There are literally a million CafePress people out there wondering how to make money with their t-shirts. There are some incredible t-shirts sites that are not making their hosting fees. Truly beautiful sites too.
‘Fact is, you don’t need the latest and greatest t-shirt site to make money on t-shirts. In fact, if you focus too much on selling t-shirts, you will drive yourself batty. Take my word for it. Uh Huh!
No, you really need a web site, or blog, that is about anything but t-shirts to make money on t-shirts. That’s right, anything but t-shirts.
There are too many t-shirt sites out there now. If you have a web site or blog that is about something else, you can make money offering topic specific t-shirts. That’s the ticket.
The key to making money from t-shirts is in niche markets. Niche marketing works like a charm with t-shirts.
Almost all of your site visitors wear t-shirts. They are a target market fortrither t-shirts. The thing is, even if they look for t-shirts elsewhere online, the market is so big, so saturated, that it is hard to find anything. It takes a real effort. Yet, if your web site or blog is already of interest to them, you can show them shirts that they’ll buy.
It’s relatively easy but, you’ll have to make the effort. One rainy Saturday afternoon of work on a t-shirt page for your site and you can probably create an income stream from t-shirts in that one afternoon. The cool thing is that you don’t have to produce the shirts yourself or handle the orders and customer service to make money. You can build a page for your site that sells t-shirts that your customers can buy and once that page is done, it will take little or no maintenance. Just put some links on your site and let your site visitors discover it. Cool t-shirts sell themselves.
Niche Market + Cool T-Shirts = Income
Here are three ways to make money by putting t-shirt stuff on your site.
1. Create Your Own T-Shirts to Sell
You don’t need to be an artist. Words on t-shirts sell. Join CafePress.com and make yourself some t-shirts. People trust CafePress.com and they will be willing to buy your shirts knowing that they will get a quality shirt.
Even though, when you sign up, it will sound like your CafePress store is going attract attention from their marketplace, don’t bet on it. Generally, the people that make money on CafePress usually do it because they have the market already. Because, they have a niche market and they are offering that market cool t-shirts specific to their interests. You need to do that. Make t-shirts your site’s visitors will like. Again, that’s the key.
They don’t have to be fancy. Many people enjoy associating themselves with their interests. Mustang owners with Mustang t-shirts, key chains, you name it. People like to own things that define who they are. Help them do that. A simple, words only, “Compost Happens” t-shirt sold like mad to… who? Gardeners, of course. No one else would be interested. But, many thousands of these t-shirts sold to gardeners. Uh huh.
You can do it. Just think about it some, and then create your t-shirts.
2. Create T-Shirts People Can Customize Themselves
Customizing a t-shirt, and the whole personalization thing, is huge. Did you know that you can create t-shirt templates that people can then customize themselves? This is great for your site. People can simply add their name or they can completely customize your t-shirt designs. Great for consumers and also great for teams, clubs, businesses and what have you.
Customizable t-shirts can even create interactivity on your site. Create some interesting t-shirt design templates and ask your site visitors to start with your templates and customize them further. Offer to post the most original ideas on the site and you can get some nice community involvement going.
CustomAvenue.com [http://www.customavenue.com] will let you create t-shirt templates for free. You create the t-shirt design templates and add them to your site. People can then customize them to their liking. They buy them and you get paid.
CustomAvenue.com also has some great tools to help you sell customizable t-shirts. Their tools allow you to add a full design studio to your site… if you want to go whole hog in to it. For page makers, they also have some little widgets that you can add your designs to and post on your site or blog.
The widgets are cool. When someone clicks on your design, it loads in to a design studio and they can edit it right there while they are still on your web site. The T-Shirt Customizer Widget is small and doesn’t take up much room but has some real powerful features. It’s worth the time to build a widget and add it to your website. Most of your site visitors will never have seen anything like it.
Many thousands of sites sell your basic t-shirt but very few have customizable designs. This is the new trend in online t-shirt sales. Take this article as your introduction to the next big thing in making money with t-shirts. Customizable t-shirts. Mark my word.
