How to Make Money Selling a High Demand Novelty Item Copyright 2013 by James J Jones Duplication prohibited Notice This ebook and supplementary material was created to provide specific information regarding the subject matter covered. Every attempt has been made to verify the information provided in this material however neither the author nor the publisher are responsible for any errors, omissions, or incorrect interpretations of the subject matter. Information contained within this material is subject to local, state, federal and international laws. The reader is advised to consult with a licensed professional for legal, financial and other professional services. The reader of this material assumes responsibility for the use of this information. Adherence to all applicable laws and regulations governing professional licensing, business practices, advertising and all other aspects of doing business in the United States or any other jurisdiction is the sole responsibility of the reader. The author and publisher assume no responsibility or liability whatsoever for the use or misuse of the information contained within these materials. How to Make Money Selling a High Demand Novelty Item is Copyright 2013 by James J. Jones. Reproduction without permission is prohibited.
Back when I got started in Internet Marketing (1996) there were so very few ways to make money online. There was no Kindle or Adsense or Createspace or Niche Marketing. Basically we had: ebay The Amazon Affiliate Program Selling Information on How to Make Money with ebay or the Amazon Affiliate Program There were a few other things you could sell if you were creative such as getting ranked to the top of Alta Vista What! You ve never heard of Alta Vista? Alta Vista was the dominate search engine of the day. (Google was just a twinkle in the eyes of Larry Page and Sergey Brin :) But selling physical products other than through ebay or Amazon -- was a costly and very difficult endeavor. And even if we could make money it was difficult to get paid. There was no Paypal or Clickbank or JV Zoo. About the only way to target traffic other than trying to rank in Alta Vista -- was with click exchanges which were completely untargeted and mostly fraudulent. Today we have it so much easier... Not only is it easier to find products to sell it s also easier to target the people who are the most likely prospects for these products. In this special report I m going to tell you about company that allows you to sell a certain extremely popular novelty item without you having to invest in any inventory, without the need for a website of your own and with an extremely small investment (less than $10) to get started.
This company is called Teespring and the novelty item I am referring to is T-Shirts. Selling T-Shirts online has been around for years but the big problem has been the cost involved in printing up dozens or hundreds of T-Shirts and carrying the inventory not knowing if you would sell the shirts or not. A company called Cafepress solved part of the problem a few years ago by offering a print on demand t-shirt service. You could upload your T-Shirt design to Cafepress and they would only print the shirt when a customer ordered. The problem with that solution was since the T-Shirts were printed one at a time the wholesale margin very low and left little profit margin for the seller.
Then 2011 a new company called Teespring hit the scene with an innovative new business model. The Teespring business model, based on Crowdfunding, is ingenious and simple: You set a goal of how many T-Shirts you think you will sell, the price, and in what time period. This is called a Campaign. Teespring gives you wholesale pricing based on the number of shirts in your campaign. But they only print the shirts when you reach your goal. Your customers reserve their T-shirt using a credit card Teespring doesn t charge the card until the shirts are printed so there are no messy refunds to worry about. If the goal isn t reached the shirts aren t printed, the customers aren t charged and nobody makes any money. BUT, you aren t charged anything either for setting up the campaign. You can try the campaign again with a different price or goal. Or, try a totally different design and see if that works. There is no limit to the number of campaigns you can run even if they are not successful. And you are never charged for an unsuccessful campaign. You can find out all the details at this link: http://old.teespring.com/about Here s a walk though of setting a campaign using the design tool: First off make sure to sign up for a free Teespring Account. Just go to www.teespring.com then click the Log In> link at the top. If you don t have an account just click on the create new account link.
Once your account is created, log in and you ll see this screen: Click on the green Get Started button and you ll see a screen that looks like this: This is the designer tool and is where you will create your t-shirt design using the tools Teespring provides.
You can add text to your t-shirt using the Add text tool. Important: the text must be contained completely within the borders on the shirt or it will not print. Just break the text up using the Enter key on your keyboard to make it appear within the border as I ve done below. Note: For some reason the position tools on the text box don t seem to work. But you can use your mouse to position the text box on the shirt by selecting it and using the up and down keyboard keys to move the text box up and down on the shirt. Notice the price on the bottom right: that is the price for 50 shirts with the text above. There are several things that you can customize some increase the price and some don t:
1) Font there are hundreds of different fonts to choose from. You ll only see the most popular to start but if you click on the drop down box next to Popular you ll see many more categories each with a dozen or more fonts:
If you change the font be sure to make sure the text still fits in the border. 2) Text Color you can choose from 35 different colors. 3) Add an Outline think of an outline as a border around your text. The default is No Outline and you can also choose thin, medium or thick. This seems to be counter-intuitive pricewise because the No outline option increases the price while the other options don t. 4) T-shirt color choose this from the color pallet on the right side of the shirt. The darker colors are more expensive. 5) Artwork. You can include an image on your T-Shirt either one your create of a stock image from Teespring:
Just click on the Add/upload art tab and you can choose from thousands of stock images or upload your own. Notes: a) if you upload your own image make sure the background is transparent so it will match the t-shirt color. b) Adding an image will increase the price. c) Like with the text box controls for some reason the position tools on the image text box don t seem to work either. But you can use your mouse to position the image box on the shirt by selecting it and using the up and down keyboard keys to move the image box up and down on the shirt. Here s our sample shirt with a stock image added:
6) Back side design. By default the back of the t-shirt is blank. To add text and/or an image to the back click the See back link at the bottom of the t- shirt to open up the back side of the t-shirt in the editor. You can edit the back side in the exact same way as the front side. Adding back text or images adds to the price. 7) Finally you can select the t-shirt design each design generally has different options for material which affects the price:
Now we re finished with the design of the t-shirt. Here s what we have so far: Notice at the top there is a progress bar with a Save button. It s a good idea to save your design now and as you are working on it. Next, click the green Next Step button at the bottom right hand side of the form. You ll see this screen:
On this screen you can set your Sales goal and selling price. Remember the default is 50 t-shirts but here us where you can change that. You can set a sales goal for as low as 10 shirts if you want but remember, the lower the quantity the higher the price per shirt. For a first time you may want to just set it to shirts just to get your feet wet. At a retail price of $19.99 you ll make a little over $5 per shirt: After you test it out you can always run the campaign again with a higher quantity goal. Next click the green Next Step button again. You ll see this screen:
Here you can enter your Campaign title, description, length and URL. You can also choose to let your buyers pick up their orders (not normally recommended) and choose additional styles of t-shirts to sell from the same page.
For the Campaign length if I m testing something out I will choose just a week or 10 days. That will give me plenty of time to see if it s going to be successful or not. (and then I can re-run it with a longer length and higher quantity) For the url just use something related to the subject of the t-shirt. For the Campaign title it s useful to begin with the phrase: Limited Edition and a short phrase that summarizes your t-shirt because this shows people that they should order now or it may sell out. For the description you can look at other shirts for ideas. Here s an example of a well done title and description: http://teespring.com/gsdtraditionhoodie Once you re satisfied with your campaign click the green Launch your campaign button and you re ready to start selling! And now the fun begins or maybe this is the part you ve been dreading: How to find the people who are interested in your Shirt to your Teespring page! Teespring is great at providing a platform to design and sell your t-shirts. However they do not help you get traffic to your t-shirt page. That YOU must do yourself luckily its easy if you know: 1) The BEST types of markets to target with t-shirt designs. 2) How to reach these markets cost effectively. It would take me another 20 or 30 pages to tell you how to do those two things so I m instead I m going to teach you how on a free training webinar Just go here to sign up (hurry seats are limited): http://snip5.com/r/?rd=w082i9iem
I ll also show you a Case Study of a Teespring Campaign based off a popular TV Show that made $4014.80 in profit in just a few days. http://snip5.com/r/?rd=w082i9iem See you there! James J Jones