Post: #26

Doing a quick Google AdWords campaign with a limited budget. Will see how it goes.

Very basic product, but aimed at women (who buy a lot of unnecessary shit online).

FWIW: Google let's you set a daily limit as well as limit your budget if it exceeds a certain value.

Giving it $50 to see if I generate any sales whatsoever. Have a lot of keywords targeted at my made up market.

Will probably do some custom designs per my own art designs and push it further after I try this out, which took almost zero effort.

Post: #27

Interesting.

Added a bunch of relevant keywords. Spent about $11 for about 1200 impressions. Had about a $0.40 cost per click. No conversion, but I'm noticing how certain keywords are more effective for clicks (but probably misleading for marketing.

I can see how this can get very involved.

Post: #28

(06-22-2016 09:04 AM)philosophical_recovery Wrote:  Interesting.

Added a bunch of relevant keywords. Spent about $11 for about 1200 impressions. Had about a $0.40 cost per click. No conversion, but I'm noticing how certain keywords are more effective for clicks (but probably misleading for marketing.

I can see how this can get very involved.

Let me know how you make out once your campaign is finished. I've never done it the way you're doing it. I feel like for t-shirts, Facebook is probably the best avenue to take, but again, I'm interested to see your end results!

Post: #29

Hey guys, for anyone looking to do t-shirts signup for Amazon Merch. The benefit of Amazon Merch over the other sites is say I put up a "Yoga" tshirt on Amazon. People who search for Yoga on amazon be it mats, gloves, socks, etc I have a chance of showing up.

When people use Teespring, TeeChip, etc nobody is going to those sites searching for stuff which means your totally on your own in terms of driving traffic to your shirts. Same is true of setting up your own Shopify site.

Amazon Merch had been closed to new members for a while but recently opened back up. It's by invitation only but you basically just go on the site and request an invitation and shoudl hear back within a couple weeks. I think it helps if youhave a blog or website to attach to your application.

I like the t-shirt business as it's pretty hands off but at the same time it's somewhat saturated, if you got in two years ago it would be a different story but unless your pretty clever with marketing, find a great niche or are really good with fb ads I think its going to be tough to make any real money.

I had considered doing a shopify site but to me at this point the effort isn't worth the return so I'm just doing merch and then I do sell some of my merch shirts on Etsy and eBay as well.

Post: #30

Will update. Already have some decent designs thought out that are within my capability to draw, edit, and post for better profit.

Post: #31

(06-22-2016 02:22 PM)philosophical_recovery Wrote:  Will update. Already have some decent designs thought out that are within my capability to draw, edit, and post for better profit.

One tip I've found is play off of current events. I have some political shirts doing well right now with the elections around the corner. I've always had some some gay, lesbian lbgt type stuff that has always sold well, after this Orlando thing sales have gone through the roof. Back a year or so when they were not giving marriage licenses to gay people in Kentucky or wherever that was sales spiked as well.

I guess it comes down to finding a good niche but if you can play off current events that tends to lead to pretty good sales, especially if its a controversial event like an election for example where people want their voice heard or to support their side, etc.

Post: #32

Attempting to make money on recent events. Throwing some more advertising dollars with a few different designs...

Honestly, 1 sale would be my first sale, and extremely motivating.

Post: #33

Assessment:

I don't like Zazzle's store front. After playing with it a bit, I don't like how it's organized nor its UI. It doesn't give clear feedback like I would prefer.

Google Adwords gives you a lot of data. However, it could be a lot more helpful on auto-formatting or giving you crop tools for display ads.

Haven't sold anything yet, but I'm working on better designs for that. Think I need a better store front with search engine generated results as well as possible ad campaigns. I've already got the server space, but I need to probably plug in shopify to wordpress and go through the other processes.

All in all, even though my initial tries at product creation were crap and didn't sell, I learned a bit about adwords for only a little bit of expense. Getting more reasources this weekend about ad creation.

Post: #34

The zero-inventory part is called dropshipping.

Here's a guide I found through a quick google search: https://www.shopify.com/guides/dropshipping.

Essentially you sell the product while the manufacturer ships the product directly to the customer, so you don't have to have any inventory.

--------------------------------------------------

On a side note this is what I'm saving up to do full time. I moved back home with my family and waiting for my savings to grow has been like watching paint dry. Still, once I hit a certain savings threshold I'm going to go into ecommerce retail full time making my own website and marketing and everything.

I was just looking at sales growth for ecommerce recently and the sales growth has been steady around 13-15% growth on a year to year basis since 2011. Ecommerce is what is hot right now.

Personally, I am going to go in 100% because right now is the time to create a full scale ecommerce business in whatever niche you prefer. All of the fastest growing brands right now like: Warby Parker, Casper, Bonobos are selling niche products almost exclusively through ecommerce while pairing up real life marketing campaigns showing off a physical product in order to get consumers interested.

In addition to this if ecommerce is not your thing, starting a niche website will get you to build capital and pivot that capital into another market. With ecommerce you can start with little to no capital and get rolling as a one man show.

Post: #35

(06-26-2016 04:03 PM)All or Nothing Wrote:  The zero-inventory part is called dropshipping.

Here's a guide I found through a quick google search: https://www.shopify.com/guides/dropshipping.

Essentially you sell the product while the manufacturer ships the product directly to the customer, so you don't have to have any inventory.

--------------------------------------------------

On a side note this is what I'm saving up to do full time. I moved back home with my family and waiting for my savings to grow has been like watching paint dry. Still, once I hit a certain savings threshold I'm going to go into ecommerce retail full time making my own website and marketing and everything.

I was just looking at sales growth for ecommerce recently and the sales growth has been steady around 13-15% growth on a year to year basis since 2011. Ecommerce is what is hot right now.

Personally, I am going to go in 100% because right now is the time to create a full scale ecommerce business in whatever niche you prefer. All of the fastest growing brands right now like: Warby Parker, Casper, Bonobos are selling niche products almost exclusively through ecommerce while pairing up real life marketing campaigns showing off a physical product in order to get consumers interested.

In addition to this if ecommerce is not your thing, starting a niche website will get you to build capital and pivot that capital into another market. With ecommerce you can start with little to no capital and get rolling as a one man show.

I've recently started a dropshipping business (watches). It's a fairly simply business model, and people love watches - the margins are incredible. I can purchase a solid quality watch off of Alibaba, and resell for $89.99 no problem, however, most suppliers require an MOQ (min. order quantity of around 200), so it's an investment. You could end up having 200 watches sittin around.

I'll make a post in the future about my experiences with dropshipping. In regards to pros/cons of dropshipping vs t-shirts, you'll receive benefits on the front-end with dropshipping, however, the backend is much easier with t-shirts (less dealing with customers).

Post: #36

Any experience with Scalable Press?

I just linked a shopify with them and shopify with my wordpress and it's been fairly seamless, but I'm new to all but wordpress. Lots of on-demand options available.

Post: #37

What about taxes? Do you register your company at all or is it more like a side hustle that provides you extra cash?

Post: #38

(06-27-2016 02:57 PM)XXL Wrote:  What about taxes? Do you register your company at all or is it more like a side hustle that provides you extra cash?

I formed an LLC in my state. You can probably do it is a side hustle and get away with it, but if you plan on scaling up you should want to form an LLC and pay taxes.

Without forming a business entity, you make yourself vulnerable to personal lawsuits and by not accounting sales in your tax payments that is essentially fraud (based on my limited understanding).

Post: #39

(06-27-2016 02:57 PM)XXL Wrote:  What about taxes? Do you register your company at all or is it more like a side hustle that provides you extra cash?

I didn't bother setting anything up. Until I start making a significant amount of money with, it's not that important. I have been considering, however, setting up a GP which I can use for all of my side businesses.

Post: #40

(06-27-2016 03:42 PM)All or Nothing Wrote:  

(06-27-2016 02:57 PM)XXL Wrote:  What about taxes? Do you register your company at all or is it more like a side hustle that provides you extra cash?

I formed an LLC in my state. You can probably do it is a side hustle and get away with it, but if you plan on scaling up you should want to form an LLC and pay taxes.

Without forming a business entity, you make yourself vulnerable to personal lawsuits and by not accounting sales in your tax payments that is essentially fraud (based on my limited understanding).

Yeah that's why I asked. I hear a lot about hustling and that's cool however where I'm from you can get in trouble if they notice you regularly selling stuff online illegally. Even on ebay-like sites it's risky as there are some limits and other regulations which they can easily check.

On the other hand it's unprofitable to legalize your activity first before starting to sell bunch of stuff online here and there.

Post: #41

(06-26-2016 04:03 PM)All or Nothing Wrote:  The zero-inventory part is called dropshipping.

Here's a guide I found through a quick google search: https://www.shopify.com/guides/dropshipping.

Essentially you sell the product while the manufacturer ships the product directly to the customer, so you don't have to have any inventory.

--------------------------------------------------

On a side note this is what I'm saving up to do full time. I moved back home with my family and waiting for my savings to grow has been like watching paint dry. Still, once I hit a certain savings threshold I'm going to go into ecommerce retail full time making my own website and marketing and everything.

I was just looking at sales growth for ecommerce recently and the sales growth has been steady around 13-15% growth on a year to year basis since 2011. Ecommerce is what is hot right now.

Personally, I am going to go in 100% because right now is the time to create a full scale ecommerce business in whatever niche you prefer. All of the fastest growing brands right now like: Warby Parker, Casper, Bonobos are selling niche products almost exclusively through ecommerce while pairing up real life marketing campaigns showing off a physical product in order to get consumers interested.

In addition to this if ecommerce is not your thing, starting a niche website will get you to build capital and pivot that capital into another market. With ecommerce you can start with little to no capital and get rolling as a one man show.

Rather than sitting around waiting for sales to build up why not start a couple blogs, youtube channels, etc in the niche you hope to start your ecommerce business in. Now only can you start making a bit of money to put towards your business but you'll also be building marketing/sales tool within the niche you plan on being in so once you do get into ecommerce you have blogs you can run banner ads on, you've already built up a relevant audience/tribe, etc.

Even if you don't have the money to start buying inventory yet you surely could afford a domain and start building backlinks in the interum.

Post: #42

(06-26-2016 06:05 PM)WeekendCasanova Wrote:  

(06-26-2016 04:03 PM)All or Nothing Wrote:  The zero-inventory part is called dropshipping.

Here's a guide I found through a quick google search: https://www.shopify.com/guides/dropshipping.

Essentially you sell the product while the manufacturer ships the product directly to the customer, so you don't have to have any inventory.

--------------------------------------------------

On a side note this is what I'm saving up to do full time. I moved back home with my family and waiting for my savings to grow has been like watching paint dry. Still, once I hit a certain savings threshold I'm going to go into ecommerce retail full time making my own website and marketing and everything.

I was just looking at sales growth for ecommerce recently and the sales growth has been steady around 13-15% growth on a year to year basis since 2011. Ecommerce is what is hot right now.

Personally, I am going to go in 100% because right now is the time to create a full scale ecommerce business in whatever niche you prefer. All of the fastest growing brands right now like: Warby Parker, Casper, Bonobos are selling niche products almost exclusively through ecommerce while pairing up real life marketing campaigns showing off a physical product in order to get consumers interested.

In addition to this if ecommerce is not your thing, starting a niche website will get you to build capital and pivot that capital into another market. With ecommerce you can start with little to no capital and get rolling as a one man show.

I've recently started a dropshipping business (watches). It's a fairly simply business model, and people love watches - the margins are incredible. I can purchase a solid quality watch off of Alibaba, and resell for $89.99 no problem, however, most suppliers require an MOQ (min. order quantity of around 200), so it's an investment. You could end up having 200 watches sittin around.

I'll make a post in the future about my experiences with dropshipping. In regards to pros/cons of dropshipping vs t-shirts, you'll receive benefits on the front-end with dropshipping, however, the backend is much easier with t-shirts (less dealing with customers).

Hey, just to be clear dropshipping versus buying and holding inventory are two completely different strategies. If your buying 200 watches at a time off Alibaba that is not dropshipping.

I will say I think if your buying from Alibaba your going about things the proper way. What dropshipping is, it's where you don't hold any inventory. You setup a store and when someone buys from you at say $150, you turn around and go buy the product (1 piece) from your dropshipper for $100, you have it shipped to your cusotmer and you pocket the $50 difference minus merchant processing fees.

Dropshipping requires people buy and hold no inventory so it can be started with less money and there's no risk of getting stuck with inventory. That said margins are much smaller and IMHO it's not really a good long term or sustainable business model ie what happens if whoever your buying from runs out of stock, stops carrying a line of your best selling item, etc.

Post: #43

(06-27-2016 02:57 PM)XXL Wrote:  What about taxes? Do you register your company at all or is it more like a side hustle that provides you extra cash?

Technically and legally speaking your supposed to pay taxes on all income regarldess of whether its a traditional business or a hustle. That said Paypal specifically only issues a 1099 and reports your income if you do over $20,000 in sales and 200 transactions, one of those two won't trigger it, has to be both. I can't speak for other payment processors ie stripe, merchant accounts, etc.

Many people create "stealth" paypal accounts as your not really required to enter any info until you hit that 20k mark so they just create 5 accounts, make 100k and no income is reported.

Post: #44

(06-29-2016 02:06 PM)jamaicabound Wrote:  

(06-26-2016 06:05 PM)WeekendCasanova Wrote:  

(06-26-2016 04:03 PM)All or Nothing Wrote:  The zero-inventory part is called dropshipping.

Here's a guide I found through a quick google search: https://www.shopify.com/guides/dropshipping.

Essentially you sell the product while the manufacturer ships the product directly to the customer, so you don't have to have any inventory.

--------------------------------------------------

On a side note this is what I'm saving up to do full time. I moved back home with my family and waiting for my savings to grow has been like watching paint dry. Still, once I hit a certain savings threshold I'm going to go into ecommerce retail full time making my own website and marketing and everything.

I was just looking at sales growth for ecommerce recently and the sales growth has been steady around 13-15% growth on a year to year basis since 2011. Ecommerce is what is hot right now.

Personally, I am going to go in 100% because right now is the time to create a full scale ecommerce business in whatever niche you prefer. All of the fastest growing brands right now like: Warby Parker, Casper, Bonobos are selling niche products almost exclusively through ecommerce while pairing up real life marketing campaigns showing off a physical product in order to get consumers interested.

In addition to this if ecommerce is not your thing, starting a niche website will get you to build capital and pivot that capital into another market. With ecommerce you can start with little to no capital and get rolling as a one man show.

I've recently started a dropshipping business (watches). It's a fairly simply business model, and people love watches - the margins are incredible. I can purchase a solid quality watch off of Alibaba, and resell for $89.99 no problem, however, most suppliers require an MOQ (min. order quantity of around 200), so it's an investment. You could end up having 200 watches sittin around.

I'll make a post in the future about my experiences with dropshipping. In regards to pros/cons of dropshipping vs t-shirts, you'll receive benefits on the front-end with dropshipping, however, the backend is much easier with t-shirts (less dealing with customers).

Hey, just to be clear dropshipping versus buying and holding inventory are two completely different strategies. If your buying 200 watches at a time off Alibaba that is not dropshipping.

I will say I think if your buying from Alibaba your going about things the proper way. What dropshipping is, it's where you don't hold any inventory. You setup a store and when someone buys from you at say $150, you turn around and go buy the product (1 piece) from your dropshipper for $100, you have it shipped to your cusotmer and you pocket the $50 difference minus merchant processing fees.

Dropshipping requires people buy and hold no inventory so it can be started with less money and there's no risk of getting stuck with inventory. That said margins are much smaller and IMHO it's not really a good long term or sustainable business model ie what happens if whoever your buying from runs out of stock, stops carrying a line of your best selling item, etc.

I'm aware of what drop shipping is. However, for branded watches, almost every supplier wants an MOQ in order to build trust - the business model is drop shipping, but the first batch I'm handling myself in order to test demand etc. From here on out, I'll be "technically" drop shipping but again, for the first batch in order to lower costs, I wanted to do it inhouse.

Post: #45

That might be a silly question, but:

I draw sometimes on paper.
How do I get my drawing now in a good quality on a t-shirt?

Ray

Post: #46

(07-02-2016 04:42 AM)Ray Carlton Wrote:  That might be a silly question, but:

I draw sometimes on paper.
How do I get my drawing now in a good quality on a t-shirt?

Ray

Scan it. Then edit it with Photoshop or Gimp, or draw over and correct with Photoshop or Krita. Keep the quality level high (lots of places have recommended resolutions, formats, etc).

Can also convert to a vector drawing (that looks the same at any size). But you'll need to use Illustrator or Inkscape for that.

Post: #47

I'm super new to this topic but have 2 quick questions.

1.) How can you determine the quality of the shirt since you are not actually doing the shipping yourself? What is the feel of the cotton. I never liked buying shirts online because I can't feel the texture. I don't want the customers to buy a quality of fabric that I wouldn't.

2.) Ray Carlton asked about how to upload his images, and I guess that cuts out the UpWork portion of the process (and also makes you feel proud as an artist). The concern is that the scanned image may be too blurry, right? Have any of you thought of drawing with a Wacom Drawing tablet? It would eliminate the blurriness, right? I have no experience with it, but any opinions?

Post: #48

(07-06-2016 03:00 PM)Mr.GoodThread Wrote:  I'm super new to this topic but have 2 quick questions.

1.) How can you determine the quality of the shirt since you are not actually doing the shipping yourself? What is the feel of the cotton. I never liked buying shirts online because I can't feel the texture. I don't want the customers to buy a quality of fabric that I wouldn't.

2.) Ray Carlton asked about how to upload his images, and I guess that cuts out the UpWork portion of the process (and also makes you feel proud as an artist). The concern is that the scanned image may be too blurry, right? Have any of you thought of drawing with a Wacom Drawing tablet? It would eliminate the blurriness, right? I have no experience with it, but any opinions?

1. Most shirts from CafePress, Zazzle, TeeSpring, etc are completely shirt quality, super thin and feel like sandpaper. Most are selling Anvil shirts or if your lucky maybe hanes tagless. I'm selling my shirts through Amazon Merch. I have the option of basically offering Anvil shirts for say $9 per shirt commission versus offering American Apparel shirts for $6 commission. I offer the better quality shirt and take the lower commission as like you said I like quality and I want repeat buyers and I want people who's friends like their shirt to buy one so I'd rather make less per shirt but sell more and have more recurring buys. One more tip, dont go low on price. I could take a lower commission and make my shirts more attractive in price, however when people see a low price they typically think low quality. If a shirt is $12 they think shitty shirt, if $19.95 they think quality. One thing I will say is the American Apparel shirts which are custom printed from Amazon are not the same American Apparel shirts you may be used to. Don't get me wrong they are leaps and bound better quality than most print on demand shirts but if you hodl them up to a another American Apparel shirt they are a slight bit thinner and not quite as soft.

2. In terms of uploading drawings you do, you would still need to turn them into transparent backgrounds. I'm not an artists or a designer, I hire others to do it for me so take what I say with a grain of salt but anything with thin line drawings may be tough to do that with or may not turn out well. What I would personally do is pass off your drawing to a graphic designer and tell them to recreate it. They will probably enhance the lines and do the clear background and make sure everything looks good. You could get this done on Fiverr.Com very cheaply.

What I typically do is create a design using Canva.Com which is basically like a design program totally stupidied for idiots like me. I come up with a rough idea of what I want, then pass that along to a designer to make it properly. Here is an example of a design I did with this method, keep in mind I have 0 design skills.

Post: #49

I appreciate it. Can anyone sign up for Amazon Merch, or are there certain requirements one needs to meet?

Also, I'm gonna consider taking your advice about using Canva and Fiverr. I just get concerned about finding someone on Fiverr that will do good work.

Also, do you only sell on Amazon or elsewhere as well? Did you sign up with Amazon Merch and then create your company name?

I'm just trying to figure out the main difference between your method and the thread starter's method (like, are you shipping the stuff yourself, or just Amazon ships it for you?).

I'm not that smart with these kinds of things, so please let me know, or send me a PM please. Thank You.

Post: #50

Too many of y'all faggots have been trying to get in the tshirt game.

Way too many tshirt ads from raggedy new companies have been invading my phone.