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Have you ever wanted to quit your day job and be your own boss? It’s the dream most of us wish would come true. Well starting your own online T-Shirt business could be that answer to that very dream.
But where should you start and go about achieving success in this type of business you ask? Well, let’s take a look through some of the basics to get you started.
Branding Is Key
If you want your T-Shirt business to stand out from the rest of the competition you will need to start with creating an amazing logo. Something memorable and something that easily sums up what your new business is about.
If you are an artistic, creative type maybe you could come up with something yourself, but if you are not, do not despair.
To try and save yourself money, ask around your circle of friends and loved ones if there is anybody they know who is good at graphic design. The world is a small place so chances are you will have someone you know who is connected to somebody who could create the logo for you.
There are many companies online that can help create a logo as well should you need, but always make sure to shop around first to find the best quotes you can.
Finding Suppliers
Again looking online you will be able to find lots of different suppliers for all aspects of items that you will need.
Finding good suppliers for the t-shirts and extras like custom hang tags is a vital starting point for the business as you will need to factor in those costs to your pricing.
If you are going to print the designs on the t-shirts yourself you may be able to save quite a bit of money. But you may find the quality is better should you outsource this to a professional company that specializes in it.
Packaging is also very important, as first impressions are so vital these days. So you will need to find a good supplier to buy all the packaging materials from.
You should always shop around and get quotes before committing to any one supplier as well as researching the company for reviews etc.
Where Should You Sell Your T-Shirts?
Once you have sorted out a good logo, great designs and finding good suppliers to use, your next step is deciding where to try and sell your t-shirts.
A good place to start would be creating your own website or e-shop. This can be relatively inexpensive to create if you wanted a basic website. You could even create it yourself with many online website businesses where you can build using their custom templates.
Again try to utilize contacts that you may have or know that are website designers, maybe you could give them some freebies in return for helping you build a website for your t-shirt business.
Remember that online there will be lots of competition on the search engines so don’t expect to be reaching the number one spot on searches for T-Shirts any time soon.
Instead, try and create a good fresh looking website that runs smoothly and stands outs from the rest. You want your customers to enjoy the experience of using your websites so that they come back and order more.
Aldo makes use of the big online shops that sell clothing, by listing your products with them. Although they may take a commission or charge you for the listing, they will always have a large amount of traffic going to their website which should help generate sales for you.
Social Media Pages
Once you have created an e-shop where people are able to purchase your creations it’s time to try and start building a following.
The perfect place to do this is on social media. Use all the different platforms available to you including Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter. There are always new social media platforms popping up so try and utilize all those that are available to you as it’s a free source of promotion.
Make sure that you use the same handle name on all of them, so it’s easy to find your pages on all of the platforms.
Start to friend/follow similar pages to yours to try and increase your own followers. Be sure to be posting good content daily such as pictures of your latest t-shirts and be sure to always have a link back to your e-shop. This will help generate traffic to your website and hopefully increase your sales.
A great idea to gain more of a following would be to run competitions, offering your followers a chance to win a t-shirt if they share your page or tag ten of their friends. Be creative with your content to get your follower to engage with you and again increase traffic to your website to help sales.
Other Clothing Products
Once you have successfully built your t-shirt business why not venture out into other clothing. If your brand and logo is strong then a god idea would be to venture into baseball hats or jumpers.
Should you be selling good numbers of t-shirts then there is no reason why people who purchase them wouldn’t be interested in other lines of clothing you create.
Again this is why as previously mentioned good logos and branding are key to your success and as they are one the first things you work it’s important to get them right.
Although building a brand is hard work, long term it’s going to be very rewarding so make sure to put the effort in for the long term success you desire.
To Sum Up
There’s no denying it will take a lot of hard work and time to build a successful t-shirt business but many people have done it before so why can’t you.
Be organized and prepare everything carefully and in no time you should have a new successful money-making business by creating your own branded t-shirts. What are you waiting for!
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This content is sponsored by Benjamin Ortiz.
Photo: Shutterstock