The Official E-Commerce/Website Business Advice Thread

Kalik

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I've made almost $33k in less than 4 months selling personalized shyt on Etsy. After paying the Etsy fees and the manufacturer who makes the products, my takeaway has been about 3/4 of that. Not bad for part-time work (a few hours a day) and all done on my laptop and Adobe Illustrator.

For those who think they can't make money online sitting at home everyday... it's possible. I started with less than $100.
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zacharie101

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That's a good idea fam. Yea, the application is no biggie tho. I had to fill it out and they just want to know if you're actually designing your products and who's making them. This is to prevent the mass influx of people buying junk from Aliexpress and selling it on Etsy as "handmade." All you need to do is tell them who's your manufacturer. What I did was screenshot my Adobe Illustrator screen of me making a design (proving I'm actually creating the designs) that I send off to get printed on products. That's it and I got approved fairly quick.

I would say definitely for t-shirts make sure it's niche and trendy like cat t-shirts, funny employee t-shirts, funny birthday t-shirts, wedding t-shirts etc. A quick cheat code you can use is see what people are buying is at Zazzle. If they're buying it on Zazzle, chances are they'll buy it anywhere else that sells that type of shirt. You want to make stuff that people are ALREADY buying. I'm telling you if I were you I would make simple ass t-shirts with funny sayings. That shyts sells like crack for whatever reason. The cornier the better it seems.

Funny T-Shirts - Funny T-Shirt Designs | Zazzle.co.uk

T-Shirts, Unique T-Shirts, Tops & Shirts | Zazzle.co.uk

I just used Zazzle as an example just to see what's selling but I still strongly recommend you sell on Etsy because the TRAFFIC is there already. I mean you could upload your designs on Zazzle if you want but you're profit will be pennies and you will have to wait months to meet the commission payout. As far as Etsy-- just make sure you have a large assortment of t-shirts so you can be found in Etsy and Google otherwise you're competing with established t-shirts sellers who have over 1,000 t-shirt designs in there shop (no lie) and have been selling for years on there. That's not to discourage you because there is money to be made on there if you're consistent. Hell, even during Christmas time I saw a new t-shirt store make those dab Christmas shirts and went viral. They only had like 20 t-shirt designs but was selling hundreds of them. So, they took a trendy idea and re-made it their own way and it took off.

Another cheat code: CraftCount
See who are the top sellers in whatever category you want to sell and basically do the same thing. Not copy, but see what they're selling, why, their policies, their designs etc.

Lastly, here you can see what's trending on Etsy: Trending Items. I don't really pay attention to that because Etsy only puts you there if one of your products is getting a lot of traffic. I know this because one of products was on the trending page and I got an automated email from Etsy telling me my product was getting a lot of traffic. It was kind of cool but it didn't translate into sales because this happened like 3 weeks after I opened shop and I didn't have many products available yet. With Zazzle the top sellers are actually what's selling the most. With Etsy customers, they like shops with a lot of listings, good reviews and established shops. If you get a lot of sales and your reviews pick up, customers will ignore that you're new because they'll see that you're "legit". I know this because I've only been selling since the end of December 2015 and I've sold almost $40k as of today. So, it's possible if you're consistent.

Hope that helps.

How do you market your T shirt shop on etsy?
 

TwistedMetal

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Put me on, PM.

I wrote a post a few pages on some tips. Hope that helps breh.

How do you market your T shirt shop on etsy?

I don't sell T-shirts right now. I can but I'm working on some other things. I was giving another person advice who wanted to sell T-shirts on there. But my advice can really be applied to anything you're selling on Etsy. As far as marketing: it's all about your keywords and tags on each listing. You can pay for promoted listings but if your SEO and keyword game is on point then you'll be good. I HIGHLY suggest those thinking of selling anything on Etsy to go to www.craftcount.com and find the top sellers in the category they want to sell. Look at the store's SEO, tags, listings etc. to see what they're doing, what product is selling the most, their policies etc. Study what they do and do the same. I honestly took about a good few days to study other top sellers in my category and took notes on what they were doing and I basically just replicated them but with my own wording.

Real talk, if you have the patience and consistency you CAN make money on Etsy. the TRAFFIC is already there. Just find a niche and go ham. Wedding and cats are really popular on Etsy for some reason and of course things that can be personalized. For instance, get a vector image of a damn cartoon cat and put it on a product (T-shirt, phone case, poster, mug, water bottle, pillow, tote bag etc. whatever your manufacturer offers to put your designs on) BUT personalize it (optional) to where your customers can include their own name, their cat's name, saying on the product. That's the real niche is the personalization because it's unique and you can't get it anywhere else. That's why Zazzle is a multi-million dollar company because everything on there can be personalize. If you want to do something easier, open up a cat t-shirt shop on Etsy (just an example). Have about 500+ listings with all funny cat sayings and EAT. (reference: cat t-shirts - Handmade – Etsy UK). I'm telling y'all cats fukking sell! I have a handful of cat items in my store and they outsell EVERYTHING else I have to offer and I have about 500 products in my Etsy store.

And of course if you don't want to do all this work... Just upload whatever designs you have on Zazzle, Cafe Press, Redbubble, Society6 etc. Your commission will be shyt but you don't have to do anything except add designs. Personally, I like graphic design and really higher profit margins.
 

zacharie101

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I wrote a post a few pages on some tips. Hope that helps breh.



I don't sell T-shirts right now. I can but I'm working on some other things. I was giving another person advice who wanted to sell T-shirts on there. But my advice can really be applied to anything you're selling on Etsy. As far as marketing: it's all about your keywords and tags on each listing. You can pay for promoted listings but if your SEO and keyword game is on point then you'll be good. I HIGHLY suggest those thinking of selling anything on Etsy to go to www.craftcount.com and find the top sellers in the category they want to sell. Look at the store's SEO, tags, listings etc. to see what they're doing, what product is selling the most, their policies etc. Study what they do and do the same. I honestly took about a good few days to study other top sellers in my category and took notes on what they were doing and I basically just replicated them but with my own wording.

Real talk, if you have the patience and consistency you CAN make money on Etsy. the TRAFFIC is already there. Just find a niche and go ham. Wedding and cats are really popular on Etsy for some reason and of course things that can be personalized. For instance, get a vector image of a damn cartoon cat and put it on a product (T-shirt, phone case, poster, mug, water bottle, pillow, tote bag etc. whatever your manufacturer offers to put your designs on) BUT personalize it (optional) to where your customers can include their own name, their cat's name, saying on the product. That's the real niche is the personalization because it's unique and you can't get it anywhere else. That's why Zazzle is a multi-million dollar company because everything on there can be personalize. If you want to do something easier, open up a cat t-shirt shop on Etsy (just an example). Have about 500+ listings with all funny cat sayings and EAT. (reference: cat t-shirts - Handmade – Etsy UK). I'm telling y'all cats fukking sell! I have a handful of cat items in my store and they outsell EVERYTHING else I have to offer and I have about 500 products in my Etsy store.

And of course if you don't want to do all this work... Just upload whatever designs you have on Zazzle, Cafe Press, Redbubble, Society6 etc. Your commission will be shyt but you don't have to do anything except add designs. Personally, I like graphic design and really higher profit margins.

Thanks for your help. Which Direct to Garment Printing services do you recommend for T shirts?
 

The Coochie Assassin

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The most downloaded episode of all-time with Noah Kagan | AWeber

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Thanks to Noah for joining the show, dropping some knowledge, and providing marketers with a ton of valuable tools at SumoMe.
 
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