T-Shirts, Yeah Why Not? - If You Write It

A famous novelist meets a famous surgeon.
The Surgeon says ‘Oh, you’re a writer? I’ve always thought about writing a book once I retire.’
‘Funny that.’ The Writer says. ‘I’ve always thought about doing a bit of brain surgery when I retire.’

I ran across a couple of videos on YouTube and, as so often happens, found a whole world I didn’t know existed. There are about 50,000 videos that talk about t-shirt marketing and about 2,000 that talk about Teespring. My own experience with t-shirts is limited to owning a couple of dozen and having heated debates at fan clubs about silk screen vs embroidered designs. Watching a couple of these video makes it look like all you have to do is start a campaign and wait for the money to start rolling in. Well, maybe it isn’t quite that easy.

This is one my ultra simple designs with a sort of funny bit of writing on it. A bit of common advice in most of the vids I have seen is Don’t Outright Steal anyone else’s design, just Steal Bits of It. So that there are a few dozen variations on themes like ‘I love — and Maybe 3 People…and beer’ or ‘I —, what’s your superpower?’ I first noticed this kind of thing with knock off Christian t-shirts that said things like ‘Got Jesus?’ and Reborn with an altered Recycling logo. Just about any famous logo or trademark you can think of has been turned into some kind of Christian product. I found the idea of Christians outright stealing intellectual property a bit funny. But it seems to be one of the things that sells.

Which brings me back to my opening joke. Selling t-shirts looks easy. The basic steps sound easy enough. Find a niche to sell t-shrits to. Find a design to tweak for that niche or make up your own. Run ads on Twitter or Facebook or Google aimed at your niche and study the data to find the lowest cost ads with the highest percentage of buyers. So, pretty much like selling anything else online. Find people with a shared interest and sell to that interest.

I’m still getting my feet wet and haven’t made any sales yet. Guess I need to watch a few more videos.