Build An Online Tshirt Business

Build Your Own Online Tshirt Business | Free To Start

This is probably one of the best-kept secrets of all online business. 

Yes, its true, you can start a great business selling t-shirts, or rather your design on tshirts.

There are a great number of sites POD`s dedicated to selling anything you can print on, most are free.

And all are scaleable.

Is it saturated, NO, there are somewhere in the area of 3 billion users a year on the internet, half buy something, think those numbers through.

Here we will talk about getting going and scaling.

Get Started

This is probably the most understated and most overused statement by the gurus, to get your money, but it is the most important too right.

Take action and go with it, don't sit for a month and plot out this amazing course of action, then never take action, just get started.

Do a little research into what sells. Look at :                    

• Fonts
• Colours ( of the fonts)
• Graphics
• Text

T-shirt colors are not hard, dark sells better.

Find your niche then spread out from that.

Design Simple

Unless your an amazing graphic artist or artist, and have a vision, just keep things simple to start off.

Do text-based designs, sometimes just a simple word, phrase or a graphic, just make sure its attrition free and free for commercial use if downloading.

White letters on dark tee shirts sell very good but mix things up.

Look at what is selling and see why and what, meaning whats the niche, content colour scheme and font.

Always check your text and designs for Tm`s at USPTO, or use TMHunt (just for clothing) 
025 is the international code for that if manually searching USPTO.

Find A Print On Demand Site

Find your POD to start with, then find more.

There are quite a lot of them. The one that has everyone's attention at this time is Merch By Amazon. 

You have to apply first and there is no way to know if you will be accepted. It can take months, and it is not easy, so don't bet the farm on it, definitely apply right, but build a portfolio on other pods while you wait.

Start with one POD say like Redbubble, get designs up to around 50 and keep adding to it, stickers do really well there.

Move And Keep Building         

After you have gotten your feet wet, so to speak, move to another POD, start to recycle, upload the same designs.

Its the old rinse and repeat thing.

At this point you should know what is selling for you, but be warned, it may take a lot of designs to make money. TeePublic is around 500 designs, but that's assuming its all organic ;)

 Uploading

This will get tedious, there is some software out there that make this easier, just don't overdo it, if you upload too much at one time, you may get banned.

MBA (merch by Amazon, don't do, it`s a ban)

You can with the right system, upload to several POD`s at the same time, just set and forget.

VA`s

 What? VA stands for Virtual Assistant, they can be hired fairly inexpensively, but you need a fairly established business for this part (I think).

They can do research, write descriptions, or keyword research and do admin, tasks.

The reason I say established, well of course cash is king right, so you need a fairly established cash flow.

 There are several places you can look, most look offshore as the prices are better.

Either way, an experienced VA that can be trusted, is not cheap and should be treated well, as we would like to be treated. They are invaluable as many will attest.

Scaling                      

This isn't as hard as it sounds and has literally nothing to do with fishing.

In case your not familiar with this, I know you are, it`s a fancy way to say grow your biz.        

There are a few things to keep in mind here:

• Hire VA`s (to design, research and write)
• Bookkeeper ( once a month or two weeks or..)                       
  
• Spread out to more PODs
• Social media
• Blog/Site

You can use one of the many sites out there to hire per job it can be a little cheaper to do so, as you grow you will find the right people, if they are not working, do not be afraid to fire them.

PPC

On all of your PODS, you will have the ability to run cheap PPC campaigns, sometimes through the platforms.

 Through your Google and Bing webmaster, Adwords accounts.

As well as your social media accounts, Be careful with those, there is not always a good result.

Rember you have:

• Pinterest
• Instagram
• Youtube
• Facebook

You can as well run your own e-com store and blog or.. and direct traffic to that.

If you spend (Just random number for an example relax) $100 bucks on a PPC campaign, and it brings you $300 even $200 its well worth it right. Just don't go crazy with the bid, and look for low hanging fruit, not as popular keywords.

What Can I Really Make

The age-old question deserves the age-old answer, which happens to be true.

You Get Out What You Put In

That's all it is, you can make as little as 5 bucks a month (this has happened to me many times)

 Or you can make ten thousand, (I haven't been as lucky with that, it's a time thing)

I do know people that are making 5-10k on one platform, a month, they work hard at it and put the effort in.

Can you make 20-40k a year on Redbubble, hell yeah, but you would really have to get concentrated on that work.  

 Hopefully, you see this is pretty possible to get yourself into a good online business for free, then to scale things up.

Remember one thing, its a business, so sooner or later you will have to invest more than just time into it.

The beauty of POD is that the cost to entry can be zero, zilch a big freebie. So if it is not for you, your only out your time.

Stick with it, like everything else time and volume are key.

I hope this helped somewhat and open your mind to a few possibilities.

l wish you all the best and the very best in your growing business venture.

if you have any comments or questions leave them below and I will try to respond as I have time.

EJ