subject: Online Business: How to Sell T-Shirts Online [print this page] Online Business: How to Sell T-Shirts Online
Knowing how to sell t-shirts online could provide you with a turnkey online business that takes little maintenance other than advertising your website. There are many advertising techniques available that you can use to promote an online t-shirt business, and many of these are free and hence involving no advance outlay by you. So how do you start selling t-shirts online?1. Find a SupplierLike any retail business operating on the internet, you have to find a supplier of the t-shirts. Few online businesses actually manufacture the articles they sell themselves. The product is produced by others and sold by you, and you either pay for stock that you the resell at a profit or you operate on a drops hipping basis where you take the orders and the supplier delivers. You then either receive payment and pay the supplier their invoice or it works the other way around, and the supplier collects the payment and then pays you.2. Get Products to SellCheck out the standard stock and designs and then advertise these along with your own offer to customize the logo and text as required by the customer. You can then put these offers on your website. This involves setting up your own website, auto responders, shopping cart and payment portal all of which can be very expensive.The alternative is to sell t-shirts online using a website supplied by the t-shirt provider - that will have all of these elements already installed, and will cost you nothing. Orders placed will be passed automatically from your website to the supplier who will collect the payment deliver the product directly to the customer, and then pay you each month. This is the best option for those with little online marketing experience.3. Get a Domain Name for your WebsiteYou will need to get your own domain name, but that isn't difficult to do. Go Daddy or any of the other domain name registration firms online will be able to register a domain name for you at under $10/month for a .com name. Domains Bot will be able to spin a few domains for you from your initial keyword input and tell you what names are available to use. You can normally choose a template for your website and change its colors if you want.4. Get Your DesignsGet your own designs together. You might be given some designs to start with or you may have to use your own designs from the beginning. It's generally better if you can get your own designs together because then you will be offering something unique when you sell t-shirts online. That is important.5. Open a PayPal account.You might have heard bad things from some people about PayPal, but it is generally a good way of paying and accepting payments. Unless you want to pay a great deal of money for a merchant account enabling you to accept credit and debit cards, PayPal is the best available. You will find that most people buying and selling online use it and that your supplier will also likely want paid using PayPal.6. Advertise your WebsiteYou have a website, but to sell t-shirts online you then have to advertise your website. There are many ways to do this such as pay per click and paid adverts but these two techniques cost money. Article marketing is free and you could also run a blog using Blogger or Word press (both free), on which you can promote your website, products and also offer useful information about using t-shirts for publicity, commemorative and other purposes.7. Wait for CustomersSit back and wait for the money. It is slightly more complex than that in that you have a certain amount of work to do, such as designing the t-shirts, and advertising your website or writing the blog, but there is no need to carry out complex or expensive promotions.You also have to set your prices based upon your wholesale prices. The wholesale price for a printed green t-shirt might be $17, so you can charge $34 for it and make 100% markup. You could offer a special promotion at $25 and still make $8 on the sale. You could also create a membership site where your members pay a monthly fee and are given for example, t-shirts free for their membership or at silly price such as $5. The minimum you can charge without making a loss is $17 for the above example, so you would still gain if the membership was $20 monthly.The simplest way to sell t-shirts online, and use it as a money-making online business, is to offer the shirts at 100% over the wholesale price. Use your site as a simple retail website, and once you are making sufficient money online you can break out and expand into other areas such as general apparel, other merchandise or other printed promotional items for corporate events.For now however, if you want your own online business then learn how to sell t-shirts online and follow the above steps and you will have made a good start.
