Teechip Review - How You Can Start Making Money Online Today
(This is not a sponsored post. I have personally used Teechip.com to sell to my followings on Instagram and have enjoyed how it works.)
Start selling on Teechip.com now and earn as you create great products! Basically If you've ever heard of Teespring then you understand the business model. Making money with Teechip is no different. Or is it? Teespring, the apparel website which lets you design your own shirts and put them up for sale was the first of its kind, you could argue, allowing people to sell custom merchandise which limits the availability of pieces. You set how many t-shirts you want to make available, set the price and promote. You only get paid the full amount when all of the t-shirts sell. You then run the 'campaign for how ever many weeks you want. Recently, Teespring set it's minimum at 3 shirts. So if you don't sell all of your 50 shirts but just 3 sell, you'll still get the profit for those 3 shirts. This can be annoying for people trying to sell shirts who maybe don't have a big online audience or who don't know how to promote them very well, like on Facebook. Now, let me introduce you to Teechip.com which has taken the same basic idea as Teespring and made things a hell of a lot easier for the wannabe merchandise seller. You still can set a limited amount of shirts for sale but even if you sell one and your campaign ends, you still get paid for that one!! It has the scarcity factor of Teespring.com but it allows you to easily test out a design for sale. Back in 2011 when Teespring first launched I had personally tried to sell some, quite honestly, crappy designs. That was half of the reason why my designs failed big time. I had several Facebook Pages in different niches which were around 60% engaged so not brilliant. However I did launch some campaigns on one of my pages using Facebook ads. I ran the add for a week. I did manage to sell 1 shirt in that time. Admittedly, the design was rubbish. However that experience gave me some hope for the future of what could be done if done properly. Because I only sold one, after the campaign ended I had the message on my Teespring dashboard 'failed to reach minimum number of sales'. Back then you had to sell 10 shirts to get paid so I was extremely far off that. How Does Teechip work? Fast forward a few years to 2015 and I stumbled across Teechip.com. At first glance it looked just like Teespring except a little more easy to navigate. To my surprise, they offered more products than Teespring. In fact, they offered mugs, hoodies, vests and posters. As an avid 'internet artist' myself, I knew this could lead onto something great. I knew from using sites like redbubble.com that putting your art on mugs could mean big money. Basically, I have several accounts on different social networks where I post different styles of art to test out what sells well. So, I created an account and jumped into creating a mug design. I was surprised how easy it was. I had always had trouble getting my art to look good on a Teespring shirt and I also had a great deal of trouble getting the formats right to be accepted as a design that was printable. Not with Teechip. They support high quality JPEG's, PNG and Vector files. Of course, the best option is to go with a vector file but if you can't, the next best thing is a PNG that is large enough so that it doesn't become distorted once printed. Select A Product To Upload Your blank Design To
*2020 update - you can now add your designs on up to 25 designs in one go!
Here's a list of all the different items you can add your designs to; Socks, vests, tshirts, tank tops, smart shirts, polo shirts, hoodies, v necks, jumpers, low top shoes, high top shoes, face masks, bags, hats, ties, mouse pads, yoga mats, pillow cases, magnets, cutting boards, towels, mugs, coasters, posters, blankets, comforters, rugs, shower curtains, curtains, duvet covers, pet beds, canvas prints, framed prints and jewelry. Uploading your designs to your Teechip store is really easy and you can easily see what they look like on a bunch of different merchandise items. Here's what you'll need to do once you have set up an account. Make sure you're setting up a 'sellers account' or just navigate to wherever it says 'sell on Teechip' at the bottom of the home page. 1. Start a campaign 2. Select the items you want your design to appear on Next, you'll come to the 'upload design' page. I'm using this slightly more expensive jacket as an example to show you the higher tier items but don't forget you can add it to mugs, prints etc. Notice that the minimum DPI is 150 so make sure you're designs are at least at that spec;
Once you've added your design you can preview it and add it to more products before you start to look at pricing. Shout out to David Englund. I'm using his 'fist' image from Pixabay for this just as an example to who you how Teechip works;
Here's a view of the preview page before you go on to sort out your pricing. The below image shows you a few interesting things. First off you'll see what the base price is going to be. All you need to do is decide how much you want to sell the jacket for. This is how much money you'll make on each items sold. So, you'll want to throw another $20-30 on top of the cost price in this example.
The next thing you'll notice is your expected sales during the campaign period. If you sold your jacket for the below pricing structure then you'd make $1,299.50. Not bad for selling only 50 units. Yes, it's not the cheapest item in the world but you can see how much you could stand to make with a really engaged audience on your social medias.
On the following page after this one you can enter the name of your campaign, set it to be displayed in one of your storefronts, add related products, track conversion rates through Facebook and add upsells.
You can then create your own description and URL to share on your social media accounts. Let's Look At Another Example...
I personally don't think many people are going to be using Teechip.com to sell higher priced jackets. Instead, I think you can sell tons and tons of things like tshirt, prints and mugs. Personally, I love to sell mugs. Teechip.com is perfect for those that create art or photography.
I have discovered just how much people really like mugs! It's something they use everyday and they showcase your designs nicely. For the below example, I was adding one of my art pieces to a mug that I was going to then go on to run a campaign for 30 days. I'm not going to share that design here but you'll get the idea;
Once I had placed my design on the mug, I was very happy with the preview picture of the product. It wasn't distorted at all and I was easily able to move it around on the mug and change the size of it.
Like I said, one of the best parts about Teechip is the low cost prices. The beginning cost prices seem to be a lot bigger than Teespring.com and other POD sites. Teechip seems to merge the best of both worlds. Let me explain... I was always a fan of using sites like redbubble or fineartamerica. These are great 'print on demand' sites which allow you to put your designs on lots of different products. I liked the idea that someone could order my product without me even having to lift a finger. However, there are catches with sites like these. The margins are pathetically low. So if you sold a shirt at $20, the base prices are so high e.g. $15, you'd make about $5 per item sold. If you don't sell many, it can be disheartening. Obviously, you can add whatever markup you want but on these other sites it just felt like the cost price was already really high whereas I don't feel like that with Teechip.com So when I saw Teechips base / cost prices I was pleasantly surprised. Let's focus on Teechip's mugs because I think they're awesome and because as I mentioned, people love buying mugs. The base cost for a basic mug is $4.00 so you're going to want to mark it up to at least $10. That means that every mug you sell you'll profit $6. That's not bad. People really are willing to pay that much for a mug especially one with your logo or art on. I'm proof of that. I've also managed to sell several shirts in the short time I've had my Teechip account. The base prices are $6 which allows you to mark up to $19-25 depending on how much profit you want. On average I make about $13 per shirt. Not bad! Currently there are two different qualities of shirts and a v-neck option. I always choose the top quality shirt for my designs because there's not much difference in base costs. *2020 update* There are now many more shirt options! Polo shirts, smart shirts, vests, long sleeve tees, baseball tees and even kids tees! How Do Teechip Campaigns Work?
The Teechip campaign options are pretty awesome too. Like Teespring, you can set your campaign length to last a few days before it expires to a few weeks to give people more time to buy. You can even set it for just 1 day to increase scarcity!
If you like you can even turn on 'automatically restart campaign'. This is really handy because you can also create your own store on Teechip. You simply create your design, add the description, set the campaign length and select which store you want to add it too. You are allowed more than one store on you account. I currently have 3 for 3 different Instagram accounts where I post different art under different names. So, this option is really handy because you can manage everything from one place. Of course, your products stay live as campaigns that have an 'expiry' but if you check the 'automatically restart campaigns' button they remain in your store until you want to end them yourself. Once you have set up a campaign you can go back in anytime you like to re-edit the settings if you need. You can add more shirt colours for example and change the description. But wait there's more...you can even add an 'up sell' to your campaign once it's live. So basically, when your customer lands on the product page they'll see an option to add something else onto their order at a cheaper rate so it'll increase your profits. You can even add to their temptation by taking advantage of Teechips coupons feature.
When editing a campaign you set your own url. For example teepchip.com/cooltee. You can create your own coupons and set how much the customer will save when applied to a purchase which is a really great way to convince people to buy. You simply grab the coupns name and stick it on the end of your unique url for the selected campaign. They, send the customer to the discounted url address. Of course, this does mean that anything the customer saves, you'll lose that in profit.
How To sell Teechip Products
As you might have guessed, Teechip.com isn't going to sell your custom merch for you. Whilst it does the hard work on the end of fulfilling orders, you still have to do your own marketing.
Like with selling anything, the making of the product is easy and if you're artistically inclined, even easier. It's the selling which is usually hard. That's why sites like Teechip work so well if you already have an online audience i.e. you have a large following on an Instagram account, Facebook page etc. With one share on your social account you could be looking at hundreds of dollars if not thousands. However, this only happens when your following trusts you enough and you've built up enough of a relationship between you. Generally, you can sell Teechip products with 2 strategies; 1. You have an online (big and engaged) audience - easy 2. You start up a social account with the intent to sell - hard We've all seen the annoying 'fan pages' of popular shows on Facebook where basically someone has built up a huge following by posting photos and quotes of the TV show or film (let's use the example of The Walking Dead) Many people think that these pages are run by creators and contributors to the show but really they are run by internet marketers out to ride on the back of something popular. In doing so, they are creating designs which are copyrighted and which violate intellectual rights of the shows. For example, they will design a crappy 2-tone picture of a characters face and add a quote which they then put on a shirt. They build these pages up by spending hundreds of dollars on advertisements and then once they reach a few thousand 'likes' they start bombarding the page with t-shirt ads in the hopes the poor suckers will buy buy buy. It does work...but people are beginning to get tired of seeing this type of thing and are being turned off by it. That's why I recommend instead, the first option. To build up a solid following around your own designs or talents. For someone with artistic talent Teechip offers the chance to sell your own designs to your following and handle all the headache at their end like stock control and shipping. It takes a lot of work and time to build your own following up but many Instagram personalities and YouTube stars have gained such trust from their audiences that they can literally advertise a link to one of their products and have $$$ in their accounts in a matter of hours if not minutes. Selling Teechip Products On The Teechip.com Website ItselfWhen I first started selling Teechip.com merch, I didn't think that much about the Teechip.com marketplace or didn't even think they had a proper one. Whilst Teechip.com first stated up their focus was on being a great place to sell POD merch. Whilst this is still true, in 2020 you should now take not of their marketplace because it's becoming more popular, as far as I can tell. You can sign up for a traditional 'sellers account' or what I call a 'buyers account'. With a general buyers account on their homepage you can browse items on their various category pages, much like you would on Amazon. Because it seems more people are buying custom merch on Teechips marketplace, it's important to make sure that even if your main goal is to directly to sell to your social following that know you, you still add the right keywords to your descriptions and the right category tags because people who actually use Teechip's frontend buying platform will be more likely to come across your merch and you could pick up a few extra sales. If you notice in the above image, like many POD sites, people are taking advantage of dates and occasions to make seasonal merch that anyone could buy. For example, there is someone using the coronavirus pandemic as a selling point for there quarantine joke mug. There's more seasonal sellers who are selling father's day and mother's day mugs too. You'll also notice that a couple of these mugs are trending. I'd bet that these are connected to social accounts. When you sell a large amount of merch, Teechip will mark your design as 'trending', pushing you to the top of the first page of each category that your design features. This is great if you can sell a bunch of items to your social following because you'll then get more exposure to the general buyers that browse different categories on Teechips frontend. How To Sell Teechip On Instagram
Of course, Insta makes it harder for us to sell (in general) than it is on platforms like Facebook. Because you can only have one live link in your bio you have to make sure you use the photos you post to redirect people. I have found the best way to get people's eyeballs on your link (which should be to your Teechip store or a current campaign) is to post a photo of your product with your design on it and to write in red the price and something like 'link in bio'.
To maximise your efforts also try and write beneath the product 'only available for a week.' In my experiments I have found that the best types of designs to sell on Insta are funny ones or rude ones, designs that are blunt and to the point work wonders and people like giving each other tshirts and mugs with slightly rude designs and quotes on. These types of designs are also eye catching and to the point. There really is no need to over complicate them. Because of the nature of Insta, it's important that your image makes an impact and the potential customer understands what they're getting for their money as soon as they see it. If it makes them 'lol' instantly or remind them of a friend you'll be onto a winner. Some of the best selling mugs in the world have simple one line jokes or quotes. If you don't already have a following on social media and have a brand new account, then make sure you take full advantage of the hashtags. So many people don't use hashtags. How are people supposed to find them if they don't? Hashtag with things like #funny# instacool #amazing. Of course if you do have a big following who are into what you do, selling to them should be easy. Thank you for reading and I hope you take advantage of Teechip.com
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Sean MichaelMake money on the side with your social media accounts. |