hey guys in today's video i'm joined by
jamie from mediocrities which is like a
content aggregator for t-shirt sellers
all right so it's very relevant to you
and i because twice a week they select
an artist to feature in their email
newsletter and it goes out to a ton of
people if they click the link it goes
straight to a checkout page like the one
you see behind me don't worry you're
gonna learn a lot more about how all
this works in this video but just wanted
to put that out there right up front and
i wanted to plug how i found them so
mediocrity is a it's part of a network
of websites that are very similar to
each other um if you've ever seen these
like deal a day websites where you can
get products like massively discounted
uh that's honestly how i found out about
them now we forgot to mention that like
you can get free shipping on all your
orders from their entire network of
websites which includes like med.com
meh.com is the one that i i personally
like use and buy from all the time so i
actually pay for the free shipping it's
like 5.99 a month otherwise you would
just pay 5.99 for shipping one product
so i wanted to throw that out there
because we forgot to mention that in
this interview but guys now i'm going to
turn it on over to me and jamie and our
discussion
[Music]
hey everybody thank you for joining me
today i'm here with jamie from
mediocrity jamie thanks for being here
of course thanks for having me
yeah i'm glad that you were able to do
this because i'm super interested in
learning more about mediocrity the
business and anybody that's watching
this never heard of it let me just
quickly prime you this is a really
interesting concept like a way of
selling t-shirts where basically you
guys have built an email list and you
kind of feature
different shirts a couple different ones
a week and blast them out to your list
and they're always amazing designs and
uh do you i probably did a really bad
job explaining the business do you want
to just tell everybody a little bit more
about you know what your company does
yeah so every week we have two different
sets of designs from two different
artists and our designs are screen
printed so they kind of stick out from
the industry of print on demand
and we very much take pride in ourselves
with how we handle you know our art and
our relationships with our artists but
every week you'll see two different uh
events of what we call
launch so this
one our most recent one is the whichever
you want to wear by ollie pop and of
course that's a play on the witcher so
you can see that there
very cool very cool yeah i've seen some
really funny shirts um since i joined
the email list and you guys i mean
they're not blowing you up with emails
so if you're not on the list i would
recommend checking it out i'll put a
link the top link at the description uh
so you can join the uh mediocrity email
list and kind of see whether you want to
buy these shirts or just draw
inspiration from them i know on our
youtube channel we've got a lot of
artists but um you know by the way shout
out to mediocrity i'm wearing a t-shirt
that they sent me right here
it says worst day ever i'll put it on
the bigger bigger screen here
this one's awesome
thank you for sending me that one jamie
of course yeah
yeah so um i know that the first thing
that people are gonna be
actually no you know what before we go
into
how people can potentially
submit their designs their original
artwork to maybe be featured on
mediocrity
how about you tell them a little bit of
like a background of how mediocrity
started
i know how i found you guys kind of
through the
you know med.comwoot.com but do you want
to tell a little bit about the
background of how the company started
yeah so we originally were the founders
of woot.com and of course with that came
shirt.woot
and
of course that got sold to amazon and
we've already then med.com
morningsave.com side deal and now we've
got mediocrity and you know we're
constantly evolving
you know our kind of internal models we
have ideas let's test them out
and this is one of our ideas and so
we've started with the screen printing
and
you know it's just kind of a big
community that we're trying to establish
with artists and our customers you know
we've got that community button up there
where you can join in on the forum
discussions uh if you're one of the
lucky few you'll get your comment
highlighted for our email blasts so it's
always something to kind of look forward
to
but you know it's the two events a week
and
hopefully yeah that's really cool
yeah um so this is the uh the drop right
here from the shirt that i'm currently
wearing
with the worst day ever yeah
yeah and the pun pain in the asteroid
that's good um yeah so i was browsing
the kind of the archive whoops and um
you got some really funny ones here and
before we even i guess kind of browse
the archive and i'll show some of the
designs and i had a question about um
one of them that i had seen
but do you want to briefly kind of tell
people that are interested in
potentially working together because
we've got some really good artists that
run print-on-demand businesses that
watch the channel so how can they
potentially like reach out to you and
the team and potentially get their work
featured in the future
yeah absolutely so
uh we're a little different from print
on demand so with screen printing the
colors are limited so i do want to put
that out there
we can do up to seven colors for a
design which might sound intimidating
but i think it makes it part of the
challenge for you know some of these
shirts that you look at and it's like
wow seven colors you know um
and so you know artists they can submit
an email to me uh artists mediocrity.com
or they can go on our support form and
send in a support request through our
drop down there that says hey i'm an
artist i want to talk to you guys
so regardless it'll get to me and you
know we'll go over your
portfolio or whatever you submit and
if it's approved then we'll see you on
the site and kind of go from there
very cool very cool so artist
mediocrity.com i'll drop a uh i'll put
that in the description of this video in
case you guys want to reach out i guess
um because of the potential reach of
some of the videos that i put out on my
channel um please guys like i guess if
you reach out you know just be
respectful um
you know as far as like you know maybe
not like writing really long emails in
case they get inundated with a few
hundred emails and you know what i mean
short concise
maybe what could they write to you that
will make your life easier as far as
kind of gauging their their work um and
what not
i'm an artist here's my art
i will love you forever if you do that
um yeah just keep it short simple send
me your portfolio send me two four
designs keep it in pairs um and we can
kind of pick through and go from there
you know i really love it when artists
come to me and be like hey
i thought of you guys i think these two
would go great together i would love to
see this screen printed
what do you guys think and nine times
out of ten it's an automatic yes i don't
want to say that's the case you know
going forward but it's very much a
you know we love seeing that and we love
getting that from artists like you
thought of us
let's go with that
very cool very cool yeah so you're
definitely going to get some people
reaching out with the um and actually
can i ask like what kind of
is this just for exposure from the
artist perspective or do they get like a
royalty per sale or anything like that
is that something you can share
yeah so with the submissions the artist
is going to get 200 base pay
and after that they'll get a dollar
basically per every shirt that they sell
so if they sell less than 200 they'll
get 200. if they sell more than 200
they'll get
say a thousand shirts then they'll get a
thousand bucks
so it goes up for every shirt that they
sell past that 200 if that makes sense
okay very cool
um
that's really great too and then like as
you guys grow which i'm sure you'll
continue to
uh
you can
you'll also be featured in the archive
here so
people
although how does that work then do you
just keep the the older shirts kind of
on stock like i know i had found a shirt
that was way way old
um
that you didn't have in stock so
yeah
so that's a good question our shirts run
for a total of four weeks so everything
since the start of our
company is going to be listed on our
forum it's just kind of a
like a priority based or
i don't want to say priority based
necessarily uh
if you react to the post if you comment
on the post it's going to get bumped up
to the top
so more of our recent things are going
to be at the top of that forum
so some of our earlier designs are going
to be more at the bottom but still
searchable if you know what you're
looking for
um
and yeah this was this was one of them i
really enjoyed these gamma rays great i
we've featured them several times and
really amazing designs
yeah these are really cool and i wanted
to ask i guess if this is a good
opportunity to
um kind of because i know people you
know i was mentioning off camera how a
lot of my community that watches my
videos we sell
um well i always preach like kind of i
call it occupying online real estate and
just selling on like all the major
platforms that you're able to get listed
on but each platform that you can sell
on may feel differently about you know
having like a hidden slayer logo or you
know what i mean like these bands and
their logos kind of being visible but
not completely and um i know i had seen
recently uh on a shirt that was featured
here the cat and mouse
um so any can you speak to kind of um
the rules as far as as
toeing the line here with with
intellectual property
yeah i mean we leave it up to the
artists to create their mashups and
their spin-offs um we really
want to see their creativity behind what
they've got and we just leave the
freedom of choice up to them and if they
send it in you know we can go from there
and see what it does
very cool very cool so
i know that a lot of uh
a lot of like us you know t-shirt
sellers i don't know i don't want to
make it sound like simplified but you
know we're artists we're t-shirt sellers
uh we struggle with like gaining
exposure to our products right like i
always remind people like every sale
starts with somebody knowing the product
exists right right um so what you guys
are doing for the artists that you
feature is really like awesome man it's
it's really great and um
i just wanted to thank you for that and
then ask like is there anything maybe
coming down the pipeline um that will
get
more exposure to the artists that you
choose to partner with or do you have
any ideas for that you would like to
share for the audience watching that
maybe will help them
either build an email list or is there
something else that we can do we're not
thinking outside the box enough
um well part of what i try and do is
like engage with social media i know i
try and follow our artists on instagram
and facebook and twitter if possible or
if they have it linked or you know
available
um
currently
kind of an internal team we're working
on
finding like podcast partners i'd love
to get more deals with them i know we've
partnered with omnibus
providing them with kind of an
individual pop-up shop basically where
we cycle through designs but they have a
designated url
so you know we would love to be able to
partner with
podcasts and commercials but you know
with
them
and just
really getting your name out there
though i think
it's tough because it's a pretty
saturated market but i think getting
your name on platforms like ours and
others
it starts to become noticeable so you
know like shirt.woot has derbies
and that's a good way to put your name
on the list and get people like me to
notice your name out there
threadless has their artist portfolios
and things and we've kind of taken that
on our site to
applying like an artist bio so when you
do have your event running
we like to provide your instagram your
twitter you know if you have any other
projects that you're working on
we want to give you that platform so
it's not just hey here's some shirts
it's hey here's an artist here's their
designs here's what they're working on
and we really want to make it that
artist focus
kind of concept of
putting them first and making sure that
they're seen
yeah i do appreciate like that you guys
do
it seems like you prioritize like real
artists like i don't consider myself a
good graphic designer so i wouldn't
i won't be reaching out to you and
trying to get you know slip my way in
the door and try to get featured um yeah
no i know my place right like
i'm good at like the marketing side more
probably
um but you know i i've worked or i
haven't worked with like i've had a lot
of like really good artists through me
having the youtube channel like reach
out to me and i've seen some of their
work and i know that sometimes like
they're the real losers in in
people like me coming and trying to make
a dollar off of this space because they
they they can produce those really
quality designs that
um mediocrity and like you know shirt
dot wood and other aggregators uh are
getting out there in front of um
in front of audiences like getting the
exposure you know where the people
deserve it in my eyes you know the
people who are really out there like
taking their time with these designs and
really making them special so that's
really cool
yeah i think it's you know something
that we want to try and appreciate and
especially
on social media you know i really enjoy
when they tag us or if we can tag them
you know i don't know how many of them
appreciate
with the incoming messages or you know
what not but i i try and make sure that
they feel seen if possible or you know
if it's within
my capabilities to do that i try and
make sure that that's a thing
yeah that's really cool and i try to do
the same too with like what i can do on
this channel you know because i mean
exposure's free so if i can have like an
interview with somebody they tell their
story and i plug their shop or plug
something like right
always happy to do that but um yeah so
thank you though for for being here is
there any other like uh did we skip
anything over that you think would be a
great you know part of the story to
share with the audience or tips and
tricks or anything like that
i think we covered a lot of topics um
i can't think of anything else
okay well
if you do let me know but everybody
please check out mediocrity like check
out the uh if you click what was it
community in the top right uh corner yes
that'll take you to our forum so the
forum's gonna be you're gonna find some
good info there and uh you can check out
some of the archived shirts as well to
either draw inspiration from or hey
maybe go buy one if it's still available
and yeah
i'm loving my my dinosaur worst day ever
shirt hilarious such a good design yeah
and i love too this is like all the
things i preach as far as like best
practices like big
easy to read like bold design good color
contrast like just in general good
design which is easier said than done um
oh yeah but
yeah
but thank you again for uh for being
here jamie and everybody check out
mediocrity and reach out to jamie if you
have questions we got the email address
there would love to hear from as many
artists as i can take
awesome well thank you so much for being
here i really appreciate it thanks for
having me
you