Militant Geek Custom Shirts

Like many a diligent geek I was avoiding real work this weekend and catching up on my Lego blog posts. A post on the Brother’s Brick Lego blog, entitled ‘Good Lego Blog, Bad Lego Blog‘ caught my attention. In it Dunechaser outlines what separates your puny, only mildly attractive review blog from a strapping, hair on chest, Bounty-cover-model review blog. While writing MilitantGeek I’ve wallowed in my fair share of Tee tedium. While his post was about Lego themed sites we can use his points as a jumping off point to talk about TShirt review blogs. Without further ado and hat-tip to Dunechaser here are the top 5 must-haves for a great TShirt Blog:

1. Give the Designer Credit - With some store fronts (like ThinkGeek) it can be difficult to find the specific designer. In those cases a link to the store is probably enough. But in cases like Etsy the shirt designer is probably not just listed; they’re probably the entire store. Its important to give these people the props they deserve because they’re out creating things of incredible coolness the rest of us can only hope to write about. Finally, it goes without saying, but if you’re just posting shirt pics you think are awesome without any kind of attribution to a storefront or creator so others can get in on the fun you’re just rude.
2. Give Other Blogs Credit - It can be very tempting to just subscribe to a whole bunch of existing TShirt blogs, let them do the dirty work of finding great apparel, and post the best pieces of their work on your blog. There’s nothing illegal about that. However, it doesn’t take long before savvy readers notice that other blogs have exclusives before yours does. Which brings us to…
3. Add Value - Just taking the latest shirts that everyone else is talking about and throwing them into your own blog does not add value - at that point you might as well just wrap your sources into an OPML file and offer that to your audience. On Militant Geek it’s not enough to just post a shirt and an affiliate link back - there’s a gajillion sites out there (I counted) that already do this. I’d like to think that I add a little humor and/or wit to each post (or, barring that, my utter failure in these regards serves as a humorous en devour in and of itself). Remember, just finding a narrow untapped niche (the best geek tshirts) and spending the time to find the best content to fill it may be value add enough.
4. Provide Both Affiliate and Non-Affiliate Links - A common revenue model for several tshirt blogs is to sign up for every tshirt affiliate program they can find and then only cover shirts from those stores. The problem is that this undermines a reader’s trust in the blog. It raises a quandary in the visitor’s mind: “Is this blog linking to this shirt because they truly believe its the bee’s knees? Or are they just doing it because they’re hoping to get a payout?” Affiliate programs aren’t a bad thing. But it is up to the blog writer to treat the audience’s trust with the utmost respect - and that means not selling it out to whatever storefront has the highest % on sales that month. Empower the reader to choose and they’ll be happy to help a site out.
5. Don’t Settle for Crap - While this point may have the biggest ‘duh’ factor its also the easiest to screw up. It’s late. You probably don’t do this for a living. You know you need a post and you’re just willing to grab the next vaguely genre-appropriate shirt you stumble upon. I know, I’ve been there. And with the explosion of print-on-demand tshirt sites online everybody and their colorblind neighbors are churning out mediocre apparel of the derivative kind. (Disclosure: if I see another ‘No Place Like 127.0.0.1′ shirt I’m going to go Jerry Lee Lewis on the nearest keyboard.) Your visitors spend their attention with you because you’re providing great stuff. Settle for so-so content and your audience will settle for another site.