The Unexpected Way Print on Demand Is Shaping Politics

I’m always looking for passive income, and I’ve always wanted to design and sell shirts online. I put that idea aside when I was making good money writing articles, content to get just a few sales from my funny shirt designs.

Then writing became unpredictable, and AI made it easy for anyone to conceptualize a design with a few words put together (known as a prompt), and suddenly I became a print-on-demand artist — or maybe just a seller.

This month would be my biggest yet, even bigger than April when everyone was buying eclipse shirts. I only sold a few of those “Twice in a Lifetime” designs back then.

I’ll probably be long dead by the time the world experiences another eclipse of that magnitude, but who knew I’d still be alive to see Donald Trump become president again?

Full disclosure: I did design (or rather conceptualize) funny Trump shirts, like this “Snowflake Removal Service” hoodie which I thought was hilarious. While I consider myself very liberal, I also have a thing or two to say about the “wokes.”

I haven’t really figured out what sells and what doesn’t, but I knew it wasn’t about the design quality.

One of my early bestsellers was a shirt about drag that looked like a five-year-old designed it with free clipart. But you can’t argue with what the market wants — as long as I get royalties, I have no judgment about what people buy online.

Like anything online, everything depends on the algorithm.

I’m still trying to figure out how other print-on-demand sellers optimize their listings because success depends on how good you are at SEO and keyword research. That’s what propels your shirt designs to the top of the results page when someone searches for a Trump shirt or a meme shirt.

We buy shirts like we buy donuts (or for some, jewelry) — they’re impulse buys. We see something we like, click the add-to-cart button, and in a few days that shirt arrives at our home ready to show off to friends, family, or even neighbors we want to annoy.

Even with a thousand copycats of the same design, the one who sells the most shirts will be the one occupying the top spot of what the algorithm believes the buyer is looking for based on those few words they type in the search bar.

As much as I don’t like Trump, beggars can’t be choosers, and I knew if I wanted to make money, I had to do election shirts.

Besides, not being American should free me from feeling bad about peddling pro-Trump ideas on shirts, right?

But I still felt bad.

Expecting only a few sales (since it was starting to look like an uneven contest between Biden and Trump), I did the unimaginable — I rode the trend and designed (or should I say, asked AI to design) pro-Trump shirts.

Then the unexpected happened: Biden was unceremoniously forced to step down as the Democratic presidential candidate after one lousy debate performance.

This was quickly followed by an assassination attempt on Trump and the proverbial glass ceiling of having the first US woman president finally being within reach for Vice President Kamala Harris.

The political merch exploded.

During my research, I was surprised to discover that Trump merch is a massive niche.

I don’t know how much money was spent on Trump shirts in 2016 and 2020, but the numbers from just one shopping platform were beyond what I expected.

The same people who claim everything is more expensive during the Biden years, who likely blame immigrants for stealing their food, would still buy a $20 Trump shirt just to post themselves wearing it on social media and be seen wearing the same exact shirt as the next Trump supporter.

If you’re a white Trump supporter, you know what I mean.

It took the euphoria of the next few weeks and the money flowing into the Kamala Harris campaign for “Kamala shirts” to become a niche, and it all started with the cat lady demographic.

Suddenly it was cool to be called a childless cat lady.

As a liberal, I was just happy churning out text-to-image prompts and asking multiple AI tools to design Kamala shirts.

I tried every possible idea that came to mind, even the most highbrow art combining Van Gogh’s Starry Night with black cats gazing at the stars.

Yet most of my Kamala Harris shirts weren’t selling. Instead, my old reliable “Snowflake Removal Service” shirt was selling more than usual.

I never made over $100 in royalties, but the numbers were there.

One shirt design sold a thousand units a day — someone was making good money, at least $1,000 daily. If they had multiple Trump shirts and happened to be your neighbor, that would explain the new Tesla Cybertruck parked in their driveway.

But for people like me, I missed the trend just like I missed the eclipse trend, or just as I miss my youth.

Luckily, I have a few evergreen shirt designs like my Border Collie shirt and my “Reading is Fundamental” shirt.

While I didn’t make a fortune, I was hoping Kamala would win.

That would still make me very happy — America proving the world wrong by electing a woman as president and not the convicted felon. But even that quickly became a trending shirt: “Voting for the Felon.”

On Election Night, I knew who would win — it’s the candidate who sold the most shirts.

If someone would buy multiple pieces of merch every time Trump says something cringy like “They are killing their pets,” and people would actually wear that on a shirt, that’s beyond being a supporter.

That’s being part of a cult, and the world hasn’t seen anything like Trump.

Even the Japanese buy Trump shirts.

So while Kamala spent more than $1 billion on her campaign, and the cat ladies bought one shirt each (hey, cat lovers are smart — they’d rather buy their cats treats than another Kamala shirt), it didn’t come as a surprise to me when Trump overwhelmingly won all the swing states and the popular vote as midnight approached on election night.

Final Words

Forget about Professor Alan Lichtman’s 13 keys. Or maybe if George Clooney hadn’t written that very public letter that led to Nancy Pelosi delivering what could have been her best performance yet to force the old man from running, the only Democrat who beat Trump became a meme to many Trump supporters buying shirts making fun of him.

Maybe the 13 keys would have still worked if Biden was the candidate? Who knows.

And who knows what happens next to America, but why am I even surprised that weeks after the election, Trump supporters are still buying campaign shirts? Has anyone told them the election is over?

But hey, how can I complain when my royalties from my “Snowflake Removal Service” shirts are going to pay next month’s rent?

And if you are a Trump supporter, go buy yourself my new Trump tumbler design.

Thank you for reading.

—

This post was previously published on The Pub.

***

Join The Good Men Project as a Premium Member today.

All Premium Members get to view The Good Men Project with NO ADS.

A $50 annual membership gives you an all access pass. You can be a part of every call, group, class and community.
A $25 annual membership gives you access to one class, one Social Interest group and our online communities.
A $12 annual membership gives you access to our Friday calls with the publisher, our online community.