Teespring T-shirts

[Korry]

I love Teespring.com but decided for certain reasons to set up my own Tee Shirt site.  It's not completed yet but here's the link if you'd like to check it out:

http://markstshirtdesigns.info

God bless you,
Mark
Isaiah 40:31

Looking good, Mark 

While I'm here - I've noticed that most people use Teespring and just few go to Skreened, Zazzle or some other similar service. Is really Teespring the best? I'd love to hear why, if the answer is yes.

[Ron Killian]

I think it's great you started a project, finished it and promoted it Mark. Most people don't make it that far.

As Others have said, I've been hearing about people making good with teespring. Mostly the guru's talking about how they killed it on facebook.

Though I did not know you needed a goal and a time frame to sell them. I understand why, but puts the pressure on, no?

Curious, what's the profit potential? It depends on the short and design I take it. Just wondering what could be made.

Like other have already mentioned, timing seems to be one big key. Remember hearing people doing well with sports teams at the right time.

I would guess one route would be to build up a facebook/fanpage following and then launching a shirt. Seems Pinterest could be a good place to sell, if you have followers.

Interesting topic.

[Korry]

...
I would guess one route would be to build up a facebook/fanpage following and then launching a shirt. Seems Pinterest could be a good place to sell, if you have followers.
...

In most cases Facebook page won't get you anywhere. Tried this, several times, didn't work. A bit more successful were FB targeted ads, but still not good enough. Response of Pinterest followers is too slow for timed sales so haven't even tried advertising Teespring tees there, but on the other side, Pinterest did a great job with Zazzle products.

[eagles12]

While I'm here - I've noticed that most people use Teespring and just few go to Skreened, Zazzle or some other similar service. Is really Teespring the best? I'd love to hear why, if the answer is yes.

Korry, one of the pros for Teespring is that they are free and the base shirt price is not too expensive.  I designed a shirt for Skreened.com and it was $19.99 (You can see the shirt here http://skreened.com/ilovenerds/i-love-nerds.  Sorry to say, I don't think that I would even buy my own shirt!

God bless,
Mark
Isaiah 40:31

P.S.  Is anyone going to buy the new covertteeshirt plugin besides myself? 

[Ron Killian]

Seems to me you could lose some good money running ads for a tshirt when it doesn't sell enough in the time frame. Doubt tespring will give you your marketing money back.

Think Korry found that out?

Just seems quite of risky. But some of the "guru's" are pushing it hard.

Course the ones sitting pretty are teespring, other people do the advertising for them, if they sell enough they print, if not, no loss to them. Affiliate marketing at it's best.

Mark: No idea what that plug-in even is, so no for me. Guessing it has something to do with selling tshirts :)

[Ron Killian]

...
I would guess one route would be to build up a facebook/fanpage following and then launching a shirt. Seems Pinterest could be a good place to sell, if you have followers.
...

In most cases Facebook page won't get you anywhere. Tried this, several times, didn't work. A bit more successful were FB targeted ads, but still not good enough. Response of Pinterest followers is too slow for timed sales so haven't even tried advertising Teespring tees there, but on the other side, Pinterest did a great job with Zazzle products.

Thanks for the post, always good to hear first hand experience.

Think it's hit and miss? Or more timing? Like when a sports team wins something big, ect.

[eagles12]

Seems to me you could lose some good money running ads for a tshirt when it doesn't sell enough in the time frame. Doubt teespring will give you your marketing money back.

Think Korry found that out?

Just seems quite of risky. But some of the "guru's" are pushing it hard.

Course the ones sitting pretty are teespring, other people do the advertising for them, if they sell enough they print, if not, no loss to them. Affiliate marketing at it's best.

Mark: No idea what that plug-in even is, so no for me. Guessing it has something to do with selling tshirts :)

Teespring is all about learning the trends, designing cool shirts, and laser targeting your market.  Pretty much the same as any online business.

The Covert Teeshirt Plugin lets you build your own tee shirt site on your wordpress site and populate it with shirts from Amazon.com, Skreened.com and Teespring.com.  Here is the site that I am working on:

http://awesometees.markbutts.info/

Have to wait until Monday until I can speak with someone at Linkshare and become a skreened.com affiliate and I need to populate some more Amazon shirts and I am still debating on Teespring as the campaigns are only temporary.

God bless,
Mark
Isaiah 40:31

[eagles12]

Got approved as an affiliate for Skreened.com so now I have more tee shirts in my store.  Need to select a few more niches besides pitbulls, german shepherds, and guns!

God bless,
Mark
Isaiah 40:31

[eagles12]

Hey, guys, who are interested in tee shirts and tee spring.  Received this email a couple of day ago from Don Wilson and thought I would share it.  None of the links in the email are mine so I not advertising any of my affiliate products.  Just trying to be helpful.

This is going to be a longer e-mail, but I promise if you commit just a few minutes to reading it you will get a LOT out of the content.

I'm going to give you a step-by-step plan that you can follow to sell tons of t-shirts every month.

I make 40k-80k/mo with just these 9 steps. Read them.

Step 1) Pick A Niche
There are a lot of niches out there, you will want to pick a passionate one that applies to a lot of people.
(for this example, we will use dirt bikes)

Step 2) Research Other Designs
After about 3-4 minutes of Google searching for terms like "funny dirt bike t-shirts" I came across a page on Zazzle with TONS of proven designs. (some are even ones that our team created LOL) Here is the link to see them: http://www.zazzle.com/dirtbike+gifts (there are some pretty great ones on there, open it up, have a glance, then come back to this e-mail)

Step 3) Create A Better Shirt Than What You See
Are they funny shirts? Can you make a funnier saying? Is there a funny one with a terrible design? Could you make it better? I'm not saying to copy anyone. Please don't do that. But, please do what every other competitive industry does... look at what's working, and do it better.

Step 4) Put Your Shirt Up On Teespring
(easy step)

Step 5) Run An Ad To Your Shirt
Keep it simple... save the photo of the default T-shirt from Teespring. Use it as your ad photo. Use the following as ad copy...

--
 * JUST RELEASED *
Limited Edition T-shirt
Get yours here: [LINK-TO-TEESPRING-URL]
Not sold in stores, this will sell out.
--

(NOTE: Chris Blair gave this ad copy out in my laboratory group and I wanted to credit it to him, it works.)
Then, add your targeting. Remember - celebrities, events, and brands in the niche are a great place to start.
Set your ad budget to $50.00/day (you don't have to pay that much, just set it there) Submit your ad.

That was a longer step, but it's not a tough one. You can do it.

Step 6) Watch Your Data Come In And Adjust
Unless you have sent 50-100 clicks to an offer, you usually do not have enough data to tell what's going on. So don't judge things too prematurely CTR, Clicks, Frequency, Audience... all this is relative. What matters is ROI. After 50-100 clicks, if you're not making more than you're spending (projected return), then turn it off. If you are getting a return, leave it on. (and then you look at scaling)

At the core if you follow these six steps. You can build an entire t-shirt business. It's not a perfect model, or automated, or new... but it WORKS.

If you're struggling to get campaigns up and hit your goals, follow those six steps. Don't overcomplicate it with more steps. Just get after those six steps and get some campaigns up. (still read them so you know where you're headed, but, don't overcomplicate it past those six steps)

Now...

Once you've completed those steps you now have a few things to your advantage.

1) you've proven the niche (you know you made money, so you know this niche is at least worth spending time on)
2) you've proven your targeting/data (you should have a pretty great idea of what interests are converting the best from your first design win for the niche)

So... what next?

Step 7) Take Your Proven Audience And Go  One Layer Deep

What exactly does that mean... right? Well, since we are using the dirt bike example let's go with that. I first proved my audience/niche with this tee.. Here: http://screencast.com/t/GwFzUlCJnPu

Then, I added a "gender layer" and put one out specifically for males. See it here: http://screencast.com/t/mHKkiIMoMa

There are a lot of layers you can try. Gender, state, or a combination. Then... if that works, move on to...

Step 8) Add Another Layer And Do It Again
And in the dirt bike niche... it did work. The above one is made for males, so we did two simple tweaks and profited again.

Tweak 1 - We changed the phrase "I Ride Dirt Bikes To Meet Women, Nurses Mostly" to work for women. So the new phrase reads "I Ride Dirt Bikes To Meet Men, Doctors Mostly".

Tweak 2 - We took all the same targeting that was already proven, and targeted women instead of men.
Here's what it looked like: http://screencast.com/t/GkgLHv9WC
So... with only two little tweaks, we were able to sell tons more shirts.

Then you take it a little bit further

Step 9) Move The Same Strategy "laterally" To A Similar Niche

Move it laterally? What I mean is... think about what niches are very similar to the one you're in. Similar to dirt bikes? 4 Wheelers and Street Bikes Similar to pit bulls? Rottweilers and German Shepherds. So... to stick with the dirt bikes niche.

What we did was again make 2 tweaks...

Tweak 1 - We took the "This guy rides dirt bikes to meet women, nurses mostly" design, changed it slightly to the phrase "This guy rides street bikes to meet women, nurses mostly".

Tweak 2 - We took the same targeting structure as before and changed out the dirt bike celebs, brands, and events with street bike ones.

This is what the tee looked like: http://screencast.com/t/xyDFIfRIN2

Launched it, sold about 100 shirts in a brand new niche without much effort.


I hope that all makes sense. After those steps I start to build out fan pages, lists, groups, blogs, etc... but you don't want to do that until you have proven a niche with some winners first.

So to conclude... the keys to making it work are...

1) Don't reinvent the wheel - do what everyone else does in any other industry - research what's working for others, then do it better.
2) Follow this step by step plan - don't fall in love with a design you like - your traffic may not like it. Let the numbers decide, after 100 clicks, if you're not making money, turn it off and move to the next

You've got the plan. And there are a lot of tools out there to help you with the research. Some free, some paid. I buy and use most all of them for different reasons.

Tomorrow there is a tool going live that I have been beta testing over the last few days that does some t-shirt research that I've never seen before. Will send you out a demo of it at 2pm EST when it goes live.

Til' then... keep it simple, follow the steps, and get up some campaigns.

Hope the steps help,

-don
leadproconsulting.com, 208 e. main st, mulvane, KS 67110, USA

[eagles12]

Hey guys, what if we had our own membership site Tee Shirts?

Here's an example:



Just an idea!

God bless,
Mark
Isaiah 40:31

[Mark Austin]

Looking good Mark!

Mark

[hillsborowd]

nice Idea but I think it should have Marks Banner on it to as that banner is sharp That is if Mark would allow it

[eagles12]

nice Idea but I think it should have Marks Banner on it to as that banner is sharp That is if Mark would allow it

Trying to keep it simple, Bill, and not infringe on anyone else's copyright.

God bless,
Mark
Isaiah 40:31

[hillsborowd]

understand but you did notice I said if Mark approved  that why I added that

[Ron Killian]

Is Mark going to buy all the gold members one of those? LOL

I was thinking, you could probably increase your sales if you used a model. I know the ads I've seen for t-shirts, have girls, that are, well, you know. Think I might have clicked one before. Don't tell my wife :)

Seriously though, bet it helps sell shirts.