We’ll hopefully be taking some t-shirts to the event to giveaway and that’s where we need your help – in designing them. We are looking for a kickass design that people want to wear, not your typical promotional tees that get thrown into a cupboard never to be worn. Your design can be trendy, humourous or professional, or even all three – we open to suggestions.

The winner will recieve $500 in cash and a 6-month WooThemes developer license. The runner up will get $250 and a 3-month developer license. Third place will get a 6-month developer license, but no cash prize.

The rules are fairly simple. The format should be a PSD, or Fireworks or Illustrator format; no stock images; you must follow the design guidelines so print will work properly; submit through the Flickr pool before April 3rd, 2009.

It sounds like a fun opportunity, and I might enter if I can think of a suitable idea. Everyone likes a funny T-Shirt.

I’ve experimented with CafePress a little in the past, but not too seriously yet. As NorthXEast.com had said months ago, back when it was still the personal blog of Collis Ta’eed, you probably won’t have great results if you’re selling shirts with just your logo on them. Only sites or companies with large mega-fan followings can do that (like Firefox, Apple, Google, maybe ProBlogger). Instead, you want to sell shirts with something funny on them (like at the Freelance Switch store). Would people buy a shirt that just says “FreelanceSwitch.com”? No, but they’d buy shirts that say “Think Outside the Cubicle.”

CafePress has two types of stores; the “free” version, and the “premium” variety. The way the free version works is

• CafePress says a basic T-Shirt is $8.99
• You apply your image and mark-up the price to $10.99 to make a $2 profit. If you think people will pay $15, then go ahead and mark it up to that amount.
• You can only have one variety of each type of product (basic shirt, premium shirt, bumper sticker, etc). You can’t have two versions of the basic shirt with different images.

The premium version, for a monthly fee, removes some of the stupid restrictions and gives you more shop customization choices. Now, if only I could think of something good to put on a shirt…