Did you know: Text-based designs like this one
are incredibly easy to make, and sell really well too.
I analyzed the top 100 best-selling Print On Demand t-shirts
on Amazon and Redbubble to find that almost half of them were text based
including the number one best seller on Amazon right now
which is generating over $600 a month in profit.
In this video, I'm going to show you how you can easily create your own text based designs that sell.
There's three main components that you need to be aware of.
The first one involves understanding what text based designs are already selling well
so you can use that knowledge to make your own popular designs.
The second component is how to actually create those designs yourself using free resources.
And the third component is how to make sure that your design actually gets found by customers
so you can leverage that organic traffic and turn it into sales.
I'll be explaining all three components, so by the end of this video you'll be ready to make some best sellers.
First of all, let's take a look at some of the text based designs that are already making a fortune right now on Redbubble.
The shirts that you're seeing are the top 10 best-selling text based designs of all time.
I didn't choose any specific styles. I just straight up organized by what designs have sold the most
then picked out the ones that were text-based. Have you noticed what these designs have in common?
They're all unbelievably simple. There's nothing fancy about any of them,
and literally anyone could have created them in about 10 seconds.
That means *you*, watching this video right now, have just as much chance of creating a best-seller as anyone else.
I've personally got a few text based designs that have generated thousands of dollars in sales,
and in my view, the biggest barrier preventing people from making money is purely psychological.
People think that they aren't good enough, or aren't clever enough, especially when they haven't had a sale before.
So they don't even bother trying, which means their ideas never get validated.
But if you're watching this, you know it's possible. You just need a few key ingredients,
which i'm going to share with you today.
You've seen what sort of designs are already selling. Now you need to understand why they're selling.
What makes them so popular? Again, the answer's so simple that people look straight past it,
and end up making designs that are way too complicated.
Customers love funny statements, phrases, jokes, and puns.
They buy them on t-shirts and other merchandise all the time, either for themselves or as gifts for others.
That's why if you've got a sense of humor or you appreciate sarcasm,
you'll probably do well for yourself in this industry.
A funny statement or a joke combined with clearly visible design elements is a recipe for success.
People trying to make money with Print On Demand often end up getting one or both of these things wrong.
They either overthink an idea and convince themselves that what they've come up with won't be successful,
or they over complicate the design process, believing they need some sort of visual masterpiece to be making money.
Check this person out: They're called "chestify" on Redbubble,
and they're a great example of someone who exploits humor and simplicity to their advantage.
As you can see, their store is made up entirely of text-based designs,
And given how many of them have become best sellers on Redbubble,
I'd be surprised if they weren't making thousands of dollars in profit every month.
Their style is sarcastic, self-depreciating, and funny.
The sort of t-shirt that you'd see someone wearing and instantly know they've got a sense of humor.
I will be giving you some tips about how you can come up with similar design ideas that are likely to sell,
but first let's analyze the style that chestify uses, because it embodies what makes text-based designs become best sellers.
Their style is very visible from the thumbnail.
Customers can read it and know what to expect without having to click and investigate further.
That puts them at an advantage from the competition, who need the customer to click on the thumbnail
to be able to see the design properly.
Remember when you're designing: not only do customers see your product on a tiny thumbnail in the search results,
but stats show that the majority of internet traffic comes from people using mobile devices,
so they're also likely browsing on a phone, meaning the thumbnail is even smaller than what you'd imagine.
Chestify's success on Redbubble is a result of using plain, bold, easily readable fonts.
They always use white text that stands out on a black background.
The text is aligned to the left, and it looks like one of the many default fonts found in freely available editing software.
Speaking of which, if you ever need to identify a font that you like the look of.
There's plenty of websites that can help you do that for free.
All you need to do is take a screenshot of the text and upload it.
I like to use FontSquirrel and MyFont, which are both free.
As you can see here, there's plenty of similar fonts that have been identified which you can either buy or scroll down
until you find one that's available for free. If you're using a font to make money,
just check that it's free for commercial use too. It might say 100% free like this one does.
So big, bold, visible fonts stand out in the search results, and therefore sell.
That's not to say that other more complex styles don't sell,
But when you see them side by side in the search results,
and especially on a phone screen, it's easy to see which design is going to stand out the most to customers.
When you're creating new work, just use the technique of zooming out to see if your text is easily readable,
and if it isn't, alter the sizing until it is.
It's kind of like being unable to see the forest for the trees
when you're making designs because you're so close up and involved in the process
that it's easy to forget what the customer will actually see in the end.
It's important to get some perspective and view your design as if you were a customer looking at a thumbnail.
When it comes to the practicalities of creating these text based designs, if you haven't got Photoshop, that's fine.
You can just use a free web-based alternative called Photopea.
I won't go into a massive detail about that because I already made a video on it,
and if you wanna see it, I'll leave a link in the description.
You can also use free graphic design sites like Canva,
which has a massive range of text based options and templates to choose from too.
I'll put a direct link to the t-shirt creator in the description. Just look for the "free" tag when you're editing
or using their elements. They even have a typography section full of templates that you can use for text based designs.
Some of the better options have watermarks or require a subscription to access, but there is a 30-day free trial
if you want to use the pro features. If you find them worthwhile, you can continue your subscription and hopefully it'll end up
paying for itself with a profit that you make from Print On Demand.
When it comes to design ideas, you can get inspiration from almost anywhere.
One of my favorite places is Reddit because I genuinely enjoy browsing the website anyway.
The posts that I see and the comments that I read often help me come up with great ideas and new niches to target.
But you can also think about areas that you're personally interested in.
For text-based designs, it's useful to think about popular phrases and how they fit together
to create a unique statement in your chosen niche. It's been done to death at this point,
but a good example is "Keep Calm and Carry On" - a motivational poster produced by the government in Britain
in preparation for World War II. It's become extremely popular to have Keep Calm and...
because it's such a recognizable slogan, but you can adjust all sorts of phrases and statements to fit your niche in.
Another good source of inspiration for text based designs is using English idioms.
There's thousands of them that people use all the time in everyday conversation
to the point that you don't even notice them anymore. See if you can alter one to fit your target audience in there.
This can be a really effective tool if done. People love clever rhyming and wordplay jokes.
You can adjust some of the language so that it rhymes or sounds similar.
Trying to replace a word in an established sentence and relate it to your chosen niche.
You can do the same thing with metaphors or intentional mispronunciation.
If you can find something topical or trending then that's even better.
If you're passionate about a particular hobby or sport or topic, you'll have that specific key knowledge
about what people such as yourself would be attracted to.
Your unique perspective of the world is gonna help you come up with ideas that others wouldn't be able to.
If you genuinely can't think of anything yourself, I've got a video about how to find what terms are becoming popular
week by week on Redbubble, which I'll also put in the description, so you can watch it after this one.
Last but not least, getting your designs found in the search is often where people go wrong.
You can have the greatest design in the world,
but if you aren't using the keywords that your customers searching for you aren't going to be making sales.
You need to think like a customer when it comes to your tags, title, and description.
Let's take chestify's design as an example: "Hang on, let me overthink this."
At this point, it's a really popular design, so people actually will be putting those exact keywords into the search box,
but if you're coming up with something that hasn't been done before,
it's unlikely that your customers gonna be typing those exact keywords into the search.
It looks like chestify understood this to some extent when writing the tags for their listing as they've used keywords
like "anxiety", "anxious", "introvert", "overthinker", and "self-depreciating humour".
All useful descriptive words that customers might be searching for.
The point is: don't just use the words that are included on your text based design.
Consider your target audience and what they would be searching for
as well as the amount of competition that's available for each tag that you use.
Just look up the tags yourself and check how many listings are already there.
If there's millions of results, you might want to narrow it down a bit.
You only get to choose 15 tags on Redbubble now, compared to the 50 that you used to be allowed,
so choose wisely based on both popularity and competition.
Don't only use the phrase that you've got on your design as it's likely that the customer isn't going to be putting those exact words in when they're looking to buy.
I've got a video that goes into more detail about Redbubble tags which I'll also link in the description.
I'm planning on making an updated video soon, so if you're interested in that make sure you subscribe.
It wouldn't be fair for me to do a video about text based designs without also talking about the negatives.
They're extremely easy to make, but the downside is: they're just as easy to copy,
especially if you're using simplistic fonts like our old pal chestify.
The thing that makes them stand out to customers also makes them stand out to thieves.
You'll find that when you start making a decent amount of sales, your idea will get stolen.
Again and again and again.
When you search for "hang on let me overthink this", You'll get over 1,700 results of very similar designs.
Chestify's got the most relevant design because theirs has made more sales than anyone else,
but when people see that designs are successful, they straight up copy it or make a slightly different version of it.
Especially if it's text based - it's making it so easy for them. It's happened countless times to me and other people.
People even straight up download and re-upload my YouTube videos onto their channel.
It's just an occupational hazard unfortunately.
It's not that your sales will stop entirely when that happens,
but there is a good chance that some of your customers will start buying elsewhere because of the diversity.
So although text based designs are amazing for beginners because they're so easy to make,
I recommend making it a long-term goal to level up your skills so you can make designs a bit more complicated
or outsource the design process entirely when you start making money so your designs are harder to copy.
If you're doing it entirely yourself and you don't have the time or inclination to learn the complexities of design,
Sites like Canva offer enhanced text based templates and other graphic elements that you can just add to your designs
to make them more unique.
And then there's PlaceIt, that offers fully editable template designs.
Again, with unique artwork elements that you can select and change as you please.
PlaceIt is also free to sign up for and has hundreds of free elements like these that you can use.
The paid version gives you access to all their resources, including the mock-up templates.
And I've got a 15% off code that I'll put in the description too if you find that useful.
Hopefully now you understand a bit more about what makes a text based design successful,
how to come up with ideas, and how to make your own.
If you've watched this far and found the information helpful,
I'd really appreciate if you could give this video a thumbs up,
or leave a comment, because that helps me rank on YouTube and beat any thieves out there.
Be sure to check out my other videos for more useful tips, and I'll see you very soon with some more content.