Well, firstly, I didn't submit this. Secondly, I thought this might serve to benefit some people who have trouble with marketing by explaining my own story and how I utilized every day resources. And thirdly, I could have very well posted the name of the reporter, but wasn't sure if that was proper etiquette.
You clearly knew what your readers were interested in knowing... so why choose not to say the amount, and instead say you got a call from someone in Forbes? Can you please tell me why the last sentence in your article says you made a nice sum of cash, instead of listing a dollar figure?
Call me a cynic, but I'd guess that the dollar amount you made would have seriously detracted from the veracity of your article. Maybe after Forbes covers your shirts, the figure will be worth sharing...
In the mean time, let me offer some words of advice to the entrepreneurs who might be misled by this article. The way to a successful product isn't a sham-wow with a trendy swine flu t-shirt site - the way to success is to focus on serving your users, and making your product better.
Tell me... did Posterous get to the level of success it has today with the tactics of making swine flu shirts? Maybe you have a more interesting story to share.
I don't think anyone would argue with the fact that success ultimately depends on having a great product and providing great customer service.
I think this highlights an important point: the best product in the world will fail without customers and awareness. This point is clearly fundamental but one easily missed by hackers living inside their products.
I've intentionally put zero marketing and promotion into my startup as I'm completing a full-time undergraduate degree and can't provide high quality customer service to a large customer base. The product is great in so far as those that use it (about a dozen) love it. But since no-one knows of it, the customer base barely stays in double figures.
The end result is interesting and the process is worth noting. The tactics used to generate the buzz may be questionable in places. Change the implementation as per any ethical concerns and you have an interesting buzz-generating framework starting point.
I hope you do realize that I wasn't trying to build a company for the long haul. I'm not telling entrepreneurs to market their products in a sham-wow way. I wrote that in an attempt to inspire entrepreneurs by letting them know that all they need are the tools they are given and their creativity to generate buzz. This was mostly a response to the submissions I've seen in the past where people complain about how hard it is to get attention for their product. That SEO is still worth something. That Twitter can prove to be an invaluable tool. And that creating an interesting story is the way to get blogged.
I'm not trying to build the next Apple, man. This was clearly a gimmick I whipped up in no time and tried to push to the limit given the resources I have and no money.
Also, in response to your last line, PlentyofFish comes to mind.
The point is not abt making-flu-shirts-is-bad attitude. It's about creating publicity for a product/service.
Here, Kyro makes shirts and he made special flu shirts when flu was the buzz. There's nothing wrong abt it.
The method of publicity and the product/service are connected. It's not like Mozilla selling flu-tshirts because they want to spread the browser. It's spreadshirts making flu shirts because they want to spread the word that they make shirts
