How many times did myriad business ideas pass and vanished into thin air because you’re afraid to take risks? Or maybe you are willing to take the risk but have no capital to start up a business.
Have you ever imagined putting your crafts into various products and selling them to thousands of people and think that it was impossible?
Whether you are an entrepreneur, graphic designer, writer, or artist without any means to start a business, it’s no coincidence that you are reading this article. Even without spending a single penny, you can start a business anytime you want, no matter your age. And no, you will not be offering your services to people.
This will not be another affiliate marketing nor drop servicing tutorial, but a legitimate way to monetize your creativity by putting it on physical products. From clothing to books, bags to posters, you can create them according to your own liking and sell them online with no capital needed.
Make physical products your canvas, and produce them without hassling yourself in shipping, manufacturing, and creating an inventory for your products.
Getting to Know Redbubble
If you haven’t discovered Redbubble yet, you have missed years of golden opportunities. E-commerce is growing around 17% every year and drop shipping’s business model is expected to grow alongside the increase of the industry. One of the areas of dropshipping is print on demand, which Redbubble focuses on.
To give a brief background, print on demand is a process where you connect with a supplier to customize products with your design and let them sell them under your brand. Every product will be pre-ordered, so there’s actually no need for you to buy it in bulk and resell them at a higher cost.
Redbubble is an established online print-on-demand marketplace where entrepreneurs and artists run to sell their artwork. The artwork can be attached to various physical products within the platform, and every time a product with your artwork sells, you will be making money.
Basically, you will not directly handle any print-on-demand items because Redbubble will handle everything, from printing to shipping.
To get started, you need to sign up as an artist to set up your shop and begin selling your designs.
Create Your Own Design
If you’re into arts, go ahead and do your craft. Suppose you are not, then head over to Free Design Resources (FDR), which is a site you can use to find high-quality and compelling designs for free. These designs are created by expert artists and designers all over the globe.
The platform possesses thousands of designs that you can sell in Redbubble without getting in trouble for selling someone else’s design online. FDR gives its users 100% free license to any design they want. This means you can assume ownership of the design you’ve chosen. All you have to do is to download the design to your computer.
Sell Your Designs
From your account, click Sell Your Art to be directed to the dashboard to upload the design you prefer. If you plan to put multiple product designs, you can build and customize your own shop.
Putting up a shop is a good idea because there will be a room where you can showcase different products, allowing you to have a higher potential income.
Once you upload your design, it will be available on t-shirts, pillows, phone cases, tumblers, tote bags, and all sorts of stuff. You can add a title to the products, tags, and descriptions relevant to your design. After accomplishing the things that need to be done, scroll all the way down to the bottom of the page, and save the work.
If an individual purchases these products, you will earn a commission and get paid through the payment details you will give. You can use online payment systems like Payoneer or PayPal.
Get Traffic to Your Store
Don’t expect to earn a lot just by uploading your design on Redbubble and wait for someone to take a liking to it. It would be best if you would work to drive traffic to your store for people to buy your designs.
If there’s a marketplace for freelancers, there’s also an online marketplace for influencers, and one of them is Shoutcart.
To send more people to your design, to make more sales, you need someone who is “influential” that will vouch for your work. Technically, advertise them to a wider audience.
In Shoutcart, you can connect with different influencers and pay them to give a positive shoutout or feedback regarding your business. This will help boost brand awareness and trust in the product because someone famous is backing you.
These influencers don’t just have hundreds of followers, but hundreds of thousands of them, giving you higher chances of landing sales. However, nothing comes free nowadays, so you need to pay them for their task. The fee is not really expensive and will only cost you about $10 to $20, which is nothing compared to the sales you could make from their shoutout.
Sign up for a brand account in Shoutcart for free to buy their services. The registering process is not really complicated and only requires you to fill up some basic information about you and your brand.
Once logged in, you will be able to see several influencers, but you have to narrow them down by just choosing Instagram as the influencer’s channel. No need to go for a Facebook, Twitter, or YouTube shoutout. After scaling down the list, filter the list by the category of the product you want to promote.
Choose one influencer that has the most followers, at the same time, one that asks for a reasonable payment. Send them a message of what you are selling, about your brand, and that you want them to promote your designs in their account.
What will ultimately determine the success of your print-on-demand business is your marketing strategy. Always remember this, if you’re targeting every single demographics, you’re basically not marketing to anyone. You need to have a central focus.
Regardless of whatever marketing strategy you employ, you will have a tough time making your marketing work without one focus. Ensure that you target a defined audience to acquire customers and maximize the potential of conversion.
Print on demand can be a very rewarding business model for entrepreneurs and artists who don’t have enough capital or want to test out an idea before fully investing in it.
Suppose your print-on-demand ideas eventually give you lucrative results in sales. In that case, you can always quit using Redbubble and start up your own business or continue using their services while discovering new methods to grow your audience to achieve better results. Either way, the choice is always yours.
