This is an interview with Jason from iwearyourshirt.com. Jason came up with a fun and interesting idea for marketing businesses by wearing a paid-for shirt everyday for one whole year. For Jason to wear a shirt, businesses or people paid by the day starting at $1 January 1st and $365 for December 31st. He still has some days left and is more than willing to wear and promote your shirt for any number of days.

What inspired you to start iwearyourshirt.com?

I’ve always been an out of the box thinker and lover of creative and interesting marketing/advertising ideas. I wear shirts on a daily basis, don’t typically care what the shirts say and knew that a lot of companies make shirts to promote their stuff. I put 2 and 2 together, started my pricing structure extremely low and exploited a bunch of free social media tools on the web to help me out.

What has the overall perception been with your idea of wearing a new shirt everyday?

When I first started the project back in October of ’08 there was a mix of positive and negative feedback. My friends/family obviously supported me 100%, but like me, they didn’t think it would take off as well as it has. I just gave my first ever presentation at a Refresh Event in Toronto and not one person clapped when my name was announced to speak because they had never heard of me. 7 minutes later my presentation was done and people were clapping and lining up to ask me questions. Moments like that are very rare and really awesome.

When do you think all of the day slots will be sold off?

A couple times this year I guessed and was wrong. I am not worried about the last remaining days selling out, but I hope it happens sooner than later!

What do you plan on doing after the end of the year?

Wearing more shirts obviously… Ha. The project will continue in some shape or form, I just haven’t figured out exactly what that is yet. I love meeting all these new great companies/people and wouldn’t mind having my wardrobe picked out for me again. Maybe start next year at $2? Can we lock you in for a day Josh?

Josh Here: I would absolutely love to book days next year if you were to do it again. Especially if I get first dibs.

What are some of the different venues you plan on visiting while wearing others shirts?

No planned venue visiting. I’ve told people from the start, I am living my life.. You didn’t spend $67 and get to tell me what to do all day. You spent that money to have me be your advertising for a day, get your name out there to a new audience and see me in your shirt. As far as planned events I will be attending, I have a few weddings coming up, a trip over the summer at some point to somewhere tropical and that’s it.

Have you had any strange encounters while wearing other people’s shirts?

Not too many strange encounters. I always get really funny looks when I explain the idea to a complete stranger, a stranger who is typically not internet savvy. I have had a couple ‘celebrity sighting’ moments. I had someone DM me on Twitter saying they were sitting behind me in a movie theater and I had a guy come up to me in the Washington DC airport and ask if I was “the iwearyourshirt guy”? That stuff is pretty neat.

How would you measure the success of your shirt wearing venture with nearly four months behind you?

I would say it has been very successful. 334 days have been sold at this point, I haven’t gone a month without a monthly sponsor and I am still receiving media attention. I really enjoy meeting new people and encourage anyone to reach out to me. My e-mail address is iwearyourshirt@gmail.com and my Twitter name is @iwearyourshirt. I’m easy to find and happy to chat. Obviously when I am sitting on Oprah’s couch I know I’ve made it… haha, kidding, maybe.

How much time a day are you spending on the adventure?

Typically between 6-10 hours depending on the day. I spend a lot of time interacting with people on E-mail, Twitter and Facebook throughout the day, along with all the content creation that goes on (daily photos, video and live video show). The more time I spend, the more results I see. I could spend 3 hours a day and be done, but I know I wouldn’t be in the position I am right now.

This is the first of a 30-day trial. Follow the link to Marketing Ideas En Masse to find out more.

Sometimes the turkey just isn’t ready. Now, instead of awkwardly looking at all your family and extended family members you can pass that time with a new Thanksgiving Game. The Thanksgiving Game is now up for sale at 100 different Kroger locations in Kentucky, Indiana, Illinois and Tennessee as well as all of the nearly 600 Cracker Barrel stores nationwide and at Amazon.com and many Christian bookstores across the country. The Thanksgiving game will retail between $14.99 and $19.99.

Stotz was doing what he could to hold off dinner until his wife’s parents arrived, but everyone was growing hungry and restless.

To pass the time, Stotz whipped out pencils and scraps of paper and declared, “We’re going to play a game.” He told all the players to write down what they were thankful for that year, and then afterward had them try to guess who wrote what. Players earned points for guessing correctly.

“I remember it like it was yesterday,” said Stotz, a retired entrepreneur and airline sales agent. “You just don’t start Thanksgiving without your mother-in-law.”

The game was such a hit, it became a family Thanksgiving tradition.

Now the family has professionally developed the game and hopes to share it with the rest of America.

Read more here.

These are the responses to the second round of Ask Josh. Occasionally I open up the floor for people to ask whatever they feel like asking. I don’t think there will be any perfect answers, but you asked for my opinion, so I’m giving it . Here we go:

Sherry Asks: What webhosting are you using? Have you heard of Shann Host or Dotster ? What do you think of the webhosting that I just mention.

Josh: I use 1and1.com as my webhosting. I have not heard of Shann Host or Dotster. I personally think web hosting has to do a lot with your needs are and how much you would like to spend. I have two servers, one shared and one dedicated, that I use for personal and business. I can tell you that the dedicated server customer support is much more knowledgeable and prompt. If you are only hosting a couple of sites and don’t drive tons and tons of traffic, focus more on the price. If you are hitting it hard, focus on the services and equipment.

BM Asks: How do I  start blogging? How many blogs do you own? How many are active?

Josh: I started full-time blogging at the start of the year. I had written a few blog posts before that but wouldn’t really consider myself a blogger at that point. Currently, I work on about 10 or so active blogs. I have a few drifters that are waiting for some attention. Mostly I use the extra blogs to drive niche traffic or build support for other sites I work on.

Chelle Asks: Is the majority of your traffic from social media or organic search results?

Which makes me wonder, why do you think more people don’t search for more marketing related terms? I’ve done a lot of keyword research for it and there are very few that aren’t broad terms that get more than 20 searches a day. Are people just not thinking that way for marketing info yet?

Josh: Most of my traffic comes from organic searches or referring site. I am averaging about 150 marketing related searches a day via the major three Google, MSN and Yahoo.

It’s hard to have an accurate view of search traffic from just keyword searches alone. Once you are first for random marketing related terms, you would be surprised of the amount of searches they bring. I have moved up a lot recently for “marketing ideas” and related terms like “Halloween Marketing Ideas” which will bring a nice steady flow of traffic in at least until the end of the month. I usually see what people are searching for when they come to my blog and at what page I show up in the serps for that term. If they are finding me on page 5 and I know with a little work I can get to page 1, I will spend a little time doing that. The first spot on page 1 receives about 80% of the clicks for that search term. You never know what you are going to get until you do it.

shawal Asks: It is possible to sell a blogspot blog, if yes, HOW?

Josh: Technically, no. But can you work something out with a potential buyer? Probably yes. Not easy. That is one of the hard things to overcome in free hosting like Blogspot. Everything you do there is like renting a house. You don’t get the equity you put into it.

Driveway Sealing Asks: I’ve started a new site and I wanted to know: What would you do to get it ranked highly in the SERPS in under 3 months?

Is it blog commenting? or directory submissions? a combo of both maybe? Anything else I am missing?

Josh: I would approach this one of two ways depending on how old the domain is. If it is a brand new domain, you are going to shoot up in the serps and then right back down to work your way up again. This is Google’s way of preventing spam sites from taking over their serps. So in that case I would do directory submissions, blog commenting on dofollow high pr pages and reciprocal linking like blog rolls. It’s as effective as one-way links, but it passes link love more evenly while you crawl the new site back up the serps.

For an older site that has been established for at least 1-2 years, I would focus on high quality anchor links. Write a guest post for a high pr site with your link in it and comment on high pr pages with a contextual anchor link. I don’t personally do this but it works if done correctly to purchase a link from a high pr page. Sometimes it can run $30-40 a month for a good link, but it is an option. Always consider the risk vs. reward factor before doing any of this. Link building is strictly forbidden in search engines TOS.