Start an Online T-Shirt Business at Zero Cost

The greatest indicator of your success in your online business is how much it jives with you as a person and what you really want to express at heart. In this lesson we will come up with a concept that we will grow from an idea into a business. Remember, if you want lasting success you will need to be passionate about your brand, like anything in life.

Actions:

Explore your passions to figure out what kind of brand you want to create.

Look at other's work, not to copy, but to be inspired

Imagine what your brand will be all about

Keeping designs organized is a real-life issue that we can easily avoid with some planning. By keeping our folders organized, and designs well-named, we will avoid losing our artwork or spending unnecessary time looking for it.

Action:

Create at least 3 documents, even if they are blank, and save them so you can easily edit.

Meta Information

Temple Branding Information

Ideas for Shirts

Resource Links:

Overview of Google Docs

https://support.google.com/docs/answer/49008?hl=en

Instead of developing a full business plan, we will build a temple, at least metaphorically, to represent our direction with our brand.

We will constantly refer back to the documents we create while building our temple any time we need to come up with some copy, describe our brand, or just give us direction.

Formatting Temple Branding Document Parts [Guidelines not rules]

Vision Statement: Usually a sentence or two, [your companies highest vision]

Mission statement: One to nine sentences, [what you do, not how]

Pillars: Series of short phrases or words, 3-6 or more, [what you actually do, what sets you apart, specific strategies, features]

Foundation: A short word or phrase, or series of short words and phrases, [why you exist, what you stand for]

Actions:

Create your Temple Branding Document

Resource Links:

Vision Statement Tips:

Considerations from https://www.thebalance.com/create-your-personal-vision-statement-1919208

These are for personal vision statements, but should work for businesses.

Use these questions to guide your thoughts.

• What are the ten things you most enjoy doing? Be honest. These are the ten things without which your weeks, months, and years would feel incomplete.

• What three things must you do every single day to feel fulfilled in your work?

• What are your five-six most important values?

• Your life has a number of important facets or dimensions, all of which deserve some attention in your personal vision statement. Write one important goal for each of them: physical, spiritual, work or career, family, social relationships, financial security, mental improvement and attention, and fun.

• If you never had to work another day in your life, how would you spend your time instead of working?

• When your life is ending, what will you regret not doing, seeing, or achieving?

• What strengths have other people commented on about you and your accomplishments? What strengths do you see in yourself?

• What weaknesses have other people commented on about you and what do you believe are your weaknesses?

A vision statement, according to Nanus, is:

• Future oriented;

• Likely to lead to a better future for the organization – that is, it fits the organization’s history and culture;

• Reflects the organization’s values;

• Sets standards of excellence;

• Clarifies the organization’s purpose and direction;

• Inspires enthusiasm and commitment;

• Reflects the uniqueness of the organization; and,

• Ambitious.

  
  

Picking a name might seem like something that is either hit or miss, but it is really a process that can be understood and mastered. We will look at what goes into picking a lasting and recognizable name. Also, we need to be sure our name is not being used by someone else. We will check around to make sure our idea is safe to use legally.

Action:

Pick a few names, get feedback from others, make a decision.

Love your brand name!

Creating a logo is very important to your brand's identity and success. Logo should be simple, yet complete, look good and black-and-white, and be recognizable at any scale. Take some time to look at famous logos and see how they embody these principles.

Logo Principles: (SMS GERM)

Simple & Complete

Monotone Compatible

Scalable

Grab Attention

Elicit Response

Relate to Brand

Memorable

Action: Create a Vector Logo

Author Note: I didn't realize that these logo principles made a design until editing! SMS GERM I changed “Looks good in black and white” to “Monochrome Compatible” to save space on the slide, and noticed an acronym. It makes perfect sense though, because a logo should be short and viral [Even though germs are not viruses lol]!!

Resource Links:

Take a look at the biggest 100 companies, and the logos may incorporate:

http://www.rankingthebrands.com/The-Brand-Rankings.aspx?rankingID=6

12 Rules for Logo Design

http://www.webdesignerdepot.com/2009/06/12-essential-rules-to-follow-when-designing-a-logo/

Brands of the World [Shown in Video]

http://www.brandsoftheworld.com/

A few Principles of Logo Design

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LoGl65hFNHc

In this lecture works talk about the importance of having a style guide. I recommend that even if you don't have the material or motivation to create a full style guide, we can easily create a document [in a program like Illustrator] that holds all of this information.

Review of what to put in your style guide:

Fonts

Logo Variations

Design Elements

Colors Spacing (Stored by proximity of scalable elements, or grids)

Action: Create some sort of a style guide. This is not vital to your immediate success (you can skip it for now if you want) but it will help you in the long run. It is actually easier to make your style guide after a little designing. You can always make revisions or multiple style guides.

Resource Links:

Why You Need A Style Guide

http://www.webdesignerdepot.com/2014/08/why-your-brand-needs-a-style-guide-and-how-to-create-one/

Style Guide Tips

http://www.creativebloq.com/design/create-style-guides-1012963

My Free Course on Setting Up Illustrator [Use to Create your own Style Guide]

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLDlAphFvOdRvikVdn_z8PFtFz7hSt488e

In this lesson we talk about recording your T-shirt ideas, as well as finding inspiration.

Action:

Install Google documents on your mobile device.

Start coming up with a list of T-shirt ideas, and write down old ones.

PS. I know that conversating is not a word, but I choose to use it in defiance of Lord Webster.

There are a TON of great programs. Use what suits you best!!

This lesson, we will make the art that we will sell on our shirts. This video will take you through finding fonts and design elements, fonts, and keeping them in a handy document.

We will look at rendering, and how to set up the software so it will save in the correct dimensions.

This lesson is an example, and will be different for each of you. The most important thing is to make sure you know what dimensions you will save and so you can open the right size document.

There are many ways to create digital art, I encourage you to look far beyond the simple method here!

Here's what we learned:

1. Wikimedia is a great place to find vector design elements

2. Fontspace is a great place to find fonts and their licensing

3. We created a design with fonts, and it was easy

4. Making our designs the right size and position to render

5. Rendering in PNG to avoid white backgrounds

6. Back up all of your vector objects in a single document

Actions:

Gather resources into a folder.

Work with a graphics program to create art.

In this lesson we will talk about getting our images ready to upload. We need to know how to save out programs to get the highest quality, and what format to use [PNG, JPEG].

We will also talk about a handy Utilities application that comes by default on Mac operating systems. We will use the Automator app to resize images quickly and easily.

Note: PNG-32 is in fact how Photoshop and Illustrator save alpha transparency, they just display PNG-24! Sorry for the confusion! Choose PNG-32 if that is an option (It is not displayed in PS and AI), if not choose PNG-24 with alpha transparency (it will actually save in PNG-32). http://blog.deepbluesky.com/blog/-/the-difference-between-png24-and-png32_49/

Actions:

Mac users: Play around with Automator's image manipulation functions

PC Users: Try an online or software image converter. You may not be allowed to convert large image files online. One free converter is listed below, but more are available.

Resource Links:

Free Windows image converter

http://free-photo-converter.en.softonic.com/

About PNG

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portable_Network_Graphics#Color_depth

This lesson may seem unimportant now, we only have a few designs, but trust me. You will design so much stuff you will easily get lost without naming conventions and organized files.

Come up with your unique system of filename and folders to keep your designs organize and easy to find.

You should be able to know exactly what design of file contains by looking only at its title.

Action: Decide how you will save different versions of your designs.

There are plentiful ways to make a t shirt, we will examine those used in the online marketplace.

We will talk about four ways to get a design onto a T-shirt. They are screen printing, direct to garment printing, plot printing, and dye sublimation. There are other ways to make a T-shirt, but we will actually be able to sell shirts using these four techniques.

Resource Links:

Learn types of Prints on Spreadshirt

http://www.spreadshirt.com/help-C1328/categoryId/9

Spreadshirt Production Process Video

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_tX2Nu-DOvU

Screenprint Process Video

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pOtL0E52qkI

Skreened Printing Process

http://skreened.com/static/process

In this lesson we talk about doing a little research before we get our feet wet. Although we will cover social media marketing in this course, its a good idea to keep an open mind if you want to innovate.

Try to find out as much information about the market as you think will benefit you.

Keep in mind, as much as you may think you know who will buy your shirts, you will almost always be wrong. However, by focusing on a specific type of person, you can come up with strategies you may not think of.

Actions:

Research three separate T-shirt companies, including business model, consumers, and marketing.

Come up with a few ideas on how to get exposure using others for inspiration

Resource Links:

50 Mock-ups to market your designs

http://www.tinydesignr.com/2014/05/free-t-shirt-mockup-templates.html

The hardest thing for me starting out was figuring out which vendors I wanted to invest my time into. I hope to make this easier for all of you!

In this lesson, I will show you you the Industry leading vendors of T-shirts, as well as other custom printed Digital art and merchandise online.

We will focus on the companies that do not require you to have inventory. We allow the marketplace vendor sites to do all of the payment processing, printing, and order fulfillment. These sites allow us to completely avoid dealing with the complexities that bring many t shirt businesses down. We risk nothing but our time.

Action:

Browse around the sites and get first impressions

Resource Links:

https://www.threadless.com/

https://society6.com/

https://skreened.com/

http://www.spreadshirt.com/

https://cafepress.com/

https://www.zazzle.com/

https://www.redbubble.com/

In this lesson, you will hear my opinions of various merchant vendor sites. I will also show you how to sign up.

Remember, these are the defining names in this industry, in my opinion. There are other sites doing the same thing, but I trust these sites and am covering them here. Personally, I have made sales on all of these sites except Threadless, but Redbubble is the best for sales count and totals in my experience.

Action:

Sign up for the merchant vendor sites using your Google email address, and Paypal where needed.

Resource Links:

https://www.threadless.com/join

https://society6.com/register

https://skreened.com/login

http://www.spreadshirt.com/open-t-shirt-shop-step-1-C3306

https://members.cafepress.com/join.aspx

https://www.zazzle.com/lgn/registration?lru=http%3a%2f%2fwww.zazzle.com%2fmy%2fstore%2fcreate&chk=false

https://www.redbubble.com/signup

I received a few questions about TeeSpring and Printful, so I decided to make a short video about the two sites. I hope this helps!

Both Redbubble and Printful have updated there upload process so that you don't have to have images that are exactly the right dimensions.

Redbubble will now put your image on every product that it fits. No more struggling with images that I have to be the correct size. They also have some cool new products available since this course was filmed. 

Printful will now will take your images and ###strong, so long as they are big enough. No more resizing images a bunch of times, and calling your hair out when Printful updates the required sizes. Check out my two new Printful-based websites, http://iamtheuniverse.club and http://futurelifefashion.com. 

I was so excited about the Printful update that I filmed a crash course on creating a Printful-based website in under an hour. You can check out the course by googling "Printful Crash Course", it should show up first

 I hope this gets you excited to get your art out there!!

This lesson, we will use Google AdWords to find tags that will be effective.

Resource Links:

Adwords

http://www.google.com/adwords/

Keyword Planner

https://adwords.google.com/KeywordPlanner

By preparing our descriptions and tags before we upload, we will save ourselves a huge amount of time, and be sure all our products represent our brand and goals.

In this lesson, we will also upload artwork to merchant vendor sites. The process is boring, as I warned, so I did a time-lapse. You will get the hang of uploading after posting a few designs. I uploaded a poster to Redbubble and Society6 instead of a shirt, but the processes is the same! For some sites you will also have to place your created products into stores.

There are many social media services available. In this lesson, we'll look at the most important ones for running a successful T-shirt business.

We will talk about the importance of social media, including getting previews of our product from merchant vendor sites.

In this video, I will talk about what I call product sites, including Wanelo and Pinterest, as well as social sites, encompassing the rest, including Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.

Note: I say 8pm is the best time to post, but there are many theories on this. I heard this 8pm time while in Internet Marketing class in college. After making this video, I have seen many conflicting times, but my personal experience has 8pm being the best time for my audience, college students. Check the link below for the times that are recommended by hub spot.

Actions:

Post to all social media sites.

Keep up with social media by posting new designs as they are made.

Resource Links:

Installing Pinterest Button

https://about.pinterest.com/en/browser-button

Wanelo Button

http://wanelo.com/about/buttons

What Time To Post

http://blog.hubspot.com/marketing/best-times-post-pin-tweet-social-media-infographic

Keep track of your sales through e-mail. Find out what your best selling designs are so you can promote them and know what direction to take your art

In this video, I will talk about optimizing your store by putting products into categories. This video focuses mainly on Redbubble, but other merchant vendor sites allow grouping, or opening multiple storefronts.

Action:

Organize your products

Try to see through a random visitor's eyes to understand their experience

It is up to you to build your successful network, and there is no one cure-all for good marketing. Focus on your strengths, and do not worry about your weaknesses.

Action:

Continue to market through social media.

Thank you for working to improve your skill set and become more productive person. Feel free to share the art and products you create with me on Facebook. I look forward to seeing what you can create!!

Remember, this isn't some get rich scheme, we are creating physical product that people will buy and wear. You will be as successful as you want to be, and work is required. This is easy work, and can help free your life with passive income!

        I am happy to report in 2018 I did not go to a “job” once, and was able to travel South America, a bit of Europe, and Iceland with a few thousand in savings and my t-shirt and teaching money! You can do this too, with dedication and a clear vision! I love you. Thanks for being here!

An update on the state of the major marketplaces in 2018

Welcome to the 2020 update. In this update we will find out what sites are getting the most traffic, learn about some new competitors to Printful, and explore something very exciting, the legalization of Fan Art!