Affiliate By Night

The Free Shirt Challenge – Affiliate.com Contest

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At Affiliate Summit West, Affiliate.com was giving out some very popular promotional shirts. They were so popular in fact that people were saying they would even wear them after the show, which is a rarity for free industry t-shirts. In order to have those people who were talking about wearing the shirts after the show put up or shut up, Affiliate.com put their money where their mouth is and started a t-shirt blogging contest. Make a post about wearing your shirt, and you could win $1,000 for yourself, and more importantly in my eyes, have $1,000 donated to Haitian Relief efforts in your name.

[To get on my soap box for a minute, it is important that people not forget about the dire needs in Haiti now that the blitz of news coverage and TV specials have faded. People still need food, water, medicine and other essential supplies to help them continue to rebuild their homes and their lives. Your donations are still needed and still important.]

For those curious, here are a couple of shots of the front and back of the shirt:

Sounds great you are saying to yourself, but I didn’t make it out to ASW so I guess I’m out of luck (exactly what I was thinking myself). However, to get even more people involved, they gave away the few extra shirts they had via email to those who couldn’t attend and I was lucky enough to get one!

I got to thinking about what a good way to display my wearing the shirt would be and decided that I would wear it throughout the course of a normal day and all the places I would go, taking some photos and more importantly keeping track of the comments people made to me as I traveled.

Here I am heading into the airport wearing the shirt:

Best Comment on the shirt at the airport (at security): “Hey Everyone, make some space for the King to catch his flight!” [Waiting in line less at the checkpoint? Don't mind if I do!]

One guy, who may or may not have been enjoying himself a bit much at the airport bar, came up to me and offered to trade shirts with me. As nice as his dress shirt was, we weren’t the same size and I was much more comfortable not changing shirts with a total stranger. The shirt definitely has drunk appeal though.

I also had a bunch of people in the terminal comment on the shirt saying how nice it was, how cool it was and wondering where they could get one so it seems like people outside the affiliate industry like the shirts too and would be happy to wear them out.

After the airport I took a break to check my email and do some “work” online. Translation: I checked and returned some emails, opened up AdWords, got distracted by a GChat from a friend, ended up looking at fantasy baseball rankings for 30 minutes before remembering why I turned on the computer in the first place.

I will occasionally wear certain shirts for various tasks as an internal motivator (State Champs shirt for working out etc.) and this one is probably going to be a good one for me to get some work done in. I can just tell myself that I am the King and so are my campaigns!

My girlfriend, who usually hates most of my wardrobe, commented that this shirt “wasn’t so bad”, so even some of my harsher fashion critics like the shirt and I can keep on wearing it.

After getting some emails sent and some work done, it was time to move on to the next task, which is always a ton of fun – coaching some track.

I am a part-time track coach in addition to all the other stuff I have going on, so I decided to take the shirt to the track.

It was a successful workout for the team and many of them had some interesting commentary on my shirt choice in between intervals. For example:

“Are you auditioning for a part in the new Alice in Wonderland movie?’

” Is that shirt something you wear to intimidate people in poker games?”

“Make some space for the King of the (timing) Clock, everybody!”

Despite the jovial ribbing from the team, they all thought it was a pretty cool looking shirt and were asking me where I got it, thus giving me a chance to explain to them a little bit about the affiliate marketing I do. Several of them were pretty interested in it, so I may be referring some new affiliates soon thanks in part to wearing this shirt.

Lastly, after a busy day, some friends and I went out for some dinner and drinks. Naturally, the shirt came with me.

While watching some Olympic curling at the bar (awesome event by the way) I was approached by a lady who offered to buy the “King of Hearts anything he wants to drink, because he clearly is the coolest guy around.” Not wanting to insult my new friend I decided to let the minor detail that my shirt clearly has a diamond and not a heart on it slide, and accepted a free beer. This shirt is really paying off!

Other excellent comments included:

From our waitress: “Will the King be picking up the tab?”

“Sick shirt, dude! Are those, like, new Burger King promo shirts or something?”

After explaining to several people where the shirt came from, what affiliate marketing was and that I was in fact, not picking up the tab for the entire bar or distributing free Burger King it was time to leave. All in all it was a pretty eventful day for the shirt and I got some potential new referrals, a free beer and lots of (generally) positive commentary on it.

As for the shirt itself, it fits nicely and is lightweight which is great for the coming warmer months. Another huge plus was that the shirt itself is tagless and made from 100% cotton so it’s really comfortable to wear. I like the look of it and will continue to wear it out and about and who knows, maybe I’ll keep getting free beers with it! Thanks again to Tom and everyone else at Affiliate.com for designing a cool shirt and sending me one for free.

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