T-Shirt Business Checklist

Your T-Shirt “Audience”

In any t-shirt business venture, your very first step is thinking about who will be buying what you have to offer.

The key is figuring out your audience, i.e. the people who want to get their eyes on your shirt because they have interests that align with your tee and its message.

Some examples of a cohesive audience would include:

School teachers
Nurses
Sports fans (specific team) Firefighters and police Scrapbookers
Knitters
Workout fanatics
Special interest groups (autism is a good example of this)
Just about any group of people that share a passionate interest has the potential to be a great audience

Your T-Shirt Niche – What is it?

As a general rule, it’s less expensive and easier to break into smaller markets because there will be less competition. When you find a small niche that you think is going well, like young, female pit bull owners, try mixing a niche in, like Jeep owners.

Targeting Your Niche

If you have a t-shirt idea already, now’s the time to do some audience and niche research

Ask these questions (without taking into consideration what your opinion is...you are not your customer):

Who is going to LOVE wearing this shirt and showing it off?
Have I seen anyone wearing something similar?
Along with the main attraction (pit bulls), what complimentary niche e.g. jeep owners) can I cross this with?
Where could I potentially find these people online – in groups, forums, etc.

If you already have a niche in mind, but still don’t have a t-shirt design or artwork in mind, there are a different set of questions to ask:

What POD designs are popular right now?
What designs seem to be selling well on t-shirt selling platforms? (More about platforms in a bit.)
What two or more niches can I bring together in a concept that will give my shirt a better chance of being popular?

Engaging with your Target Niche

Now that you know what your target niche looks like, you have to go out and find out where they are and engage with them.

Here are a few of the more effective places to do niche research:

Google
Facebook
Pinterest
Twitter
Instagram

Once you’ve found a few great groups or communities to join and become active in, do just that...become active.

Creating the POD Designs

Now that you know where your market hangs out, and what they like, you’ll have a good idea of how to get started

The actual artwork designing process is something that you can tackle yourself if you have design experience, or a good eye, and some experience with Photoshop or GIMP

If you’re just not the designer type, not to worry. There are several alternatives that you have, depending on your budget.

Here are just a few places to get your POD designs created:

Fiverr
99designs
Craigslist
Upwork

Make sure that whoever creates your t-shirt design also gives you full copyright ownership of the artwork when you purchase it.

POD Selling Platforms

It’s very likely that most t-shirts and printed products you see online came from print-on-demand platforms.

A few Print on Demand platforms that deserve mention include:

Teespring
GearBubble
RedBubble
Teepublic

These platforms have a wide selection of quality shirts for men, women, and children, fair pricing for the vendor, and excellent fulfilment.

Using Facebook to Reach Your Niche Audience

The number one, absolute best way to get traffic to your t-shirts is by using Facebook ads

Not only can you home in on very specific demographics (age, income, sex, location), but you can also access important psychographic information as well (interests, values, attitudes)

Top Tips for Selling POD T-shirts

Choose a niche you’re familiar with. It helps if you are in a POD niche where you already understand the audience because you are part of it. You’ll be able to better target your ads this way.
Learn that it doesn’t matter whether you like an artwork design or not. It’s all about what the audience likes, and what they’ll take out their credit card to buy.
Don’t be easily discouraged. You may go through ten designs before you hit upon one that people like and buy. Learn from those business ideas that don’t work and try to find ways to expand the campaigns that do work.
Try to create artwork designs that can be used over multiple niches. For instance, our pit bull example would easily translate over to German shepherds, rottweilers, or any other dog that needlessly gets a bad rap in the minds of their owners. The same with professions. The same t-shirt you use for a firefighter could be easily tweaked for use with cops and/or first responders as well.
In the beginning, be prepared to spend some money on ads that do not perform. Consider this a necessary investment in learning how to do Facebook ads, and in learning what does work by weeding out what doesn't work.
Always keep a notebook handy to write down t-shirt ideas. Soon, you’ll be seeing ideas everywhere, and you never know where your next super successful POD idea will come from!
Get to know other t-shirt sellers by joining groups on Facebook. You won’t get ideas here as those are closely guarded (especially the super successful ones), but you will be able to get answers to your general questions from people with a lot of experience.
Don’t expect to get rich quick. Getting rich slowly is preferable. Learn while you earn. Get good at it, and then expand.
Don’t be afraid to let ad campaigns go. If it doesn’t work and you tweak the design or the ad copy and it still doesn’t work, let it go. Don’t get personally or emotionally invested in your t-shirt designs. If it doesn’t work, kill the artwork and move on.
Don’t compare yourself to all the successful POD sellers you see out there. Do a great job on your own and you won’t need to compete with anyone.