How eBollo gets every new T-shirt design onto Pinterest
eBollo
eBollo has made more than 236,000 sales on Etsy since 2009 with hand-printed funny T-shirts for dads, grandpas and the holidays. New designs go up through the year, and the shop uses Alura's Pinterest automations to turn each new listing into pins and keep the rest of the catalog posting in between.
Dad jokes, printed by hand
eBollo sells the kind of shirt that gets unwrapped at a birthday dinner and read out loud. "You Can't Scare Me, I Have Two Daughters." "It's Not a Dad Bod, It's a Father Figure." "Hi Hungry, I'm Dad." Most of the catalog is written for dads, grandpas, husbands and uncles, with hobby shirts for fishermen, hikers, golfers and mechanics, and a run of Halloween and Christmas designs.
Every shirt is made to order and screen printed by hand in a smoke-free shop, on soft combed and ringspun cotton. A tee gets a business day to be printed and checked, most orders ship within one or two business days, and if one can't go out within 48 hours, the buyer hears about it directly. eBollo has been on Etsy since 2009, has made more than 236,000 sales and holds a 4.91 star rating from more than 43,000 reviews. The shop also runs a second Etsy shop, eBOLLOKids.
A holiday joke has a short season
The catalog never sits still. New designs go up through the year, and many come with a date attached. A Halloween shirt sells in the weeks before Halloween. "Santa's Promoting Me to Daddy" is a Christmas pregnancy announcement, so its moment is the few weeks before Christmas. A new fishing shirt has Father's Day to aim for.
Funny shirts are mostly bought as gifts, and plenty of gift hunting happens on Pinterest, where people save ideas for a dad's birthday or a stocking long before they buy. Getting a design onto Pinterest means making pins by hand: choose a photo, write a title and a description, pick a board. Do that for every new design, and again for a catalog of more than 800 active listings, and it lands behind printing, packing and answering messages.
“A Halloween shirt is only funny for about six weeks a year. If it sits there waiting for me to make pins, half the season's already gone.”
New designs go to Pinterest on their own
eBollo connected its Pinterest account to Alura and turned on both Pinterest automations. The first, Pin New Listings, runs once a day and picks up listings that went live in the past day. It doesn't pin the moment a shirt is published, but by the next day the new design is waiting in the Pin Queue.
Each new listing becomes several pins, each built on a different photo from the listing. Pin text is set to Optimized for Pinterest with AI, so every pin gets its own title, description and alt text, written from the listing and worded a little differently each time. The images are cropped tall, in the 2:3 shape that fits a Pinterest feed, and they all go to one board.
“Every photo sells the joke a little differently. Close up you read the line, on a guy at the lake you get the vibe. I'd rather each one get its own shot.”
The rest of the catalog fills the days in between
The second automation, Smart Pins, covers everything that isn't new. Once a day it tops up the queue about ten days ahead with pins made from the shop's active listings, ranked mostly by Etsy listing views. A photo pinned in the last week is never reused, so the same shirt doesn't crowd the board, and photos from older pins only come back when nothing fresher is left.
The two work together. When a new design goes up, its pins join the queue alongside the Smart Pins, and the Pin Queue posts on the schedule set there: how many pins a day, on which days and in which time slots. Nobody at eBollo has to sit down and choose the lineup, and a shirt listed for Halloween doesn't wait for a free afternoon.
One shirt, several pins, each with its own pitch
The newest designs show up on the board in several versions. "Shut Up and Fish," a tee with two fishermen on a lake, went out as "Funny 'Shut Up and Fish' T-Shirt for Fishermen & Dads" and as "Funny Fishing Shirt - Perfect Gift for Dad and Fishermen." The red "Santa's Promoting Me to Daddy" shirt became "Funny Santa Pregnancy Announcement Shirt for Dad-to-Be," with alt text that reads "Red Christmas T-shirt with white lettering saying 'Santa's Promoting Me to Daddy' for pregnancy announcements." The Pumpkin Crusher monster truck tee went out as "Pumpkin Crusher Monster Truck T-Shirt for Halloween."
Each pin links straight to its Etsy listing, so someone saving gift ideas for a fisherman or a dad-to-be is one tap from the shirt. Between the new arrivals, older designs like Best Dad Ever and the coach appreciation tee keep taking their turn.
Advice for other sellers
Put the joke in the first photo, big enough to read at thumbnail size. On Etsy search, on Pinterest, anywhere a shopper is scrolling, a funny shirt sells when the line lands before they've clicked.
And list holiday designs before the holiday shopping starts, not during it. A Christmas shirt that first goes up in mid-December has already missed most of its season.
“Read the shirt out loud before you print it. If it still gets a laugh the second time, it'll work on a stranger scrolling past.”
eBollo received Alura credits as a thank-you for sharing this story.