Now that you figured out the service provider for your print on demand business, spend some hours on the decor of the store and definitely more than a couple hours filling your store with “inventory” It´s time to let the world knows your store is there. How? well that’s the tricky part and I guess there is no exact answer, but there is a couple of basic stuff you can do from the beginning.
1. Make sure you write down some tags on each product for the marketplace you are selling: every provider (zazzle, cafepress, etc) have their own internal “marketplace” where customers looking for certain product type in on their search engine the word that they think it describes the most of what they are looking for. So if your design is about a bunny have the tag word ” bunny” on it, chances are a customer who type in “bunny” on that marketplace is going to find your product, along with others similar products with the same tag.
So bottom line is: if your image have no tags, nobody is going to find them and therefore it´s like the don’t exist.
2. Fill out your store page Meta Tags: I know… I ask exactly the same when I founded out, “What the heck is a Meta Tag???” well just like the marketplace and their tags I just described above, Meta Tags are the tags used by search engines over the Internet (google, bing, yahoo, etc) to find things, so its really important that you fill them up in order to increase your chances to be found by a customer over the Internet.
3. Do fill out descriptions on your products: this is A VERY IMPORTANT thing to do and by far the number 1 mistake made from people starting on this business. You see, computers can´t read your drawing or pictures, only word as search parameters, therefore, the more descriptive words your design have the more the chances to be found. Lets say you have a t shirt with a bunny on it with the description ”-this funny bunny is perfect for a party, a rabbit t shirt that gives girls something to talk about”-
A potential customer who type on google “t shirt party girl“ would have more chances to find your products with the previous description than having only the meta tag “party” on your online store page.
4. Make sure your tags and descriptions are precise & accurate: make sure you use tags according to your product, you may think that words like “super” would drive millions of possible users to your store, but somebody who land on your store looking for something else than a print on demand shirt could take a bad impression on your store. Also make sure your use accurate words for your descriptions.
Generally you have a limit on letters or word so try no to waste on a phrase like “really cool designs that you are going to like!”, think like a customer. If you where looking for a t shirt would you type “cool t shirt that I would like”? I don’t think so… So if you design is about rabbits write about rabbits.
5. Summit your page to search engines: Search engines are always looking for new pages to add to their repertory and if you summit you page to them you allow these engines to “crawl” in and get your meta tags and description and therefore helping them to find your place or product when someone type a search inquiry. Doing this is for the most cases free, here you can find some links for the main search engines: