  • If your number is unavailable you can enable voice mail messages to be emailed to you
  • You can set it to not disturb you between 9pm and 8am in the US time zone of your choice
  • You can enable Call Screening which requires the caller to leave a short message which you will hear before taking the call
  • Your number will automatically expire in set increments of your choice (1 day to 1 month) but if you need your number beyond 1 month you can renew your number for free or if you want to expire it early you can do that too.

There aren’t even all of the features.
Aside from just using for personal online security purposes, this could be handy for fun store promotions, or maybe a contest of sorts.

Photo from flickr user sophistikittenlin

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Conferences, Are They Worth It?

Posted on October 21st, 2006 by thetshirtnexus.
Categories: Offline Promotion, CP Connect.

I was going to make this post about the CP Connect Conference in general but I got side tracked with an important point. If you have never attended a conference on a subject you are interested in… attend one! This is not just relevant to the CafePress Connect conference but for any conference. In this day and age of information on the internet you might say, “What’s the point of traveling to a conference when I can probably learn what is going to be said by looking stuff up online or maybe even just watching the reports that get posted later on?”

Well, I’ll tell you. Nothing beats in-person interaction. There is a vast difference in looking something up online and being able to absorb it in person… and to be able to ask questions during a session or individually of the speaker later. There is also the factor of being able to discuss the topic with your fellow audience members after the presentation. Discussion can lead to enlightenment.

When you’re looking up something on the net, you *might* be able to post a question or engage in a discussion, say on message board forums about it, but when something is just-happened-live fresh, discussion is easier and more spontaneous. And getting a specific question answered right then and there, is, of course, priceless.

Another big bonus of attending a conference is the social aspect of being amongst peers. Don’t underestimate the value of this. In some cases a conference may be the only time some people get to speak to someone face to face about a topic that consumes a lot of their time. I know that before I attended my first video game conference, aside from my boyfriend and his friend, I had not met anyone else who played games as much as I did. Perhaps we were all freaks, but darn it, we were all freaks together! Attending a conference makes you realize that not only are you not alone, but you share some of the same passions and problems with others… and you can share solutions.

One might counter what I’ve said by saying you can get camaraderie online, through chats or message boards or even email exchanges. I say yes, this is true… to a certain point. Man (and by this I mean all of humankind) is a social animal. Like it or not there is something that is triggered when we are together. Brainstorm sessions work for a reason. People can feed off of other people’s energy. Before you know it, you are breaking out with new designs, new ideas, and a new outlook on the path of your business.

If this all sounds a little too touchy-feely for you, I apologize. But I must use this sort of language to explain the magic that can happen at a conference and no where else. You are with peers, you are often with professionals who influence your business to whom you can give direct feedback (CafePress staff showed up in force for that, let me tell you). You are immersed in this for 2 days (or more), away from your ordinary routine and regular distractions. Is it any wonder then that *during* the CP Connect I knocked out a new t-shirt design? Is it any wonder that though I was on two panels myself as a 5+ year veteran of CafePress and a longer eCommerce Veteran… I still learned something from a panel meant for beginners?

Alright, enough with these hard to measure benefits of conferences. I will throw out more practical reasons to attend a conference. They are tax write offs. You can deduct the price of the ticket, you can deduct travel and lodging. You can deduct 50% of your food and entertainment expenses. You can make business deals during a conference. You can get free stuff. You can learn about tools with practical, money saving applications. You can list your involvement in a conference on your resume or as something to show your seriousness to a would-be money lender or investor. You can learn things ahead of your competition. You can scope out your competition.

Well, there you go, an incomplete, and likely slightly incoherent, long winded response to a question.

Is attending a conference worth it?

Yes.

—-

Agree, disagree? Agree with a few exceptions? Reply and speak your piece!

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Offline Promotion… Literally

Posted on October 12th, 2006 by thetshirtnexus.
Categories: Marketing, Offline Promotion, CP Connect.

When you have an online store does it do any good to do offline promotion?

Come on, you know the answer to this right? The old, “it depends”.

In the case of this trip and this picture, I already had a ready made sign which I’ve used at conventions so it wasn’t much effort and no additional expense to prop it up on the back of my rental car. We drove from Southern California to Northern California, a drive which has folks passing and repassing each other quite often. How many people saw it? Not sure, there wasn’t much traffic (thank goodness!). Will it generate tons of sales? I doubt it.

So in this case I’d say my OffLine promotion was worth it but the equation was.
0 Expense + Very little effort
- Versus -
Small Chance of Benefit

A side effect on this is, I have a picture to blog about, so bonus for me!

I believe that for stores that only have an online presence, a good portion of your time and money is best spent online where you know you are reaching pre-qualified folks. Meaning, they at least have a way to get online and the skills to browse around.

I do think that offline promotion opportunities should not be ignored though. Again, it’s time to think about your customer. Where are they? If they are not online then go find them offline.

Also, be aware of opportunities. They may present themselves in places you haven’t thought of before. More on that during my Niche Shop Panel Discussion ;)

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Good Business Card Deal - Vista Print

Posted on October 8th, 2006 by thetshirtnexus.
Categories: Marketing, Offline Promotion, Deals.

Here’s my discount link (25% off of your order) to Vista Print - I use these folks often both for their customizable cards but also for their free card offer (you pay shipping). You can get the free cards as many times as you like so whenever I’m ordering the normal kind I put in an order for some free ones as well.

The cards have a nice weight to them and the printing has come out great. The free version comes with a tagline about Vista Print on the back printed in grey.

Here’s a pic of some cards I made using the free option. I was lucky to find a stock design that went with my theme (rockclimbing). But do you see how I creatively used the lines for an address as places for my own text? You can use text fields for whatever you want, you don’t have to follow their “Address Line 1″ suggestions.
picofrgbizcards

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