If you have a good idea for a t-shirt and you know what fabric and style are selling, then all you need are good quality prints of the design in different sizes. Of course you will want to add some unique features like some graphic designs or funny sayings to make your product more appealing to customers. As long as you can keep the price low enough, the opportunity to make money online with a t-shirt design is definitely there.
The Biggest Challenges
Although a t-shirt is a very simple product to retail, things can become complicated when you are trying to sell it online. The biggest challenge is keeping the price low enough without losing too much income to online fraudsters or counterfeiters. When you are first starting out, you want to keep your prices as low as possible to maximize your profit. This is usually done by cutting corners and using low-quality prints or low-quality fabrics. These practices cut both ways, though, as your customers may perceive your product as being of lower quality if the price is too low. The risk of losing sales to competitors who are selling genuine products at a lower price is very real.
Another challenge is that you will want to sell different sizes and colors of your product, so finding the right combination of fabrics and styles for all of your sizes can be tricky. If you are unable to satisfy this need, you will either have to settle for cheaper products to meet the demand or lose sales to competitors who can offer a better product at a better price.
The Biggest Opportunities
Even though a t-shirt is a very simple product to sell, there are many opportunities to make money online with a t-shirt design. The biggest opportunity is utilizing affiliate marketing, which allows you to earn a commission from selling a product that you are not directly associated with. For example, a company might pay you to promote their products on social media platforms like Twitter.
Another opportunity is through dropshipping, which is when you essentially operate a storefront. When a customer makes an order, you order that product from a third party (the retailer) and ship it directly to the customer. You keep the profit, and the customer is happy because they get what they want without having to go through numerous steps to complete the sale. You can easily create a store from scratch with the help of an online market place like Shopify, or utilize an existing e-commerce store to set up your dropshipping store.
Summary
Selling t-shirts online is a viable way to earn a decent amount of money, as long as you keep the prices low enough and find the right combination of quality fabrics and styles for the types of products you will be selling. As long as you can keep the prices low, you will be able to maximize your profits and grow your business slowly but surely.