Have you ever tried Print On Demand affiliate programs?
Programs like TeeSpring or ViralStyle allow you to sell t-shirt designs for free online. They are called P.O.D. affiliate programs.
With no upfront cost, no inventory management, and no shipping or customer service on you, you get your designs printed on t-shirts and shipped worldwide.
All you have to do is to come up with designs, promote your designs on shirts (pants, mugs, phone cases, hoodies) and collect your money. I talked about selling t-shirts online in another post.
In today’s post, I will share effective strategies to sell t-shirts with TeeSpring and/or ViralStyle.
Like many marketers, you can make $1000 a week if you’re willing to invest time and/or money.
Disclaimer: I am familiar with P.O.D affiliate programs. I make money selling t-shirts, referring people who sell t-shirts. I will share proofs of income. But they are here just to show that it works. Not to support a specific income per week. Your earnings depend on your design, your target niche, your audience and the price you set.
I choose ViralStyle & TeeSpring for several reasons including the ability to:
- sell t-shirts design with no upfront cost.
- earn money selling t-shirts without spending on ads.
- reach out to your customers via email and free ad re-targeting.
- sell only one shirt and get it printed (tips below)
But also because they are similar in concept. You can sell your t-shirts on both systems and take the best of two worlds. They are paying through Payoneer, PayPal, ACH, and Wire.
Affiliate Disclosure: This page contains affiliate links from which I may earn a commission per sale.
Strategies to sell t-shirts with TeeSpring & ViralStyle
Now you can create a branded store on TeeSpring or ViralStyle and sell t-shirts. It’s no more required to spend on ads to make sales. And you can earn residual income like with any other store.
Here are actionable strategies you can apply today.
1.- Target an audience willing to buy
Target people who are passionate about something such as a hobby (fishing, camping), people who are proud of something (their jobs, countries, sports teams), and people who have money to buy. The key is the willingness to invest to wear the design or to give it to someone.
2.- Come up with designs people buy and minimize the risk
2.1.- spy on winning designs: One way to come up with designs that sell is to spy on existing ones that were sold successfully. While you will not copy these designs, you can target a different niche with a similar slogan or design.
2.2.- high-quality designs: I create my designs on Inkscape. You can use other software such as Adobe Illustrator or GIMP. I create 1000 pixels by 1000 pixels designs. They look great and the printing is awesome. So, no return after shipping for low-quality design.
2.3.- save as eps: Save your design as a .eps file. TeeSpring will recognize your design as high-quality designs. It will enable one goal for your campaign. Meaning: You can sell a single t-shirt, get it printed, shipped, and get paid revenue. No more minimum to print with .eps designs.
The same applies when you create your designs using TeeSpring t-shirt designer.
Your design will work the same way on ViralStyle.
3.- Get residual income selling t-shirts with passive traffic
3.1.- Set campaign to repeat: Never forget to set your campaign to relaunch automatically. Your t-shirts will be available for your customers to buy anytime and make you a profit.
3.2.- Choose categories and tags wisely: When you choose the right categories and tags, customers browsing the marketplace will find your t-shirts. You can make more sales passively as you add more eye-catching and inspiring designs.
3.3.- optimize for SEO: It is easier to optimize your t-shirts on ViralStyle with a meta title and meta description. But you can optimize your campaigns to get organic traffic on both systems.
Search for t-shirt keywords buyers are using on Google, Yahoo, and Bing. Optimize your campaigns to rank for those keywords.
TeeSpring and ViralStyle already have the domain authority to rank fast. Earn a passive income selling t-shirts.
4.- Turn on retargeting
With retargeting, TeeSpring re-targets people who visited your campaigns. It uses advertising systems such as Google AdWords to advertise your shirts on sites your potential customers are visiting.
When you make a sale through retargeting, they take $2 as fees. A sale you would not make otherwise. It’s wise to turn on retargeting.
5.- Create Storefront
Create a storefront for your t-shirts. It helps you to promote your store online and get multiple sales. If you promote a single t-shirt, other shirts will be promoted for cross-sale.
You can use your storefront to offer discounts if your customers buy multiple apparel.
You can customize your storefront with a logo and featured image. TeeSpring and ViralStyle are not what selling t-shirts was like years ago.
Back in the day, you created a t-shirt design, promote it through Facebook ads, and make money once. Now you can create a store, a brand, and sell designs printed on t-shirts without investment.
Free Advertising Methods to Sell Shirt Designs
The most effective way to promote t-shirts nowadays is still paid Facebook advertising. However, there are several ways you can advertising your TeeSpring t-shirts for free.
In fact, I no more spend money on ads for a design I could not sell for free.
1.- Share on Pinterest: Share Pins featuring your designs on t-shirts. People buy them, buy they also spread the word about designs they like with repins. With the new ’tried it’ system, they say if they liked it or not.
I created a Pinterest account for clothing only. I share my designs and affiliated products. ( Still working on it )
In the tool section below, you’ll find free tools to create high-quality graphics on to share on social media.
2.- use Tumblr: If you take the time to build a following on your Tumblr blog, or if you can hook people with an astonishing design, Tumblr will make you money.
It is a visual network where people can re-post you and make your post go viral. Sharing t-shirt design is one thing they usually do.
3.- YouTube: I did not use YouTube to promote t-shirt, but I have seen some stores making sales promoting t-shirts on YouTube. It worth the try.
4.- Facebook: Create a Facebook page to promote your shirts organically. Images tend to have more reaches than link posts.
However, most of my sales from Facebook come from Facebook groups. When you’re allowed to do so, share your t-shirts on Facebook groups store and increase your sales.
T-shirt selling Tools & Resources
1.- AdFactory: Create high-quality graphics for your ad or share on social media. This tool will extract your designs from TeeSpring using API. You don’t have to deal with screen capture tools that would take low-quality images.
This is the tool I use to create 1200X1200 pixels images for Facebook or 735 X 1102 pixels images for Pinterest.
2.- Public License Vectors: Download CC0/Public license vectors you can use in your designs. They are free for commercial use. You break any rules using their vectors that you can customize as you wish.
3.- Inkscape: The best software I have found to create vector designs. It is free, open source, multi-platform ( Linux, Windows, Mac OS ).
You can start selling t-shirts designs for free. No investment needed.
I am not making money online primarily via t-shirt selling. But because I can use organic traffic, it’s a good side hustle.