I tried selling merch online with no investment (and how you can too)
How you can start your first online shop and my experience as a print-on-demand seller (+income proof)
Hello there!
Harshini here, and today I’m going to be telling you all about how I started my online merch shop, how much money I made, and how much time it took for people to start buying my products.
I'm also going to be sharing how you can start your online shop without investing any money. There were like a hundred other things I had to learn to start making sales. But you don’t need to learn all of them because, in the next newsletter, I will share some tips on what works and what doesn’t and the important things to keep in mind.
Here’s what I did:
I created some designs, slapped them onto products, and listed them for sale.
Don’t worry, you don’t need any design skills to get started. I will tell you how I easily created designs (for free) in this newsletter:
When a customer purchases one of my products, it’s automatically printed, packaged, and delivered. And I get a commission for designing the product.
That’s all I did, every day without breaking my streak.
I opened the shop a few years ago, I stopped working on developing it for a while, and I’m still making a few sales to this day. I don’t have much design skills and I am not a sales expert. I started as a complete beginner.
A lot of people earn hundreds to thousands of dollars per month doing it. But, to be honest, I didn’t make much money, even though I spent a lot of days adding more designs to my store. But I get a few sales here and there, so it’s all good.
If your designs are a hit, you can earn some extra (or make a living, if you become one of the top sellers), without actively working on it.
I figured out why it works well for many people and it doesn’t work for others. You just need to have the right expectations and put in some effort.
Print-on-demand platforms:
The website I used to sell merch is called “Redbubble”. Redbubble is a print-on-demand platform for artists and designers to sell their artwork/designs on over 90+ blank products available on their website. Redbubble handles everything. Manufacturing, printing, packaging, shipping, and handling customers. You can just focus on designing and uploading.
There are some print-on-demand (POD) companies that offer more earning potential than Redbubble. But I chose Redbubble Because it’s free, anyone can do it, and it's recommended for beginners.
I might open an online store on a different print-on-demand platform in the future. But, for now, let’s look at my experience as a seller on Redbubble.
My experience on Redbubble:
I opened my Redbubble shop in 2021 and spent 6 months creating and uploading designs every single day.
During the time I spent on Redbubble, I learned a lot about the print-on-demand business model. I watched Redbubble tutorials on YouTube and read articles in my spare time.
After 6 six months, still haven’t made any sales nor I saw any signs of improvement. I thought my designs were not good enough and it would be a waste of time and effort to continue. So, I gave up.
Fast forward to 2023, I randomly decided to take a look at my Redbubble shop to find that I made 13 sales!? What- I thought they wouldn’t sell.
My first sale was in March 2023 and I found out that I made sales in August 2023. At that time, I didn’t read emails and kept my earnings on hold on Redbubble. So, I didn’t know people bought my products.
Though I only earned $26 at that time, it was still a pleasant surprise. I was happy, excited, and glad that my efforts were not wasted. I danced around yelling “Woo-hoo!”. I was staying at my cousin’s house at that time and my cousin looked at me, confused lol.
That day, I got back to creating new designs and uploading them on Redbubble. But I stopped continuing, soon after I found out that Rebubble introduced a new tier system to classify designers/artists.
Redbubble tier system:
Redbubble introduced the tier system in 2023. Each Redbubble account is labeled as one of these three tiers: standard, pro, and premium. Redbubble claims that each seller's account is classified based on how much they positively engage with the platform.
The pro account gets all the features Redbubble has to offer. The premium account won’t be affected by the tier system, and the standard account has to pay fees to keep making sales.
And I… was labeled as a standard account. The fees are not even a small percentage, it’s around 45% of my profits. But the fees apply only when I make sales and it is automatically deducted from my earnings when I withdraw. So, I don’t owe anything to the platform. But still, Redbubble makes poor decisions.
But, it is true, that you can earn more than hundreds of dollars per month with print-on-demand platforms. The reason I couldn’t do it is because I chose the wrong strategy (and maybe the wrong platform).
Choosing the right POD platform:
If you choose Redbubble, I can’t guarantee that you can make a living. But, there are ways to get a premium account at sign-up. And there are ways to tier up in case you get a standard account. So, I’d recommend giving that a try. It’s a great way for beginners to gain experience and earn some extra.
Other than Redbubble, there are a lot of print-on-demand platforms, a few of them are free, some of them require a fee, some of them have great features, and some are limited. Do research and find which print-on-demand platform you prefer.
Check out my Redbubble shop:
That’s it for today’s newsletter. If you liked this post, I hope you can let me know by leaving a quick like, comment, or share this letter with others.
Thank you for reading! I hope you enjoyed reading this post and hope it was helpful. Come again next week on Friday for a ✨new post✨
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