You Need to Start an Online T Shirt Business Already

I LOVE dreaming up different random businesses to start that are creative and cool and fun and personal. One of those that has drifted in and out of my mind is a t-shirt business.

I’m one of those dorks who always has to point out when a dumb phrase would make a good band name, and I think that same gene makes me think of amazingly hilarious and awesome t-shirt ideas.

Then I start thinking about the actual work involved in buying a bunch of shirts, screening them, trying to sell them, etc etc etc and holy nuts, no way do I want to do all that peasant work.

I’ve batted around the idea of starting a Zazzle shop, and I have a few random items floating around Zazzle, but Zazzle overwhelms me. And then I decide my stuff will simply get lost in the vast ocean of Zazzle.

Today, however, I got an email in the old inbox from Shopify about their Online T-Shirt Business Guide and I silently screamed what a good idea this is.

I had to read it first to make sure they don’t recommend printing your own t-shirts, and when the coast was clear, my curiosity was piqued.

As I mentioned, I just got this email today, so I haven’t ironed out any details, but my first thoughts would be to start a quick and easy website, then and add a Shopify store to that. I would slowly start to add some designs to my store, making sure they worked together in a visually cohesive way. For instance, you don’t want to have 3 t-shirt designs with funny porcupine photos and then 4 more with hilarious quotes about how much you love coffee.

I remember reading somewhere – and I tend to agree with this – that the more products you have for sale, the more likely someone is to buy something. People want choices, and they also want to browse through a bunch of cool designs. Also, the more stuff you offer, the longer they will browse, making it more likely they will actually buy something.

Therefore, I would probably wait until I had 6-10 designs up in my shop before I began to hardcore promote it.

IN FACT! I came up with some beautiful designs on PicMonkey, my favorite site for Photoshop-averse dorks like me.

Are your creative pistons firing? The guide over here offers much more juicy, in depth info and resources for branding, ideas, best practices, t shirt resources, and best of all: printer/dropshippers.

If you start a t-shirt biz, will you let me know? I want to see what creative things you people are up to.