BLOG INCOME
$1547.50
PAID ADVERTISING
REVENUE: $15,046.43
COST: $10,048.80
P/L: + $4,997.63
TOTAL INCOME
$6,545.13
(I accidentally typed $30.68 instead of $301.68 on 11/20/14 in the cost section. This has been fixed now)
Woohoo, almost 5k!
Milking a Profitable Campaign
During the end of October I stumbled upon a fairly profitable TS campaign with a massive audience, (over 5Mill). I love when this happens because I know I’m going to make a lot of money. I usually cap my budget at about $150 and let the campaign continue till I saturate my demographic but I’ve been recently wondering if this is the correct way to do things when I can just increase the budget to 3-$500 and just milk it dry as soon as I can.
This campaign was launched 3 times and gave me around 550 sales all up. I was doing great until Teespring conducted an internal review and decided to stop allowing me from running the campaign. They had been contacted a few times by the company the shirt alludes to so to be on the safe side, they decided to take down my campaign. I still got paid out though so all was good but I’m sure I would have been able to sell another 500. Oh well, you take what you get and move on.
Hitting Another Big Campaign
I found another campaign that has even BIGGER potential. It doesn’t have the same ROI, but has an audience of over 10 million! This one’s a general hobby so there is no risk of Teespring taking it down. I’ve decided to increase the budget slowly as high as I possibly can maintaining a good ROI. Currently I have it at $200/day and it’s making 20-25 sales at $15 commission each. I’m happy with that. I’m going to try go big with this and get it to around 1500 sales all up. Let’s see how I go!
Teespring Promo Feature
Recently Teespring released a promotional feature that allows you to add a link extension discounting your product to whatever discount price you want. I’ve really been able to experiment with it this month and must say, it’s AWESOME!
The hardest part of running a TS campaign, is getting it off it’s feet. Once your rolling and you have about 10 sales on your campaign, more sales start to come by easier as there’s now more trust in the product when people see ’10 products ordered’.
Pretty much 1 of every 3 campaigns I set up will make at least one sale which is mainly due to the discount link I put in the description. Say something like, ‘first 10 orders get $4 off’. This will get people buying initially and you can simply remove the link once the orders reach 10.
Anyway, if you’re not using it, you’re missing out. I do it for EVERY campaign and so should you.
The ‘You Only Need One Win’ Theory
Above I mentioned 2 campaigns I’ve found that should be able to net me 10-12k profit alone. One thing most people don’t realize, unless you’re in the business yourself, is that I’ve launched about 100 campaigns+ trying to find these.
I’m not exaggerating. Some of these campaigns will break even, some will be profitable but short lived, some will be total duds luring me in with good CTRs so I spend about $30-$40 before I give up on it. Some however, will be massive winners.
If you do the math, say about 70 of those campaigns were total losers. For these, I didn’t make a single dollar back. I usually spend about $20 for testing before I stop something so all up, I’ve spent around $2100. Even if I find ONE really good campaign that gets me 2-300 sales, I’ll make my money back and then some.
This has been my mindset throughout this whole year. I’ll do 15 campaigns in a day and find out they all fail. I’ve spent $300 on testing them all in total. Do I get sad and become more conservative with my money? Nope, this is how it is. I keep going and repeat the same thing the next day, and the next day, and the next….
This business has shown me time and time again, from mine AND other peoples experience that you just need one campaign to change everything around. Whether it be Teespring or anything else, out of the 100s of failures you’re going to go through, just remember, all you need is one success to turn things completely around.
Switching to a MacBook Pro Retina
I’ve had an Acer for the last 2 years. It’s pretty good but the battery drains so quick, I can hardly take it anywhere. I’ve been meaning to get a new laptop for a while now and this month I decided to just go get one.
I did some research and decided to give the MacBook Pro a go. I took a friend of mine to the shops and as we looked around, the salesman bought my attention to the Surface Pro 3.
So, confirming that I had 2 weeks to return it if I didn’t like it, I thought I’d give it a shot! I bought it and spent the next day trying to get used to my daily computer tasks. The touchscreen functionality was starting to get pretty useful. There were a lot of other problems though.
1. Screen Way Too Small: At 12 inches, this screen was tiny! I found myself squinting a lot especially when playing around with my spreadsheets.
2. Can’t Use It On my Lap: The whole point of a ‘laptop’ is to be able to use it anywhere. As I’m typing this, I’m sitting on my bed leaning against the wall with the laptop on my lap. This simple task was so hard to do with the Surface Pro. You have to balance the back stand on your legs and if you move a bit it’ll topple over to the side.
Anyway, I decided to give it back and go with my initial choice – The MacBook Pro Retina Display.
I bought a 13 inch for about $1400. It took me a while to get used to the touch pad but I LOVE it! It’s so smoother, battery lasts a good while and I can use it anywhere.
It’s made me pretty efficient with my work which is the main thing. Even if I’m saving 20-30 minutes a day with this laptop, that equates to about 100 hours a year! Well worth the investment.
Starting to Become Very ‘Custom Product’ Focused
Usually people that get into affiliate marketing start promoting CPA offers. I did the same till I stumbled upon Teespring. Since TS was working well for me I continued with it this whole year which has allowed me to keep connected to this fairly new industry of affiliate marketing.
Since Teespring has been successful, we’ve seen the emergence of a lot of other competitors, each offering something the other doesn’t. As I explored all these and spent 3-4 figures testing things, a lot showed promise. As these new companies start popping up here and there, they’ve started to show me the potential of turning this into a long term business. With some companies allowing you to have your own hosted store with 100’s of customizable products, there’s still a LOT of money to be made here and it will be the case for a long time. I’m going to focus on long term projects that allow me to run this like a real business.
I’ve let the industry guide me since day one and so far it seems like I’m becoming more and more custom product focused which allows me to have my own virtual business and sell products that would give me almost the same profit margins as if I did the whole back end myself. It’s pretty cool if you think about it.
A real business is one that you are able to build upon. One that you can grow an email list of, upsell to, keep connected to, all which Teespring doesn’t really allow you to do, (yet).
I’m hoping to do a lot more with this sort of stuff next year, probably with other companies so stay tuned!
Part of AffPlaybook Faculty
I’ve been with AffPlaybook forums since I started. A lot of my successes here are based on what I learn there. Recently David asked me to be part of the AffPlaybook Faculty. I was honored and said yes straight away!
There’s a good number of us there, all pretty much full-time and making good money. One of the members just made $250K in 28 Days, selling Hoodies/Tshirts in November. All selling Christmas Jumpers. It’s awesome to be part of a group that have so much to offer and make money in all kinds of ways online.
I’m definitely looking forward to staying with the community and being part of their successes. Knowledge is a big part of the game, one that will separate you from being a 3 figure affiliate to a 6 figure affiliate.
Blog Income Nearing 2k
Along with my Teespring endeavors, my blog has been showing me some GREAT promise this last 6 months. This month I was pretty close to 2k and should be able to hit that next month. It’s awesome side money and is slowly starting to overtake my Teespring business. Along with Teespring, I’ve earned about 7k this month. Almost double my engineering salary!
This is the sort of income I love because all the value I put in it will continue to be there and won’t disappear once the ‘campaign ends’.
Again, I have big plans for the blog and hope to make it an awesome place for all kinds of affiliates so stay tuned!
Ending Remarks
With November gone, we have 1 more month before the end of the year. It’s been a CRAZY year for me and a massive learning experience. I can’t wait to do my December blog post, there’s a lot I’d like to talk about.
As usual, I hope you guys are killing it with whatever you’re doing! Just keep pushing, stay motivated and remember
It Just Takes ONE Win to Turn Everything Around
~ Mateen
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I need to test 100 campaigns to find those 2 golden campaigns? is it? with this 2 I can make massive profit. My testing budget is $5 per campaign, so 100X5=500 I need to spend to find 1 or 2 profitable campaigns that can bring me $$$$..Is it correct?
Nothing is ever guaranteed, the above is just an example. $5 is not enough to test. Sometimes I go till $15 and make no sales but I’ll test another $10 and make 2 then continue with the campaign to $100 profit days.
When I find something good I can usually scale to other niches with the same design template. But definitely spend at least $15-$20 unless you’re getting baaaad CTR
Thanks ..will you split test design too? i mean with the same niche you will test 2,3 design and spend $15 each design?
Sometimes yes. If I think another type of design works well then I’ll try it. I think it’s a good idea to be split testing designs also, something I should be doing more often.
Hey Mateen.
Thanks again for the report – inspiring and motivating.
I actually cracking some profit with teespring this month about $300 after adspend it was just enough to keep my mind in the game.
Great to hear! It’s those small wins that keep you in the game. At least your making progress and that’s the absolute main thing. Keep it up!
Hi Mateen
I was waiting for the report to discover what did you do and seeing how the things work for you and as I see above I Say BRAVO 🙂
thanks for the report this will keep me motivating
Best Regards
Yassine
Thanks Yassine 😀 hope you’re doing good too!
Congratulations Mateen!
$5k is awesome dough!
Thanks for the breakdown of your months’ activities.Always nice to read what other people are upto.
One thing am asking for: In a paragraph or two, could you walk us through an arbitrary TS campaign you would run…as in:
1. an example of a potential niche and why you think the niche could be profitable
2. how you would design the shirt: an simple design example would be great.
3. how you’d do custom audiences/audience insights/demographic targeting – what you look out for (age,sex,profession)
4. how you’d scale a winning campaign.
I know you have some of this info spread out on your blog but if you just answer each question above it would be rgeat!
Thank you!
Thanks Harry!
All this deserves a blog post of it’s own. I’ll make my next blog post about this. ‘Launching a Teespring campaign from end to end’.
How does that sound?
Awesome! Am sure plenty of us will benefit from it.
On that note:eg:
massive audience (over 5Mill) – could you give an example…fitness enthusiasts – people who like Fitness Planet or Gold’s Gym FB pages, right?
How do you design your shirts so you don’t violate trademarks? Can you show a portion of the logo/symbol on the shirt? e.g half/quarter of the Fitness Planet logo?
Do you run the same templatized designs everyone is doing but look for different niches or do you do your own unique designs?
Do you milk a niche before going to another? eg: try as many designs as possible in the Nursing niche.
Custom Product Focused: Are you talking about like having your own Etsy/Zazzle store online?
Lastly: you should tell us how you’d find a big potential campaign…of course using example niches… 🙂
Thanks again!
How are you hitting big numbers if you only spend about $100/day on a campaign? Looking at your daily log, you are spending about $300/day so are you running 3 campaigns at $100/day or many campaigns at smaller amounts?
Hey Dave,
Some campaigns I’ll spend $150-$200. Sometimes I’ll just be getting really good ROI. Eg, $100 spend, 20 sales. Each day is different so you can’t really put a formula to it. Usually it’ll be 1-3 campaigns I’m spending $50-$150 on which will make the bulk of my profit, the rest will be experiment campaigns and break even campaigns, ($20/day). Usually the days you see big profits are the ones I stop experimenting for a while because I get lazy.
Hi Mateen,
thanks for article. I read some posts on affplaybook that many newbies who just started teespring campaigns are not doing very well. Do you think it is a good idea for me to start or am I too late in the game?
Hey Andrew,
I always believe there will be opportunity with custom design platforms like Teespring/fabrily if you look hard enough.
Reason being is, Ive always been proven wrong when I think a certain something is too late to get into.
Just last week one APB member said he made 250k in November with TS. This month I’ve found some really good camps, should bring in over 20k in revenue.
It’s never too late but definitely gets harder.
hi, love the blog, keep up the good work. just a quick question. for any newbie who is getting started what is the one piece of advice you would give and how many campaigns should you been running each day to see come kind of profit.
Once you’ve watched all my video tutorials get straight into it. Launch campaigns and learn from experience. You can see profit from 1 campaign or many, there’s no difference however I run 10-20 at any given time with a large chunk of that in test mode.
Good luck!
Hi Matten,
Love your post!! I see that you have been in TS business for years, how to figure out 15~20 niches per day? do you read a lot or check FB fan pages a lot?
Hey Alex,
I just google ‘big list of hobbies’ and enter them one by one in audience insights to see if there’s a passionate audience for it. You can check ‘page likes’ to uncover more niches. So yeah, in a way I DO check FB fan pages a lot.
What is the benefits of selling through teespring vs other print on demand tshirt sites like zazzle or spreadshirt? Why go through the hassle of having to reach a minimum# of orders for a shirt to even be sold when, if you just upload the same shirt to any of the other POD sites it is for sale from day 1 without needing a certain# of orders. Also, does that mean shirts on teespring are for sale during the campaign only and then never again? On the other sites, buyers can purchase forever. Meaning you would continue to earn revenue indefinitely.
A few things,
Base cost is MUCH cheaper because Teespring manufacture in bulk. E.g, Zazzles base cost is $19.95 for a basic white tee compared to Teesprings $9, (approx). This means we can price our products competitively and STILL make over 50% commission.
Teespring also bases it’s model on ‘exclusivity’ which is why the limited time thing works so well. We can use promotions to further influence this effect.
Teespring works well with the FB advertising model. Since you’re going to saturate your audience eventually, you need to push them to buy which is why promotions, exclusivity, limited time left, etc have an effect.
I’ve split tested different platforms before and TS performs the best.
If anything, I’d try sunfrog or other new platforms and build a site around them but never rely on the actual platform to make sales for me, you need to drive traffic yourself.
Just my opinion*
You are testing during a limited time window, my point is that out of your 1000 campaigns if all those items were being sold forever with smaller daily marketing budgets instead of a huge push for a few days you may not sell 10-20 shirts right away but after a few months or years of continued sales and a build up of designs and products available you would be generating a more passive income model without pushing new designs over and over again.
What are the rules on teespring about exclusivity? Can you sell the same tshirt somewhere else or does a popular shirt sell even after a campaign is over? I’m assuming not.
It doesn’t quite work like that. Once you find a design that is profitable will you continue to just spend 20$ a day and make $40 when you can just up the budget to $100 and make $200?
This is the TS model and this is why you hear people making 6 figures with it.
The passive model is also good but with the same marketing strategy there is no doubt, you’ll have a better ROI with TS.
Each to their own, do a split test and see how you go. I’ve done it and TS gives me a much better return.
Exclusivity wasn’t the right word. I was referring to the ‘available for a limited time’ effect.
– Mateen
But this seems like too much of a gamble and too much work as you’ve admitted yourself in some of your other posts (I’ve been reading site all night). Coming up with new things over and over and testing testing testing to find campaigns that work.
But I’ve never used TS so that’s my question… Can you sell shirts AFTER the campaign ends on TS or at least use the same design somewhere else so they can buy them again in the future or is it a once and done thing during the 10-20-30 days you have the sale going?
Say someone sees your ad 60 days later on someone’s timeline feed on FB, this potential buyer can no longer purchase the shirt because it was only available during a limited time. So all your ad efforts are wasted on the long term buyers who may come along later.
I feel like the way you have this set up, it’s going to be a hard business model to continue with success over the long term. And it’s very risky. You may have a better return taking your ad budget and betting it all on BLACK on a roulette wheel. Doubling your money!
You can keep selling by reopening the campaign.
Have you tried anything else? Zazzle, Sunfrog, etc? Or this is just your opinion based on research?
Try everything out see how you go, you might find more success in the POD sites you’ve mentioned.
I guess my issue overall is I feel that your cost vs revenue is too risky. Spending $10K on ads, you should have a gross profit of at least $20K-$30K minimum.
Great blogging, great content! I have recommended your site to all my friends who are interested in this! Best start up tips and advice! Keep them coming! I love it!