T-shirt printing can make you money. T-Shirts are not just a simple aspect of casual wear. They are clothing pieces that also reflect our personalities, desires, and identities. Because of this, it has become a common option to sell t-shirts online, especially for entrepreneurs and artists looking for a relatively cheap way to start a company. Plus, the custom t-shirt printing industry’s global demand is expected to exceed $10 billion by 2025.
With the popularity of selling t-shirts rising, there’s no question you’re going to face some tough competition. Nonetheless, you can discover your success by developing a brand for a particular target audience and designing t-shirt designs that your clients like. This guide will go through every step of starting an online t-shirt printing business that brings in extra monthly revenue.
Here’s Steps to Explain Your Business Idea
How to start up an online t-shirt printing business
Below are some tips on how to start an online t-shirt printing business:
Select a niche
Aniche will help your online t-shirt company stand out and better attract the right target audience without blowing your budget. You hear the word “niche” thrown around a lot, but it’s essential to pick one when searching for t-shirt business opportunities. The ability to stand out is one of the most critical aspects of creating a booming t-shirt printing business. One of the best ways of accomplishing that is by appealing to a particular target audience or interest group.
In general, categories such as “t-shirts for people who like funny slogans” are going to be too large for a very established market to accept. You would want to tighten things up a little bit more for a successful t-shirt printing business. T-shirts with humorous slogans that appeal to doctors and nurses, or dog owners, will be an example of a more narrow niche.
There are many avenues for a niche to be identified and measured, but here are a few:
- Visit the subreddits of your prospective niche and determine the number and level of interaction of subscribers.
- Use Facebook’s Audience Insights tool in order to gauge the size of your niche on the site.
- Search for a list of favourite hobbies on Wikipedia for inspiration.
- Respect your interests and the groups to which you belong—sometimes trusting your gut is OK.
When you narrow down your niche, develop a marketing plan that covers your goals and numerous ways to sell custom t-shirts for your t-shirt company, then find out how you’ll implement that plan.
Search for quality material and t-shirt printing alternatives
Not all t-shirts are similar, and not all print jobs are identical. Quality is critical to your brand and its growth, so it’s better to educate yourself and wisely select your blank shirts.
It might be appealing to compromise quality for higher profit margins, but you need to understand how a customer’s decision to share your brand and buy from you again would affect the quality.
Several variables involved selecting a quality t-shirt, including fit, height, material, softness, and weight. Checking out T-Shirt Magazine’s overview of some of the most common blank t-shirts for printing is a great starting point for deciding which blank t-shirt to use.
When you narrow your options down, ordering samples is highly recommended so that you can make an informed final decision.
Creating your templates for t-shirts
Here are some ways that you can get a head start on your company designs for t-shirts.
Find the projects and niches that are the best selling
If you’re stuck with ideas and designs for t-shirt niches, a great start is looking at what is popular and selling well at the moment.
A list of sites for some of the leading marketplaces for graphic t-shirts is below. You can use them to check for the’ best sellers’ and’ most famous’ pages to help you get a better concept of your next niche or t-shirt design.
- Zazzle
- SnorgTees
- Redbubble
- Kickstarter t-shirt campaigns
You might also want to try checking out Google Trends to get an idea of what people are interested in.
Recruit a designer
You’re going to have to design them once you have an idea for some t-shirt designs. You will possibly create some amazing designs on your own if you have Adobe Photoshop or similar software. However, if you’re like most individuals, you’ll need to recruit some support.
You can make use of a wide range of tools and marketplaces to find an appropriate graphic designer to help you. Bear in mind. You will have to purchase a commercial license if you want to sell t-shirts online.
Mockup your t-shirts
As soon as you have some final designs, your next move will be to have some mockup photos made so that your customers can see what the final design will look like printed on a shirt.
There are several ways you can get photos on t-shirts of your design specifications, that include purchasing samples and capturing product photography yourself or choosing to produce a 100 per cent digital mockup with the availability of t-shirt models online.
The most common types of mockup files include Adobe Photoshop t-shirt templates. They allow you to preview how your designs would lookprinted on a t-shirt easily. Most Photoshop models come with multiple layers that will enable you to change the shirt’s colour and add your design to fit with the shirt’s creases, folds, and contours.
Here are a few tools to help you find the right mockup file for your next project:
- GraphicRiver mockups for t-shirts
- The MockupWorld
- 19 awesome models for t-shirts
You can also use a web-based mockup program that will enable you to do the same thing without installing if Adobe Photoshop is not right for you.
Validate concepts for your designs
You can check that there is a demand for and interest in your designs before spending lots of money on your new business concept. You can go about validating the order and selling t-shirts online in several ways.
Some of the most basic and more popular approaches for validating your concepts for design include:
- Personal social networks: Upload a few of your models to your Facebook profile, Facebook niche groups, Twitter, and your friends as well as potential customers frequent social media networks. However, when asking friends and family be careful; their views are vulnerable to kindness.
- Reddit: Reddit is also one of the best ways to get truthful reviews on your projects, considering the community’s general aversion to ads (which can even translate into sales after you launch). It’s easy to find a highly focused niche of potential customers with countless subreddits and ask them directly for their opinions on your designs before releasing.
- Crowdfunding: Crowdfunding platforms have made it much easier to research, verify, and raise money upfront your new business concept. It can be time-consuming to launch a crowdfunding campaign and requires a good deal of preparation. Nevertheless, the advantages can be immense, like entirely financing your project before you begin it. Crowdfunding could be for you if you have an especially novel t-shirt business idea (for example, matching t-shirts for dogs and dog owners).
- Print on demand: It has never been simpler to set up a completely functioning online shop (including the domain name) in a matter of hours to verify your business concept with e-commerce platforms. Launch a 14-day free trial and add a print-on-demand service to verify your t-shirts by attempting to sell them online.
Configure your online shop
It’s time to create your store now that you have your t-shirt concepts in hand, have created your mockups, and confirmed your idea. There are a significant number of print-on-demand t-shirt services that incorporate directly with your online shop, enabling you to begin taking orders in no time.
Every time you receive a request, these services will print and send your t-shirts to your clients on your behalf. There is no need for any inventory to be purchased or stored upfront, making it a perfect way to get started. Best of all, you also have the option if you want to use your concept on other customizable items, such as mugs and tote bags.
Several t-shirts are available through the following print-on-demand companies:
- Printful
- Printify
- Teelaunch
- Gooten
You’ll be able to begin selling t-shirts online once your store is set up.
Things you should consider when designing your t-shirts
There are several ways of printing designs on t-shirts and other clothes. It is essential to understand them before creating your online t-shirt printing business. Understanding them will guarantee that you make the correct decision for your company. Three of the most popular t-shirt printing options to consider for their quality and process are given below:
Screen printing
Screen printing is the right choice for designs that are darker or have a high degree of vibrancy. Printers put layers of ink on a t-shirt using stencils or screens, and various stencils for multicoloured inks. Screen printing is excellent for bulk printing of five or fewer colours because of its labour-intensive setup.
Heat transfer
A picture is placed on heat transfer paper, cut from the paper, and put on a t-shirt. The Heat Transfer paper melts into the garment’s fibres like a big iron, heated to high temperatures, rendering it part of the shirt without affecting the top photo. Heat transfers are relatively easy and quick to generate coloured images on t-shirts.
Direct to garment
With ‘Direct to Garment’ printing, ink is applied onto a t-shirt through an inkjet printer. T-shirt designs are then uploaded to a computer using specialized water-based ink and transferred directly to a simple t-shirt using a specialized printer.
This is the cheapest print choice as there is practically no setup expense. Printing each t-shirt takes some time, so this is an excellent option for small printing orders.
How to sell t-shirts online
Here are the essential items to bear in mind before launching your online t-shirt business:
Deciding the business
It’s important to understand the niche you’ll concentrate on before starting your online t-shirt printing business. The t-shirt industry is oversaturated, and you need to know what your objectives are to be effective.
Design your t-shirt
If the designs aren’t good, you’ll have a hard time convincing people to purchase your t-shirts. So, pay special attention to what happens to the t-shirts you choose to remove. Use t-shirt design platforms to ensure that your items’ design is top quality and not trademarked.
Select a supplier for quality dropship
Ensure that when it comes to t-shirts, you follow quality requirements. Knowing which t-shirts are of good quality when you are dropshipping can be tricky. Just to check them out, order a few samples from your suppliers. You may discover that you don’t like the design or that the material is not your taste.
Build reviews and social confirmation
Reaching out to customers and asking them to rate the product online is crucial for selling t-shirts due to the value of social evidence in this niche. Customers want to know that when shopping online, they are getting value for money, and when making their choices, they want to hear from real customers.
Grow your understanding of the brand
The make-or-break part of your new company can be brand recognition. You can build your company as trustworthy and a leader in your space with the correct branding. This also helps with your marketing tremendously. Your clients are told by a brand who you are and what you are for. How you look, and your manner of expression is the essential elements of a company.
When shopping for new t-shirts, your logo and website will always be the first thing a new client sees, so these elements of your organization need to make a strong first impression. Your tone of voice and writing style also influence anything from sales to dedication. Think about how you’d like your clients to see you, and from there, decide your tone and style.
Outreach to influencers
Influencers will help you crack into new markets in your current audience or gain more clients. With the advent of micro-influencers and nano-influencers, finding influencers on your top platforms like Instagram or Snapchat can be simpler than you think. Some influencers may only have a few hundred followers, but those individuals are compelling.
In exchange for sharing photos wearing your product, consider reaching out to a few smaller influencers, offering them free t-shirts. This small act of social evidence will incur bonus brand points for your online t-shirt printing business.
Use remarketing to your benefit
If you have many people adding t-shirts to your cart and then disappearing from your site, remarketing might be the perfect way to improve your conversion rate. When customers add a product to their cart, you can retarget them on different websites through products like Google Advertising or on social media networks through products like Facebook Ads. You can lead people back to your cart with coupon codes, new deals, or just a reminder of their products.
Expressing your inventiveness and selling t-shirts online has never been simpler. Whatever market you want to serve or how ambitious you plan to be with your quality and designs a t-shirt shop makes for a perfect first online business for new entrepreneurs.
You should read this and learn Starting a Business: Simple Things You Must Know
Reference
How to start a successful online t-shirt business – oberlo
How to start an online t-shirt business – shopify
