How to make money off selling t shirts

He hadn’t graduated from college and didn’t have many options. He describes himself as a normal guy from Wisconsin with crazy hair. After all, someone pushing shopping carts must be an uneducated fool, right? I was so fed up with the way I was treated, I decided to do something about it. One night after a particularly long shift in the scorching summer sun, I got back to my place and started researching. The site was downright awful. I knew if this guy could make this kind of money with a site this bad, then I could, too! Since then, Lassen, now 24, has graduated from college and is working full time for. He develops online and affiliate marketing for large websites. He’s also got an impressive side hustle. Lasson met Karlikov, who is from Bulgaria and now 29, through an internet marketing forum, and they have worked together on multiple projects.

How to Create a T-shirt Design

You can start by selling t-shirts on Amazon. All you have to do is request an invitation and submit a t-shirt design. Amazon does the rest. Searching for a legitimate side gig can be difficult. It can take a while and sometimes cost you money out of pocket just to set up. But with Merch by Amazon , you can sell t-shirts and earn money from each shirt that sells. You can submit as many design projects as you want and receive design drafts in hours. Production and shipping is no longer a concern.

Taking advantage of the resources available to me

If you were to start your own apparel business, you normally would have to search for a manufacturer and find t-shirt blanks. This could cost hundreds and sometimes thousands of dollars depending on how many designs you have. Amazon takes care of the technicalities and allows you to work on being creative with your designs. You no longer have to think about how many colors you should be using or the cost of a large design versus a smaller one. Merch by Amazon gives you the creative freedom that you crave without the hassle of worrying about production. Getting traffic to your own website is hard.

How to Create a T-shirt Design

So, spend some time brainstorming and coming up with cute design ideas, clever puns, or laugh-out-loud jokes that you think people would enjoy wearing in their day-to-day. You can riff off popular TV and movies but make sure you steer clear of copyright infringement , capture cultural moments or movements, or take advantage of local pride with community-specific designs. If you have a talent for art, developing the actual visual design for the t-shirt is all part of the fun. You can still have the t-shirt business of your dreams. You might even learn how to use clipart or word shapes to enhance your images.

1. Design the Shirt

Three years ago, Glen Zubia was stuck under a mountain of student loan debt, living with his parents and struggling to scrape together car payments. Now, the year-old has his own four-bedroom house in El Paso, Texas. He even co-hosts a weekly podcast where he tells listeners all about how he turned his finances around. Zubia is a master of passive income through print on demand , a system in which designers link up with sites like Amazon, Teespring and Redbubble to sell shirts and other items. Companies handle the production and customer service while paying out royalties, meaning people like Zubia can earn big without much investment or upkeep.

How to Start Selling T-shirts Online

Try it out or wait for the right time? But if you think that using one type of element is too restricting, mix and match different elements to create a one-of-a-kind t-shirt design. But if starting an online store is your way of testing the waters of ecommerce, make seasonal themes and trending topics the epicenter of your designs. They also offer plenty of tools to support you — their site includes tips and tricks to design and promote your products, and they periodically offer promotions to help you make sales.

Taking advantage of the resources available to me

People love t-shirts. They can make your entire outfit pop, help you make a statement, or be a conversation starter. While you might be the first one in your circle to design and sell t-shirts online, in the wide world of ecommerce, there are a bunch of other merchants chasing the same dream.

So before you get to designing and setting up your store, you need to answer one question: who is going to buy your t-shirts? That said, you need to narrow down your audience even more to find a product niche. So in order to be successful, you need to find a niche that you understand and can market to.

Knowing the desires and pain-points of these people is your biggest advantage — you can now generate product ideas that this particular niche will love. Find out who are your competitors, what are their strengths and weaknesses to get a better picture of how you could position yourself in the same market. Scout the web to learn what are local or global trends among online shoppers to find a gap in the market for your niche product.

A couple of tools that can help you on this journey are Google TrendsAlexaand Ahrefs. Will your t-shirt provide psychological support, help someone express their beliefs to the world, or make them feel part of a community? BigCommerce is one of the most popular ecommerce platforms out there that lets you launch a store in a matter of a few minutes. That includes going over:. BigCommerce offers a number of integrations you can use to source products for your online store, so explore your options.

This also gives more freedom to introduce new products, or discontinue those that are not selling. While your research has suggested what design will drive sales, your predictions might not match the actual needs of your target audience at this point in time.

Sign up for our weekly newsletter. T-shirts are one of the most popular apparel items out there that are worn by both men and women. As a rule of thumb, the more popular the product is, the bigger the competition it has in the market. Start by jotting down the key themes, beliefs, and styles you want your brand to be known. Then, take some time polishing these ideas to come up with more concrete design concepts. But if starting an online store is your way of testing the waters of ecommerce, make seasonal themes and trending topics the epicenter of your designs.

This might be your chance of monetizing the moment. You can use typography, line drawings, shapes, illustrations, or photographs as your design base. But if you think that using one type of element is too restricting, mix and match different elements to create a one-of-a-kind t-shirt design. Just remember, even the smallest detail in your design can tell a thousand words, so for the best outcome, stick to clear shapes and forms that are easy to recognize or read both up-close and from a distance.

Learning the basics of color theoryor color psychology can come in handy when making such decisions. But you also have to keep some of the technical aspects in mind. For example, selling white tees with text in black will look sleek, but having the same text in pale pink might make the design difficult to read.

The crew neck, the V neck, and polo are just a few types of t-shirts out there for you choose. When deciding which t-shirt will make the best canvas for your designs, think about your target audience and envisioned goal for your brand. Direct-to-garment directly applies the ink onto the product. DTG printing allows extensive color options in designs and offers great precision in details.

However, design placement can sometimes be limiting. Screen printing involves pushing ink through a woven mesh stencil onto fabric. So the more colors your design has, the longer it will take to print it, and the more expensive the whole thing will be.

Sublimation printing infuses a layer of ink directly onto the fabric, which means that the t-shirt print area is significantly bigger. This type of printing works best with patterns, photographs especially landscapesand abstract designs. There are several ways you can go about it. If you have skills and time, take on the challenge of creating t-shirt designs.

Luckily, there are great free alternatives out there that offer basic functions needed to create a print file for your t-shirts. If you want your design to look the best it can when printed, carefully follow basic graphics requirements provided by the printer of your choice. There are numerous platforms out there that will connect you with a talented designer who has the skills to turn your vision into a print file for your t-shirt store. The more information you share with them, the easier it will be for them to create the design you love.

This free tool will let you create designs with custom-drawn smileys, shapes, and fonts, and showcase them on the actual product.

Every store owner is different, therefore the way you choose to print and ship your products is entirely up to you. Another option is to partner with a print-on-demand dropshippers like PrintAuraPrintfulor TeeSpring.

Working with third-party fulfillment partners gives you the freedom to experiment without losing any money. You can add new variants of the same t-shirt or introduce new styles or designs. Your fulfillment partner will charge you the cost of the product and printing. Find wholesale t-shirt suppliers, select the designs you like and add them to your store. Once orders start flowing in, your supplier will ship them directly to the doorstep of your customer. Once they do that, sit down with them to learn what their shopping experience was like, and, of course, ask them to leave a product review.

You need to grow your brand awareness in order to land more sales. And what is one of the easiest ways to get people interested in you? Offering something for free. A good old giveaway can work wonders in getting more eyes on your business and products. Seattle-based online store Girlfriend Collective launched one product in April — eco-friendly leggings made from recycled plastics.

To kick things off, the company decided to run a this-is-too-good-to-be-true campaign offering the new generation of activewear just for the cost of shipping. The result? In the world of the internet, businesses have to maintain their presence on social media to be taken seriously. Try to engage with your audience, participate in conversations outside of your social media accounts feed, follow the trends, and react to the hottest news in real-time.

Simply put, use brand storytelling to how to make money off selling t shirts with your audience through social media to drive engagement. Another option worth exploring is influencer marketing. An honest shout out by an opinion leader can get you in front of a niche audience that you might be struggling to reach.

To run a successful campaign you need to have a clear idea of what you want to achieve, then find relevant influencers, and agree on collaboration structure. How can you get that shopper back? By running retargeting campaigns. Retargeting ads use cookie-based technology to display custom ads to visitors who have left your online store without placing an order.

In other words, you can bring the users back to your website by showing personalized ad on their Facebook and Instagram feeds, or Google. So in order to be successful, you need to continuously think how to develop your online store. You might found your niche and made quite a few sales. But think, how often do people buy new t-shirts?

Once every season? Every year? In order to keep the orders flowing in, you need to try approaching niches with similar interests or backstories.

Dividing your target audience into different segments is a great way to connect with your customers on a more personal level. And as we all know, personalization drives conversion. Now, not all dog lovers are dog owners. It would make sense to push promotions for this product to a more defined segment of your target audience, for example, women who own dogs.

They might know someone who does. Your job is to target multiple segments using copy that resonates with each individual in your target audience.

Selling shirts is a great start, but it can be limiting after some time. If you want to stick to printed products, consider adding hoodies, phone cases, or mugs to your product catalog. Just make sure the new products go well with the entire concept of the store. Exhibit your products in trade shows, local fairs, or popup markets.

Get in touch with a local newspaper and share your story. Organize or help to organize an event for your local community.

Approach brick-and-mortar stores that are interested in independent brands and introduce them to your products. If you want to grow your online store, you need to introduce new t-shirt designs every now and. So keep designing. Think of upcoming ecommerce holidays you can use to build your designs. Add a seasonal t-shirt, or put together a limited edition collection. To get started, create an account on BigCommerce and set up your store: choose a theme, upload your brand logo, and add contact information.

You can a purchase custom domain name for your store directly from BigCommerce. This is the fastest method for applying a domain name to your store and requires the least amount of setup. If you want to launch your online t-shirt store fast and without investing extra money, consider adding products to your store using print-on-demand drop shippers like Printful. Select a t-shirt that you like, upload the designs, select product variants, push them to your store, and voila!

So, when trying to define the retail price for your t-shirts, consider:.

I had my tipping point

N ot too long ago, I knew nothing about running a Facebook ad to sell a product. Okay, maybe I just tried it. I ran an ad for an iPhone app I had get more users. I was probably doing it all wrong.

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Still… I tried. One day in March, I came across someone selling a course about shirtd to make money selling your own sel,ing online. This seller was your typical internet marketer. He said how easy it .