So You Want to Make Money Online: An Extensive Guide to T-Shirt Affiliate Marketing

Everyone loves cool T Shirts with great designs or slogans. And why not? They aren’t expensive and are generally affordable to a large market of consumers, from your average college student or high school kid to your corporate executive or housewife.

Because of its implicit connection with internet, sports and pop culture, T-Shirts with snarky or humorous designs are appealing and can easily sell themselves effortlessly. Here’s where this applies to you.

Did you know you can make money by simply promoting T shirts from clothing companies online? Like most other affiliate programs, you can earn commissions on every T shirt bought by a visitor that visits an online store through your affiliate link.

This article will touch on how you can get started as a T-Shirt affiliate and includes a comprehensive list of thirty one T-shirt and clothing companies with affiliate programs you can use to kick-start your T-shirt marketing experiment.

Types of T-Shirt Affiliate Retailers and Programs

T Shirt retailers fall into two main categories, the niche T-shirt seller as well as the general retailer. The niche retailer specializes in selling T-shirts and no other products. Depending on their size, they usually offer some of the best rates, customer support and promotional tools.

The general retailer offers T-shirts alongside other merchandise such as hats, bags and other apparel. The T-shirts they sell will appeal to a large demographic and are generally not theme-orientated.

There are mainly two types of T-Shirt affiliate programs:

1. Direct T-Shirt affiliates – You’ll work directly with the retailer so there’s leverage for rate negotiation if you can pull in a large amount of sales. Note that stats tracking may not be as efficient as third-party affiliates.
2. Third-party affiliates – These companies run their affiliate program through affiliate networks such as ShareaSale or Commission Junction. If you already have an account with these networks it’ll make the whole process of getting started faster. The middlemen also acts as a guarantee that you’ll get paid whatever commissions that are due to you.

Eleven Quick Steps to becoming a Successful T-shirt Affiliate

You probably want to get started immediately so I’m going cut to the chase and tell you exactly what I did to make a yummy amount of money every month. I love selling T-shirts and these steps are fail-proof methods which will guarantee that you’ll make money too:

1. Get your own domain. Go for older or expired keyword domains if possible. I would suggest using your own hosting and domain because you’ll have a lot more freedom at the backend. Also, you can flip the site for profit in the future if you ever get tired of this niche.
2. Set up Wordpress. Choose a fresh, attractive template and create one or two web pages, which contain specific product type or brand (Men/Women, T-shirts/Hats etc.). Make sure you don’t put any contextual ads on it.
3. Import the product/data RSS feeds that the T-shirt company offers or manually insert image and text links to specific products.
4. Pick various keywords you want to target. Check their search volume through Overture or other tools. Include several long tail keywords and don’t forget to optimize your images.
5. Submit articles to free directories. Hire a cheap freelancer to write and do article submissions. This might cause a few dollars for each article and will build lots of backlinks to your website. You’ll also get traffic and sales when your article is syndicated by other publishers. My guideline is at least one article a day for the first month.
6. Hire a content writer to put up content on a regular basis. Content doesn’t even have to be related to T-shirts. General Humor, TV and movies are a great place to start. Put up a minimum of one post a day. This also makes your website attractive to other websites/blogs and helps in link exchanges.
7. Buy links for specific keywords. I usually buy contextual blog links from several brokers I am familiar with. This will allow you to rank fast for mid-level competitive keywords.
8. Set up a YouTube Channel and upload wierd/sexy/funny videos. Include links to your webpage on the video and channel page. This is an awesome method to get free targeted traffic from an interested demographic. I have gotten at least 100 visitors a day for videos that were relatively popular.Upload at least one video a day. Maximize the exposure by submitting the videos to Digg, Fark, StumbleUpon and Reddit. Also post video responses to popular videos and leech their traffic.
9. Link Bait as much as possible. I usually write a linkbait piece once a week for each website. I isolate it on a separate webpage and include sidebar or post banner ads. As I’ve mentioned above, video and picture link baits have been the most successful for me. Doesn’t matter if the content is cheesy or Made-for-Digg, as long as it gets you traffic.
10. Get on Myspace. You can buy a Myspace Profile with thousands of real friends and use it to send out (spam?) bulletins about your website. This will definitely will get you some buyers if you don’t overdo it.If you’re not interested in buying, just start your own MySpace page and hire an experienced MySpace pimp. If you really want to DIY the whole process. Add a minimum of 30 friends a day to your account for the first month.
11. Drive traffic to your website using PayperClick Campaigns. I’ve also used StumbleUpon’s advertising program as a word-of-mouth promo tactic because it gives you the ability to designate age/sex and location. SU doesn’t convert well but the traffic is very cheap so it’s worth it, in my opinion.

And the list of ways to promote your website goes on and on. I’ve only listed what I think are some of the more effective ways to get you started. Keep in mind the ultimate goal is to drive a large amount of targeted traffic to your website and direct them on to each T shirt company.

This works because almost all of these T-shirt companies use cookies which ensure that even if the visitor doesn’t make an impulse purchase, you’ll still be credited with the sale as long as she returns to the website and makes a purchase within a certain time period (e.g. 30 days to lifetime).

Why Use Wordpress instead of building a normal website?

I chose to use Wordpress and the format of a blog because I’m very familiar with how it works. You can choose to create your own website using any other platform, it’ll probably work just as well if you know how to drive traffic to it.

Here are other several reasons why I use Wordpress:

• Wordpress templates are attractive and most importantly, are free. Saves you a lot of time from buying/building a template or hiring a designer. Also useful when you want to run multiple websites. Pick one from this list of great themes.
• Blogs can easily add fresh content daily which makes it easier to rank for specific keywords.
• Wordpress can can be designed to look like a magazine or professional store. See this tip on tweaking Wordpress.
• A lot of functionalities (plugins) are available for Wordpress and it is a hassle-free Content Management System. It allows one to add, manage or tweak content very quickly.
• Wordpress is very easy to optimize for search engines. See this SEO Guide for Wordpress.

Dosh Dosh’s List of 31 T-Shirt Affiliate Programs

The following collection of T shirt affiliates is currently the largest online list at the moment. All links in this list point directly to affiliate program homepage for each T-shirt or clothing company.

I’ve not included any referral links whatsoever for the entire list. Unless otherwise stated, all descriptions below also come from each respective affiliate program.

Recommended T-Shirt Affiliate Programs

The following list might be too much to plow through so I’m going point you to some of the affiliate programs out there that worked for me. I’ve used T Shirt Hell (#3) and Deez Teez (#2)for some time and they are two of the T-shirt companies you can start with if you’re completely new to T-shirt affiliate marketing.

These two companies have products that are geared towards the college crowd and will convert well with social website traffic. There’s also a decent amount of promo material provided by each. Other companies I’ve tried include Busted Tees (#4) and Split Reason (#11). Both are recommended as well.

1. NerdyShirts

We will pay you 15% of each order you send us. That’s $3.00 per t-shirt ordered and $4.50 per BeatBuckle sold!

2. DeezTezz

Place a banner or text link on your site with your personal ID URL and make $7.00 per lead. We also offer Tier II, get paid $2.10 for affiliates under you that make a sale. Operates via ShareASale.

3. T Shirt Hell

We’ll pay you $4 for every shirt a visitor you send to T-Shirt Hell.com buys! That’s right, $4 for every single shirt that’s sold. Doesn’t matter if we’re selling the shirt for $7, $10 or $17…you make $4 for every shirt sold!

You also make $1 for every shirt a webmaster who signs up under you sells, using our 2-tier program. Real time tracking for states included.

4. Busted Tees

Every time you send someone who puts in an order with us, you get 10% of that order. It’s that easy! Powered by Commission Junction.

5. Crack Smokin’ T Shirts

Every person you refer to our site that buys something will earn you a 20% of each sale. If your lead signs up for our program and gets a sale for our Tier II program… you get another 5% from their sale.

Your clicks get stored in our database for up to 365 days, so if your refferal leaves and comes back another time to buy… you still get paid. Powered by Shareasale.

6. Snorgtees.com

Earn $5 for every sale that you refer us. 45 day cookie tracking. Our ideal affiliates are content-driven sites, blogs, or online stores that cater to a similar demographic as us and can send us unique traffic.

7. T-Shirt Humor - broken website renamed site

We pay you a 20% commission on every sale resulting from a visitor who reaches T-ShirtHumor.com through a banner or link on your site. Powered by Shareasale.

8. Spreadshirt

Spreadshirt pays partners at least 20% commissions for each sale they generate. Tiered commissions give up to 25% of each sale to our partners for outstanding sales performance. Includes hundreds of product feeds.

9. tShirt Freaks

We’ll pay you $4 for every shirt a visitor you send to Tshirtfreaks.com buys! Sales are tracked through Shareasale.

10. CafePress.com broken website

The CafePress Affiliate Program powered by Commission Junction is scheduled to launch on April 10, 2007.The base commission rate is 15% and the cookie duration for the CafePress Affiliate Program on CJ is 30 days.

11. SplitReason.com - broken website

We pay $4.00 USD for every t-shirt you sell, period. Every single customer you refer to us remains your customer. If you’ve referred a customer to us that has made a purchase, you will make an additional commission on everything that customer ever buys at SplitReason.com

12. RadRowdies.com broken website

Affiliates earn up to $4 from every item they sell. (US funds). We use a 30 day cookie too! So if someone uses your affiliate link but doesn’t buy anything right away, and then they come back within 30 days and buy something, you still get the commission. As long as your affiliate payout balance is over $30, just send us an e-mail and we’ll send you your commission via PayPal.

13. BrownTurtle - broken website

Get a industry high commission of 25% on the entire order you bring to Brownturtle.com. That’s $4.25 per sale and our average sale is $34.00, which gives you a commission of $8.50. For every webmaster that signs up for Brownturtle.com under your link ID, you will receive $1.00 for every sale they generate.

14. ChoiceShirts renamed site

We pay 15% of net sales, plus give you the opportunity to earn bonuses as well. Promotional ads individually tailored to your site; we have ads and text links available in just about every one of our categories.Complete data feed of our entire product line is now available.

15. Tshirts.com

We will pay you a commission equal to ten percent (10%) of ‘Net Sales’. This excludes any returns, applicable sales tax, coupons, and shipping and handling charges. If your site has earned $25 or more in commissions in a month, your site will receive a check after the month ends.

16. Jiggy.com

You’ll earn 10% on all sales made during user sessions originating from a link on your site. Includes 24/7 Real Time tracking.

17. T-Shirt King

New 2-tier Payout Structure: Get paid 12% on all sales commissions that you generate, PLUS, 3% earned on all sales generated by webmasters that you refer to us. Direct link capability without the need for affiliate links. Includes lots of promotional material.

18. AllPosters.com

Allposters.com pays you a commission rate of 25% – 30% on all shipped products made through your affiliate links. For each Website you recruit, you will earn: $3.00 when they make their 1st sale, $5.00 when they make their 2nd sale, Plus 5% of every sale they make for life.

19. Karma Loop

Part of the Linkshare Affiliate Network. Provides you with a large variety of banners, logos, product links, text links, images and more. Affiliate commission is 5 to 8%.

20. CoultureCandy

Commissions are 15%. Since our average order is $239, that would earn you $35.85 per sale referred through CoutureCandy. CoutureCandy’s affiliate marketing program includes the latest tools and features that will allow you to maximize your earning potential. You can choose from a terrific selection of banner ads, text links, product catalogs and more

21. ThinkGeek

ThinkGeek uses Commission Junction to conduct our affiliate program.Earn commissions of up to 8% from all qualified sales that came from your site.We maintain a 45-day cookie, meaning that if a visitor clicks on a link from your site, you are credited with the sale as long as the visitor purchases within 45 days.

22. Bantam Apparel

You send us a sale, we give you 20% of the total item cost. Sales are tracked by entrance referrals and are valid for 45 days. Partner accounts are credited thirty days after an order is shipped. All partners are paid via PayPal.

23. ihateclowns.com

Earn 15% per sale and 1% on all 2-tier sales. Cookies that NEVER expire!The average sale amount is $20, which means you will be earning approximately $3 per sale with your 15% commission. ihateclowns.com has teamed up with ShareASale to offer a simple affiliate signup process

24. Vintage Edge

Also allows you to insert a personalized T shirt store on your website with tracking functions. VintagEdge Affiliates are paid on a monthly basis once they have reached the $25 minimum payment threshold.

25. ONS Shirts

Earn 10% for every sale that you refer to us. 60 day cookie tracking. Powered by Shareasale.

26. T Shirt Black

Features sexy and funny T shirts. Affiliate program accessible by private arrangement only. Email T Shirt Black for more information if you’re interested.

27. Skrew Gear

All our affiliates get a 15% commission on sales. Powered by Shareasale.

28. American Hockey Center

By joining our Affiliate Program, you earn a 10% commission on T-Shirt sales generated through your site. If the customer returns to our site at a later time (even if they never enter your site again), our system will remember the affiliate code of the the last referring site so even if your customer doesn’t purchase T-Shirts right away, you still get paid.

29. KlearGear

17.5% commission on all net sales (less shipping and tax) for new Affiliates. Affiliates who generate consistent results over time may be upgraded to our Platinum program with 20% on commissioned sales. Features Geek T shirts and Apparel.

30. TasteeTees.com

We Pay a generous 15% on all sales! We don’t limit you to a per sale amount – if you send us a sale for 4 Tee Shirts you make 15% on the total sale! If a customer that you sent us – purchases t-shirts from Tastee Tees anytime within 60 days – you get your commission.

The more you promote us – the more you make. For any month that an affiliate sends us $1,000 in net sales – we will pay them 20% on all sales that month!

31. Threadless

You can start earning points right away. One of the best ways to earn StreetTeam points is to link to Threadless from other websites or through email using your unique StreetTeam URL. If your referral results in a sale, you will receive 2 StreetTeam points ($3.00). You can use the points to buy Threadless T-shirts.

(Threadless doesn’t actually make you money but I’ve included it because you can redeem the points you earned for some pretty cool shirts.)

And that’s a wrap.. good luck if you’re starting out as a T-shirt affiliate!