- Hey, everyone.
This is Roberto Blake of Robertoblake.com,
helping you create something awesome today.
So, today, we're going to talk about something interesting.
We're going to talk about selling T-shirts
on the Internet
and how you do that
and whether it's viable or whether it works.
Now, we're doing this video because
it was a request from many of you
in the audience,
both in the graphic design video comments
and in some other comments
because you guys see that I have the
Always Be Creating and
the Create Awesome T-shirts.
And a lot of you have been wondering about that.
Now, the thing is,
I don't market those a lot because
I'm not really in selling T-shirts online
to make a ton of money or
to really even promote my website
because there's no URL link or anything
going to my website.
These shirts, for me, were about
spreading a specific message
and then, also, in my personal branding.
Whenever I walk out in these,
they're a conversation-starter.
There's no point at which a day goes by
when I'm wearing these shirts
that I don't end up talking to someone about the
Create Awesome philosophy,
about creating things and sharing them with the world
and living out your dreams,
if you're a creative.
So, that always ends up being part of the conversation.
So, if you have a message or you're a personal brand,
there might be reasons outside the e-commerce benefit
for you to sell T-shirts online or to have T-shirts
because you might be interested in building a community,
which is what I'm doing.
I'm building a community of people who either
want to be entrepreneurs and
they're creating value for other people or
they're creative professionals or hobbyists.
They're artists,
photographers,
painters,
designers
who are creating things and sharing them with the world.
So, Create Awesome and Always Be Creating
applies to anybody, really,
and that's the point.
So, I'm building a community of people
who are interested in that message and
want to feel like they're a part of something.
That's it.
That's why I don't spam people
with stuff for the T-shirts
or go buy the T-shirts in the store.
With that in mind,
if you are looking to do e-commerce
and sell T-shirts for whatever reason,
there are some strategies and methods
that I can advise you on.
One, I would say that I understand
if you were trying to go wholesale,
buy T-shirts from a wholesaler,
print them yourself or whatever,
and then keep the largest margin.
But I'm against that for several reasons.
Because, one, it means that you're limited to the market
that you can either deal with locally
or that you have to absorb shipping logistics
and shipping costs.
If you're doing any other type of business,
all of that for selling the shirts
for a very minimal amount of money
is taking away time from your other business.
So, I recommend that
if you're doing any other business,
any other side hustle,
do not print your own T-shirts
and buy them wholesale.
Just go through an online vendor.
Let them keep the bulk of the profits and
you make like, $1.50 or $2 a shirt.
It's fine
because it means zero costs to you,
zero work,
and zero of your time.
So, I would argue that the margin that they're keeping
is you buying back your time.
So, that's what I would recommend.
The online marketplace that I utilized
for my T-shirts is Spreadshirt.com.
So, I have Robertoblake.spreadshirt.com,
but I also set up my own URL.
I set up RobertoBlake.com/shirts
to forward to that.
So, if you have your own website,
I would say,
find a way to do the URL redirect
and do something like shirts or store
and then, push people from your dot com
to your store.
The reason I recommend that is
you'll have better tracking metrics.
It might be easier for people to remember and to get to you.
It might be better for you for
linking that up on your website.
Obviously, if you're on YouTube, like me,
then, using the YouTube info cards and annotations
are associated with your website, your dot com.
So, that's going to make it easier
for you to link out to that.
So, those are my recommendations with regard to
utilizing an online store, e-commerce platform,
as a third-party for selling your T-shirts
or your, you know, apparel accessories online.
Now, with regard to,
how you go about designing them,
I recommend that if you're going to do something
that's text-based, like this,
or that is an icon or a logo
that you take the Adobe Illustrator EPS file
and you upload it.
And the reason I use Spreadshirt
is specifically because they take advantage of
EPS and Illustrator files,
so I know that it's going to be clean.
It's going to be vector.
It's going to be perfect.
It's not going to be pixelated.
It's not going to be off in any way.
So, that's why I would use it.
Also, I feel the quality of the shirts
is very good.
So, those are my recommendations
for selling shirts online and
how you approach that.
I have links to the stuff I talked about
in the description below,
so make sure you're checking that out.
If you still have questions
about selling shirts online,
then, go ahead and leave those in the comments section.
I'll try to answer as many of them as I can.
But I think I pretty much covered it in this video.
Anyway, like this video if you liked it.
Don't forget to subscribe.
Share it with friends.
Check out the other awesome content on the channel.
As always, you guys, thanks so very much for watching.
And don't forget,
create something awesome today.