Do you have something to sell or have a business that you would like to take to the next level? Would you like to open an online e-commerce store for free and start making money right away? Well if your answer is yes then I’ve got some great news for you.

I’ve found a website that is both a free webstore builder and a free online marketplace and best of all you don’t need to know hotmail. You can easily create your online store in minutes and start making money right away. Sellers recieve free website hosting, a free sub-domain and a free powerful administration tool to manage their free online store and another free bonus , all products are automatically posted to Google Product Search.

1) Yahoo Store – Host to more top 500 Internet Retailers than any other ecommerce provider.

Yahoo provide everything you need in an ecommerce solution. Here is their special features:
Design Tools: Create a store with easy-to-use tools.
Product Info: Use our simple ecommerce wizard to add all your product details.
Billing: Accept credit, debit, and PayPal payments.
Marketing: Drive traffic to your site with free marketing features and discounts—including a grand opening email.
Processing: Easily process and ship orders.
Tasking: Measure your success with extensive reporting capabilities.
Promotion: Get $50 setup fee WAIVED if you sign up today!

2) SpreadShirt – A Springboard for you ideas

With SpreadShirt you can open a FREE shirt shop and fill it with your own designs or with designs from our community. This is how you can grab more attention for your projects, ideas and hobbies.
Advantages
*  No costs, no risks (we both earn when someone orders).
* You have an idea, we bring it to the shirt (and take care of the processing, payment and shipping).
* We print products individually and ship starting at one piece.

Your Shop
* Seamless integration into your online presence (from websites to communities to MySpace Profiles or blogs)
* Choose English or French as your shop language.

3) ProStores – eCommerce Hosting / Web Storefront / Shopping Cart / Real-time payments / Easy setup and more

What you can do:
- Set up: Choose a website template and get set up fast
- Promotion: Get eCommerce marketing tools to bring in customers
- Manage: Get the tools to run and track your Web store business.

What they can do:
- Service: Let a Certified eCommerce Designer set up and design your store for you! eCommerce design, SEO marketing services and custom integration.

Promotion: Get one-month FREE-Trial subscription when you sign up today!

4) eBay – Save Time, Sell More.

They’ve got the tools to meet your selling needs from start to finish!
Advantages:
- Take the burden out of listing
- Increase selling efficiency
- Improve your selling success

List: Choose a free option such as Sell Your Item (SYI) or Turbo Lister and get started selling.
Manage: Once your items are listed on eBay—track the status and make changes. Automatically send emails, invoices and labels.
All in One: End to end selling tools for the professional or large-scale seller. Efficiency at its best!

Save time, Sell more only at eBay Store.

5) Amazon – Reliable – Secure – Powerful – Simple

Webstore by Amazon provides you with a branded e-commerce site backed by the support, selection and expertise of Amazon.

Simple: Easy and quickly create your online webstore in a minute.
Reliable: Backed by the same technology that powers Amazon.com
Powerful: Product recommendations, customer reviews, and recently viewed items.
Secure: Secure checkout with Amazon’s Fraud Protection Technology.

Promotion: Get 30 Days FREE Trial* only for T-shirtBusiness[dot]com reader.

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Have you heard about Twitter? And  have you heard about successful marketing on Twitter? Lots of dominant company already expanding their marketing strategy by using this new micro-blogging technique. Twitter is a next-generation instant messaging tool. But how does it works on your clothing business? Here is simple guidelines and tips how to market your business on Twitter.

Before that, we assumed that you already have a T-shirt business, and Online Shop running as well. Seems everything is up, you have to follow Must-Do step before proceed with Twitter Marketing as an addition.

So here is simple step how to market your business on Twitter.

1. Create Twitter account.If you don’t have an account yet, do sign up on Twitter. You should have your own branding name as your Twitter name. We assumed that you already have a business name and it’s should be still available for you to choose. If not, try to come up with something that comes close. If you are “MyFirstOnlineTee” around the web, but that’s already taken on Twitter, then try to use something like “MyFirstTee” or “MyOnlineTee.” You get the idea.
2. Let everyone know you are on Twitter.

   You should have a decent social network going when you come to Twitter. Spread the news for clients, friends, contacts and colleagues that you are now available on Twitter. It’s not impossible to start from Twitter and work your way out from there but it will be more time consuming. Trust me, I did it that way and I would have saved myself a few weeks networking time if I started somewhere else.

3. Recruit followers.

   Now you want to build up your list of followers. You have a few from your social networks (remember not all of your contacts from outside of Twitter will be using Twitter). Don’t despair. You can get followers from inside Twitter. Start by following as many people as you can who are in your industry or who work with your topic of interest. Do NOT follow everyone just because. That is not a strategy.

   Start by looking at the people in your industry or area of expertise who have a strong following. Go for trend research, lots of Twitter mash up contributing on Trend Searching. What do their followers want to hear about? What’s being re-tweeted? Are you following the leaders in your area? You should be? And you should be networking with these people around the Internet in places outside of Twitter!

4. Ok, so you’re on Twitter. You’ve a got a base of followers. You’re following all the popular Twitter accounts in your industry. Now, you start to tweet! BUT – tweet about your clothing business, products and marketing. Think of Twitter the same way you would email. If you tweet about answering “What are you doing?” daily,  chances are you won’t be too successful on Twitter.

   Quality Tweets include quotes from leaders in your industry, re-tweets from experts in your field, tweets about your online shop, and the like. You should also tweet with updates on your business activities if you are very active in your field!

“We’re at a point where even though we’re only two years old, acquisitions are definitely possible” -Bizjournal.com

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You already setting up your business and it’s running; have a great location, well-manage inventory, hardworking employees and some loyal customers, but you may be stymied when it comes to determining the next steps to growing your business. Use these helpful tips about how you can successfully get to the next level in your marketing strategy without breaking the bank.

Important: Things you’ll need for Growing your retail T-shirt business is an online store and business newsletter tools.

1. Ask your customer how they found your business. Most customers will be happy telling you where there heard about your business mostly advertisement, or from friends. If you find that advertising attracted more customers, keep doing what you are doing. Don’t cut back on advertising; do more of it, if possible, as it is clearly working for your business.

2. Identify your target market and aggressively advertise specifically to those people. Advertise in the magazines they are most likely to read, attend an event or trade show where they may be found, and leave brochures or fliers in places they are most likely to congregate.The best and fastest way is internet marketing. You can choose your keywords or phrases relevant to your target market. Many providers exist today; however, Yahoo Search Marketing, Google AdWords and Microsoft adCenter are the most predominant providers of this service.

3. Build and maintain customer relationships. The key to successful marketing is maintaining your current customers so they continue to come back and tell others about you. Offer special discounts on occasion to frequent customers and, depending on what type of business you have, consider a frequent shopper’s card, where customers earn something special rewards for making a certain number of purchases. Also, consider offering some type of savings each time they refer a new customer to you.

4. Create a newsletter. Keep customers informed of sales and new products via a basic newsletter. A newsletter can be sent monthly or quarterly, and if you are looking for the most affordable way to reach customers, consider an email newsletter. Collect email addresses from customers upon checkout, telling them they will receive your newsletter.

   If you are searching for simple email marketing software that provides a platform for your online marketing campaigns, we encourage you to use our friends at iContact.

5. Don’t ignore the Internet–have a presence on the web. If you don’t have a website, you can use this refference on how to create an online store. Your retail business can reach an entirely new market from across the globe with e-commerce. A presence on the Internet is often the fastest way to grow a retail business. Another option to increasing your web presence is to sell your products on third party company such as spreadshirt, cafepress, eBay, Amazon.com, Yahoo store and ProStores

6. Host a special event that will draw in customers and media. This could include donating a portion of the day’s proceeds to a local charity, or having a “family day” with games, prizes and a local radio station broadcasting live from your store. If you are creative, there are a variety of events you can hold at your store. A few weeks prior to the event, send a press release to local television and radio stations as well as media.

Based on statistics from Internetretailer.com, all merchandising categories tracked in the Top 500 web-merchants registered double-digit growth in 2007, with the fastest growth rate coming from the specialty/non-apparel segment, which expanded online sales by 47%!  That is a significant growth and means you’re products have a place in the online selling arena. WebStore’s integrated marketing services can help you get selling online quickly.

*Source: Revenue Today (www.revenuetoday.com)

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Are you looking to start an online niche shop for funny t-shirts? Follow these simple steps to start your own funny phrases niche t-shirt, clothing or accessories clothing line at the lowest cost possible.

Step 1: Create A Free Web Store
Are you trying to avoid the risk of paying hundreds of dollars for ecommerce hosting service like Yahoo Store or eBay Prostore and not being able to make enough money to cover your cost? Then you should go to Spreadshirt.com and create an account for free. This will be your design database where all of your creations will be brought to life using Spreadshirts’ detailed clothing designer. No risk whatsoever.

With Spreadshirt all you do is design a humorous product which can range from t-shirts to hoodies, choose a price, add it to your online shop, and promote it using html integration, so you can integrate your online shop to your Website, blog, mySpace page or anywhere else that will accept this kind of HTML integration. The main benefit of using this business model is that Spreadshirt will take care of processing, shipping and other billing issues that a normal store owner may encounter. You just need to upload your design, your ideas or even the funny pictures from your last photo printing batch. Then set up your commision and your design will be on sale in the Marketplace.

Click here to start exploring and learn more about Spreadshirt creation tools.

Step 2: Refine Your Niche
You may think that your humor theme is such a specific niche and not many people are into this theme. Don’t jump into the conclusion too fast. Get more specific as possible. Then find the suitable name for your domain and go register at one of the web domain registration providers. BabyFunnyBibs.com is much better that JohnFunnyShop.com because the former is more targeted and will have less competition.

The name of your domain and clothing niche alone can make or break your business, so consider your name carefully; and most of all, be authentic. Think of what type of funny clothing you would be best at creating, for example: if you listen to rap or hip hop music you may want to create an urban style to your humorous clothing, on the other hand if you listen to rock or metal, you may want to have a gothic type look to your seasonal clothing line. Either way make SURE you consider the style you’re going for when creating your name.

Click here to register a domain name at the cheapest price of $7.99 with Netfirms.

Step 3: Product Creation
The next important thing is you need to create your personal clothing line logo, which will be used for your billing statements sent to your customers and for branding your shirts using Spreadshirt’s image uploader. If you are the designer type, Photoshop is a great tool for creating logos but if you are not or do not have the time to do it, then you can try many online logo making companies. Afterwards, you’re ready to start creating your own clothing, fool around with designer, upload your own designs, and start adding items to your online store.

Recommended Online Logo Designer: LogoDesignGuru + 500 Free printed color business cards

Step 4: Promote Your Shop
Once all the previous steps have been completed, you will spend most of your time to market your shop and products. Marketing, promoting, advertising are the keywords here. There are many ways to market your products or to advertise your shop. One of the fastest way is by using pay-per-click marketing.

Pay-per-click promotion: Get $25 FREE Marketing credits from Yahoo Search Marketing

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Should I invest in my own website or use a third party website to host my T-Shirt designs?

If you are thinking about doing every aspect of the T-Shirt business yourself (including producing the T-Shirts), then I suggest you invest in a website (recommend Inmotion Hosting Plan), but first try out a third party website that makes the T-Shirts for you (no risk involved or investment needed) to see if you can make your business a success. Once you’re confident in your business, then you can upgrade to making and owning your own website.

There’s a few types of third-party website which provide you with different business and approach. However, it still the best way and a good kick start for newbie who just want to jump into this industry. Some of them provide services from printing to shipping. What you need to do just submit your design and that’s all. You don’t have to worry about hosting, domain, server, downtime, all site thingy. It’s already included. Some of third party only provide you with online store and site thingy. But you have to work on printing, and deal with shipping and posting. All the payment will go through the third party, so you don’t have to worry about fraud, cheating and so on.

From our research, we highly recommend you with SPREADSHIRT. Easiest, and Hottest third party business website provider.

There are many online third party websites available on the Internet that you can choose from that will create and ship the T-Shirts to your customers (risk free with no money invested) and therefore, save you the hassle of actually having to deal with the customer aspect of your T-Shirt business.

There are as many cons as there are pros when using a third party service. Some of the cons are: You don’t get your own website and you are in some way connected to them, you don’t make as much profit (you have to pay them to do all the work, like printing the T-Shirts and shipping), and they make all the rules (Example: not providing you with the E-mail address of your customers or refusing any designs that you create).

When you sign up with one of these third party services, you are actually working for them and that includes promoting their site. The customers that purchase your T-Shirts are actually their customers meaning they have full control and every time you make a sale, they make a profit. In other words, these third parties depend on your success and if your business goes under, theirs doesn’t because there’ll always be someone else to take your place.

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The above design contest is organized by Uneetee, where they use a contest to promote a clothing, costume or t-shirt business. This is a great marketing idea! There are many other ways to create contests or competitions:

• have people submit customer success stories.
• award customer with most purchase.
• create random draws or sweepstakes.
• have people rank their favorite designs.
• the possibilities are endless. Just look at some contests sites for ideas.

The possibility of free marketing exposure for the developer or their company will entice people to try out the product and deliver ready-made testimonials to you!

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