How to use Teespring to sell successfully in 7 steps

I enjoy earning money online, and I also hang out in a few online communities for people who sell t-shirts. Due to both of these factors, I've started to receive a lot of friend requests from people looking to sell t-shirts online for a profit.

Here's how to sell t-shirts online. However, for free and without cost.

1. Create a shirt that people will want to buy.

Examine news reports about selling shirts, shirts you see people wearing, and shirts you see in stores. Do not imitate any of these shirts; instead, consider what works in terms of design, ideas, and structure. Find a pastime, preferably one of your passions, that has a limited number of available shirts. Look for interests where all the shirts say "I'd rather be pigeon-fancying" or "Keep calm and carry on pigeon-fancying" or "I'm a girl who loves pigeons" or anything else where you could put any hobby on the shirt. Create a shirt with a slogan related to your activity. "I adore pigeons because there is no place like home." That kind of thing. Check that your idea hasn't already been used and that it doesn't infringe on anyone's intellectual property. If you're new to design, try internet tutorials to learn how to build a good-looking shirt. If you can't afford paid design software, try GIMP and Inkscape. Make your design as good as possible, but don't overcomplicate it, and don't spend days on it unless you're learning how to use the software. Consider paying for designs; I don't, but many people do.

2. Make sure your shirt is available.

Set up your shirt on Teespring or another t-shirt fulfillment service, and use their tools to ensure the preview/mock-up image is as excellent as possible. I prefer Teespring because the shirts are of decent quality, the company responds to sellers, and the customer support is generally good. They also pay rapidly, which is important while you're scaling.

Click here for some amazing T-shirt designs and more

3. Market your shirt for nothing.

Discover where the pigeon-fanciers congregate. Forums, Facebook groups, and mailing lists are all options. Check the terms of those organizations carefully; if they allow you to post pigeon-fancying commercial messages, do so nicely once with a link to your shirt. If they don't, message the administrators or post saying "is it fine to do this?" because most groups that don't already have a lot of fantastic shirts are delighted for you to talk about your shirt.

4. Sell one or two shirts

Hopefully, a couple of pigeon-fanciers will purchase your shirt. If they don't, ask if they have any comments on your clothing and act on it. If there are a lot of likes but no sales, find out why. "It's humorous, but I wouldn't wear it," is a problem; find out what they're looking for. If the answer is "the shirt is too expensive," start over with an activity that is more expensive to participate in. Fix, relaunch, and follow up on design flaws, such as it being a t-shirt when they wanted a hoodie. Pay close attention to those who say things like "I need a shirt saying..." – if you make that shirt, that person will be happy and that person will probably buy it unless it’s crap, and other people might like it too

5. Paid advertising and scaling

Once you've made a few sales, create a $5-per-day Facebook ad directed at the fans of Pigeon Fancier magazine. Look for videos on YouTube on leveraging audience insights to locate pigeon-fanciers who are willing to spend money on their hobby. To learn how to use paid ads efficiently, visit Teespring's Training Center and watch Teespring's YouTube videos. Use a Pigeon Fancying Facebook Page to run your adverts. Choose a catchy name for it, such as "We All Fancy Pigeons." Make it appear genuine by posting genuine pigeon-fancying photographs and articles, as well as clothing advertisements.

(This is just another incentive, to begin with, for a hobby you enjoy.) Scale up (invest more money on that ad) and scale out once you have a profitable ad (design similar ads, and shirts for very similar niches, canary-fanciers say). Keep a close eye on your return on investment; you want at least 100%, which means that every $10 spent earns you $20 in sales. This is by far the most difficult element, and there is plenty of free advice available on how to accomplish it. You must now devote time, possibly a week full time, to understanding this aspect of the craft.

But here's the deal for newbies: Don't spend a single penny on marketing until you've sold one shirt to someone you're not related to. I constantly see individuals say things like, "You have to spend money to make money," and then spend hundreds of dollars 'testing' extremely bad concepts. If you can't sell one shirt to a zealous customer for free, it's unlikely to ever be a lucrative shirt. I have a rule that I (almost) never spend more than 50% of my previous day's shirt sales on advertising. Because I don't pay for designs, my company is completely self-sufficient and has no overhead. (I do have Adobe CC and a handful of other necessary software subscriptions and I buy software and fonts out of profits when I need to).

6. Produce more products

There are numerous further products. I strive to launch at least one per day, and many people launch more. I saw an interview with Derek Pankaew in which he stated that nine out of ten shirts lose money (but not for me, see 'no overheads'), nine out of ten of the rest earn a little money, and one out of a hundred makes thousands of dollars. However, many people sell twenty shirts, and a few sell a hundred or more.

7. Three free bonus pieces of advice

"It's almost as difficult to go from one sale to ten as it is to go from ten to hundred, hundred to thousand, and thousand to 10,000." It looks to be accurate for me, and if I hadn't felt it was doable, I would have given up because 10,000 shirts a year is approximately where it delivers the revenue for a full-time job, and that feels unattainable when you've only sold 50 shirts.

Finally, Ira Glass's renowned creative quote. "No one tells newcomers this; I wish someone had told me." Everyone who does innovative work does so because they have good taste. However, there is a gap. For the first couple of years, your work is simply not that good. It tries to be good, and it has potential, but it isn't. But your taste, which brought you into the game, is still deadly. And it's because of your taste that your job disappoints you. Many people never get past this stage and eventually give up. Most of the intriguing, creative individuals I know went through this for years. We are aware that our work lacks a unique quality that we desire. This is something that we all go through. And if you're just starting or are still in this phase, remember that it's normal, and the most essential thing you can do is work hard. Set a deadline for yourself to complete one tale per week. Only by completing a large volume of work will you be able to close that gap, and your work will be as good as your ambitions. And it took me longer than anyone I've ever met to find out how to do it."It'll take some time. It is usual for this to take some time. You just have to fight your way through."