You’ll need to buy a domain name (the virtual address of your site), find a place to host your website, and create your shop. Many places can build one for you, and some can give you design tools to create one yourself. GoDaddyHosting & Servers or Yahoo! Small Business Yahoo! Web Hosting, Yahoo uses a web hosting service to allow your site to be visited and operated. Yahoo also has online stores you can open, if you plan on getting a seller’s permit, and a business license to sell products from your home.

GF: I usually listen to different kinds of music. I’m listening to music the whole day, and I love to discover new bands, new sounds. Right now my playlist has these bands: Yacht, New Young Pony Club, Liars, Grizzly Bear, Animal Collective, Piano Magic, Panda Bear, Beach House, and Benjamin Biolay, and I’m also re-discovering the Spanish band Los Planetas…

Its not a bad idea to give some of your biggest fans some free shirts. You’re going to need a shopping cart on your page. GoDaddy has a wonderful site hosting and shopping cart tools. You are also going to have to be able to take orders and ship to your customers in a reasonable amount of time. I might suggest UPS. or USPS. Whichever you think is cheapest and speediest.

Once you have got your feet wet and have a good number of designs go ahead and transfer over to producing your own shirts. Once you gain some market insight as to what shirts of yours people are talking about, and which designs are selling, you can start to have your own shirts made. Some ways of producing your shirts are: Acttee screen printing, heat transfer, Iron on, Direct Printing, and embroidery. You can buy shirts wholesale inexpensively and get your designs printed fairly cheap as well. Make sure you do the math right to produce the shirts in bulk amounts for less than you would sell them to the public.

The deadline on this is SUPER TIGHT. We are closing submissions next Friday (March 18th) in order to get the shirt produced and up for sale as soon as possible. Godspeed!

I was able to start my business with $1,000.00. The most expensive item I purchased was the heat press. It was $700.00. After you have searched around to find a good heat press that will fit your budget, you will need to find a company where you can purchase your t-shirts at a wholesale price. I was very fortunate to find a t-shirt company in a near by city that sold their shirts wholesale. This worked out perfect for me, because I was able to place my order over the phone and pick up my t-shirts the next day. This really cut down on the two to three days waiting period and not to mention the shipping charges.

If you have some cash, give a way some free products in a contest. Promote the contest as much as possible, to have people come to your site, sign up for a newsletter, or blog, or submit emails about your site to their friends, for a chance to win a free product. This is a great way to increase recognition of your brand, increase SEO, and increase your page rank in Google, all leading to more traffic, more looks at your products, and more sales.