It’s been a few weeks since I got back from the affiliate summit west 2010. There were many affiliate networks at the event and almost every one had something to give out for free. Most of the time it was some cheap promotional waste such as a t-shirt with a company name printed all over or some rubber ball and this is one of the reasons why I didn’t even look at the free items or grabbed them. Besides, I didn’t feel like walking around with a bag full of promo items that I would never use or wear. The only things that I took home were whatever came in the welcome bag and shareasale shirt since I wanted to show somebody how it was packaged (pressed) and it was right at the entrance.

Being affiliated with custom apparel company, estores by zome, regular promotional items do not really attract me since we screen print, direct to garment print and embroider pretty much anything. However, I like the items that are not ordinary but I usually don’t even look around since you don’t see them too much as they fall in the “a little more expensive to produce” category.

Well, I guess there was something that I like. I didn’t see the shirts that affiliate.com was giving away at the event, however, I saw it all over internet a few days later. It is nice that they actually run a contest but it is not the main reason I blog about it since I don’t think I have much of a chance to win it anyway.

Anyway, I asked them to send me two shirts – a king and a queen for my wife, which arrived just couple days later to my doorsteps. I was out for over a week, just got back home a couple days ago and tried it out. You can see the men king shirt I received on the picture above. The women shirt is similar, except that it has a queen of hearts. It makes sense, and I would definitely ask the queen of my heart to put it on next time we go out.

I should have payed more attention in Vegas and grabbed a couple there – it is definitely a good shirt to wear while gambling. I went out to local casino yesterday wearing that shirt and won about 500 bucks in blackjack after losing couple hundred in craps. Not that a shirt had much (or anything) to do with luck, but it definitely has a good card theme… I think the dealer got a clue who was a king at that table, now I just need another shirt with hard six and hard eight for craps.

It is great to see the shirt that is not too branded. It says AFFILIATE (part of affiliate.com) on the back written in bigger letters which kind of tells who you are, but of course, the brand needed to be somewhere. It fits nicely into the design on the back written in smaller letters. The shirt is two-color, but I don’t think savings had to be a factor there as it doesn’t need any additional ones. As a matter of fact, it is not a standard screen print job and costs twice (if not more) the amount it would have cost if it had a company name in the standard screen print mid-shirt printable area.

I hope that it would be a trend and other companies will take a note. I have a ton of branded shirts in a closet that I would never wear. Why not print something that people would actually want to wear? Affiliate marketing companies should know how to get impressions…

At last, I want to thank affiliate.com for the shirts and quick response. Good work on the shirt!