To save the shop partners amongst us a little time in preparation for the upcoming holidays, our graphics team put together two lovely winter-holiday-snowy-and-sparkly background images for you.

You can simply download these from our Flickr page or right click and save the images. Then you can upload them to your user area and select it as your shop background under “Profile – Shops – Shop Layout”. If you go the extra step and set your theme to “Winter” under the “Selected Design” drop-down, you will be sure to get your customers whistling their way into the holiday shopping mood!

With the holidays just around the corner, we thought it might be helpful to take a look at what the top Selling products were for September 2009.

1. Men’s Standard Weight T-Shirt

2. Men’s Heavyweight T-Shirt

3. Men’s American Apparel Tee

4. Women’s Standard Weight T-Shirt

5. Men’s Hooded Sweatshirt

6. Female AA Slim Fit Tee

7. Children’s T-Shirt

8. Women’s V-Neck T-Shirt

9. Junior’s Cap Sleeve Tee

10. Women’s Heather Jersey Tee

Do you have any of these in your shop? What is the top selling product for your shop? We also have lots of other items in our assortment that aren’t t-shirt for you to customize.

Image by BlueOut via Flickr

Are you looking for a little help in getting your shop started with Spreadshirt? I wanted to share some of the places you can get more information and some tips on setting up and running your Spreadshirt shop.

1. Spreadshirt Webinars - Webinars are a free, live presentation about different topics - all you need is your computer to participate. We have 2 different webinars (Spreadshirt Bootcamp and Vector Graphics 101) and we are working on some new ones that will launch in the future. Click here to see a list of upcoming webinars and to register to attend a future webinar.
2. Spreadshirt Forums - We have a very active forum where Shop Partners have shared lots of great ideas and tips. Check out the Shop Admin Forum and the HTML and Web Coders Advice Forum.
3. Shop Partner Newsletter - Each month we send out an info packed newsletter to shop partners including info on new products and tips for shop partners. Make sure you are subscribed in the Shop Admin section Your Spreadshirt->Profile->Subscriptions
4. Shop Partner Stories - see what some of the other shop partners are up to and how they get ideas for new designs. Check out the Shop Partner Stories here.
5. Tommy White’s Blog - Tommy White is the guy behind Nekkid Tee’s. Tommy has posted some great tutorials on his blog TommyWhite.com - check out his great tutorial on Organizing Your Spreadshirt Products and his Starting Grid for Spreadshirt Vectors. Thanks Tommy!

Know of some other Spreadshirt tutorials? Please share your favorites here.

Congrats, congrats!

A little over a week ago we asked you, our partners, to create new products with the new September apparel for your shops and the Marketplace. Many of you took us up on this request and therefore automatically entered yourselves into our MOO Minicard raffle.

We’ve pulled 10 winners out of a hat and each of them will receive 1 free pack of MOO Minicards from us.

The winners are:

Lucie - Milatchek Shop
Bernd - Warten Shop
Katharina - Katharina’s Shop
Yasmin - Wiesnengerl Shop
Rene - Vakantietshirt Shop
Stephan - Stephan’s Shop
Iris -Ticeforheroes Shop
Dagmar - Exklusiveshirtandmore Shop
Becky - Wonkywear Shop
Robert - Thecasualmusician Shop

In order to claim your coupons for MOO, please write a short e-mail to Kathrin at ktl at Spreadshirt dot net.

If you are wondering how best to use the Minicards, we will be posting some offline marketing tips in the blog soon!

So, don’t wait too long to claim your coupon as they are only valid until 31st October 2009. You can start creating your Minicards here.

Image by Gary Denness via Flickr

Temple’s Tip is a regular feature of the monthly Shop Partner Newsletter. Click here to see previous Tips from Temple.

Last month we introduced a small change to our shipping method…the UPS Ground option was replaced by a new shipping method, Standard Shipping.

What does the new shipping method offer?

• A third party, Mail Express, will facilitate the delivery of the packages from our facility to USPS, therefore the package would be delivered to the customer with their regular mail
• Tracking included for all orders using this shipping method from pickup to delivery
• Saturday delivery is available, as well as shipping to PO boxes. Since USPS delivers the final shipment, delivery would be the same as regular mail delivery times.
• Shipping in the 48 contiguous states will take 1-5 mailing days from the time the orders leaves our doors, Alaska, Hawaii, Puerto Rico, and APO address can take up to 7 mailing days.
• A lower shipping cost, check out the shipping prices for complete pricing list (http://www.spreadshirt.com/us/US/Service/Help-1328/categoryId/277/articleId/542).

No changes were made for the other shipping methods, so 3 Day Select, Next Day Air Saver, UPS International Premium, UPS Standard (Canada) and USPS International Economy have all remained the same. For an overview of all shipping methods, check out this helpful Shipping FAQ.

Update: In last month’s newsletter I discussed new fonts. Well the new fonts are live and available for you to use! For further font updates, check out the fonts topic on the Forum.

How can you stay in the know with Spreadshirt? Visit our Partner forum regularly! The forum offers many tips and advice from us and other partners. Logon with your Spreadshirt account user name and password to post a question, offer advice, or read up on announcements for new apparel, sales, new features and changes!

Not sure what the weather is like where you live - we were having a lovely summer here in Pittsburgh - hot but not too hot and bang - last week - it just turned to fall weather - chilly mornings and evenings. It is the perfect fall weather but I wasn’t ready for it on the wardrobe side. Fortunately - I am okay with the chilly mornings because it gives me a good excuse to wear the new scarf that we have added to the apparel collection. I can’t wait to see how creative the custom scarfs will look and the new lined hoodie screams cozy!

Here are 6 new items from American Apparel that have been added to the apparel collection to help you chase away these fall chills.

1. Men’s American Apparel Fleece Track Pants - black with white trim (We also offer sweatpants for women too)

2. Men’s American Apparel Thermal Lined Hoodie – black/white, cranberry/navy and navy/melange navy

3. American Apparel Jersey Scarf - royal blue, red, dark pink, and black

4. Toddler American Apparel Long Sleeve Tee - white and black

5. Baby American Apparel Long Sleeve Lap Tee - white, black and red

6. New colors: Kelly Green, Brown and Heather Gray added to the Men’s American Apparel Long Sleeve Tee

We have just scheduled more sessions of both the Spreadshirt Bootcamp and the Vector Graphic Webinar for September!

Spreadshirt Bootcamp - a quick guide to  getting your shop up and running
Wed, Sep 2, 2009 5:00 PM - 5:30 PM EDT
https://www2.gotomeeting.com/register/469962154

Wed, Sep 16, 2009 3:30 PM - 4:00 PM EDT
https://www2.gotomeeting.com/register/976312603

Wed, Sep 30, 2009 4:30 PM - 5:00 PM EDT
https://www2.gotomeeting.com/register/286458338

Vector Graphics
Thu, Sep 3, 2009 4:00 PM - 5:00 PM EDT
https://www2.gotomeeting.com/register/135109770

Fri, Sep 18, 2009 2:30 PM - 3:30 PM EDT
https://www2.gotomeeting.com/register/199065786

Wed, Sep 30, 2009 1:30 PM - 2:30 PM EDT
https://www2.gotomeeting.com/register/797728539

Well there is one good thing about summer coming to an end - we are cleaning out inventory to make room for - GASP - the holidays.  I know it is hard to think about christmas tress and snow when you are trying to think about how to get a few more trips to the swimming pool in before it is drained for the season.  But we are thinking ahead for you and in order to make some room on the shelves we have added 18 items to the Sale page - price reductions range from 12% to 87% - order now because when these items are gone, they are gone for good.

Check out the savings on these bamboo t-shirts - Women’s Jonano Fitted Tee,  Women’s Jonano Long Sleeve Hooded Tee & Men’s Jonano Long Sleeve Jersey Tee

Click here to go to the sale page.

Temple who manages the Spreadshirt forums (and writes Temple’s Tips for the Shop Partner newsletter) just sent me a link to the new shipping FAQ page.  I hope that you find this helpful in figuring out how long it will take to process your order and have it shipped to you.  I am usually ordering things last minute and trying to figure out what level of shipping that I need to use.  Click on the screenshot of the page to visit the Shipping FAQ page.

So sorry if you had trouble joining us for the SpreadX on Socail Media today - we had some audio troubles and it looks like Twitter has had some troubles today too. (I guess we picked the wrong day to talk about social media :))

One of the things that I think is key to understanding and working with social media is understadning RSS - i highly reccomend the video RSS in Plain English by the Common Craft folks.  We watched it again this morning and discussed.  Deb who also works here at Spreadshirt found this video from the folks at Common Craft on Social Media - which is a really way of looking at social media.  I have been working on blogs and social media here at Spreadshirt for a few years now and I had never thought of explaining it this way.

What websites/videos have helped you to understand social media?  What social media tools have you used to help you with your Spreadshirt shop?