One of the tips I found for getting traffic to your shop is setting up a MySpace profile for your shop. Lots of people set up MySpace profiles for groups, organizations, even cars. I have a MySpace profile for my blog, IheartPGH.com - http://www.myspace.com/iheartpgh. One of my favorites is the one that the mayor and deputy mayor of Braddock, PA have set up for the mayor mobile - http://www.myspace.com/louthelincoln (I have seen Lou, this car is definitly cool enough for his own MySpace profile).

So, we set up a MySpace profile for WashableWisdom - http://www.myspace.com/washablewisdom.  So far we have just a few friends.  I am working on going after some of my friends and others people who have profiles here at Spreadshirt.
Why a MySpace profile?

• Friends of Friends will see your shop, lets be honest, most people get on MySpace and look at friends of friends. This is another way for more people to see your shop
• Bulletins/Blog can be used to let people know about new products, sales and promotions

Best Practices…

• Custom URL - make sure you set up your custom url so that it is easy to tell people about your MySpace profile
• Pictures - add lots of pictures of your shirts to your profile, put the pictures in the photos section and on the front page of your profile
• Add a Link - you can add a link to your MySpace profile from your shop so that new visitors can add you as a friend

Do you have a MySpace profile for your shop? Has your MySpace profile helped to get more visitors to your shop? What works and doesn’t work with your profile?

I have been working on the About Us page for Washable Wisdom.com for the past few days and I am feeling rather uninspired.  So I thought I would write to you, and see what you think about the about page.  Do you read the about page when you visit websites?  I often do and I like to read the stories behind the sites.  For an interesting About page check out Johnny Cupcakes.  He calls the about page “The Story”.  He has a great story that is fun to read.

What other things do you put on your About page?

Last week I wrote a post about our new task here in the Spreadshirt marketing department – The Open Shop Project. The marketing team here at Spreadshirt is working together to set up our very own Spreadshirt shop.

Step 1 – the Name

We spent quite some time trying to decide what to name our shop. The one parameter we have is that all of our products were going to have text designs; just words. So that should help to narrow down the name, right? Wrong. Selecting a name was much more complicated than it first seemed. The name of your shop is a big thing that can set the course for years to come.
Here are some things to think about when choosing a name

1. Is someone else using the name? Is the domain name available?
   A quick search on Google and GoDaddy.com can answer this question. We came up with a bunch of names that we liked but some of them already existed as shops or some of the names we liked did not have the .com available. We decided we wanted a name where the .com is available. If the domain name isn’t available you could try adding a word. For example, if WashableWisdom.com was not available we could have tried ShopWashableWisdom.com.
2. What does the name say about the shop? Is the name too narrow?
   Since we will be selling many t-shirts, we started with some shop names that included the word t-shirt. We wanted to convey that we are selling t-shirts but, once we realized that we wanted to sell sweatshirts, aprons and other items, we decided to take the word t-shirt out of the name. We didn’t want to limit our shop by the name. The name “Washable Wisdom” gives us room to expand in the future.
3. The Theme
   Okay, so I know this seems to contradict what I just wrote, but it is important to at least think about the theme of your shop. This is exactly what happened to us and we spent some time this morning revisiting the theme of our shop. We started with the parameter of text only designs. Now that we have the name Washable Wisdom, we have decided to make sure that our designs all share the common theme of wisdom. We even spent some time talking about what is our definition of wisdom (I will save that for another post).
4. Easy to Say, Easy to Spell
   Is your shop name easy to pronounce? Is it easy to spell? If people can’t spell your business name, they are going to have an even harder time finding your business. I learned this one the hard way. My first online business was a t-shirt shop that was named ThreeStitch.com. Every time I told someone to just visit ThreeStich.com they could never find the site because they thought I was saying TreeStitch.com. ThreeStitch was way too complicated to be a good name for an online business.
5. Does it make sense?
   This whole conversation got us thinking about what are some business names that just don’t work. I decided to Google “Bad Business Names” and found some even funnier stuff. Apparently many people don’t like the name “Dress Barn” – click here to read the blog post on bad business names.
   So before you finalize your shop name, it is probably a good idea to get some feedback - ask some friends what they think of the name.

Do you have any tips for selecting a name for your shop? Is there a good story behind the name of your shop? We would love to hear how you choose a name for your shop.

So we spend a lot of time thinking about how to help you set up a Spreadshirt shop but we have not spent a lot of time actually setting up a Spreadshirt shop.  Well that is all about to change.  Jana, has challenged the marketing team to set up and run a Spreadshirt shop.  We are calling this project the Open Shop Project and the task is to set up a shop that sells t-shirts with text designs.  The shop name is Washable Wisdom.  Look for lots more blog posts about the project in the near future.