How to Start a T-Shirt Business

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10 Tips for Running a Successful T-Shirt Business

The potential for success in the t-shirt selling POD business is absolutely huge! Here are ten top tips to remember when getting started on your own tshirt business.

1.
Choose a T-Shirt niche that you are interested in and feel passion for. This will help you understand your audience better, and you’ll be much more effective at ad targeting with an audience you’re actually a part of.
2.
Try not to get discouraged. You may go through dozens of designs that only sell a few each before you hit upon one that goes viral. Take lessons from those artworks that don’t work out, and find ways to grow the designs that are moderately successful.
3.
Try to create design concepts that can easily be used for multiple different POD niches. Can your t-shirt with a knitting design be used for crochet, needlepoint and cross-stitching too? Great! That awesome nurses shirt you designed can also be tweaked to work for other professions or businesses...go for it!
4.
Be ready to spend money on business ads that don’t perform well. This is all part of the learning process, so consider it an investment in learning how to do the T-Shirt ads correctly. Once you know what works, you’ll be glad you made the investment!
5.
Purchase a pocket notebook to write down the POD design ideas that come to you during the day. Maybe you’re shopping and you see a cool t-shirt in a store that you want to emulate, or an idea hits you for a shirt when you see someone who is really passionate about something. Let those ideas flow, and get them down in writing so that you always have a ready list of new business concepts to try.
6.
Invest time in getting to know the t-shirt business selling community. These types of community groups are so valuable in getting your questions answered from the veteran sellers that hang out there.
7.
Know that you won’t get rich overnight. Take the time to really learn the business model, and hone in on the great print on demand niches.
8.
Stop ad campaigns when they’re not performing well. Let them run for two or three days, and if you’re not seeing sales, it’s either the ad or the artwork. Figure it out and try again, but if it still doesn’t work, let that design go.
9.
Don’t compare yourself to those you see bragging about their own success online. Do your own thing and do it well, and the money will come.
10.
Don’t be afraid to try out new POD niches, once you’ve started building an income. This is the only way you’ll learn which niches are hot and which are not.

A Simple Way to Brainstorm T-Shirt Ideas

Sometimes, the hardest part in the entire t-shirt print on demand business is coming up with ideas. Great ideas can mean great sales. Sales are what most people are in this for. Coming up with great ideas – not so much. I’ve even heard some people in this line of work wish out loud for an “idea machine” that would crank out high-end t-shirt artworks at the drop of a hat. Well, there already is such a machine is you know where to look and how to use it properly. I’m talking about the auto-complete feature on Google and Amazon’s search bar.

When you search for something on Google or Amazon, it automatically fills in what it thinks you’re looking for before you complete typing the full search term. You can then select from the choices it gives you if any match what you were looking for. This is a great feature that you can use to begin exploring POD niches that you weren’t aware of or re-engineering existing concepts for your own purposes. Once you get used to the process is does act very much like an “idea machine”. You’ll find yourself getting exposed to all sorts of business ideas that you hadn’t considered before.

One of the best ways to look for new POD niches that you might not know about is to type a specific word followed by a letter. For example, you could type the word “shirt” followed by the letter “a”. You can review the auto suggestion results and then go on to “shirt” followed by the letter “b”. Again review the results. Then continue on through the alphabet seeing what you can discover. You can also use alternative words related to the original word you’ve been using. For example, “tee” or “sweatshirt” instead of shirt.

Another technique is to reverse engineer existing sayings and slogans. To do this, you first need to go to existing POD t-shirt sites and make some notes on sayings and slogans that catch your interest. Once you have a list of sayings, head over to Google and Amazon. Type in the first two words of one of the sayings that you’ve jotted down. For example, if you wrote down the saying “This guy loves baseball”, you’d type in “This guy”. Once you do you’ll see a laundry list of alternative “This guy” sayings. You can then peruse this list and see what gets your creative juices running.

Researching Popular T-Shirt Designs

You’ve done your niche research and you’re sure you’ve got a profitable one on your hands. Now it’s time to create really attractive POD t-shirt designs that people will want to buy. You may think of a dozen possible concepts, but it pays to do some research before you launch any t-shirt business to ensure you’ve got a winner.

The design part of t-shirt selling is where a lot of people get it wrong. They go with an artwork design that they like, only to find that it really doesn’t matter what they like.

Rule #1 in business: You are not your own customer.

There is an easy way to go about the Print on Demand business process without spending a ton of time and money creating and testing art designs on your own. The research you’ll do to avoid all of that will take time, but it’s well worth it when you hit upon a great Tee best-selling design that you know you could do better or put your own unique spin on. We’re not talking about stealing design artwork here. We’re simply going to find what is already selling and use those designs as inspiration for our own.

Here are a few ways to research already-successful POD designs and see what people love before you create your own t-shirt design.

You can learn a ton from Pinterest boards. Do a search for your niche keyword plus “t-shirt” (example: pug t-shirt), and when you look at the results, pinpoint those designs that have been pinned, like, and repinned the most. And, don’t forget to also look at the “related photos” to see what else you can dig up.

Online T-shirt Markets

By going to Print on Demand places like Teespring, Zazzle, and Viral Style, you’ll be able to take a look at lots of different designs and see which ones have sold well.

Again, look for your own niche among the POD artwork, and take your design inspiration from those that have already done well.

Facebook

It’s likely that as soon as you start doing research online for t-shirt art designs in a specific niche, you’ll be retargeted as soon as you log on to your Facebook account. So pay attention to the ads in your newsfeed. They may hold the keys to POD artwork ideas you hadn’t even thought of!

If you’re looking for a one-stop-shop for your research, you can sign up for a service such as Teegrasp, where you can see all kinds of statistical sales information in your niche without having to do all the research yourself. It’s a smart investment, and it’ll save you a ton of time.

POD T-Shirt Concept and Design

If you’re like most people new to t-shirt sales, you’ve probably got several designs in mind that you are absolutely sure are going to be sure-fire hits! Pro tip: always Keep a small notebook with you, because you will start seeing ideas for designs literally everywhere.) But there’s more to a t-shirt than its artwork, so let’s get into that a bit.

First, you should already have researched your niche and your audience, so you know whether it’ll be men or women who will largely be the ones purchasing this artwork. This will guide you to choosing the type of shirt you want your design to be offered on.

By and large, black shirts are the most popular overall whether they’re for men or women. If you do go with a light shirt, use dark text and images. Smaller women like the fitted t-shirt and plus size women like the unisex style t-shirts. Both men and women like hoodies and sweatshirts, especially in the winter, and more women buy long-sleeved t-shirts than men do. You’ll probably want to offer your artwork on t-shirts and tank tops in the spring and summer seasons, and during the autumn and winter, offer t-shirts, sweatshirts, hoodies, and long-sleeved t-shirts.

If you don’t yet have a POD design you love, but you have a rough concept, fire up Photoshop, GIMP, or Canva and see if you can create some awesome artwork. If graphic design isn’t your forte, outsource this part of the process to a professional on sites such as Fiverr, Upwork, or 99designs.

Remember that above anything, the art that is printed on your t-shirt is going to be what “wows” people and gets them to buy, so it pays to invest in the design if you have the resources to do so.

If you find that you have the marketing chops, but not the design skill and talent, and are low on money to outsource, consider teaming up with a designer, and splitting the profits once your t-shirts start to sell. This can be an extremely lucrative partnership once the logistics are figured out. In this way, you’re doing what you do best, your designer is doing what they do best, and you are both profiting from the sales. Two people working together can get a lot more done than one!

A final, but important, note: Always be absolutely sure that when you purchase a POD design, you are getting the full copyright ownership of the design. This ensures that no one else can use that design.

3 Signs of a Profitable POD Niche

There are several signs that you’re on the right track when it comes to the POD niche you’ve chosen to pursue in your t-shirt business. Here are the three surest signs that your niche is a hot one!

Pride and Passion

If your POD niche is filled with people who take pride in their interest, and who are extremely passionate about it, you’ve likely got yourself a winner. The most passionate audiences center around controversial subjects - think pit bulls, politics, veterans, feminism, religion, sports teams, animal rights. These are the types of people who will proudly wear your shirt as a message to the world about who they are and the values they represent.

Gaining insight into this sense of pride and passion will fuel many lucrative print on demand niche choices for you and your business, as most t-shirt purchases are based on emotion, not logic. Creating designs that can trigger that feeling of passion or pride in your audience will create huge success for you.

Audience Size

If you have a huge audience size, that’s great! That means your campaigns will be able to grow as your business grows. It’s a good idea to start out with a small target audience - that’s the easiest way to decide what’s working and what’s not with your t-shirt artworks. But once you’ve got a winner of a campaign, there’s no reason not to grow that audience, because that will grow your number of units sold!

By choosing a POD niche with a really large audience, you multiply your selling potential, and generate far more income than if you chose a very narrow niche to begin with. When you’re targeting this niche, think in terms of smaller, more specific audiences within this larger audience, and target art designs towards these smaller, more specific audiences.

By choosing a POD niche with large audiences multiples your selling potential, generating steady streams of revenue. Also, this still leaves you room to break the niche down into smaller sectors, targeting them more effectively through specific designs.

By utilizing Facebook’s Audience Insights Tool, you can get a fairly accurate potential audience size based on demographics and interests that you choose.

Wallet Access

One of the most important, yet often overlooked aspects of choosing a profitable artwork niche is whether or not this audience has money to spend. If they don’t have a Paypal account or credit cards, or they’re largely a niche that’s not online, the best design in the world won’t bring them in.

They have to have a way to buy, and a ability to do so. They must have expendable income. And they must have an online presence if they are ever to see your ad, and your t-shirt.

Combining POD Niches for More Sales

If you’re new to the world of t-shirt creation and sales, you may think that the bigger the audience you target, the more money you’ll make. But starting out with a huge audience gives you very little control when it comes to being able to figure out why a shirt artwork may not be selling well. That’s why it’s a very smart move to target a small audience first, and if you see success with that audience, widen the audience a bit.

Let’s think about it...if you target a really large audience, and your shirt doesn’t sell, was it

The artwork design?
Could it have been the color of the shirt?
Who did buy the shirt - males or females?
How much money on average do they make?

These are all reasons a shirt may not have done well, but if we only have a huge audience to look at, it’s very difficult to break down the analytics into something that we can actually read.

Therefore it’s so vital to your eventual success to think small audiences in the beginning. For instance, if you want to target pug owners and lovers, target one segment of that audience that represents pug owners making over $75,000 a year, who are female, married, and aged 35-45. Target another audience that is exactly the same, but aged 45-60. In this way, you begin to be able to see who is buying and who isn’t. Start with a few artwork designs to see what this audience likes and give them more of that.

This is the only way you’ll find sure fire winners and be able to decipher why they were winners. And this way, you’ll be more likely to repeat those winners in the future!

It’s also less expensive to target smaller markets because there will be less competition.

An excellent way to narrow down your POD niche, but still know you’re finding a buying audience, is to mix two different niches. Using our example above, we know we want to target pug lovers who are female. But what if we add a second niche into the mix? What if we create a t-shirt artwork design that combines a pug with knitting, and we target female pug lovers who are also knitters!

There are so many creative ways to combine niches in order to land a successful t-shirt business that that particular audience gets super excited about! And the more excited they are, the more likely they are to take out their wallet to buy!

2 Simple Ways to Beat the Competition in Hot Niches

Online on-demand t-shirt sales can still be a comparatively lucrative way for any entrepreneur to make a bit of extra cash. The great thing about this business model is that you don’t have to invest a boatload of time and energy in doing market research in order to make some decent profits. All you have to do is keep an eye open for a trending or hot niche to pop-up and then jump in on the feeding frenzy that’s occurring around it.

By following these tips you can go just that an beat competition who have spent days and weeks figuring out a marketing angle to move their t-shirts.

Only Use One Keyword in the Title

Oftentimes, in an overheated niche, sellers will try to jam as many descriptive keywords as possible in their description of a t-shirt. They do this in an attempt to out-keyword the competition and have their listing show up first. This pretty much always backfires.

For example, let’s say the hot niche is chili and you have a shirt that says, “Chili is Hot”. You don’t want a description that says “Chili Shirt – Chili is Hot Shirt – Funny Chili Shirt – Cool Chili Shirt – Hot Chili Shirt” etc. What you want to do is keep the descriptive as simple as possible. “Chili is Hot T-Shirt” or Chili is Hot” will work perfectly well. Why?

Your average e-commerce site is like a small-scale Google. Little search engines using simple algorithms to give customers results. When a niche is trending, these algorithms have very little to go one when it comes to rankings sites catering to that topic. When you just use the title of your search in the description and someone actually searches for that title, your description gives them a perfect match. This perfect match will rank you way higher than a keyword jammed mess.

Use an Unusual Color for Your T-Shirt

On demand t-shirt sites allow you to pick the shirt colors that your design will be available in. They also allow you to pick a default color that will be used in the thumbnail that displays the shirt to potential customers.

While accepted knowledge says that dark colors sell better, it’s not always the case. In hot niches, everybody is using these same dark colors for their thumbnail and available colors. By choosing a lighter or brighter color, your thumbnail stands out in a sea of drab blues and greys.

Comparing T-shirt Selling Platforms

Where will you sell your amazing t-shirts? That’s what this article is all about!

First, you have a great many choices when it comes to where to sell your t-shirts. There are now dozens of online marketplaces to choose from, and the numbers keep growing as the t-shirt business model continues to grow and expand.

For selling shirts, you have two types of marketplaces to choose from: non print-on-demand, and print-on-demand.

Non Print-On-Demand Marketplaces

Examples of non print-on-demand marketplaces include Amazon, Ebay, and Etsy. When you use these marketplaces, you advertise the goods, they bring the traffic, and you take care of all order fulfillment once an order has been placed. The benefit to using one of these types of marketplaces is that they offer huge amounts of automatic traffic! Amazon alone has 54 million active Prime users, and 44% of online shoppers go directly to Amazon whenever they need to make an online purchase! It pays to stick with the leaders.

A disadvantage of this type of marketplace is that you must deal with order fulfillment, which can be time and energy consuming. But if you have the means to take care of order fulfillment, a non print-on-demand marketplace might be for you.

Print-on-Demand Marketplace

Here’s how a print-on-demand marketplace works: you sign up for an account on the marketplace, and then you create a design. You create a campaign for that design within your account, and you choose the colors and styles of the shirts for that campaign. Then, you drive your own traffic to the marketplace listing using Facebook ads or other methods, and hopefully sales start to happen.

There are now many of these types of platforms to choose from, including Teespring, GearBubble, RedBubble, and Teepublic, to name just a few. Each of these platforms have a huge selection of shirts available for men, women, children, and sometimes pets! They offer fair pricing to the vendor, and a mostly excellent fulfillment rate.

When you’ve invested in having a design created, it pays to list it on a few of these marketplaces. See which you like best, and which ones your shirts sell best on.

A major advantage of print-on-demand marketplaces is that they no longer just offer shirts. You can choose to offer your design on any number of available products such as necklaces, bracelets, hats, mugs, device cases, and pillows, so the investment of a design can go a long way on these types of marketplaces.

Who is Your T-Shirt Buying Audience?

You can have the best t-shirt concept or design in the world, but unless you have people that see it, and want to buy it, you’re dead in the water. It’s like putting up a billboard in the middle of a forest. You need to figure out who your audience is, and in this article, we’ll take a look at exactly how to do that.

The first thing you need to realize is that it’s not about what you, yourself, like or would wear...it’s about what the audience will purchase. This is a grave mistake that a lot of newcomers to t-shirts make. They create shirts that they love, but then wonder why they don’t sell. Of course, there are lots of reasons why a t-shirt doesn’t sell, but bad design, or a design that just doesn’t resonate with its intended audience is one of the big reasons.

Think about your shirt design concept. Who would wear that? Who would buy it for themselves? Who would purchase it as a gift? What type of person would be the most apt to want this particular shirt. If we have a shirt that has a concept for knitters, is the message or image on the shirt going to be something they’ll actually take out their wallet to purchase? And how can you find these people?

One of the great things about selling t-shirts is the ease with which you can find all this information. All you have to do is a bit of research.

Take Facebook, for example. If you do a simple search just for “knitting”, there are dozens upon dozens of groups with knitting as the main topic that have well over 20,000 members each! That’s your audience! If that’s your niche, then you need to start getting involved in a few groups, and get to know people. Let them get to know you, too. After you’ve built some trust within the group, you may begin to ask them questions, such as: “Would you wear shirt A or shirt B?”, “Which design do you prefer?”, “Do you like these colors?” These types of questions can be so valuable to your business and your bottom line!

Examples of other audiences would be:

Nurses
Firefighters or police
Gamers
Cat lovers
Dog breeds
Special interest groups
Political movements
Movie or music fans
Sports teams

Bonus points if you hit upon two audiences that happen to intersect, such as: nurses who love to knit, Democrats who love cats, or firefighters who love to play Fallout 4.

So you can see that just about any interest, hobby, profession, or even preference can turn into a successful audience that you can target!

The Long-Term Value of a List

If you’re new to online marketing, you might not know what a “list” is...it’s simply a collection of emails that you’ve procured where those people have signed up to receive information from you. You’re probably on several email lists yourself!

You may not think of a list in terms of something that combines well with t-shirt sales, but in this article, we’re going to show you how they not only go together well, but how having a list is going to make you a lot of long-term money.

Most t-shirt sales operations simply send the buyer to their sales page. Whether they buy or they don’t, that’s the last you see of the customer. But what if, instead of sending them directly to a sales page, you send them to an opt-in form where they can choose to get more information and offers from you in the future, or choose to simply go to the sales page?

One of the easiest ways to make this work for you is to create a page where you advertise a free t-shirt giveaway contest. They give you their email and other relevant information, and they are entered in a monthly drawing for a free t-shirt. So, even if they don’t buy the particular shirt they’re currently looking at, you now have their email address and can market subsequent designs to them that are in the same niche.

This creates a much longer-term income potential, because you can market to these people over and over again. The customer now has longterm value instead of being a one-off purchaser.

Once you’ve begun to build this email list, don’t just focus on selling to them. Offer them value in the form of content about their niche that is interesting and informative. You don’t even have to write this content yourself, if you simply curate the content from the web with proper attribution. After you’ve spent some time just offering value to the list, send them a promotion for your latest design.

Having an email list for your niche is also a superb way to gauge a great design from a design that no one will buy. If you send it to a nichespecific list, and no one purchases, it’s very likely a design problem. This type of information is invaluable to the success of your t-shirt selling business, and owning a list is a great way to get the most out of your tshirt campaigns.