That is kind of a big deal…
Wow. This has been a fascinating discussion to watch evolve! And while it hasn’t ALL been productive or on topic, there are a lot of great thoughts and suggestions and important questions in here, so thanks to everyone who is contributing to that.
I can’t comment on everything brought up, but want you to know that we hear you and agree with much of what you’re suggesting. We value the input. Many of you have been here longer than the entire Shirt team combined, and we’re glad you’re here to provide your “well-marinated” insights. Many others are new and we appreciate the fresh eyes and perspective you bring.
We’re working hard to improve Shirt. Some changes will happen faster than others, but things WILL change. Which means Shirt and the Derby will continue to evolve. And we hope you’ll stick around and be a part of it.
As a closing thought, we know that exclusivity is an important topic. Also a complicated one. With wide-ranging implications for you and for us. And we’re going to want and need your input to help unpack it. But not quite yet. So let’s focus the last few days of this conversation back on the rules, submission guidelines, and other suggestions you have for the derby. We’re looking forward to seeing where the conversation goes. 
Thank you for explaining your concerns. Your analogy of how monumental the first tee print is a good one, and I don’t think it warrants offence.
But I don’t feel Woot is out to ‘get me,’ or any of the artists. Your criticism focuses on low sales and exposure for Honourable Mentions and D-Contracts. Woot deserves credit for actively trying to change this because (dramatic pause) they’re a business who wants to make money with the artists.
A month or two ago, an artist addressed the number of HMs from a derby being too high, and Woot addressed this by not running every shirt in the derby. They cut it down to the top 12-15 selections, which gives better exposure to the ones selected.
Additionally, they have been giving the daily feature on Mondays to highlight the Ed Choices. Proof of that helping artists would be the recent Food Derby. Walmazan’s 4th place shirt sold more on Monday than any of the top 3 from that Derby. It’s kindof embarrassing for myself, as mine was one that was outsold; but so was his “I love food” design.
The point of this thread is to research and implement changes to make current artists, buyers, and voters happy. I mean no disrespect to the great artists who have come and gone before me (and fostered my interest in nerdy tees and inspired my own art), but Woot is doing the smart thing by looking forward to determine how to prosper and set themselves apart.
Years ago; when there were 3-ish shirt sites, of course they had more volume. If people are worried about receiving an HM, then they can avoid the derby and submit directly to Woot. That way they maintain the option of seeking better offers if they don’t like the results.
Oh, and I’m Chris btw. You should get to know me, bc I’m pretty awesome ;).
Back on topic…
Please keep the ECs and side sales. Woot does a great job running feature sales each week. Some people think there are too many choices. I think it’s a nice variety that’s bound to appeal to someone who may not have bought the one shirt from the one artist available for the day. More artists have a shot at making some money each day. It’s much better than the days of one shirt per day and no catalog, when it’s gone it’s gone.
Switching up the rules once in a while is fine. I like text, but some people don’t. It gives everyone a chance at excelling in a derby that appeals to them.
We definitely need the rules in a prominent place so new artists can find them.
Ramping up social media would help get participation. Offering contests on twitter and facebook would also attract people and encourage interaction.
That’s it for now. Maybe.
I agree, I actually really like looking through all the side sales, and have discovered some artists whose work really appealed to me that way. Personally, I like lots of choices and enjoy browsing through them all.
One thing I’d like to reiterate/add, though, is implementing a “strikes” rule against artists who are caught using photos, clip-art, tracings, and art that isn’t theirs. To be fair, I think the derby rules page could put visual examples of what’s okay and what’s not. I think some artists think they make an image “theirs” by tracing/putting filters on it, and genuinely don’t know any better. Posting images in a rules section would help newcomers adjust and bring the banhammer down harder on those (few, thankfully) who keep doing it intentionally.
I agree with Fishbiscuit.
Keep the Editor’s Choice and other side sales, though allowing an opt-out would probably be more fair for those who don’t want to participate (maybe on the Submit page, where you have to tick the I agree to the terms and conditions box, you could also have a box that says something like I wish to participate in a possible Editor’s Choice sale if my design does not win the Derby.")
Keep the Derby rules changing to make it interesting for both artists and buyers. But make those rules crystal clear. Some derbies should be allow pop culture references and some shouldn’t. Same for text. Same for cats. Etc, etc. And throw in some randomness every now and then. There have been derbies where only one color ink could be used. Or limit the shirt colors for a particular derby. Or do Letter derbies where everything has to start with the letter “P” or whatever. Start a new discussion thread (or even Woot Asks polls and list some possible ideas for the next derby—and then use the top three voted-on ideas (this would not only give some some input for what artists want to draw but also for what buyers want to buy—and could help to entice more people to visit and participate: “Help Decide the Next Derby Theme”).
Also, keep the apparel changing, if possible. More sweatshirts. And long sleeve tee shirts.
Have a location for ALL known derby rules and regulations. Include in this the absolute rules (like no photographs or clip art) and the suggested rules (like the suggested numbers of colors) and the unofficial rules (like no Woot references and no Calvin and Hobbes references). Keep it current.
UPDATE the artist instructions. Some artists only recently weren’t even sure how many colors we can use. And with the new reality of DTG printing, things have changed. With the shirts I have purchased this summer, I have discovered that designs that would have LEAPT off the shirt had they been screenprinted do not look the same on a DTG print. Halftones are not what they used to be in the old days. In addition, I’ve noticed that white is crisp and clean, but black looks sometimes as though it had been applied with a Sharpie. I could really use some guidance with best practices in this new DTG world—and I bet that there are others out there in the same position.
And somehow please try re-instill a sense of community among both artists and non-artists. The idea to have a thread for works-in-progress is really good. I used that years ago to bounce ideas off of other artists. And I can remember non-artists collaborating with artists on ideas. Woot was a more fun place to be before social media morphed into what it now is. Woot was the social media. And that was fun—even for an antisocial person like me.
Howdy all. Looks like we have an old poster that has returned to our ranks. Those of you that know Adder know that his posts are often filled with vitriol.
My best suggestion is to ignore those portions and don’t engage him in conversation on those areas.
Sift through to find any points that interest you and work from there if you so desire.
If you feel things are getting too personal, feel free to tattle and we’ll hop on to clean up as needed.
There’s great discussion going here and all have made great contributions. Don’t lose focus on that.
Regardless of how this all goes down. I think shirt woot needs to do some serious thinking and come up with new mission statement. I think a clear mission statement could help us all understand the intention and purpose of shirt woot. If making money is the most important thing (in order to at minimum self-sustain), then it needs to be made clear. If cultivating community is the most important, then start there. If nurturing artists is most important, go there.
What ever you decide as the most important thing, we need to KNOW this. We can give ideas for improvement but I think our ideas may have more clarity once we understand your intent for this site. Maybe ranked in order of importance…
I think they’ve learned their lesson with they switched to Anvil. I was finding them in thrift stores within weeks of debut; those who wrote them off probably weren’t coming back.
Advertising derby entries – still must be in the .sig, right? If so, that should be in the rules list too.
Like Adder mentioned, when I first entered the derby over 10 years ago, it was an absolute game changer for me as a freelance artist. It represented a level playing field where an artist could score a big pay day and earn some spotlight even if they had no fans or reputation. From Shirt.woot I got SEO stuff and clients reaching out to me and more. Plus it was my gateway to t-shirt design in general, which led to Threadless prints and all kinds of stuff. It was huge!!! Before Shirt.woot, my only clients were friends and family. Afterwards, I got bona fide people-I-don’t-know client work. And even fan mail! I know shirt.woot is much, much smaller these days, but I hope it can still serve that transformative purpose for other artists starting out, and also be a viable source of income for us old-timers, and I think it still can with some tweaks to the derby.
- Select Derby winners the way Threadless used to. Everyone votes, but ultimately the staff picks the ones that print (though it is heavily informed by votes). Alternatively, the top vote-getter could print on Friday and then editors pick Saturday and Sunday.
I know this is a pretty big shake-up, BUT if there aren’t enough people voting, the derby simply doesn’t work. It’s too easy to game, and it’s too hard for a new artist to compete unless they bring in their own fans.
OR
- Incentivize voting with coupons. Maybe the traffic driven by the coupons will make folks stick around to see who won, thereby generate more sales and justify the cost to Woot for the coupon.
Also, yeah. let folks option out of EC prints (kind of obvious, and I was under the impression we could if we just said so when we emailed in the print-ready.)
Onwards and upwards!!
I had a whole section written about the EC sales (though Ben already knows some of my thoughts;))… the abridged version is: Offer some smaller upfront compensation (as was done for the mini-derbies a while back) for ECs (which would also probably tighten up selections) and offer an F contract/opt-out so artists have other options… but looks like he wants that conversation another time, so I’ll save the long version for later and focus on the derby itself.
Derby changes I’d like to see (and some have been mentioned, but adding a voice in support of those ideas!) :
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Changes to make it more possible for designs to be entered late and still have a decent chance. There are some suggestions in here…I’d try having the default view be by date or randomized. At least for a day or two (or the whole time if that’s easier). When I first joined, the default view was by date.
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More derbies with a no text rule and/or no pop culture rules. Those used to be much more frequent back in the day.
Other rules can keep things fresh and different too (specific ink colors, one ink designs, only certain shirt colors, art styles, etc) once in a while. -
I like that there is now a main derby thread again - that used to be a great place to post ideas, get feedback, ask questions, and have general derby conversation. So yay for that! I’d also suggest putting the subject of the next theme in the link, so people at a glance might see next week’s derby theme and get excited at the theme (voters too).
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Since the popularity of the derby seems way down these days, maybe the name should change to draw more people in? Or at least the name/link from the main shirt page… to either “contest” or “vote”? Anyone unfamiliar typically has no idea what the derby is. If it were me, I’d think of horses or Kentucky.
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Rules clearly listed somewhere. I’m a regular submitter but I don’t have time to sift through the site as much as I’d like… I only recently realized we’re allowed more than 6 colors (and based on some posts I’m wondering now if you no longer have to buy a shirt to vote?).
Side note: I don’t see how this could happen now with the current system but I miss the Doubletake Derbies.
Quick recap of DoubleTake Derbies: A small (8-12?) group of Honorable mentions were chosen each derby, and they got 3 free shirts and a blog post about them (which people looked forward to seeing!). Then every couple of months there was a derby for ONLY Honorable Mentions.
They were really high quality and exciting derbies. In addition to the 3 vote winners, the staff would choose a handful of designs from it as EC dailies - so it was also a chance for A contracts through the whole week after the winners. So these designs got a second chance, and a higher chance at printing with an A contract (which actually might have been the only contract back then!). I think most regular artists back then looked forward to these.
Thanks for reading!
These are both great ideas. Whatever voting success I’ve had lately has been bolstered by maintaining an email newsletter (you can usually tell if one of my designs is out and then suddenly in the fog), so I’d once again add that a short and sweet email reminder could likely go a long way. “Hey that shirt you voted for is available” kinda thing. For all the slacks and tweets and toots going around nowadays, people still rely on email.
-Please give the artists the ability to tag their own designs. Maybe on the derby/daily submission pages have the option to add some keywords related to the design. This should help the catalog entry process on woot’s end and would definitely increase sales. There are OBVIOUS tags missing from a LOT of designs in the catalog.
-Contracts obviously need addressing. In support of F! Other suggestions mentioned for improving D sound reasonable.
-I don’t see the issue with using photos if YOU took them and manipulated them to look decent on a T-shirt, keeping the colors relatively limited etc. Since Woot’s printing abilities have changed, maybe they’re more able to handle this type of art? Though monitoring this would probably be difficult. I’m not overly pro-photo, but you did say you were looking for things we don’t think are “wooty”. Maybe No photo-only designs?
-Can we clarify the rules about reusing derby entries? It used to be that significant changes had to be made to a design before it can be resubmitted. Rejectionator is really lax on this, and yes I’m still pissed that I took 4th place to a design that was a direct resub. 
While it might be beneficial to remove this rule, I don’t find it very exciting to see the same designs over and over (and over.)
-More specific derby topics might be a hit if woot is smart about it. Without needing to be overly mainstream, keep profitable motifs in mind and get a bit more focused/creative. I think a lot of cool art will surface.
-Mobile improvements would be great. I just noticed what a headache I got squinting at the derby
Totally agree. While I try to be a bit more optimistic with the payout, this is something I have to consider greatly when spending time on the derby. It takes me a few to get everything perfectly print ready. Can we have a little wiggle room here? I promise I’ll be better D:
None of the derby changes will make enough of a difference unless you have traffic to the contest. Someone once mentioned having a raffle of some sort to entice voters. It would probably be less costly than a coupon, and hopefully spark curiosity and participation. Just make it something cool
Anyway, I love the derby & community. After college, my access to the art studio and beer pong were halted, and shirt.woot was there to pick up the pieces. Thanks for feeding my creativity and competitive nature, and opening the door to the reality of a career as an artist. Oh, and making my grandpa proud that I’m using my BS degree in art. 
Hopefully some improvements can come from this discussion, especially in the most mentioned areas.
I take back my previous statement about voting. It should be closed off from non-customers. I underestimated the ability of people to game the system. Even if it’s still a popularity contest to some degree, and even if there are less votes to go around, at least the winners will come from people that care about the longevity of shirt.woot.
No amount of positive changes will improve the derby or shirt.woot if derby winners are selling 6 copies.
16 now. But any moment the voters will be coming to buy … right? Right?
Hopefully woot will take a look at voter eligibility for future derbies. We do want more traffic and voters overall, but that needs to be balanced with a sense of fairness in the overall process.
Here here! Shirt artists should be consulted for tags on each and every print they get. It is so frustrating trying to find designs dealing with a certain subject and not finding what you are looking for.
Here’s an example of that… my son appreciates anything having to do with Dr. Seuss, so I was looking for a Dr. Seuss type shirt to get him for his birthday a couple years back. But when I typed “Seuss” into the search bar, only 4 shirts showed up… and I knew there were more than that!
I just typed “Seuss” in again, and am delighted that someone finally did something about it-- now 17 entries appear! (3 of them are out of print.)
Letting shirt artists have first crack at their own tag words gets a giant vote from this active voter & shirt buyer!
PS. Just realized that the Seuss page is still missing at least 2 more shirts… "One Saber Two Saber Red Saber Blue Saber… designs.
Good Golly, Miss Molly, is my head spinning! 
When I posted on this thread (directly above this post) I didn’t realize this discussion was 4 pages long. I mistakenly thought this discussion had started at the top of this page, 4.
Throughout the day I have read/skimmed /read again all 4 pages of this. I just finished. I wish that I’d been aware of this discussion earlier so that I wouldn’t have felt compelled to read it all in one day. lol
I just want to say that there are many great ideas throughout this thread-- many of them expressed by some of my favorite shirt artists on this site. (Nope, I’m not going to say who is who! :D)
I, for one will be looking to shirt woots future moves with great interest. Thanks to all of you for enriching my life with your thoughts and your art. Also, thank you for helping me to jam (literally!) my closet with great shirts.
Good luck getting all of these great comments sorted out, Woot Staff! imo you’re going to need it!
PS. I started buying Woot Tee Shirts on my daughter’s account. I bought at least 35 shirts on her account before I got an account of my own. I got my own account once I figured out what a Derby was and wanted to vote in them.
The hard thing is, time always is relevant in a timed contest. Even if entries were always sorted random by default (hasn’t woot tried this? do we know the results?), a shirt on Tuesday would have an uphill battle.
The other thing is, woot has had at least one derby where all the entries were submit and then entered at the same time. I don’t recall it yielding very different results (even the Doubletake Derbies tended to shake out very similar, even with woot doing the curation of entries). And with a week to prepare an entry, it really shouldn’t be so hard to get something in within the first weekend now as it would have been with only 24 hours to work. I know this is still something designers are regularly mentioning, but I’m not sure what more Woot can do on that end.
One could also ask: is having the glut of designs ready by Friday part of why the derby is so silent these days? Why would I come back on Sunday? Earlier on, Sunday, even sometimes Monday, could give us a huge surprise that at least snuck into third. People would come back because they knew more shirts were coming. If new shirts were in the Hotness, they might vote for things they didn’t see before. They might notice things they otherwise wouldn’t, or see comment threads that made them interested. There is something to be said for a staggered release, though it’s obviously a point worth discussing.
Hello Squidbucket, one of the very first shirts Woot sold, by an artist who went by Demanda Tension, is currently listed under CheeseSandwich’s work. Having met Demanda after Cheese’s live traced broccoli debacle, I’m fairly confident they’re different people.
I’m not sure I trust artists to do all their tags either… we all know some instagram friend or other that uses 30 hashtags to desperately get noticed in every post… but with such a large back catalog available, the searchability DOES need to be top notch.
Still baffled this is even remotely a controversial stance. You can’t even pretend to be paying in exposure if you’re regularly seeing 10 sale tees.
I feel like there are a lot of slippery slopes here. Woot has sold live-traced photos before. There’s always Ur-Sign, for example, to say nothing of other egregious examples. That one got permission for use of photo, either from the artist or woot, prior to sale.
But allowing photographic elements feels super slippyslopey. It requires a constant copyright hunt, sure, but it also is sooooo easy to do poorly. It’s one of those times when I can’t picture the effort of policing those entries to be worth the handful that might be good, let alone great.
I find this interesting because woot now has “1986: the legend was born” and “1981: a legend is born,” both about NES games. I might argue this is indicative of a lot of reasons woot might be experiencing a decline in terms of audience and participation, but there is time enough for that snark elsewhere.
I’m totally OK with not allowing designs which have been elsewhere. The derby is best when it’s a catalyst for inspiration. Honestly, though, I remember many entries from Threadless or elsewhere coming back as derby entries, and while sometimes they’d get an EC, they almost never got in the fog, so I wonder if it’s THAT big a deal, but yeah, I don’t see any reason not to require original work
If nothing else some of the weirder derbies were less predictable (Motherhood gave us a second place with a super non-woot style, and a third place which was the first print from a cult-favorite designer who rarely resonated with the masses. I wouldn’t say the overall results are GREAT, but there’s a definite weirding compared to other derbies.
Also, the more open a derby, the more open a derby. I think the “Life in the Style of Anime” derby allowing anime versions of pop culture was just weird and added in to bulk up the number of entries (and it worked, since all three winning prints and a good chunk of the ECs were simply Pop Culture in the style of Other Pop Culture). Sometimes you want the theme to be Birds and you’ll get art pieces and joke pieces and probably desperate googles for the Most Popular Bird On Television or whatever. But if you’re gonna go weird and specific, commit to it. Require the theme to be strongly expressed.
'course, these weirdo derbies were also unlikely to bring sales in, neither from the masses nor the voters. YMMV.
I’m sure this is no small concern for many. I rarely use a full screen these days, and I probably do more than most (typing is pointless on a touchscreen).
Major mood, as the kids say.
For as bad as the audience used to be at Woot, there was one. I think WHO an audience is matters as much as just HAVING one, of course. I could probably teach a PhD course on why I think the ecosystem collapsed, but that’s moot now that it’s dead. The important thing is finding out if there’s a way to rebuild. Literally no other change matters if no one is voting. Hashtag 2018.