- Hey, everyone. So if you've been following
this channel for a while, you've probably noticed two things. The first thing is that
it's just about that time of the video, where I take
a moment to thank everybody who takes a moment out
of their very busy day to give my video a like and to subscribe, because seriously, every time you do it, it genuinely supports me, so thank you so much to everyone that takes the moment to do so. But the second thing that
you've probably noticed is that I'm wearing a
T-shirt in this video. What's up with that, Sarah? Where is the Burberry flannel? Well, it's because you, my
amazing long-term viewers and subscribers might
remember a video a while back where I revealed my five favorite products to make and sell online
with print-on-demand. And in this video, I revealed
my absolute favorite product and that product, drum
roll please, is T-shirts. Yes. Although I will freely admit that stickers are fast becoming one
of my favorite products to sell as well, for
now, the humble T-shirt is still inching it out as
my favorite item to sell. And you know, over the years, I have sold a lot of T-shirts. And throughout this journey, I will freely admit that
I've made a lot of mistakes. Mistakes, which have
cost me a lot of money. But on the flip side, I've also done something
else throughout this journey. I've also developed some
strategies and some tricks which have improved my T-shirt business and have in return made me a lot of money. And so in this video, not
only did I want to celebrate my favorite item to sell online by wearing my favorite ever
print-on-demand T-shirt that I've ever bought, featuring some super cool
art of Swedish Vallhunds, which is the breed of my dog Starbuck, but also thought it would
be fun to share with you my tips and strategies
that I've been using to improve my T-shirt
business by telling you the 10 things that you
should or need to do before you sell T-shirts online. This is basically the information that I wish I had known
before I got started. So let's begin with the first
thing that you need to do, and that is you need to price
your T-shirts not too cheaply, but not too expensive either. So there was a very
interesting pricing study done with beer, which revealed the sweet spot when it comes to pricing
products, including T-shirts. This study was done in three phases. In the first phase, a restaurant listed two
beers on their menu, a premium beer for $2.50 and
a cheap beer for a $1.80. Even if people didn't recognize the beers, 80% of people would
choose the premium beer, not the cheap beer. So that was phase one of the study. In phase two, that same
restaurant changed their menu and listed three beers on it. A premium beer for $2.50,
a standard beer for a $1.80 and a super cheap beer for a $1.60. Now, 80% of people chose the
middle of the road priced beer that cost a $1.80. And then in phase three of the study, they offered three
beers on the menu again, but this time they offered a
super premium beer for $3.40, a standard beer for $2.50
and a cheap beer for a $1.60. And guess what? 80% of people chose the $2.50 beer. Again, the middle one
was the most popular one. So can you see what the study showed? Well, it showed that pricing
is ambiguous and subjective. Is a beer worth a $1.80,
or is a beer worth $2.50? Clearly nobody really knows,
but what most people do know is that they don't wanna
buy the expensive product to get ripped off, but
they also don't wanna buy the super cheap product, in case you know, it's cheap for a reason. And so I know through reading my comments that a lot of people are afraid to price their products
that they sell online, including T-shirts for anything other than the lowest end of the pricing spectrum, because they are afraid of losing sales, which is ironic because
as the study showed, it can actually hurt
your sales by doing that. And so my advice, when it
comes to pricing your T-shirts, price it somewhere in the middle. And so to do that, think about what you're
selling your T-shirts. If you're selling your T-shirts
on Redbubble, for example, T-shirts tend to go from
around $17 on the low end to $21 on the high end. And so pricing somewhere in the middle usually works well. You know on Etsy, T-shirts
have a wider pricing range of between $10 to $30. So again somewhere in the middle
is usually the sweet spot. And if you sell privately
through something like Shopify, like me, remember that
the range is even wider. And Urban Outfitters, most T's cost at least 34 U.S. dollars, some costing over 80 U.S dollars, but then again, at Walmart
they sell for as low as $8. So when it comes to
selling in your own store, the low end is really low. So for me, I sell my T-shirts
in the middle for 25 to $30. And there something else
that you need to do as well before selling T-shirts. And that is to ask yourself
every time you design a new T-shirt to sell, what niche is my T-shirt targeting? Because you see there are
lots of people out there who will bizarrely claim
with no evidence to back up their assertion, that the
T-shirt market is just saturated and that you shouldn't
sell T-shirts online. But the truth is, is
that I'm not surprised that they make these
assertions without evidence, because if they did try to
find evidence to back up their assertions, they
would very quickly discover that the evidence matches
with my personal experience, which is actually that the T-shirt market is the opposite of saturated. It is growing every year,
but there is a caveat. And that caveat is that
that graph I showed you is for niche T-shirts. The word niche, otherwise known as nitch, both are correct and fine to say, means that you create a T-shirt
around something specific. And the reason why niche
T-shirts are growing is because of the growing
trend towards personalization, especially amongst millennials. They want to personalize
the goods they buy and the experiences in their lives. And so increasingly instead
of a generic Levi T-shirt, more and more people want T-shirts that are personalized to their interests and that allow them to
express their personality. So for example, for many millennials, if they were a beach person
and they liked beachy things like surfing and scuba diving, there was a high chance
that they would much rather be interested in this T-shirt here, which is one of the most
popular sea theme T-shirts on Redbubble. A T-shirt like this lets
you express your personality through your clothing, which a generic T-shirt like
this doesn't let you do. And so a big mistake that
I see a lot of people make, especially talented artists, is that they'll create a T-shirt design that they think looks cool, but they don't ever ask
themselves that key question. Who can express their personality
by wearing this T-shirt? It's much more difficult to target a specific niche customer
with a T-shirt like this than say a T-shirt like this, which clearly targets a niche customer interested in space and astronomy, which I created by the way with Place It, which you'll find a link to in
the video description below. But yes, if you feel inspired to come up with a T-shirt design, always ask yourself what
niche does my T-shirt target? How does it let somebody
express your personality by wearing it? If you can't come up with
an answer to this question, my recommendation is to think twice before investing your time, energy, and money into creating it. And if you'd like to land
some of my tips and tricks for choosing cool niche's
to make T-shirts in, you should be sure to
download my free ebook, The Six Steps that 6
Figure Online Stores Follow To Make Over $10,000 a month. And you'll find the link
to download my free ebook in the video description below. But anyway, back to the video, and there's something else to keep in mind when you're researching
niches to make T-shirts in, and that is this, it's a
good idea to check and see if the niche you're
designing your T-shirt around is secretly a seasonal niche. So that you don't
accidentally get disappointed. So here's the thing, right? Some niches like pumpkins
are obviously seasonal. If you design a fun pumpkin T-shirt you're probably expect
to see most of your sales in the fall around Halloween. So this is an obvious seasonal niche, but for some niches,
they ain't so obvious. So let's circle back to beer for a moment. You might've seen some
clever beer T-shirts like their selling on Etsy. And so you think to yourself, well, I've got a funny phrase and
T-shirt idea for this niche, I'll make a T-shirt on it too. And so you post it and well,
nothing, nobody buys it. And so you might start
questioning yourself. Maybe nobody likes it. Maybe nobody wants to buy
it, but you know what? Maybe there's another question that you should be asking yourself. And that is, what month did I post this? Because beer is one of those niches, which I would call a
secret seasonal niche. Now, if you think about it, interest in it is obviously going to peak in summer when people are drinking it outside. But because it's something
that's still consumed year round, people are often surprised by
just how truly seasonal it is. So to check if a niche is seasonal, just come to Google Trends
and search for your niche, and filter the results
to the primary country that you're going to be selling to, such as the USA and then set it to show the past five years of results. And if we do that, you
will see that very clearly outside of Christmas time, which by the way, for obvious reasons, a lot of niches spike
over the holiday season, there is a sizeable dip,
in interest in winter. And as you can imagine, that is therefore going
to have a flow on effect for beer themed merchandise,
such as beer themed T-shirts. Although before you can even
list your T-shirts for sale, there is something else that
you're gonna need to decide. And that is which generic T-shirt you will print your designs onto. So for example, here on Printify, you've got tons of options. You've got a range of Gildan
T-shirts, Champion T-shirts and my personal favorite, the
Bella Canvas 3001 T-shirt. And you know what, when
you're just getting started with a T-shirt business,
it can be very confusing. Which one is the best? And so my advice is if you can
to choose what pricing range you're willing to pay
for your generic T-shirts and then order samples
of each of the T-shirts that's within your pricing range. So these two T-shirts here,
the Bella Canvas 3001, and the Gildan 5000, are
two of the most popular low-cost T-shirts on Printify. And if you had ordered samples of each, you would have very quickly
discovered the Bella Canvas 3001 is much softer and lighter
than the Gildan 5000. And that's not necessarily better. That's just different. They both have their own pros and cons and they can both be good
in different scenarios. So for example, in their day-to-day life, most people from my experience
prefer a softer T-shirt, even if it's a bit more expensive, whereas the heavier
T-shirts are often used for groups wearing matching T-shirts since they're quite
durable and functional. But I also understand
that for many reasons, including having a limited startup budget, not everybody can just afford
to buy a bunch of samples of T-shirts just to figure out which one that they should use. And so if that is you, let me introduce you to your
new best friend Jiffy Shirts. So this is basically a giant
online store that sells wholesale blank, generic T-shirts in bulk. And it's a great way for
beginners to get reviews of generic T-shirts to
print your designs onto, which is handy for everyone, but especially handy for those of you that can't afford to order samples. So for example, if you'd come to Printify and seen that the Gildan 5000 and the Bella Canvas 3001, are some of their cheapest T-shirts with a Printify premium subscription and wondered which T-shirt would
be best for your customers. You could have come here,
read reviews on each of them. Now, what you'll quickly
discovered by coming here is that there is no single best T-shirt. There are just different T-shirts. So this is the review
page for the Gildan 5000. And as you can see, it
has over 22,000 reviews, and it's achieved a 4.8
out of five star rating. So, you know, that's pretty good. And if we come to the Bella Canvas 3001, out of over 8,000 reviews, it's achieved a 4.9 out
of five star rating. So, you know, a 4.8 star out of five, versus a 4.9 star out
of five is pretty close. And so for these two, you'll probably not be
using the review scores to choose between them. Since clearly, most people like both. Instead what you'll be using
is their review summaries. So what customers do is they rate different aspects of
the T-shirt on a scale. So for the Gildan 5000
customers have reviewed it as having an average level of softness. Whereas for the Bella Canvas 3001, it has been reviewed as being
surprise, surprise very soft. And so using these reviews
and the review summary, you can pick the right type of T-shirt, which matches the feel of your brand and the types of customers
that are gonna be ordering your tees without ordering
product samples if you can't. Although something to keep in mind is that if you plan to make
and sell T-shirts online, using a done for you,
print-on-demand marketplace like Merch by Amazon or Redbubble, they will pick the generic brands for you. So you don't need to worry about this, which depending on the
types of goals you have for your T-shirt brand, you might like, or you might dislike that you don't have that level of control. But regardless of what
website you plan to sell your T-shirts on, there is something that's
good for everyone to do. And that is brainstorming
ways to repurpose designs into multiple versions and niches. It's just a really good way
to make additional money with minimal extra effort. And who doesn't like additional
money for minimal effort, am I right? So this here is a top
selling T-shirt design being sold on Amazon through
their Merch by Amazon program. It's an event niche T-shirt
that parents buy for their kids to wear on their birthdays. Using Jungle Scout sales estimator tool, we can see that it
estimates that it's selling 788 units a month on average, which is over $13,000 a month in sales, just from this one T-shirt. And sure, you know,
that's pretty cool, right? But what's even cooler is
that this T-shirt design has been repurposed for extra money. The T-shirt store has taken this design and switched up which family
members are mentioned, and now they make additional
money selling it in. And as you can see,
while the money they earn from these additional repurposed versions of these T-shirts isn't
as much as the first, combined, they all make
more than double the sales of the first one. This is a great way to
earn additional money from the T-shirts you create, since you don't have to come up with the whole brand new design. And if you want some tips on how to use winning T-shirt slogans like this, to help inspire you to create your own top selling T-shirts, why not
check out my premium course, The Ecomm Clubhouse, where I
share my tips and strategies for researching viral ideas, to get inspiration for creating my own top selling T-shirt designs. If you'd like to see if my
course is right for you, I'll have a link to it in
the video description below. Although when it comes to making tees that feature additional slogans, there's something else
that's really good to do. And that is to see if the
slogan you want to use is trademarked. So there are two different ways that you can protect
something creative legally. The first is that you
can protect works of art you create with copyright. This requires no registration. So the moment you say, paint a picture or take a photo or write a poem, it is immediately by default
protected legally by copyright. No one else is allowed to take
your picture, photo or poem and use it without your permission. So as you can see, copyright
is a very powerful law, but that's why it also
has a lot of restrictions. And one of the restrictions is that you can't copyright small phrases. And so while the poem you wrote as a whole may have copyright protection, if you wanted to protect
small little phrases, you make within your poem, you're gonna need to do something else to legally protect it. And that is you would
need to trademark them. This does require that you register it and get it approved though, which is actually quite handy for us. Because if we wanna find out if a phrase is trademarked or not,
it's really easy to do because you have to register it. So there is a register to
be able to search through unlike copyrights, where you don't have to register your art. So for example, if I wanted the check if the phrase it was being
used on their T-shirt was trademarked in the USA, I can come to the USA
Trademark search engine and do a search through it. And if we do that, we will get no results. And that's because no one
has trademarked this phrase, which means then that
this Amazon Merch seller is indeed allowed to use
this phrase on their T-shirt. And something else that's important to do, if you want to meet your legal obligations is decide how to handle
customer turns and refunds. Yes, here on this channel, I get a lot of questions
about how to handle returns and refunds. And fair enough, so, here's the deal. If you're selling your
T-shirts on a done for you print-on-demand marketplace
like Merch by Amazon, or Redbubble that simply
pay you a commission to sell your designs on a T-shirt that they then sell on their own website, then don't fret, they handle this for you. You make less profit when you sell on a done for you
print-on-demand marketplace, like Redbubble and Amazon, but in return, their fees
go towards things like taking care of returns for you. It's a trade off. It's only if you're
selling in your own store, such as your own Etsy T-shirt store or in your own store, like a Shopify store that you need to handle customer returns. They don't handle it for you. It's your store. So you need to handle it yourself. And that's the deal. When you sell in your own store, you get a much bigger share of the profit. But that also means that
you're going to have to take care of more things such as deciding whether you will accept returns. Now, for me, most of my
customers are in the USA. And I know that for most of my viewers watching this channel, they sell primarily to USA based customers too. Well, legally in the USA,
you are not obligated legally to offer a return just because a customer has changed their mind. And yes, you will
definitely see big stores like Urban Outfitters that do offer this, but it's not a legal requirement. And so smaller boutique
clothing lines often don't. So don't feel obligated to. From my experience, this very rarely impacts
sales and conversions upfront. So I don't think that
people should feel obligated to offer it. Although something that people
are basically obligated to do is to have a refund page or policy where you outline exactly what
you will accept returns for. Otherwise, there are some
States out there in the USA, such as New York, which say that if you don't have
a refund policy stating that you won't accept
returns for change of mind, then you are legally
obligated to offer it. So make sure you outline
in your refund policy, what you will and won't
accept returns for. If you're selling in your own
store, like a Shopify store, you can create a separate
refund policy page or include it in your
general business information on say, an Etsy profile. However you do it, make it visible and easily accessible. On your refund policy page, you just outline what you will
and won't accept returns for and provide contact
information so that people can contact you to find out the process for returning an item such as what address they should mail it back to. However, while change of
mind returns may be optional in the USA, what is not
optional, is that fair enough, you must accept returns for
faulty or damaged products, which depending upon
what country you live in might be absolutely fine or problematic because you think about it, right? I live in New Zealand,
yet most of my customers live in the USA. It doesn't seem fair that my USA customers have to go through the
process of mailing me their faulty items all
the way over here does it? So if you're like me and you
live in a different country to your customers, and you don't wanna have
to put your customers through the hassle of sending
an item internationally, just don't require that your customers send an item back to you. And if you're worried that customers are going to take advantage of this, and they're just gonna
tell you an item is faulty, and you're not gonna be able to check. The easiest way to check is to ask them to take a photo of the damage
or fault with their phone. And then when you see that, yes, that T-shirt does have a misprint or yes, that T-shirt
does have a hole in it. You just let them keep it. You can either refund them the money or send them a different T-shirt, whatever you work out, it doesn't matter. Just let them keep the T-shirt. Don't make them send it back. In my experience, customers love it. They'll use a T-shirt for
pajamas or something like that. It turns a bad customer experience into a great customer experience because now they got something for free. And so now, because they've had
a great customer experience, they are way more likely to, even though they received
a faulty product, turn into a repeat customer, which means more money for you and so, even if you live in the USA, you might wanna consider
doing this as well. And instead of making customers send faulty items back
to you for inspection, since, I mean, it's pretty
hard to re-sell a T-shirt that has a fault in it anyway, but, you know, even though I
don't have to offer returns for change of mind, I personally chose to. And that is because I
get very few customers that want to change their mind. So I don't mind the cost of offering this as an additional service. And the reason why I get so few returns is because there is
something else you should do. And that is to check and
see if the generic T-shirts you have chosen run true to size. So by far, the biggest reason
why customers return clothing is because it doesn't fit. So, you know what I do? I make sure that 99% of the time, my T-shirts will fit before I sell them. And the way that you can
do this too, is this. Guys when you're choosing
your generic T-shirt to sell, come and check the description. If it states this, that
it runs true to size, this is my favorite T-shirt. The Bella Canvas 3001 runs true to size. What this means then is that this T-shirt is a classic retail fit. So in simpler language, what this basically means
is that if my customer is used to walking into
a standard retail store, like Old Navy and buying a medium T-shirt and having that fit them great, then a medium in the Bella Canvas 3001 is likely to be an
awesome fit on them too. Whereas if we check out this T-shirt here, you can see that it instead
says that it runs small. So what this means then
is that if the customer just assumes that their
usual retail size, a medium will fit them well here,
they would be wrong. They should probably be
buying one to two sizes up. Since this T-shirt runs smaller
than traditional Western retail sizes. Understandably it's
these sorts of T-shirts that have a high rate
of frustrated customers emailing and asking to return
it because they just assumed that a medium T-shirt would fit them great without checking the sizing chart first. And so I just avoid these
refunds by only selling T-shirts that run true to size. And something else to keep in mind is that if you're watching
this and you're selling with a done for you,
print-on-demand marketplace like Merch by Amazon or Redbubble, this is something that
they take care of for you. As part of they've done for you service, they choose the T-shirts for you and for the standard T-shirts, they're usually T-shirts
that also run true to size. So you don't have to worry. And the cost of managing this
service comes out of the fees that they remove from the sale before they pay you your commission. However, something that you should do regardless of what type
of website you plan to start your T-shirt
business with is this. Ensure your T-shirt designs
always look great on black. Black T-shirts 99% of
the time, easily outsell, any other type of T-shirt color. And if your design looks
bad on black to be frank, you're probably missing
out on a bunch of money. And really it doesn't take
rocket science to figure out why black T-shirts are
easily the most popular. They don't get as dirty as light colors. And it's a neutral color that looks good on pretty much everyone. I keep making the same mistake
of creating T-shirt designs that looks super cool,
but didn't have a version that looked good on a black
T-shirt over and over again. And I sincerely regret that. So for example, I'd make
a design that featured black text and pictures like
this example designed here and be like, well, I guess that's it. I guess I just can't sell
this design in black then since, well, obviously you
can't see the black text and black pictures on a black T-shirt, unless you squint really, really hard. So I'd just be like, well,
yeah, I guess that's it, I just can't sell a black
version of this T-shirt. And when I did this, I would
get emails from customers being like, yo there, I'd
love to buy your T-shirt, but there's just one problem. It doesn't come in black. Can you let me know when I can
buy this in a black T-shirt because then, and only then will I come and spend money in your store? Okay. Thanks, bye. And so now I have very
much learnt my lesson. I will not design a T-shirt unless I can ensure that it will look good on black, or I can create a black
T-shirt specific version for it because something that's pretty cool about a lot of print-on-demand, with certain apps is that
some print-on-demand apps and websites like Printify
here allow you to upload specific design files for
specific T-shirt colors. So for example, if I
wanted to sell a T-shirt that came in three colors, white, Heather Grey, and black. I might choose to upload
a version of this design, featuring black text and
picture for the white and Heather gray versions, and then upload a different
edited version of this design, featuring white text and white pictures for the black T-shirt. Printify would then save both
design files in its system. And so now when a customer
orders the white and gray tee they'll get the black text version. And if they order the black tee, they'll get the white text
and white picture version. So you can do this for all of
the other T-shirt colors too, not just black. So if you were to, for example,
sell this in dark Heather, you could upload a white text
and white picture version for the black and dark Heather T-shirts and then upload a black text
and black picture version for the white T-shirts and
the Heather Gray T-shirts too. So it's a super handy feature. So then did you learn something new? If you did, please hit subscribe and click that little notification bell. (bell chimes) So you don't miss any of my videos. And if you'd like to learn more, on how I run my T-shirt business, you should be sure to watch my video, Five Apps I Use To Earn
Money On Autopilot. So go ahead, watch my next video and I'll see you over there.
