The first of, what I expect to be, many new products in the Initial Charge Shop — for the first time ever, the #OpenWeb shirt is now available.
The design is printed on ultra comfortable Bella + Canvas triblend with seven color options. Of the bunch, I think teal is my current favorite.
And if you’re taking this as an indication that there may be something new in store for #OpenWeb, I would encourage you to stay tuned.
➝ Source: initialcharge.shop
I’ve wanted to relaunch Initial Charge shirts for quite some time, but it was always a project that ended up on the back burner in favor of more important things. I mentioned it publicly a couple of years ago and started toying around with some options.
I’ve ordered a bunch of samples, made some tweaks to the designs, and am pretty happy with the results. It’s time to finally ship it.
If you’re in need of some snazzy shirts, hats, sweatshirts, or stickers, you might as well buy them from me. It helps support the site and you get something that you’ll have to explain to all your friends when they inevitably ask, “what is that logo?”
You can just tell them it’s a website that all the cool people read.
On a more serious note, the shop is starting out with Initial Charge themed merchandise, but my plan is to expand it with more designs and product types in the future. If you have any ideas, please let me know.
I don’t expect to change the world with this. I’m certainly not going to be going full time with Initial Charge because of t-shirt sales. But even if just a few people buy some products I’ll be happy. Heck, if I’m the only one that ever wears them, that’s actually fine. They’re comfy.
For a little bit of a peak behind the curtain, in case anyone wants to setup a store of their own like this, I built the site on WordPress and am using WooCommerce and WooPayments. Products are printed and shipped by Printful.
I’ve opted for higher quality materials where possible — tri-blend shirts, organic cotton caps, and so on. All of the shirts are printed on Bella + Canvas, which has become my absolute favorite shirt supplier. I would recommend checking the size guide closely, I’ve heard from others that they tend to fit a bit smaller than shirts from other companies.
So please, check out the shop, buy some stuff, and send me any feedback you have.
Today is the last day to order the Initial Charge t-shirt — the Teespring campaign will be ending at approximately 11PM eastern. Thanks to everyone who placed an order, your shirt should be arriving in early September.
For those who haven’t ordered yet, they come in men’s athletic gray for $22 and women’s athletic blue for $21. But you better act quick, you don’t want to be left shirtless.
Update: The Teespring campaign has ended. One last thanks to everyone who ordered, I really appreciate it.
When I decided to finally start a t-shirt campaign for Initial Charge, I already knew that I was going to be using Teespring. I’ve purchased shirts from them in the past — Minimal Mac and ATP, off the top of my head. I was very happy with the print quality and thought the customer experience was great.
Although this selling experience got off to a rocky start — waiting weeks for my shirt of choice to become available and going through a lengthy email exchange in order to determine when they would be in stock — I wouldn’t hesitate to use Teespring again. But as with all online services, I knew that it would be wise to consider the future and leave my options open down the road.
I certainly don’t expect Teespring to go away anytime soon, but I needed to make sure that if another service cropped up that I liked better — or if I wanted to take my t-shirt sales and fulfillment in-house — I could do so painlessly. I knew I was going to be publishing links each week and tweeting regularly to promote the shirts, but I didn’t want a reader to come across those links months or years from now and be taken to a dead end.
The solution I came up with is pretty clever and something I haven’t seen any other writers do with their own t-shirt promotions. Before launching the campaign I built a landing page alerting the reader that shirts are no longer available. The page is located at initialcharge.net/shirts, but if you try to visit that URL now you’ll be redirected to the Teespring page.
In order to point my readers to the appropriate sales page I added four lines to my server’s htaccess file:
redirect 301 /shirts http://teespring.com/initial-charge/
redirect 301 /shirts/ http://teespring.com/initial-charge/
redirect 301 /shirts-w http://teespring.com/initial-charge-w/
redirect 301 /shirts-w/ http://teespring.com/initial-charge-w/
They’re just simple 301 redirects, but what this did was give me two simple URLs that I could share that took those interested directly to Teespring. As you can see I built one for both the men’s shirt and women’s shirt, which would allow me to direct readers to the one they’re most likely to be interested in. And when the campaign is over, I can remove all of the redirects and point /shirts-w to the self-hosted landing page.
If readers come across an old Linked List item or tweet and end up at the landing page, they can even bookmark it to revisit when the campaign is active. If they do, they’ll be automatically redirected to the sale page. Whether that’s Teespring or otherwise.
It seems so perfect to me. Readers find something relevant whether they’re following the link during or after the campaign. And it’s not as though the contents of the landing page are that magnificent — just a note about when to expect the next round of t-shirt sales and some suggestions of how to help support the site in the meantime. But, it’s a page I own rather than a page Teespring owns.
I was more than aware that others might share the link to the Teespring page, and I can’t do much to prevent that. But at least I have some more control over the links I share myself. Honestly this might be a bit too fiddly for other would-be t-shirt sellers out there. But I think it should become standard practice for web publishers that are in it for the long haul and are comfortable editing their htaccess file.
As an aside, there’s just one week left to order The Initial Charge T-Shirt. There will only ever be one first printing and every reader who purchases from this batch is going to be part of an elite group of early adopters. Don’t forget, it comes in men’s athletic gray for $22 and women’s athletic blue for $21. And both are printed on high-quality American Apparel Tri-blend – the best shirts available.
I’d also like to offer a hearty thank you to everyone who’s already purchased — please share the link and encourage everyone you know to purchase one too. I appreciate it more than words can describe.
Just a quick reminder that there’s just two weeks left to purchase the Initial Charge T-Shirt. And don’t forget that it’s available in women’s athletic blue for $21, as well — printed on the same high-quality materials as the men’s shirt.
I’d also like to thank the readers who’ve already purchased one. It means a lot to me that you’d be willing to spend your money on, and wear, an article of clothing that sports the Inital Charge logo. I’ll also encourage you to share the link with everyone you know, I’d really appreciate it.
Presenting the official, limited edition Initial Charge t-shirt. Logo design by Aaron Mahnke and printed exclusively on high-quality American Apparel Tri-blend — the best shirts available.
Sales of the Initial Charge t-shirt will help support the site and allow me to continue producing the Linked List and weekly feature articles.
American Apparel sizes tend to run a bit smaller than many other brands, so if you typically wear a medium, I’d suggest considering a large. They are available in men’s athletic gray and women’s athletic blue for $22 and $21 respectively. Orders will be accepted by Teespring until August 26 and should arrive at your door in early September.
