

Show HN: Hashtagtee.me – A weekend attempt at passive income - china
http://hashtagtee.me

======
ruswick
From the About page:

 _We use the highest quality shirts and deliver them with the most affordable
pricing._

Does this imply that the $25 price is the lowest possible point at which the
OP can attain reasonable margins? If so, they really need to reevaluate their
infrastructure, as $25 for a text-only tee shirt is very, very high, and the
OP is likely being ripped off by their suppliers.

Given the price, I have doubts about the willingness of potential customers to
purchase shirts of this sort. The precedent for comparable services like
Teespring and even for individual shirt vendors seems to be $10 to $20,
substantially lower than what the OP is charging.

Other than the pricing, I'm not entirely sure whether hashtags would make
suitable shirts. Hashtags tend to be highly ephemeral, and most cease to be
relevant within a few days. Most people keep shirts for years, and thus would
be likely be wearing these shirts for a period far longer than the life of the
hashtag. It's a novel idea, but at the end of the day it's trying to turn what
are highly transient cultural artifacts into something permanent.

~~~
china
The problem with teespring and the likes are that they have an MOQ that most
people don't want to commit to.

As for hashtags and being irrelevant in a few minutes/days/weeks, I'd argue
that a shirt that says "#GoBlue" will always be somewhat relevant. But hey,
we'll see! More a fun project than anything else.

~~~
frankdenbow
The MOQ is a drag but it serves a purpose: you can use a higher quality
printing process (screen printing) which has most of the cost in the setup.
Personally have not found too many Direct to Garment (what most one off shirts
are printed with) printers that I was happy with in terms of consistent
quality. Trust me, it would make my life so much easier if I could print
quality one offs.

You may be better off doing each hashtag as a short term campaign, maybe
Teespring has an API?

Love your idea though! Think you should consider different color shirts: when
we did black shirts in our tshirt subscription, people complained that they
already have too many black shirts in their closet and wanted something
different.

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Killswitch
Automate that shit son. Use Shirts.io and grab trending tags from Twitter, and
display them, even tweet about them when a new trending tag hits, also allow
users to enter their own hashtags... I'd buy one right now if I could input my
own hashtag.

~~~
china
who is to say I'm not using shirts.io already ;) and that "add a hashtag"
feature is in the works...

~~~
Killswitch
Atta boy. Now chop chop so I can order a shirt for an event on the 23rd.

~~~
china
What're ya lookin for?

~~~
Killswitch
#FFFFFF

Just kidding, not 100% sure yet.

~~~
ryen
>#FFFFFF

Would #FFFFFF on a white tee just be a blank tee? ;)

~~~
Killswitch
Not sure, I just know the display shirts are black, haha.

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tommis
Google "order a tshirt with your text", first hit that came up was for example
this - [http://www.spreadshirt.com/design-your-own-t-
shirt-C59](http://www.spreadshirt.com/design-your-own-t-shirt-C59)

Type in what ever #tag you want, $13.90

I bet with little more googlefu there's some cheaper places out there.

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aaronbrethorst
#toomanychoices

have a shirt of the day, pick it from the Twitter trending list, lather,
rinse, repeat.

Holy crap, I like this simplification so much I might go build it myself...

~~~
china
dig the idea

~~~
Zaheer
Have you ever the MobStub Facebook ads? They choose one item a day people
really like/need (iPhone chargers for cheap) and feature it daily. Do
something similar for your biz. Love the concept btw - saying this as a person
experienced in the hashtag space (check my profile).

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brianbreslin
If your volume price on 1 off shirts is $12.99-14 on shirts.io, I honestly
think you'd get 5-10x the volume at $20 flat price vs 25, 20 is closer to
impulse buy range than $25.

~~~
frankdenbow
This is good advice. We saw the same thing with our subscription and one off
tshirt sales.

~~~
QuasiAlon
can you share some numbers? did you gauge demand price elasticity ?

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avalaunch
What is your marketing strategy - other than the initial launch on Hacker
News?

I'm curious how other people market their passive income apps. I'm doubly
curious because I've got my own t-shirt passive income app that I've been
working on for a couple weekends now.

EDIT: I just realized you are (wisely) tweeting out each shirt to the
appropriate hashtag. So the marketing is essentially baked in. Nice.

~~~
china
Twitter twitter twitter :)

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cjrd
I'd consider springing for a hashtagtee if the price was circa $10.

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DaemonXI
$25 for a shirt I could print at Zazzle for less?

No thanks.

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joebo
I don't understand hash tags and I don't understand why someone would want
them on a shirt. Is this best understood by immersing myself in the twitter
culture? I don't get it from the outside. The main place I see hash tags is
where networks will display them with a TV show. Aside from that, I don't
understand how people come up with them and how they are used other than
searching and linking?

For example, #SalmonCat (a TV shirt on the home page) apparently refers to
some tv show called Sam and Cat? Googling that reveals it's the 17th episode
that aired today. If I loved the show enough, would I go buy a shirt with the
hash tag on it? [http://hashtagtee.me/products/salmoncat-
shirt](http://hashtagtee.me/products/salmoncat-shirt)

I am admittedly not one of the 230 million+ twitter users.

~~~
vxNsr
If you've used facebook recently you'd know they've also added hashtags, their
main purpose (and the way twitter started using them originally) is to connect
your posts to a topic.

I've also seen it used (and have used it myself) as a way to kinda add a
punchline to a post that didn't have or need one.

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adaline
I have made a t-shirt generator ([http://sonarcore.com](http://sonarcore.com))
in a similar attempt at a passive income. It took me much longer than a
weekend to build but anyway. I'm very anxious to wait to see how your project
goes :)

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dl_terp
I think the trick is going to be either: 1) finding hashtags with enough
people desiring them so that you can order in bulk OR 2) finding a production
method that is cheap/efficient enough that you can print 1 or 2 shirts without
breaking the bank

I wonder if you could do something like threadless did, where people vote for
the "best hashtag" with their wallet, saying they would buy one if you
produced the lot.

Not bad for a weekend project though! Props to you!

~~~
china
Thanks!

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jrosenberg99
With all due respect to your work, somehow I never understood the "t-shirt"
startup idea. We live in a world where there are many problems to tackle in
health, science, government and politics, yet I've seen dozens of attempts at
these t-shirt startups.

I do not mean to discredit your work, that being said.

~~~
Falling3
Probably because the OP was able to create this in a weekend or less in hopes
of generating some passive income. That really doesn't compare to any problem
(trivial or otherwise) in the areas you mentioned.

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nosph
If you make your blog a place where we can be updated about how your business
are going in real time, it ll retain and grow your traffic and build a great
comunnity around

Good reference: [http://groovehq.com/blog](http://groovehq.com/blog)

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QuasiAlon
Very nice. Good luck!

I would hide the hello world post from your blog :) Also, not sure what
message it sends out when you write it runs from your basement.. perhaps it
will hurt conversion.

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adamnemecek
You could also use the Twitter API to get hashtags trending in the user's
location and create shirts based on those hashtags.

~~~
china
To be in version 2.0 for suuuure

~~~
digitalboss
CNN did this several years ago with headlines.

[http://37signals.com/svn/posts/985-custom-cnn-t-
shirts](http://37signals.com/svn/posts/985-custom-cnn-t-shirts)

[http://www.adweek.com/news/advertising-branding/cnn-promo-
tu...](http://www.adweek.com/news/advertising-branding/cnn-promo-turns-
headlines-t-shirts-95587)

[http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/09/business/media/09cnn.html?...](http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/09/business/media/09cnn.html?_r=0)

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forlorn
Sorry for the offtopic, but it's such a pleasure to see #Pacers on the 1st
position.

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danmaz74
Holy crap, I thought somebody had submitted my Hashtagify.me without telling
me :)

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emilioolivares
Nice, who are you sourcing your t-shirts from? Good luck.

~~~
mbijon
Yes, and that's your biggest risk.

Tried a niche, online T shop with a friend years ago (before Spreadshirt
existed). We worked with a local T shop at first but their minimums were a
drag. A big T shop in a lower income town about 100 miles from us (we were in
Santa Monica) agreed to waive minimums and do drop shipping.

Problem ended up being quality we or the shop couldn't consistently control.
It was great for weeks, then bad for a batch, then good again.

Returns and re-shipping costs due to low quality finally killed us.

~~~
dmak
What was the biggest take away from that experience?

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zachschau
not bad for a weekend project!

~~~
progx
Seems that some people have longer weekends than others ;-)

