[ankeshk]

I like the game mechanics.

A story that comes to my mind is: there was a grocery store in London in the 1950s who didn't have the best of locations. They ran a contest: They would randomly select a half an hour time period (eg: 2.20 to 2.50pm). People who had shopped during that time on the previous day could come back with their time stamped receipts and get cash back.

The store tripled their number of customers per day.

This however worked because people didn't go out of their way to buy new things. They just went out of their way to buy the things they needed at a different store to get a chance to get cash back.

So my suggestion is this: source out the "winning" designs on threadless etc in the past 3 months. And list those t-shirts on your website only. Don't ask your audience to submit their designs.

And announce this fact. Re-assure people that they are buying the same "hot" stuff they would buy on other t-shirt sites. But they could just earn a free t-shirt too.

Take away the neg that comes with the "least popular tshirt" tag.