how to start a custom t-shirt business | everything you need as a successful entrepreneur (online!)
why are custom t-shirts better than regular t-shirts?
We all know what the good old regular t-shirts look like, they have a basic design on them with either a brand logo or a stylish drawing or saying on it. But here is where custom t-shirts come into play, which are better than regular t-shirts in many ways:
- First, when you design your own t-shirt you can choose the exact colors, images, and text that you want. This allows you to create a shirt that is truly unique and represents your personal style. It will make you feel more comfortable and confident while you are wearing it, as you will be wearing a garment that perfectly represents your personality and that you created.
- Second, custom t-shirts are usually made from higher quality materials than regular t-shirts, so they will last longer and look better. Our garments, for example, are made with 100% organic cotton and recycled materials, which we will be discussing in a moment.
- Finally, custom t-shirts are a great way to promote your business, organization, or event. They can help you get your name out there and attract new customers or members. You can also show support for a cause or team that you like and can make you bond with other people that are members or fans of the same thing you are showing support for. It can also be a great conversation starter and can be the start of many friendships.
These were three reasons why custom t-shirts are better than regular t-shirts, not that you know this, we are going to explain to you the steps that you need in order to start your own business.
how to start a custom t-shirt business
To start any business you always need a product and a client that demands that product, you being the person in charge of turning productive resources, like time or raw materials, into goods and services that can satisfy the needs of your customers.
In order to start this kind of business, you will need a way of turning regular t-shirts into customizable ones, and that takes quite a lot of investments and time if you have read our previous article on What You Need To Start Making Custom T-Shirts. But worry do not because we have a method that you can exploit now to start your own business practically for FREE!
We are talking about our custom t-shirt affiliate program, which in reality is not limited to only customizable garments but also to any types of garments that we sell. What is this affiliate program, you may ask? Well, it basically consists of you selling the garments that we offer in our store, many of them being custom t-shirts, to customers, getting a good portion of the sale that you make using your affiliate link. You will basically get 20% of the price of the t-shirt, which is insane if compared to similar affiliate programs out there and has a lot of potential for scaling up.
Some of the benefits of our custom t-shirt affiliate program include:
- A wide range of products and services to promote, as we told you before, you will be able to sell every product that we list on this website, which is quite a lot of products, but we are mainly focusing on custom t-shirts here.
- The ability to earn a big commission on sales, which is something that almost no one else is offering at the moment, and can make you scale up your business to stratospheric scales by selling lots of good custom t-shirts.
- Flexible hours, you can work whenever you want, or not even work at all (although you should work at least something if not you will probably make zero sales). No one will be telling you what to do, and when to do it, which is something that most people dream of.
- The ability to work from home, you will also be working on the computer, or your phone (Although the latter is not recommended), which is also a great benefit of any type of online business.
- The potential to earn a full-time income, if you do everything correctly, you can even „retire” from your job to work as your own boss full-time, and who knows, you may even retire completely at an early age.
- You will be promoting slow fashion, organic garments, fighting Fast Fashion, which has many problems, like for example that it is often made with cheap, poor–quality materials that fall apart quickly. This means that people have to keep buying new clothes, which are not only expensive but also bad for the environment. Another problem with fast fashion is that it is often produced in sweatshops, where workers are paid very little and have to work in terrible conditions. This is unfair and unethical. Finally, fast fashion is one of the main contributors to climate change, as the production of clothes uses a lot of energy and resources, and creates a lot of pollution. We offer slow fashion garments that are made with the utmost respect for the environment and the workers making them, and you can be sure that you will be promoting ethical garments. If you want to learn more about this subject please check the article How Does Slow Fashion Actually Help The Environment?
You can learn all about our custom t-shirt affiliate program by reading our article How To Get Money Promoting Slow / Sustainable Fashion? or just by visiting our Affiliate Program main page. You will find all the details about our program and how to begin making money, which you can do by the way totally for FREE.
everything you need to start a custom t-shirt business online
We have to say that starting your own business is not necessarily an easy task, however, it is not the destination but the path you took to get there that matters, and when you do succeed you will always remember that path with the biggest nostalgia. We are going to present you with some of the things you will need to start your own custom t-shirt business online, having said this, here are 7 things you need to do to start your own custom t-shirt business online:
- A website: This is where your affiliate links will be housed and where potential customers will go to learn more about your products or services. This is crucial for starting any business online, and if you do it correctly you can become the next custom t-shirt king, earning a real living out of your business.
- A domain name and hosting: In order to have a website, you‘ll need to purchase a domain name (this is your website‘s address) and hosting (this is where your website lives on the internet). You can find many options out there, from the cheapest ones that can start from $0 (Yes, you read that correctly) to the most professional and costly ones. If you want to know what we personally use for this website, out of curiosity, we use a service called Romarg, but as this is not a sponsor we will not extend further into this subject.
- A product or service to promote: Obviously, you‘ll need something to promote! This can be your own product or service, or something you‘re an affiliate for. We have already told you about our custom t-shirt affiliate program, so this will be the product you will be selling as a newborn entrepreneur. A great thing to do at first is to focus solely on one single product and try your luck with that one.
- An email list: This is a list of people who have signed up to receive emails from you. You can use this list to promote your products or services or simply stay in touch with your audience. This is a highly efficient tool in today’s marketing world and can be very profitable, although it takes a lot of time to create and master. You can also create wonderful emails to send to your customers to help them in one way or another.
- A social media following: Social media is a great way to promote your products or services, and to build an audience for your affiliate business. You can start by creating videos, reviews, posts, or even memes that your followers will love. It takes a lot of time and effort to master the art of social media, but once you do you will be practically unstoppable. There are many Instagram profiles out there that create content for a certain niche, and they are affiliates with a product that can satisfy the needs of that specific niche of people, like for example custom t-shirts.
- An advertising budget: You‘ll need to spend some money on advertising and marketing your business, whether it‘s through social media, pay–per–click advertising, or other means. We recommend that if you are a starter you first start out with organic content, see what works best, then bet on the things that have the most prospects for success. You don’t want to be emptying your pockets too soon, that being, you don’t want to really spend money on the first years, as this can demotivate you and make you think that you are wasting money. The art of advertising is one that requires a lot of experience to master.
- Patience and perseverance: Building an affiliate business takes time, so you‘ll need to be patient and persistent in your efforts. Not only for the custom t-shirt affiliate program, but any business or project ever, you are not going to see changes overnight, instead, you will probably see big results if you are doing everything correctly in a few years, which is a length of times that defers the weakest entrepreneurs and rewards the strongest, and the ones that knew how to spend their money the best.
Here were the 7 steps that will help you start a custom t-shirt business online, however, don’t feel intimidated by all of this. Creating your own website and doing all of this can be a very difficult task to do correctly, and that is why we are recommending Debutify, a wonderful service that will help you create your new eCommerce business from scratch with no programming knowledge needed, with great professional and easy-to-use tools that will help you start selling big. You can sign up now for a 14 day FREE trial and build your online website without any costs (Affiliate link).
Now that you know how to create your customizable t-shirt business online, how about we tell you some of the ways to promote it once you do start it, if you want to learn how to do that, we are going to explain it to you next.
where can you promote your business
There are many reasons why marketing is important for any business, especially for online businesses, your custom t-shirt store included. Marketing helps reach a larger audience, generate leads and sales, and build brand awareness and credibility. Marketing also helps to create a competitive edge and differentiate yourself from your competitors. Having said this, here are 5 of the best ways you can promote your custom t-shirt affiliate business online:
- Use search engine optimization techniques to make sure your website appears as the top result for relevant keywords. Many SEO techniques can be used to boost traffic to your website. Some common techniques include optimizing your website for specific keywords, building backlinks to your website, and submitting your website to directories. There are many ways you can optimize your website for SEO, but by focusing on creating quality content, you’re 80% good.
- Place online ads on websites that your target audience is likely to visit. There are a few ways to create ads online for your business. One way is to create an ad campaign through a specific ad network or platform, such as Google Ads, Facebook Ads, or LinkedIn Ads. Another way is to work with an advertising agency that can help you create and place ads on various websites and online platforms. This is a great way of letting your target audience know about your personalizable t-shirts.
- Make sure your website is mobile-friendly so that people can access it when they are on the go. There are a few key reasons for why it’s important to optimize your website for mobile phones: 1. Mobile phones are the most popular way to access the internet. More people use the internet on their mobile phones than on any other device. 2. Mobile phones have smaller screens and slower processors than desktop computers, so your website needs to be designed to accommodate these constraints. 3. Mobile phone users are often on the go, so they have less time and patience for slow–loading websites. 4. If your website isn’t optimized for mobile phones, you’re likely losing out on a lot of potential website visitors. 5. Optimizing your website for mobile phones can be relatively simple and inexpensive, so there’s really no excuse not to do it.
- Use analytics to track your website traffic and see how people are finding and interacting with your site. Analytics are important for tracking the traffic of your website because they give you insights into how people are finding and using your site. This information can help you optimize your site for better search engine ranking and user experience. Additionally, analytics can help you identify which content is most popular with your audience, so you can produce more of the type of content that they want, in your case, also finding the best-selling custom t-shirts.
- Use content marketing to create and share valuable content that will help promote your business and attract new customers. This is a strategic marketing approach focused on creating and distributing valuable, relevant, and consistent content to attract and retain a clearly–defined audience — and, ultimately, to drive profitable customer action. Content marketing’s purpose is to attract and retain customers by consistently creating and curating relevant and valuable content to change or enhance consumer behavior. Its ultimate goal is to drive profitable customer action. It is important for a business because it helps to build trust and credibility with your target audience. By providing helpful and relevant information, you can show your expertise and build a relationship of trust with potential and current customers. This can eventually lead to more sales and conversions as customers are more likely to purchase from a brand they trust.
These were 5 of the best methods of promoting your brand new custom t-shirt business, now the only thing left to do is to start doing them, and to start with your custom t-shirt business now, following our tips and methods.
summary
We hope you have learned a lot today on how to create and promote your custom t-shirt business, if you want to learn more about slow fashion and the problem with the fashion industry, be sure to check out the articles linked below or just check out our blog, here we have tons of different articles like this one that you will enjoy.
We are thrilled to teach people all around the world 🙂 Also, did you really know what Fast Fashion really is and its terrible consequences for the environment, the planet, the workers, society, and the economy? Do you know exactly what the Slow Fashion or Sustainable Fashion movement is? You should really take a look at these articles about this forgotten and unknown but very urgent and important subject, click here to read „Can Fashion Ever Be Sustainable?”, Sustainable Fashion, Ethical Fashion, Slow Fashion or Fast Fashion 101 | How It’s Destroying Our Planet because knowledge is one of the most powerful strengths you can have, while ignorance is your worst weakness.
We also have a big surprise for you! Because we want to give you the right to know us better, we have prepared a carefully dedicated About Us page where we will tell you who we are, what our mission is, what we do, a closer look at our team, and many more things! Do not miss this opportunity and click here to check it out. Also, we invite you to take a look at our Pinterest, where we will pin everyday sustainable fashion-related content, clothing designs, and other things that you will surely love!
