Opening a print-on-demand T-shirt shop is one of the easiest ways to start an online business with virtually no startup cost and no risk. Companies like Cafepress, Printfection and Zazzle allow you to open your own shop for free or cheap, and they take care of all the customer service, manufacturing and shipping. All you have to do is put up a few designs, set your markup and collect your monthly paycheck.
However, if you choose to run your business that way, you may be waiting a long time for that first check. It takes works to build a successful t-shirt business, but if you do it right you could be on your way to earning a significant second income from home.
The first thing you need to open an online t-shirt shop is some t-shirt designs. But first you must decide on a theme for your shop and what your target market is. One way you can do this is to take a look at your own hobbies. For example, if you like to spend your weekends fly fishing, you can safely assume there are a few other hundred thousand people who also like to spend their weekends fly fishing. Chances are many of those people would buy t-shirts about fly fishing, or their friends and family would buy them as gifts. So now you’ve got your market and you can open your shop. Ted’s Fly Fishing T-shirt Shop.
Now you can start designing. For many people this can be the biggest hurdle, especially without a background in art or graphic design. If you are really serious about succeeding with an online t-shirt shop the best thing you can do is contact your local community college and ask if they offer any courses in the graphic design department that focus on using Adobe Photoshop and Illustrator. These programs can have a steep learning curve but they will prove invaluable for their flexibility. If you don’t want to take classes there are multitudes of tutorials available online, and forums with others willing to help you learn.
Another hurdle is obtaining the design software. Photoshop CS3 will set you back about $600.00. But you don’t need to have the newest version. I have been using Photoshop 7 for the past four years and it still serves me well. You can usually find older versions available for less that half the price of CS3. There is also Photoshop Elements, which is more of a consumer grade version that is usually $100.00 or less. If you are extremely poor or simply don’t want to spend a whole lot of money up front there are a few open source programs that can be downloaded for free off the internet. Gimp is a photo editing program similar to Photoshop, and Inkscape is a vector program similar to Illustrator. These are free to download and use, and allow you to get your feet wet in the world of t-shirt design.
If you are creating text only designs you don’t need much besides Photoshop (or your software of choice) and fonts. You can go to www.1001freefonts.com and for a small fee purchase 6500 fonts and a font manager. This is probably more that you will ever need! But if you want to add graphics to your text and have no drawing skills, you may need to purchase some clipart. Clipart.com and GraphicsFactory.com both offer subscription based services that allow you to use the graphics on your t-shirts. There are many other clipart and photo services around, but you must be sure to read the terms of service before you buy. Many of them do not allow their images to be used on pod websites such as Cafepress.
Now you need to promote your shop online and offline. To promote online make sure you have thorough descriptions written for all your products that utilize important keywords. Think about what you would type in a search engine if you were looking for fly fishing t-shirts, and then use those phrases in your shop. Promotion offline is much easier if you have your own domain name. Head over to godaddy.com and you can purchase a domain name for $9.95 a year. You can purchase your domain name of choice as long as it’s available and set it to redirect to your online t-shirt shop. Giving people a web address such as www.flyfishingshirts.com looks much more professional than www.cafepress.com/flyfishingshirts.
Next you need to get some business cards with your shop name and address on them. www.Vistaprint.com and www.Overnightprints.com both offer low cost business cards where you can upload your own design or use one of their templates. Hand them out to family and friends, post them on community bulletin boards, and even leave them in public bathroom stalls. Your imagination is your only limit!
Now you know the fundamentals of starting your own online t-shirt business. The most important thing is to stay motivated and keep designing. Keep your store fresh with new designs and get the word out. With hard work and dedication someday you may even be able to quit your day job!
