It seems the entire internet has gone ga ga over t-shirts (and no, you haven’t been teleported back to the 70’s). T-shirts have been with us practically forever, and they don’t seem to be falling out of favor anytime soon. In fact there is a current t-shirt craze popping up all over Facebook.
What’s driving all this new excitement over t-shirts?
A new company called teespring. They aren’t doing anything new, not really. They are essentially a dropshipper / shirt printer / payment processor and marketing engine.
Thing is, they are doing it RIGHT!
We here at Scoop have been hearing from lots of marketers who haven’t had success in the past, but who are building SOLID incomes using a combination of TeeSpring, Facebook, and some good old creativity.
Here is a basic look at how it works:
- You set yourself up with a Facebook advertiser account.
- You set yourself up with a TeeSpring account.
- Using Facebook’s custom audience feature, find yourself a niche.
- Design a few t-shirts using TeeSprings handy design tool.
- Advertise your creations, sell a ton. Rinse, Repeat!
That really is basically it in a nutshell. Ok, off with you then. Go sell a ton of t-shirts, live long and prosper.
What, more details you say?
Ok, here are a few refinements on the plan. But first, let us take a closer look at TeeSpring.
This fledgling clothing company has burst onto the scene for a few key reasons:
- Promoters need NO upfront investment (Other than time) If your project doesn’t sell a set number of shirts (or more), nobody get billed, no shirts get made, lesson learned, you move on…
- They handle ALL of the production, shipping and customer service for you. Your ONLY real job is to create ads that sell shirts!
So let’s dig in to just how to do that…
Design a shirt people will want. This essentially boils down to 2 main categories.
1. What’s popular now?:
Smart marketers will troll the internet for new and interesting events. Remember that guy on the news saying “hide yo kids, hide yo wife, and hide yo husband” or Chris Tucker’s immortal plea “Leave Brittany Alone!”
Trust me, someone made that into a t-shirts, and made good money. My guess would be probably more than a few somebodies. A good rule of thumb is if it is interesting to you AND at least three other people you know, it’s worth looking into.
2. Evergreen Topics:
These topics have their good and bad points.
Good: Once you figure out how to make a campaign work, it is likely that it will work for a long time. (Think topics like “Redheads Rock”, Or “Kiss Me I’m Irish”) These sentiments, for example will be popular as long as there are redheads or Irish people in need of kissing.
Bad: Since these topics are likely to be popular in the future, they almost certainly have been popular in the past, meaning that others have had a long while to figure out the market and serve it well.
But hey, if you’re feeling creative and innovative, have at it! You’ll be making bucks for a LONG time if you get an evergreen topic right!
Whether Evergreen or what’s popular now, you will want to serve the market where they stand. If your target niche is a bunch of beer soaked frat types, it’s perfectly fine to skip the proper English and get a little crude. “K Brah?”
Who are we going to target?
If this question sounds like a “nitch-ey” thing, that’s because it is.
Pretty much the same thing, same questions, same goals. Are they passionate about what they are doing? People who love 57 Chevys will happily spend 30 or 40 grand for the object of their affection. Don’t think for a second they would buy a shirt from you if it enhances, identifies or elevates their love of these cars.
Are there a lot of them? Sure, there are people out there who LOVE three legged blind Irish setters like me but I am guessing I would have a hard time making a shirt for them a mass market hit. Stick with groups large enough to make a living and small enough to be attainable.
Do they have the money to spend? Be sure your choice of t-shirt audience is at least flush enough to spring for a t-shirt or two. Ask yourself this, is there enough passion for an average user to spend $200 total? Little league, Yep. Working soup lines, noble, but nope.
Ok, now you’re on your way to choosing an audience, how about designing the shirt itself?
Here are some tips:
- Create a design that looks good on different color shirts.
- Picture your design on different shirt styles. Hoodies anyone?
- Is your design “flexible”? I LOVE The Yankees! easily becomes I LOVE The Dodgers!
The cool thing about a flexible design is, if you come up with a winner like I LOVE The Yankees! (Who knows maybe that IS a winner) the odds are good that that same concept would translate to ALL the baseball teams and this would mean MO Monies!
The Actual Design Process
Ok, you have your topic, you have some ideas on the design, let us do some layout! There are a fair amount of things you have control over with TeeSpring.
Choice of shirts: You can look over the style and brand names of the shirt itself. User reviews and ratings are provided. And as you change your selection, the online tool updates.
Text: Font, Size, positioning… It’s all under your control.
Images: You can browse their HUGE image library or import your own.
Editing Tools: These allow you to resize, move, or otherwise tweak your creation. You can also flip the shirt and add images or text to the back side as well.
Pricing: As you choose the quality and brand of shirt, the price will reflect that. TeeSpring assumes by default that you will sell a minimum of 50 shirts and uses that figure in its pricing.
Quantity: You can go up or down with your shirt count, changing the price as you do.
Pricing 101
As you gain some experience, you can fiddle with the pricing and goal number.
Here is an example: Say you design a shirt and its “wholesale price” is $11.61. You retail it for 12.99 and go with 50 units as your goal.
You stand to make about $65 bucks. Not bad but there is a LOT of room for improvement…
Let’s try it this way: say you design a kick ass shirt, you have a hungry market, you set 100 shirts as your goal, and the price goes down to $9.14 and you retail for $15.99. Not a huge difference in retail price but now your profits are up to roughly 700 smackers!
No guts no glory right?
Ok, you’re well on your way to setting up your first TeeSpring campaign. You’re ready to go buy some facebook traffic!
Buying traffic is a topic that has been covered here and will be again but not in this post, the info is out there I promise.
What I want to impart to you as I wind down this shirt rant is the little thing that separates people who MAKE money and those who WANT to make money. It’s easy, just 3 words actually…
Just DO IT!
Seriously, you might have a false start or two, but if you TRY and KEEP TRYING It is a near certainty that you will eventually make money with this.
Come to think of it, isn’t the above statement true of MOST things?
Let me know in the comments section how it turns out!
I enjoy reading through a post that will make men and women think. Also, thanks for allowing for me to comment!