In this video, I'm going to attempt
to take my last few years of print on demand experience
and sum up 15 of the most common questions,
misconceptions, and quick for all Teespring sellers.
Yes, this is going to be a rather quick video.
However, these 15 points are very important.
So by the end of this video,
you should be able to walk away
with some very valuable takeaways.
Hi everyone, welcome back to another video.
If you are new here, my name is Greg
and I like to talk about online entrepreneurship.
I've been selling on Teespring and other platforms
for quite a few years now,
and I'm just trying to share some helpful resources
to help you guys out.
If you're interested in this type of content,
feel free to look around the channel
and consider subscribing.
As mentioned before, I've been selling on Teespring
for a few years now,
and I have learned a lot over that process.
Now, if you are starting out on Teespring,
this is going to help you a lot.
Even if you've been selling on Teespring for a while,
this will still be valuable for you.
So without further ado,
let's get right into number one.
Number one is a very common question that I get from people
who are creating a storefront on Teespring.
Now, if you guys have been following my videos,
I always recommend a storefront.
I'll talk about this further in this video.
However, the question is,
how do you remove the duplicate styles of the same design
in a Teespring storefront?
Now, when you were going to see this is
when you upload a design,
you put it on different styles,
and then you put that design into a storefront.
By default, right now on Teespring,
when you put that design into the storefront,
it's going to separate it into different listings
for each one of those styles.
So you'll have your T-shirt version,
you'll have your long sleeve version,
you'll have your hoodie version,
however many different styles you put that design on will be
separately listed in your storefront.
This is obviously not ideal because when someone goes
to your storefront,
they're going to see all the same design on different items.
The way that you correct this is not very obvious,
but here's how you do it.
You go to the storefronts tab and then you go
to the little edit icon that is on the storefront
you want to edit.
And then you go to products, add products,
and then uncheck the ones that you do not want to show up.
Now, just know that if you leave in just a T-shirt,
for example, with the design on it,
when someone clicks on that t-shirt in your storefront,
it'll bring them to the full listing
where you have all the other styles available.
So don't feel like people are going to miss out
on the hoodie version of it,
if you don't have it included in your storefront.
Number two is another common question
with not many answers out there about it.
And that is if you have different variations of a design,
how many should you make?
And when should you make them?
So for example, for this,
if you have a design and you wanna make different variations
of it that are very similar
because that design's selling well,
how many should you make?
And when should you make these?
So the simple answer here is I don't recommend doing
this in the beginning.
Now, if you have a design, that's a quote,
and then you have a slight variation of it,
you don't wanna be making a bunch of different variations
in the beginning, because if you don't have
your trust score set on Teespring,
it's just going to look like spam to Teespring.
Now, creating a lot of designs is fine,
just make sure that they don't have the same title,
they're not too close and similar in the beginning.
Once you've got your trust score
and you start to get sales on your account,
you will know by looking at your statistics,
your analytics of which designs are selling best.
Now, if you see that one design starts to sell really well,
then I recommend creating up to five variations
of that design.
If it's in black writing,
maybe you convert that to white writing,
that could be one variation right there.
Maybe you add in a different graphic to it,
maybe you add in a different phrase,
but what that means is that design
and that niche is being bought by people,
they like that style.
So once you see that, that starts to sell well,
create up to five variations of, not 50 variations of it,
but up to five, now just keep monitoring and seeing
if that continues to expand and sell more and more.
Alternatively, what if you want to create variations
in different niches?
So let's say you have a quote, for example,
that can go into football
and then you can just change out the word,
it can go into soccer, it can go into basketball, et cetera.
How many of these do you create and when do you create them?
For this one as well, I don't recommend going crazy
on this in the beginning because it can look like spam
to the system.
However, once you have your trust score,
it is totally okay to create a bunch
of different variations on here.
I wouldn't go absolutely nuts and create 100
or 200 different variations.
However, if you have a great design that you could put
into different niches that are completely separate,
feel free to do that and make variations that way.
The thing to keep in mind is that once you have
your trust score, Teespring is going to be marketing
and putting your items
in the marketplace completely individually.
So someone who's looking for a soccer shirt may find
that great quote and like it.
And then someone else completely different maybe looking
for a football shirt, find that quote
and like it for football.
So that totally works
and I recommend doing that once you have your trust score.
Number three is kind of a staple question
that I get all the time and this is,
do I need to use paid advertising?
The short answer very quick here is no,
I do not recommend using paid advertising, not on Instagram,
not on Google, not on Facebook, not on Pinterest,
not any paid advertising at all.
If you guys are newer to this channel
or you haven't seen the other videos
where I'm talking about this,
I always recommend using completely free, organic,
hashtag driven marketing on Instagram.
This is a video in itself and I have multiple videos on it,
so I'll link up a video that you can click,
I'll also put it down in the description
if you need that one as well.
Number four, how do you know if someone has
already uploaded the design that you're considering?
And if you're afraid of copyright,
how do you know that you're not going
to upload the same design?
My recommendation for you is two part here.
So one, do a quick Google search for that phrase
or the design, try to describe it.
See if you can find what's already out there
and be sure not to copy that exactly.
And two, do the same search on Teespring marketplace.
Now, if you're uploading to other platforms,
other print on demand platforms,
do the same search on their platform as well
to make sure that you can't find anything that is similar
and make sure that you are not copying it exactly
or even too close where they could report you as a copycat
and your design will be removed.
The way that the policy works on Teespring is
essentially first come first serve.
So if you upload the design first to the Teespring platform,
if anyone comes along and copies it,
or even copies it to close, you can report them,
if they don't catch it automatically
and have that person removed.
Now, the copycat who copies the design will have
their design removed from the platform
and their trust score will be negatively impacted.
So make sure that you were never copying anyone's design.
So do a quick search beforehand to make sure
that you're not getting too close to their design.
I'll talk about this later in this video in another point,
but as long as you are adding in graphics,
you are changing the fonts, you're changing the colors,
making the design custom to your own,
then you will not be infringing on their copyright
that they owned by uploading it first.
Now, I wanna be clear,
I'm not saying copy people's design,
I'm just saying, make sure that you are far enough away
from their design and putting in enough
individual unique features to your design
that it's not a copy of theirs.
Number five, this is a staple question as well.
And that is what is the Teespring trust score,
so quickly just to go through this,
a Teespring trust score is essentially a filter
that Teespring has put in on their system.
So anyone who just signs up for a Teespring account
and starts creating designs,
their designs don't get shown on the marketplace,
their designs don't get all of Teespring's marketing
until they prove themselves
and essentially build up trust from Teespring.
The way they do that is by getting at least one really
between two and 10 sales on their account themselves.
So if you are a new seller,
you have to get two to 10 sales on your account
before you get your trust score.
And then you start showing up in the Teespring marketplace
and getting all of their free marketing on your designs.
Number six is the second part to this question.
And that is once I get those two to 10 sales on my account,
how soon until the trust score kicks in?
When am I gonna start showing up in the marketplace?
When am I gonna start getting all the organic views
from Teespring, doing the marketing on my designs?
There is no published answer on this.
There's no public answer from Teespring.
However, I've gathered from my experience
that it's somewhere around one month,
that's kind of the timeframe that I would give yourself
from when you've got those sales to just keep an eye
on your analytics, watch as the view start to go up.
It's typically about one month's time.
Number seven is part three
because this is such an important question.
How do you know when your trust score has
officially kicked in?
Well, the short answer is you don't know officially
because it's an internal metric,
it's not something we can check on our profile.
The things to look for, however,
are to go to the marketplace, search for your design.
If you can find it in the marketplace,
that is a great sign that you have your trust score.
And the second thing is you can go over to your analytics
and you can switch it from sales to views.
And you can see as the views start to climb,
the organic views, if you're not doing
any marketing yourself,
you can see that that's all Teespring marketing for you.
Number eight, I get this question all the time,
and that is how many niche specific storefronts do you need?
And really what is the strategy?
Why are we creating those niche storefronts?
So without getting into too much detail
because as I said before,
I have another video that goes over this step by step.
However, the point of creating a niche
specific storefront is so that you can take that link
and you can put it on a social media profile,
specifically Instagram, then you can use niche
specific hashtags on your posts as you post
on the Instagram page and drive traffic
over to your Teespring niche specific storefront.
In the beginning, as we were talking
about before you have a trust score,
when you create designs,
they're not going to be showing up in the marketplace.
So how are you supposed to get those first few sales,
those two to 10 to get your trust score
and then show up in marketplace
and get all of their marketing?
It is to create multiple designs in a niche,
put them in a storefront,
so you have one link and then drive traffic
over from Instagram.
So the question I get here is how many
of those niche storefronts do I need?
How many Instagram pages do I need?
And the short answer here is you really just need one.
You have to remember the purpose here.
The purpose here is just to get two to 10 sales.
Then your trust score kicks in
and then Teespring will be marketing all
of your designs individually.
So once you get your trust score,
Teespring will be doing the marketing
on all your designs individually
on their marketplace and externally.
So you don't need to use storefronts anymore.
So with that said, the answer really here is
you only need one niche specific storefront
and one Instagram page for it to drive traffic
to get those two to 10 sales.
However, for all of you guys who are advanced,
or you want to make this process go faster or bigger
and get more traffic,
you can create multiple niche storefronts.
You can actually create as many as you want.
And then you have to create new Instagram pages
for each of them and then just do the same process.
So essentially, the more you create,
the more traffic you're going to be driving to your account,
the more sales you will be getting.
However, for the purpose of creating a niche storefront
and a niche Instagram page, you only need one.
And the purpose here is just to get two to 10 sales,
so that you get your trust score
and they start doing the marketing
on all your designs individually.
Number nine, can you put your designs
that you upload to Teespring on other print on demand sites
at the same time?
Yes, the short answer is absolutely, yes.
The three big sites I'm always recommending are Teespring,
Merch by Amazon, and Redbubble.
All three of them are completely non-exclusive.
So if you create your design,
you can upload it to all three of them individually.
They have three different marketplaces
and typically three different clienteles.
So someone who's coming on to Redbubble doesn't
typically go onto Teespring or Merch by Amazon
and for all the others.
So you can upload your same design to all three of them,
and basically just triple your traffic.
Number 10, how do you know if a design, a phrase,
a word is copyrighted on clothing,
and if you can use it or not in a design?
This is a really good question and an important one
because it brings in the legal side of creating design.
So there's really two ways that you can do this.
So if you're thinking of creating a design that has words
or a phrase in it, and you're not sure
if that's copyrighted or protected,
you can go to tmsearch.uspto.gov,
and then you can go just do a basic search,
type in the word or phrase.
And then one, make sure that it is live,
and two, make sure that it is on clothing.
If that word or phrase is live and on clothing,
that means it is protected and I do not recommend using it.
Now, if you do use it, then the system,
when you upload it to Teespring or the other sites may
or may not catch it, however,
the person that owns that copyright
or that protection can go in and report you
and take you down at any time.
Now, unless you're infringing on something major,
this is not often going to happen,
but I always recommend being on the safe side of it.
So if you're going to use words or phrase,
and it's not something that you came up with yourself,
and you're not sure if it's protected,
go do that Search at tmsearch.uspto.gov and find out there.
The second way that you can do this is
by using Merch Informer's tool,
they have a trademark search.
So it's going to check everything,
highlight it as you're writing it out.
However, this is not specifically for Teespring.
this is more for a Merch by Amazon,
but if you're going to be uploading the same designs
on Teespring as Merch by Amazon,
if you're not sure if it's copyrighted,
just upload it to Merch by Amazon first,
use Merch Informer's tool,
if you have a subscription
and it'll tell you everything in that listing
if it's copyrighted and it references
basically the tmsearch site
and it references it in real time.
So if you do it there on merch by Amazon first,
then you'll know for Teespring,
but those are the two ways you can check,
if you're not sure if that word or phrase is copyright
with trademark protected on clothing.
Number 11, this is a question
that you probably know the answer to by now,
but it's a very common question and that is someone uploads
their design to Teespring and they can't find it
in the marketplace.
You guys probably know the answer to why you can't find it
in the marketplace, yet.
And the answer is because you don't have a trust score yet.
So if you are a new account,
you haven't sold two to 10 shirts
and you haven't given it a month after that for it
really to kick in, you're likely not going
to find your designs in the marketplace at all.
So that's why I recommend creating the storefront
and getting the link there to share your designs.
Number 12, this is where people who have been
on Teespring for a while, you may have noticed
that there was a edit section for the listings,
and you could actually add in tags to that design.
Well, that feature is actually going away,
Teespring behind the scenes is removing the tags feature.
I'm not sure how far along they're on this,
if they've done it to all accounts yet,
but that's what they're in the process of doing.
So you won't be able to manually add tags
to your designs anymore.
However, instead of that,
they're going to be referencing your title
and your description of your design to see what the tags
and keywords should be.
With that said, make sure that you're putting in proper tags
and telling Teespring what your design is
about in the title and in the description.
Number 13, should you be putting your brand
or logo in your design somewhere,
maybe in the bottom corner?
The short answer here is for the vast majority
of people no, this is not a good idea
because it's going to limit your audience
of who's buying your designs.
Now, allow me to explain
this because it is pretty important.
For the vast majority of buyers who are buying designs,
they're going to be buying a design
because they like what's on that shirt,
they like how it feels,
they like it as a gift for someone, it's relevant,
that's going to happen far
more than people are buying a shirt
because of the brand that made it.
For the situation where people are buying the shirt
because of the brand that made it,
that is going to be for the
really high tier clothing companies,
not us who are selling print on demand.
It's just the truth.
These big clothing companies spend millions
and sometimes billions of dollars in ad campaigns
to build up their logo and their brand.
They're not building up the designs,
they're building up the logo and the brand,
so they can place that on any design.
And someone's buying the shirt for the logo
and the brand, whatever's on the design is just cool
because it's associated with that logo and that brand.
For us in print on demand,
we are not taking the strategy at all.
We don't have millions and billions to spend on ad campaigns
to build up brand loyalty and brand credibility.
So we are just creating it for the design.
They may like the design that you've created on the shirt
and it feels good to them,
but then they see your brand or your logo,
and they don't know who you are.
They're not loyal.
They don't know what you stand for.
So they don't want that on the shirt,
so they end up just not buying it.
So proceed with caution on that,
I really don't recommend putting your brand
or logo in your designs because it's going to limit
your audience of who's going to be buying.
Number 14, very simple question.
How do you get your storefront link?
This can be a little bit challenging
for people who are new to Teespring,
but once you create your storefront
and you're ready to create the link
to put on your Instagram page,
how do you get that link?
Well, you can't get it from editor.
You actually go through to edit your storefront,
you do all that.
That's not the link one up top,
you actually have to click view storefront.
Once you click that, then you can copy the link up top
and that is the actual live link.
Now, for those of you who have seen tutorials
on this channel, you see that I usually take this link
and put it through bit.ly,
it basically just allows you to shorten the link,
completely for free, and you can customize the tail end,
so it looks something easier for people to click on
instead of teespring.com/stores/all this extra stuff,
they really don't wanna put in your Instagram link.
So as a bonus, once you get that link
from your Teespring storefront,
you can then put it through bit.ly, make it shorter,
customize it, completely free,
and then put that Bitly link in your Instagram bio.
And the last question is how many designs do you need
to create an upload on Teespring to be successful?
How many do you need in niche storefront?
How many do you need total before your trust score
and after your trust score?
So this should cover a lot right here,
I'll be quick to it and make sure not to waste your time.
When you're creating a niche specific storefront,
make sure you have at least eight to 12 designs
in that niche specific storefront
before you go get the link and create the Instagram page
to start advertising it.
This will make sure that your storefront
actually looks full when people come over from Instagram
and they go and look at your designs,
you don't want an empty storefront.
You can go up to really as many as you want
in a niche specific storefront,
just make sure you have at least eight to 12
before you start marketing that storefront.
Now, the other part to the question is,
how many designs should
you aim for on your total Teespring account?
Knowing that once you get those first two to 10 sales
from your niche storefront,
you're going to have your trust score
and Teespring will start adding all of your designs
individually to their marketplace and marketing all
of your designs individually externally.
So this totally becomes up to you.
The sky is the limit.
The more designs that you can create
that are quality designs and upload them to Teespring,
the absolute better.
Because you're going to have more lines in the water,
more in the marketplace, more on their external marketing,
just more chances for you to get traffic and get sales.
Now, for those of you starting out who have zero designs,
I recommend setting your goal at least 50 different designs,
get those uploaded to Teespring,
and then get those uploaded to Redbubble
and Merch by Amazon, the same 50 designs.
Now, that should be enough for you to feel accomplished.
Feel like you've done enough on Teespring to get started,
where you can actually stop and take a look at your accounts
and start watching kind of the organic traffic come
in from your trust score and people seeing your designs.
However, I would not stop there,
once you've got past the comfortable stage of sitting back
and kind of seeing that you've done the first kind
of barrier to entry, you've got your trust score built,
and you're starting to see some organic sales come through.
Then I would set your next goal
to at least a few hundred designs.
I know that sounds like a lot,
but if you have a good design tool,
then you can kind of knock these out pretty quickly.
To give you guys an example of how many
you can really create,
anywhere from five to 15 a day is great.
In my peak, I was creating an uploading 50 designs per day.
So don't be fooled, if you have a great design tool,
don't spend time on nitty gritty stuff,
just pump out great designs.
Now, it definitely goes without saying,
but the goal also means that those designs
you upload to Teespring, you wanna also have
those same designs uploaded to Redbubble
and Merch by Amazon.
Once you have a few hundred designs on Teespring,
Merch by Amazon, and Redbubble,
you will be doing pretty well financially.
You'll be seeing a lot of organic traffic coming
through from all of their marketing and consistent sales.
If you personally need more income than this,
then you can continue to raise that goal to 1000
or more designs on each one of these accounts.
The beauty to print on demand is you can scale it as high
as you want without bringing on other employees.
All the work comes down to you.
If you have a good design tool
and you spend the time creating
and uploading the designs to the sites,
that's all there is to it.
All these sites do everything else for you.
So you can scale without having to worry
about bringing on other people.
Guys, that's it for this video,
hopefully, these 15 things leave
you with some good valuable takeaways.
I'll link up some other helpful videos
that I'll go into some more detail.
However, if you guys have any questions,
feel free to let me know the comments.
And as always, if you enjoyed this video,
feel free to give it a thumbs up and subscribe
if you haven't already.
And I'll be seeing you guys in the next video.