How To Start A T-shirt Business – With No Money!

How to start a t-shirt business

If you are curious about how to start a T-shirt business with no money, you have come to the right place.

Starting a T-shirt business with no money is 100% possible, and there is very little to stop you from going ahead and creating your own T-shirt brand today after reading this blog.

In this blog, you will learn how to start a T-shirt business for free and be introduced to the tools needed, in order for you to be able to do this.

Why Start A T-shirt Business?

Thousands every day think of designing a brand of clothing and I am sure that many of these ideas don’t grow any further than the idea itself.

Growing a brand in today’s market is easier than ever, and if it is done right, the money that can be made is phenomenal.

There are loads of reasons why someone would want to start an online or offline T-shirt business and here are just a few reasons that most find attractive when starting your own T-shirt brand.

  • You can make your own designs
  • You own your own brand
  • You can own your own store or online shop
  • With POD ( Print On Demand ) type merchandise, everything can be set up and running on auto pilot
  • You are your own boss
  • Work the hours you want
  • Tidy and clean work
  • This business model can be done anywhere in the world.
  • Earnings potential is unlimited

Whatever your reason for starting a T-shirt business, it can be done quickly and without any initial investment.

How To Start A T-shirt Business With No Money!

Sign Up With These 3 Platforms…All have a free membership plan, but with Canva, I strongly suggest getting the yearly paid membership plan as this will allow you to access extra tools and more importantly loads more graphics and images.

Online Tools Needed To Start Your T-shirt Business

1 – Canva – Easy-to-use logo and picture design software >>> SIGN UP HERE <<<

2 – Printify or Printful – This is where you can put your designs on T-shirts and then publish to your store.

3 – Etsy, Amazon, Ebay or other online sales platforms. I use Etsy.com as this has over 1,000,000 daily visitors and is easy to understand and get the hang of. This is where your T-shirt designs will go after you hit the publish button on Printful, or Printify after adding your design.

With these 3 online platforms you have the ability to start a T-shirt brand, without the cost of setting up the physical side of things, this way we can set up our stores, stock, and shipping, without having to pay any money upfront.

This is one huge reason why Affiliate marketing and print on demand business models are so popular when it comes to people starting an online business.

How Your T-shirt Business Works

Once set up, your online T-shirt business will almost work completely on autopilot.

To do this you will need to create a membership on each of the 3 online platforms mentioned earlier.

To complete your Etsy shop creation account, you will need at least one product, and you can get this by first creating an account on either printful, or printify, and then by uploading a design to go onto your T-shirt.

From here you can add it to your store on Etsy.com

I do all of my design work on Canva. You can start creating your first T-shirt design, and then upload it onto your T-shirt in printful, or printify.

What Are Printify And Printful?

There seem to be some misconceptions as to the difference between Printify and Printful and I will explain the difference between the two so there is no confusion from the get-go, this will also help you decide which platform is right for you.

What Is Printful?

Printful is an online POD ( Print On Demand ) service that lets users create designs to upload and have printed onto clothing, bags, cups, towels, linen, and the list goes on and on.

Not just that, once you have uploaded your design and are happy with how it looks on your chosen object like a T-shirt or cup, you can have this product added to your Etsy store with one click of a button, and without having to buy the item at all.

Printful not only lets you customize your own clothing, but they also do the printing and delivery of your sold products as well

.

What Is Printify?

Printify is the uber eats of POD products. Printify lets you add designs to POD products just like Printful, however, Printify does not print the merchandise ordered.

Instead, you will be given a list of about 10 or so POD services to choose from. Like Printful, where you don’t have a choice, with printify, you can find your preferred POD outlet to fulfill your orders.

What Is Canva?

Canva is an online platform that lets you design and edit pictures, graphics, drawings, etc.

canva has an excellent reputation and also offers a free membership which allows you to use Canva but has limited tools and useable graphics and pictures.

Canva is exceptionally easy to use and is perfect for designing T-shirts of any kind.

Canva has pre-built templates for practically every social media platform, templates for T-shirts, Planners, hats, cups, and more! not just that, if you wish to start a graphic or design in a certain size you can do this as well.

Canva is used by millions around the world and is definitely worth looking into if you are searching for design tools.

There is also no software to download, this makes Canva ready to use straight after making an account.

How To Sell T-shirts Online

As most people find out, starting a T-shirt business online and making designs are the easy parts of this whole operation, selling your T-shirts is the harder part.

Although you have the ability to integrate your POD merchandise straight into Etsy, Amazon, eBay, or other online marketplaces, getting views on your designs, and more importantly views from the right people can prove very difficult.

After my studies at the Wealthy Affiliate University, understanding why this happens and how to overcome this “No views and no sales” is very clear, and there is only one way to push past this, the answer is time!

With ANY new website or store, Google, Yahoo, and Bing search engines will not rank any of your products until your virtual authority climbs out of the newbie stage.

To put this simply, no one will see your products because you are a new business, and search engines like Google, show results from online companies with thousands of T-shirt designs, and countless reviews.

Wait! Don’t let this freak you out, there are ways to help this situation, and a few tips to help get your store found, get the right people looking at your designs, and overall get more sales!

How To Sell T-shirt Designs Online Tips

1 – Always do your research and investigate online what is selling, what T-shirts are showing after searches, etc
2 – Always choose a niche, this means choosing a theme like cars, and sell car T-shirts, or get more specific and really find a micro niche like 1965 Fords. Selling a more specific T-shirt like 1965 Ford cars would appeal to people that own a 1965 Ford, therefor this is your target market.
3 – Always use “Tags”. Through the listing process when adding a T-shirt to your store, you will get the option to include tags, If you are selling 1965 Ford car T-shirts, your tags would be something like #Ford T-shirt, #1965 Car T-shirt, #Car T-shirts, #1965 Ford T-shirt Gifts, etc. When someone types a tag into a search browser, your T-shirts will have a better chance of being shown.

4 – Quality, always get samples if you can, if you don’t, and your T-shirts are not the best quality, you can be killing your business from the get-go!

5, Online stores like Amazon, Etsy, eBay, Tiktok shop, and Woocommerce are already established and rank highly in search engines. If you advertise in any or all of these stores you will have a better chance of being discovered.

6, TIME, TIME, TIME. If there is a number one reason people fail at affiliate marketing dropshipping, POD businesses, it is simply because they give up way too quickly. As I mentioned earlier, gaining authority in the online world takes time, don’t give up!

Learning How To Start A T-shirt Business

This is the young lady that helped me start my T-shirt business.

Watch and then watch again as you complete the steps.

Everything may seem a bit new at first, but just be patient and remember the more you practice, the better you get at what you are doing.

Most of all, keep in mind your store and designs will most likely not sell in the first few weeks, or months, but I can assure you, if you keep going, and keep building your brand, you will be successful.

How I Learned To Make Money Online!

Affiliate Marketing is the term given to people like me that do what I do, and this is how I made my first lot of decent money online, on auto pilot.

Affiliate marketing is simply the process of advertising a product or service online, and if someone makes a purchase, you get paid a commission.

Companies like Amazon.com, AliExpress and AliBabba, eBay offer affiliate programs for people like you and me to join, and once approved we can help advertise that stores products and services.

Millions of products at our fingertips.

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