Print-on-demand businesses have gained a lot of popularity due to lower entry costs compared to other eCommerce fields.
In addition, out of all POD products, T-shirts are by far most popular with an expected CAGR of 11.1% from 2023 to 2030.
Thus, it’s not surprising that everyone wants a piece of the $3 billion custom T-shirt market.
However, is there a chance of succeeding in such a saturated market and stand out?
Yes, if you know what you’re doing.
Read on to learn about 9 tips to start a print-on-demand T-shirt business the right way.
Let’s dive in!
Start creating for Free!
Showcase your E-commerce products like big brands, without costing a fortune
What Are The Benefits of Print-On-Demand Business?
As we’ve said, one of POD’s biggest appeals and benefits is its low initial investment.
Unlike traditional retail models that involve holding inventory, in a POD business, you manufacture products only when a customer places an order.
✨ No Inventory Management — You don’t have to worry about managing inventory, storage costs, or unsold stock.
Instead, you print and ship products directly to customers on demand, eliminating the risk of overstocking or running out of popular items.
✨ Diverse Product Range — You can offer a wide variety of customizable products, such as apparel, mugs, phone cases, etc., without the need to produce or hold physical inventory for each item.
✨ Design Flexibility — Due to easy product customization and personalization, you can create unique designs, artwork, etc., catering to niche markets or specific customer preferences.
✨ Scalability — You can expand product offerings, target new markets, or test different designs without additional production costs.
✨ Global Reach — POD services often provide worldwide shipping options, allowing you to reach customers across the globe and tap into international markets.
9 Tips to Start A Print-On-Demand T-Shirt Business Efficiently
If you’ve already done some research, you may wonder why we omitted typical initial steps, such as market research and defining your target audience.
The reason is simple — We’ve already covered the general steps of starting a POD in our comprehensive blog How to Start a Print-on-Demand Business [11 Expert Tips].
So, this time, we want to provide actionable tips specific to starting a print-on-demand T-shirt business.
1. Choose The Right Topic
As a general rule of thumb, you should brainstorm on the topics you are passionate about, your hobbies, or any topics you know a lot about.
It would be much easier to come up with ideas for topics you care about. In addition, it would make the creation process more engaging and interesting.
Once you’ve found your topic, you can search for additional inspiration by browsing popular platforms like Etsy, Shopify, etc.
Let’s say you want to explore the topic of T-shirts with pets. You only need to type the word in the search bar, apply the filters you want, and check the results.
It doesn’t matter whether you’d sell on these platforms or not — you’re not going to use identical designs, but to get your creative juices flowing.
However, although you may get inspired, you still wouldn’t know which of these designs will drive more sales within your niche, right?
This is where the next step comes in.
2. Find Design Ideas That Sell Well
There are tools like Merch Informer, for example, which can help you get the info about the gaps within your niche.
Since we started with T-shirts with pets, let’s continue in the same way.
If you type “pets” in the Keyword research field, you’ll get the list of all related entries showing current competition and gaps.
Naturally, you should look for the green tags because they indicate low competition, and avoid the red ones.
3. Create Compelling T-shirt Slogans
Now that you’ve picked a sub-niche with low competition, it’s time to come up with catchy and interesting slogans.
Again, tools like Chat GPT or similar AI text-generating tools can speed up the whole process.
So, let’s say that based on the above information, you’ve picked up “adorable pets” as your sub-niche.
Go to Chat GPT, for example, and type Write 10 funny adorable pets T-shirt ideas.
Not only did you get a list of potential slogans, but you also got a suggestion for designs.
You can edit and tweak your Chat GPT input as many times as you wish, you can change or omit adjectives in the input descriptions, etc.
4. Pay Attention to Trademarks and Copyrights
Using Chat GPT and similar tools is great for quickly generating slogan ideas, but you still need to know if those slogans have trademarks or copyrights.
The last thing you want to do is get flagged and have your account taken down — not an optimal scenario.
Some POD platforms offer trademark checkers or copyright-free designs, and some non-POD tools, like Merch Informer, also provide that option.
Pick a few or all phrases you like from your slogan list and use the Trademark Alert tool to check if they are free to use.
Regardless of the tool you use, it is a time-saving process that keeps you on the safe side and prevents you from accidentally doing copyright infringement.
5. Create Mockups
One of the most important parts of the POD T-shirt business is to make your products appealing and realistic so your customers can envision them in real life and situations.
Since digital images don’t always “translate” optimally to real-life items and can look distorted, mockups can close that gap and help you achieve realism.
Furthermore, they allow you to add more varieties to your designs without advanced technical skills.
Dynamic Mockups allows you to upload multiple design assets and color combinations and automatically create all mockup variations.
With most mockup platforms, the process is manual and takes too much time. Just imagine — for 100 T-shirt designs in, let’s say, 3 colors, you’d have to create 300 variants.
Now, imagine doing all of that manually.
Our tool takes about 10 seconds to produce 100 customizable mockup variations.
💡 ProTip:
Create and upload 20-40 different designs containing the visuals and slogans you’ve picked for your low-competition sub-niche.
This way, whenever a potential customer searches for the related designs, your collection of various designs will pop up, increasing the chance of sale.
6. Pick The Right T-Shirt
Even the greatest and the most original design doesn’t stand a chance if the T-shirt quality is poor.
The 3 most common or popular T-shirt materials are cotton, polyester, and mix.
Another important thing to consider is what printing technique you’ll use because not all materials “react” the same.
For instance, the DTG print looks best on 100% cotton or polyester-cotton mix shirts.
In addition, you may want to include eco-friendly options from organic and sustainable materials if you cater to that audience type.
💡 ProTip:
You should always test your product and order samples to see how everything fits together and whether you approve of the quality.
Dynamic Mockups allows you to create multiple mockups of a single product and test them to get audience feedback by:
- Sharing your designs on social media and other relevant channels,
- Running and sharing a survey with your email list, social media followers, etc.
This way, you can make an informed decision based on the feedback.
7. Choose Between Active or Passive POD
The time has come for you to upload your products to eCommerce marketplaces or platforms.
✨ eCommerce marketplaces like Amazon, Etsy, and eBay represent the so-called passive POD because you don’t need to create an online store.
You need to create and upload the designs, and they do the rest for you. They usually charge a fee for listing and selling your products on their platform.
✨ On the other hand, eCommerce Platforms like Shopify, WooCommerce, or BigCommerce are the active POD.
You are responsible for creating your website and online store, driving traffic, handling customer service, etc.
These platforms usually charge a monthly or transaction fee based on sales.
🔥 Thanks to our Etsy integration, you can sync mockups directly to Etsy and save your time by eliminating the manual download and upload process.
📌Note:
Uploading your designs to multiple platforms allows you to get more exposure.
8. Set The Price
Setting up the price isn’t something you should base on your gut feeling, wishes, or expectations.
There are 3 main aspects you need to factor in:
- Variable costs
- Fixed costs, and
- Competition prices.
💰 Variable costs, such as T-shirt materials, printing techniques, and shipping costs, vary based on the number of products.
💰 Fixed costs usually include tools and software to streamline your design process, platform and marketplace fees, marketing and advertising costs, etc.
💰 Competition prices will provide an insight into an average price you could set up. Therefore, your price can go below your competition to attract new customers. If you opt for this, keep your profit margins in check.
The other option is to offer a higher price if you think your designs, material, etc., are more premium.
9. Promote Your Products
There are multiple ways and opportunities to promote your print-on-demand T-shirts.
Let’s check a few main ones:
✨ Promote on Social Media Platforms
Social media is an inevitable part of advertising and promoting your products. Which one will work best for you depends on your niche and audience.
✨ Collaborate with Influencers
Influencers and micro-influencers have loyal followers, and you can tap into their audiences based on the trust and loyalty already there.
You can also consider niche communities that align with your products and more easily connect with them.
✨ Leverage User-generated Content (UGC)
Similar to influencer marketing, UGC’s main purpose is to build trust. New customers will more likely buy your T-shirts when they see a real, everyday person wearing them.
Your existing customers can post videos, reviews, photos, tag your brand, etc., and you can reward them with special discounts or offers in return.
✨ Host Contests and Giveaways
Games represent an engaging way to reward loyal customers and attract new ones while promoting your products.
Your imagination is the limit, and you can organize everything from photo or video contests to sweepstakes.
🎁 Bonus: 9 Print-On-DemandT-shirt Design MistakesTo Avoid
Before we wrap things up, let’s pinpoint the most common mistakes you shouldn’t make regarding T-shirt designs.
How Can You Start a Print-on-Demand T-shirt Business With Dynamic Mockups?
Dynamic Mockups is a mockup generator tool that provides solutions to PODs for managing their business as they scale efficiently.
So, how can we help you launch your POD T-shirt business?
Besides our stellar bulk feature, Dynamic Mockups enables you to:
🔥 Create unique and original mockups thanks to the Upload Custom Photoshop Templates feature.
This way, you can create and customize mockups to better resonate with your audience and brand.
🔥 Store all designs in one place in our Design Library and easily move them into different folders to eliminate the need to re-upload.
🔥 Tap into our ever-growing Template Library and browse T-shirts, Hoodies, Wall art, Pillows, Blankets, Tote Bags, Phone Cases, etc.
🔥 Optimize the layout of your designs, perfectly place your assets, move and resize them, apply automated fitting modes, and do post-adjustments.
🔥 Use Photoshop blending modes for more realistic designs.
🔥 Apply more customization and integrate the API key within your web or Mobile app with our API.
Ready to check what we offer?
Try Dynamic Mockups for free to get a great headstart for your print-on-demand T-shirt business.
Start creating for Free!
Showcase your E-commerce products like big brands, without costing a fortune
Keep Learning:
7 Best Mockup Tools To Automate Your POD Business
