Free copy of “The Amazing Shubi Bird”

To start out the New Year, during the months of January and February, I will conduct a drawing for free copies of my book, “The Amazing Shubi Bird” (a $33 value). It is simple to enter, just post a comment here on this blog, with your name and e-mail address. And remember to tell all of your friends about me.

Your friend,

Shubi

Web design

Here at TamedLyon Design, Kat has been designing websites and databases for several years, so in light of this we have a nice article from t-shirt forums by contributor AndyC.







Beginner's guide to E-Commerce

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Introduction:

Out of boredom I decided to type up a beginner's guide to E-commerce. Please keep in mind this is going to be very basic. I thought it would be good to have all of this basic information in one post. Please feel free to provide your input if you feel I have left something out or you have additional recommendations.

Background:

This is just a very quick rundown of my experience with commerce and the Internet. Five years ago I started a webhost that had approximately 500 customers when I sold it in 2003. I also have a degree in web development and have been playing around with web design for 10 years.

Domain Names:

One of the first things you will need to do is register a domain name. This has become increasingly more difficutl as domain name speculators buy up domains and try to sell them for a profit. To help in finding this domain I highly recommend using Dotomator. With this tool you simply enter a list of up to 15 prefixes and suffixes, combine them, then do a bulk search to see if any of the domain names are available.

Once you have decided on a domain name you will need to register it. For this I recommend GoDaddy. The normal price for a domain is $8.95 but you can usually find a promo code to get a discount. Right now the promo code OYH3 will give you $2.00 off which makes the domain name $6.95. I have confirmed this code does work.

Whatever you do try to avoid registering the domain name with your webhost, which brings us to our next topic.

Webhosting:

Now that you have your domain name you need to find a place to host your website. Most webhosts offer three different types of hosting: Shared, Reseller, and Dedicated.

If your are just starting out you will probably want to find a good shared web hosting solution. If you plan on hosting for friends or hosting multiple sites the reseller option is a good one. The host I recommend is HostGator. They have a plan called the 'Baby' that will allow you to host unlimited sites for $9.95, but all the domains will be created on the same account. They have an unadvertised reseller plan for $14.95 that I use and like because I can host domains on separate accounts. Coupon code hgc25 will give you 9.94 off your first month for any plan you select (Does not include Hatchling).

Once you sign up with the host you will receive a welcome letter that will have instructions on how to direct your domain name so that it points to your new host.

Now that you have your host it is time to put up a site...

Website:

The first thing you need to do here is decided what type of shopping cart system you wish to use. Three of the most popular are:

CubeCart
OS Commerce
Zen Cart

These carts generally have very thorough installation instructions so if you have every installed a script before you should have no problems. Now, if the thought of doing this scares you to death all is not lost. Most webhosts offer a program called Fantastico that will install these carts for you. Once you login to your web host's control panel you can click on the Fantastico link, select the cart you wish to install and just follow theprompts. It is very easy.

Once you have the cart installed you will probably want to customerize the look of it. If you are familiar with HTML/PHP and have good design skills this should be simple for you. To get instructions on how to do this please see the support section for the cart you use.

If you do not have any design skills you will need to find someone to customize the cart for you. One of the most affordable solutions is to purchase a template from Template Monster. You can get a very professional looking template starting at $160. Template Monster will customize the templates for you at an additional charge. The drawback to using a template is that other sites may have purchased the same template so your site will not be unique. You can purchase the template so that it will never sold again but this will cost you in the thousands of dollars.

To get a unique site you will either have do design it yourself or hire someone to customize your cart for you. Two great sites that I have used in the past are Guru and Elance. The prices for a unique site depend on what graphics you need (i.e. a logo) as well as anything else you are requesting. From my experience the pricing starts at $500 and goes up.

In addition to getting the design done and the cart configured you will also need to decide what types of payment methods you want to use and set those up but that is a discussion for a more advanced guide.

Conclusion:

As intended this guide is very basic but should give the budding entrepreneur an idea of what they need to do and how to go about it. If there is something you would like for me to expand on or add please reply to this post so that other members can provide their input. If you need any assistance please feel free to PM me. Also, if you have other services you
would like to recommend in addition to the ones I have provided please do so.

http://www.t-shirtforums.com/ecommerce-site-design/t25617.html

We welcome comments and suggestions, and if you would like to guest post, please leave a comment.

Have a great one,

Jeff and Kat

To regift or not to regift, that is the question

Good morning friends,
I hope your holidays are going well, and you have a prosperous new year.
As you know we are designers and garment printers, but I have also worked in signmaking for a company in western Ky. If there are any sign professionals out there there that would like to contribute, let us know.

Bamboo clothing seems to be picking up speed as the new "green clothing", but before you decide to use this product, check out this article http://www.treehugger.com/files/2007/09/is_bamboo_cloth.php

In the spirit of after Christmas rush, here is a neat article on regifting.

"Making" Money by Regifting

By Bob Cox

The basic concept of regifting is simple: You get a gift that you don't want, and you give it to someone else. The obvious benefit is that you avoid the hassle of returning it or the guilty feeling of knowing it will never be used. And it saves you money.

So that's regifting in the classic sense. But you can also "make" money with regifting. Here are two ways:

1. Instead of giving it away, sell it. If you have a platter you'll never use... a sweater you'll never wear ... a chess set you'll never open... sell it on eBay or CraigsList. Someone else will get a bargain, and you'll have some extra money in your pocket.

2. Turn an unwanted gift into a tax deduction. Donate it to Goodwill, the Salvation Army, or another charitable organization that can sell it, auction it, or use it. Ask for a receipt when you make the donation, and file it with your tax-prep papers.

[Ed. Note: Bob Cox is the creator of The Billionaire Way and the voice of ETR's Total Success Achievement Program. Members get weekly motivational Power Surge Messages packed with advice on how to accomplish their goals... twice-monthly teleseminars with Bob and Patrick Coffey... and personal coaching calls. Click here to learn how you can achieve all your goals in 2008.]

This comes from the newsletter, Early to Rise, and is a daily newsletter.
Have a great New Year.
Jeff and Kat

Have a Merry Christmas

From our family to yours, have a safe and happy holiday season.
Jeff and Kat

Sustainable "green printing"

Good morning friends,
Here at TamedLyon designs, we will lean towards "green" ways to do things, especially printing. On the T Shirt froums, contributors have referred a good article on green printing which I will print here in part.

Most of us try to be aware of the environmental impact of the choices we make in our daily lives — and that extends to our professional lives as well. Who doesn't want to make a positive impact? It may be as simple as taking mass transit or as complex as tracking our carbon emissions and trying to live carbon-neutral. The point is that the environmental movement has become a mainstream, ongoing and important part of society and commerce...
Screen printed T-shirts have doubled as billboards for pro-environmental sentiments as far back as the first Earth Day in 1970. Because T-shirts have been so closely associated with environmentally conscious lifestyle choices, it only makes sense that our customers look to us to lead this movement. Thus, our impact on the environment becomes especially important to our businesses. Not only do we want to make responsible ecological decisions because of our sense that it is the right thing to do, but we are learning that it will help our businesses to be more successful and profitable...
The inks used in screen printing generate the most concern, but they also provide the most opportunity to use green processes and sustainable materials. Plastisol inks are generally considered the easiest and most versatile inks for printing apparel. They also are commonly considered the least "green" ink option available.
While there is some genuine debate about this, my opinion is that plastisol inks are probably the least sustainable ink system used. These inks are made with polyvinyl chloride (PVC) resins. This material is often considered objectionable to the sustainability movement because it is a heavily manufactured, non-natural material. PVC is persistent in the environment as it does not easily break down into natural components...
An entirely different approach is to use water-based inks. There are many types of water-based inks available and each has very different performance characteristics. Some are very eco-friendly and can be used as part of a highly sustainable printing process. There are, however, some performance limitations with all water-based systems — so you have advantages and disadvantages.

This is part of an excellent article. Click on this link to read the full story.

http://www.impressionsmag.com/impressions/content_display/screen-printing/e3ie03af3d9f69cae9947016c75fdeb05eb

Marketing tip from T-Shirt forums contributor Wombat.
What I would suggest you do is bring some of your shirts to your local pub and bring your camera...Find some of the hottest females/males in the place and ask them if they would be your model for you....It should cost nothing more then a shirt and most "younger" people would just think it was cool to be a tshirt model... You could even have alittle more fun and hold a model search down at your local pub...Most pub owners will also do that for nothing...Don't pay the models any money...Its just unnessary...You could probably find a release for them to sign somewhere on the net...The more people you have do this, the better...What will happen is these people modeling your shirts will tell all their friends to check out your site to see them...They will actually be advertising your site for nothing..

Any comments or guest posts? Feel free to e-mail us at tamedlyondesign@yahoo.com or visit www.shubibroom.com
Jeff and Kat

Screen printing as a hobby, or career?

Good morning friends,

Kat and I would like to welcome you to our forum. If you haven't been here before, we are Graphic Designers, as well as Screenprinters and would like to spread interesting tidbits on these topics as well as marketing your shops. We are members of t-shirt forums as well as threadchat forums and have gleaned a lot of information there as well as other business related forums. You can click on the zazzle store on the right, or view our linkedin profile also on the right. We would love to hear your comments on any of these topics.

Screenprinting is a business that a lot of weekend biz owners have turned into a full time career after starting as a hobby.

To cold call or not to cold call, that is the question. There are many proponents of both, and I have been somewhat successful with cold calling although it is time consuming. The best way is to develop a reputation with quality and unique work to get the masses to come to you. Social networking is a good way to achieve this.

Feel free to post your comments. See ya next Monday,

Jeff and Kat

A New Direction

Good morning friends,

I hope you have enjoyed previewing "The Amazing Shubi Bird" as well as the adventures of Shubi. As some of you may know, Shubi has his own blog and will be posting his adventures there. As for this blog, we at TamedLyon Designs, will be focusing more on the graphic design aspects. Kat is an award winning graphic designer, and I am a screenprinter by trade. We hope to open our own screenprinting operation in the near future, but for now we will be posting along those lines. Feel free to comment or maybe guest post. Either way we would love to hear from you out there. Oh, Shubi's blog is at http://gotshubi.wordpress.com/ We look forward to putting up some useful content in the near future.

Our plans are to post to this blog every Monday, so stay tuned.

Jeff and Kat