Before I announce the two winners, now would be a good time to tell the t-shirt story.  On October 17, 2007 I launched turnipofpower.com for no other reason than I quit a MMORPG name Vangard and had entirely too much time on my hands.  Using the Turnip name from gaming, the Turnip logo came shortly after the website.  Around the same time, John Chow was posting all these cool little video clips of him attending marketing conventions.  Immediately I wanted to be there, walking around proudly wearing a Turnip of Power T-Shirt in hopes a reader of mine would recognize me.  In my dream I would meet some cool online personality and give them a free Turnip shirt.

  About a month later I began to research T-shirts, silk screening (as I called it then), and anything else about the process.  Doing it yourself could be difficult, expensive, and complicated.  I also researched how not to do it, like buying some crappy iron on transfer kit.  I bought one just to check it out, and it’s still sitting on the floor of my room with an unopened packet of Hanes black t-shirts. 

If I was going to do this I wanted to do it right, even if that meant buying the shirts, and wearing one every day for the rest of my life because I couldn’t even give them away.  I continued my research, calculated pricing, and bookmarked a few shops.  Then along came Entrecard.

Few people know this, but I joined Entrecard as a method to promote Tech.turnipofpower.com.  It wasn’t until I started to shoot through the ranks with my tech site that I tried the same techniques on my Turnipofpower.com site.  This site soon overshadowed the tech site by writing about what worked.  So now I had readers, a logo, and thousands of Entrecredits sitting around.

I put an ad on Fawnzy.com looking for screen printing, but nobody ever responded to it.   A week later I was dropping my usual 300 when I saw a mention of screen printing in Shopdogdiaries “About” page.  I used Heidi’s contact form and actually got a response! 

I had proposed trading Entrecard credits for screen printing.  Heidi, the owner, thought I only wanted one shirt.  When she realized I wanted quite a few, the negotiating began.  Paying 100% in credits was risky on both are parts.  That meant unless we found the perfect exchange rate, one of us would be badly burned.  At the time, I was selling credits for $15, but they were going for less on eBay.  This was the hardest part of the deal. 

In the end we settled on paying cash for shipping and the cost of the t-shirts.  Above that we set a rate and paid credits for time spent.  This was probably the first business deal using Entrecredits outside the Entrecard shop that didn’t involve selling credits or advertising.  I won’t say how many credits, but it was a considerable amount.  So now we had a deal, but still no t-shirts.

I took my logo and used Adobe Illustrator to make a vector based graphic.  Knowing 3D modelling and photoshop, it was pretty simple.  Just when I thought I was finished, Heidi asked me all these questions I had no clue about.  Cotton or polyester? Shirt sizes?  Type and size of printing?  Crisp edges or fuzzy edges?  Luckily Heidi is an expert in her field and was able to guide me through all my choices.

The big day arrived during a snowstorm.  UPS safely dropped off a giant box containing my precious turnip t-shirts.  Next marketing conference in New York City, be sure to look for that handsome guy in the turnip t-shirt! 

If anyone has a blog and is looking for ideas on how to promote their brand, t-shirts are a great item.  Give them away, sell them, wear them yourself, or even send one to Shoemoney.com for t-shirt Friday!  Now for you painfully patient readers who sufferred through that story just to find out who won a free shirt, here we go.  Using random.org, I’ve picked 2 winners based upon the 29 who commented.  The two winners are 11 and 28, that’s John and Nissa!  I’ll be contacting you both by email or through your website to get your mailing address and size requested.  Remember, send me a digital picture back of someone wearing the shirt so I can post it.  Thanks to everyone who posted and participated in the contest.