
Last year I made almost 300k revenue from Teespring alone. Others have made millions.
This Post will Cover Exactly what I do each day for my Teespring business.
Note: This is NOT a case study. It is purely to outline my process to launching Tees.
Step 1 – Research
The way I research has changed dramatically throughout the year or so I’ve been doing this. The idea is to see what designs are currently selling and use them as inspiration to find other design ideas.
Go to Teespring.com/discover and see what designs are selling. List the designs that stand out to you, (ones you can make variations of).
Let’s start with this design
What/Who else can we make this shirt for?
Relations
– mums
– dads
– aunts
– uncles
Back in the day when Teespring was new you could have also done professions. E.g,
– engineers
– nurses
– plumbers
– mechanics
– plumbers
Nationalities
– The Greek
– The Italian
– The Indian
– The Aussie
– The American
etc, etc, etc
I will go on to test maybe 5-8 of this type of design. You want to be finding out which categories work best. E.g, Relations, Professions or Nationalities. To do this. I will select 2-3 from each category and make a design for these.
I’ll list these down on a separate notepad and continue my search. Also notice how the text is quite large and the word ‘papa’ is even larger? This helps your ad be instantly readable on peoples newsfeeds. You won’t get anyone scrolling past without seeing what the shirt says.
Next Design
Nice and simple, yet selling well. The idea is to add a word before ‘LOSOPHY’, obviously alluding to ‘the philosophy of…’ What can we vary up here? We also want to be changing the text/saying.
– brolosophy
– baelosophy
– nanlosophy
– birdlosophy
– dadlosophy
– crewlosophy
– unilosophy
– ladlosophy
– plumblosophy (plumbers)
– manlosophy
– beardlosophy
– Get the idea?
There’s literally 20 I can think of, off the top my head. I’ll probably even get 100 if I were to sit down and properly brainstorm more.
Again, add it to your list and continue your search.
Like this, I will continue to list about 10-20 variations. We’ve already got about 20 for the 2 above so at this stage I might stop and just start designing.
Step 2 – Design
In this case, the designs are quite simple, (mostly text). In the cases I feel like I need to add some design to it, I’ll spend a while trying to come up with something but for now, the text is enough.
We’ll go straight to the second design. But if you want to do the first one, for females, I’ll add some pink/red love heart silhouettes of different sizes here and there. Gents love to be proud of their ‘handyman’ status so silhouettes of nuts/bolts/tools/gears, etc work well.
The above took me about 10 minutes to design. The variations however will take me 2 minutes each since I have a template to work off once I make the first one.
I got the saying from the below meme which I simply googled. ‘Beard meme’
In total, if I were to treat this like the average working day, I would have tested 20 or so different niches. Usually I’ll be testing 4-5 completely different designs not just 2 like shown above.
Link to the campaign – > http://teespring.com/beardlosophy
Step 3 – Advertising
I’ll post all these on a generic Facebook Page and use this page to advertise from, via FB. Below is the Page I’ve Advertised on,
https://www.facebook.com/pages/Epic-Shirts/761262833951787
Notice how I haven’t paid for likes or anything? I’ve done the BARE minimum. Profile Pic, Cover Photo, that’s it.
Now, go to Power Editor and click the ‘Download to Power Editor’ Button right at the top. I do this every time before I create any ads.
Next, Click the ‘Ads’ tab and create New Ad, (Green Plus Button).
I always use ‘Page Post Engagements’. From split testing I find this to work the best.
Next, still under the ads tab, select your page and then the post you want to promote.
Click the ‘Ad Sets’ Tab,
- Set budget to $30/day
- Set date and time so your ad starts 2 hours from now
- Click ‘Edit Audience’ and set your targeting. In this case, this is how I’d target,
- Uncheck the ‘Desktop Right Column’ option at the bottom, (blue circle with a tick in it). I find this performs poorly so always uncheck it.
- Leave everything else the same and upload your ad.
That’s it! Now do this for every design variation you can think of, test as many as you can manage/day. Imagine after days, weeks, months, you would have tested 100s of designs in 100s of niches, all inspired by current PROVEN designs.
I can’t stress how important it is at this stage just to jump right in and start testing designs. You can read all you want but till you start doing the work and just grinding it out you won’t get the results you desire.
Even if you think you’re not ready, just go for it. There’s no such thing as being ready. Don’t be afraid to fail. Falure is good for you. It exposes the holes in the wall. It exposes what you need to work on. It also exposes the few things yiou’re good at, maybe you should refine them even more but that does not happen until you grind it out.
Good luck,
~ Mateen
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Hey, thanks for the helpful post. Did you ever have much luck with Teespring on Adwords? I got banned from Facebook 🙁
Hey Dave, only at the start. I stopped trying it once FB started to give me results though. Ouch, maybe try making another account? FB is a massive traffic source, you definitely want to be advertising through it at some stage!
Thank you, thank you, thank you!
Awesome strategy and tips, Matteen!
Tell me:
what do you set as your selling goal?
What’s the limit to the target audience size?
How much do you use for testing before dropping a campaign?
How much do you price your tees?
Which are your top selling countries?
Do you use FB retargetting?
How did you insert the red description box in the beardlosophy image? ☺
Thank you again!
No probs!
– Goal is usually 50-150, depending on how I think it will perform. Usually 150
– No limit, depends on how targeted the audience is. I go from 50k to 5M+ sometimes
– $30 for testing. Sometimes less if it’s a REALLY bad campaign. Eg, 2-3% CTR.
– Tees @ $22, Hoodies @ $39.95
– FB retarget ALWAYS on successful campaigns. If you’re not, you’re missing out on a lot of sales
– It’s all one image. Just make it in photoshop, gimp or even paint:)
Awesome share as usual! Just started and appreciate all the info you’re putting up!
No worries!
Hi Mateen,
Thanks for sharing the whole process generously.The concept of layering is awesome!!
I understand that designs are countless, but Relations/Professions/Nationalities may be not. One profession is likely to purchase more than another, some professions might not going to buy at all. After you had test it once, you would know if it is work or not. If the answer is no, you may not going to try next time. I mean you might stuck with these working rel/pro/nat ideas, no others come up to your head.
How did you handle all kinds of Relation/Profession/Nationalities things, specially make them countless combinations? Did you brainstorm all sub-niches of relation/profession/nationalities all the times (some of them you may not familiar with, you do not know what sub-professions in this area) OR try different designs to similar proved working rel/pro/nat over and over ?
please forgive me if the logic is a complete mess. 🙂
There are certain relations/professions/nationalities that will continue to buy tees. Once it starts working for any of these, I’ll start testing random sub-relations/professions/nationalities which I’ll google and make a list of.
Sometimes a sub-niche I’ve tried in the past may not have worked then but will work for another design. That’s why I try 5-10 different niches/subniches for each design. If there’s good CTR that means there should be opportunity to find a niche/design combo that works.
Hope that answers it
WOW! Just checked the FB page and you already have 51 likes, 1 comment and 18 shares!
Tell us more about your bidding process, tracking and maintenance as you do it.
How many shirts have you sold?
Can you be updating us on this campaign? Make it a follow along…am sure it’ll be a hit!
You’ll have to expect some competition from lazy affiliates who’ll copy the same design though! 🙂
And 1 sale 😉
Bidding = ocpm
Problem with live follow alongs is people copy like you said. We’ll see how it performs!
Hi Mateen,
I know you and many others use a image post for your ad but I notice I get a high CTR (7-10) for my ads and high clicks but I when I check teespring analytics it has super lower views, like under 15 after 20 dollar ad spend.
I was thinking about a) Just using the Facebook image link where as soon as the user touches the image he’ll be forced to the tee spring page or b) use something like pretty links where I can actually track people clicking the link because maybe tee spring analytics is wrong. Sometimes I see one sale after 15 views so it’s definitely off.
Best post I’ve read in a while !
Hi,
I was wondering is there any way to track sales that come from shares? I saw some people mentioning adding variables to ads and/or Google Analytics? How do you track it?
I track things via analytics.teespring.com
There’s info there on how many conversions have come from FB shares/links. Maybe try that? I don’t know of any variables but am sure there are some. Maybe someone else can chime in here?
Mateen,
I just wanted to say Thank You for all the valuable content you are providing to other people for free. That’s awesome. I’ve just started watching your videos, but I’ve decided to commit to trying this.
Best of luck and thanks again.
Anthony
No worries Anthony. Glad they help!
Hey Mateen, whats your take on the number of likes, shares,comments on a newsfeed ad VERSUS your teespring sales?
I see you NF ad has 943 likes 42 comments and 396 shares…and only 1 t-shirt sale…any insights in this?
eg: do you find that the more engaged the audience the more they buy?
I started 2 campaigns using your process and got 1 sale each with one audience more engaging than the other…
Also do you think more graphics in the images (which cost more to make) get more sales? do you only use text and basic graphics for your t-shirts?
And in Teespring analytics where do you think the “No referrer source” traffic is coming from?
thanksfor your insights!
I think for that shirt I might make a redesign, people obviously find it funny enough to engage with so there’s a good chance they’ll buy if the design is right.
Yes, the more engaged the audience is, the more likely they will buy.
Sometimes, text only is good as long as the fonts suit the demographic. The better it looks, the more chance people will buy so some graphics night be worth it in some niches. I use both most of the time.
No idea with the last question, I never thought about it actually! Could be a bunch of different sources that haven’t been tracked properly.
~ Mateen
Hi Mateen,
Thanks for your blog
Did you use “Je suis Charlie” design?
Hey there,
No I didn’t but I DID see many of them selling
Thank you Mateen your examples are really helpful. I followed them and setup my first campaign and this is what happened.
I created an Ad in FB, this was my first time creating an ad so I don’t really know how oCPM works so I just choose the defaults that FB provided.
Budget: $20.00 daily
Duration: Continuous
Bidding: Bid for website conversions
Pricing: Your bid will be optimized to get more conversions for your website. You’ll be charged each time your ad is served.
So for the first day I got 7 sales then 2nd day it dropped to 3 sales then on the 3rd day it again went for 7 sales 4th day zero sales 5th day 1 sales 6th day 4 sales still 4 days remaining.
In Teespring it shows that I have sold around 31 tees in 6 days. Since this was just an experiment I kept my own profits at minimum like around $6.5/ shirt just wanted to test the waters first 🙂
Now the funny side is that my ad campaign on facebook have around 2k likes on the ad plus around 700 shares and about 70 comments… but still only 30 tshirts in sales…
My question is what should I do if for example when I launch a campaign and on first day 5 or 8 of them are sold… should I immediately increase the daily budget on FB from $20 to something else and is there a formula for doing that?
On FB it shows my Ad Reach at 53,000, Frequency 1.09, CTR 3.252%, total spend $90, Max bid: Auto (optimized CPM), Avg.Price: $1.55
What can I do to boost sales in this situation?
Thank you!
Wow, I’m impressed,
Yes, if I spent $20 and had 5-8 sales, I’d increase it as soon as the new days start to $60-$80.
To continuously sell a good amount of tees and boost sales there’s a few things you can do.
1. Continue adding more targeted interests as to increase your audience size. This time you’re frequency will be kept low and you won’t be advertising to the same people.
2. split campaign into different ad sets and see which convert best, increase budgets JUST for these.
3. Start retargeting
I’m surprised your selling well with that CTR, it’s actually quite low but hey, that’s how internet marketing is – there’s no correct formula here.
Thanks for your comments again very helpful.
You are right my CTR is low I will try adding 2 more ads styles and see how it performs.
One more thing that i wanted to ask you was when we select a new add is it a good idea to create the ad to work on all 4 preview placement or should i disable any one of those. The current ad that i am running I have disabled Partner Mobile Apps. What are your experience which ad preview performs best in terms of CTR and conversions?
Disable right column add, they usually don’t perform very well. I’m not sure about ad previews, I usually just leave it as it is. I’ve never split tested although I should.
Hey Mateen,
Thanks for the really helpful post. I got a couple of questions for you.
1) Is it really necessary that one should join AffPlaybook to start a campaign in Teespring? Say for example I got hardly $110 as a disposable income. Instead of joining Affplaybook, shouldn’t I be launching campaigns since I have watched all your Teespring Tutorials? Your Insights please.
2)Say I want to launch a campaign in a non-English speaking country like Germany. How do I make my fb ads appear in German? And most importantly the T-shirt description in Teespring should be in German, right? How do I do that?
Thank you.
No worries!
1) No, it’s not necessary but is very beneficial. The reason is because you need feedback on what you are doing. The quicker you learn BETTER ways to do things, the faster you’ll excel. Of course, there is no teacher like spending $ on testing designs and if you’re tight on budget then it’s understandable but the reason I always encourage it is because there is ALWAYS someone in that forum that are doing things 10 x better than you and will give you advice that can skyrocket your campaigns. Maybe try it as a last resort.
2) Well, you’ll have to type all text in german, I don’t think it can autotranslate. For T-shirt description, just type it all in german. Use onehourtranslations if you need to.
Hope that helped!
Thanks for getting back to me bud. Yeah that helped a lot.In case I do join AffPlaybook, I will join it through your referral link and hopefully see you there. Thanks again.
Hello from apb! You got a nice looking blog and a lot of good content.
Waiting for the campaign update and the new post about January 2015 income. It will be a hole year since you started this.
Keep it up!
Thanks! I’ll release it soon, hopefully later this week.
As always, awesome work!
Thanks Chris!
Mateen,
How is your experimental test results in US market that you have mentioned in previous post?
LOL~~~
The experimentation part of my business doesn’t get the time it deserves. Hoping to start getting a team in here so I can work on R&D type stuff. So far, there’s been little experimenting and more just chugging away at Teespring!
Hey Mateen,
Just wanted to say thanks for all the detailed Teespring info you put out. After ending up on your blog while looking for something else aff marketing related, I launched my first two campaigns last week, the first one flopped but the second one I did around AUD$650 in sales off a $190 ad spend. I can see how Teespring can become addictive!
Wow Congrats Kirsta,
I am IMPRESSED! Keep on going, Teespring is a huge opportunity and looks like you’re doing things right!
Congrats Krista! I also launched 2 campaigns with each getting a sale each (goal not reached) with a $50 ad spend total… If you don’t mind, tell us which country are you targeting, broad niche market, what kind of tee sold? did you cap your ad spend to test the waters first? Thanks!
Speaking of which, MAteen, we need an update of this case study…I see you sold 2 long sleeves…with 944 likes, 42 comments and 397 shares… how much was your ad spend/ctr…what would you have changed to make it profitable? color? design? NF AD?
Give us ANOTHER case study! 🙂 They are def popular and bring in more traffic to your blog!
😉
Krista,
Your success looks very inspiring…
But I don’t know why I’m losing on three campaign consecutively.
Hi Mateen
May I know how much capital outlay should one have before starting this kind of business? I’m targeting a monthly income of roughly 5k. Based from your experience how many months before one can realistically achieve this income? Thanks in advance for the answer.
Teespring specifically is much too volatile to give you a consistent income. I’ve had 80k+ month and straight after 1.5k months. It’s very hard to answer this question. Most people spend a good year at least to get 5k consistently. But some people have been able to hit that in 6 months or even 2 months so it’s all up to you and how you much effort you put in and of course a bit of luck.
And as far as capital outlay. I would suggest a good 3k your willing to lose. That’s a healthy budget, 5k being VERY healthy. Then again, there is no hard rule here. Some people have seen a return straight away, some after a few hundred but most are at least 1-2k.
Hey Mateen,
I’ve started with TeeSpring and facebook ads with my second Tee design. Have spent on design+advertising with only one sale. The time for that particular campaign is now over with loss 🙁
I did research before starting the design but it ended up with costing me some money in design and PPC.
I know you’ll say, “Don’t give up” but my current campaign is not also giving me any ROI.
I’m losing my confident on Teespring business.
I would appreciate your guidance.
Hey Kumar,
Unfortunately, this is how it is at the start. I did 50 camps till I got my first to tip. I was a total noob to design, teespring and FB advertising. This business is not easy, it is only for those that keep going and keep being motivated. The only guarantee is that as long as you keep going, you will get there. Ask yourself. Are you learning as you go? Did you learn a lot from those campaigns that didn’t work? If the answer is yes, keep going! (it will always be a yes).
If it was easy enough to make it in the first 2-3 campaigns, then everyone would be doing it. These hurdles are there to separate those who dream about it and those who REALLY want it. It’s tough but it’s supposed to be tough. Business is like that. the fruits will come after a lot of hard work, struggle, money loss, etc.
You’re doing good my friend, only spend what you can afford to lose. Keep bettering the process and giving it another try.
MAteen, we need an update of this case study…I see you sold 2 shirts…with 944 likes,42 comments and 397 shares… how much was your ad spend/ctr…what would you have changed to make it profitable? color? design? NF AD? New angle/niche?
Give us ANOTHER case study! They are def popular and bring in more traffic to your blog!
I think the Ctr was 8% and spend was $40-$50. I would have just scrapped it and moved on to another design. I don’t waste time making things work. Sometimes people just like the saying and will share it and engage with it as they do with memes. No point dwelling over the same design when you can launch another 2-3 in the same time.
Mateen,
I am launching a Teespring campaign overseas in a different country. It has to do with an event going on currently. I am wondering, will people actually pay the extra ~$12 for shipping?? If the tee shirt is $22, how much success have you seen with international orders (when people have to pay extra for shipping) or would you mainly stick to the US for this reason?
Thanks for your help!!
It depends which country. Some countries, $12 is nothing, others, it is a BIG deal. I would definitely try it and see what happens. I’ve old tees to over 20 different countries so it definitely works!
Great job on your success man, nice to see you growing and scaling theses is a great guide for newbies.
Thanks Justin
Hey Mateen, thanks for sharing these awesome information!
I’ve got a question on targeting audience. Firstly, how do you gauge when to stop adding the interests related to your niche at the start? Is it by the size of targeted audience? Are there any indicators I could follow?
Secondly, what if my campaign only have very little related interest because it is very specific? How can I add more targeted interests to increase audience size? Would you recommend adding in target interests that are less closely related to the campaign in that case?
Thank you in advance!
Your welcome!
It’s by the size of the audience, (considering you’re selecting only targeted audiences). I don’t know if I mentioned it in this article as it was a while ago and my process has changed slightly but I aim for about 50k audience at the start. Only because I don’t know if I’ll be continuing wit it after the $30 spend which will only go through about 10-20k audience size anyway.
Once you know it works, just keep adding interests until you can’t find any targeted interests anymore.
In cases like that, you can’t do much but try and go a little less targeted like you’ve suggested. That’s one of the problems with going TOO specific. You want a decent enough audience size to make a profit off which is why it’s important to find out niches that are big, yet specific.
hey i love your article.
do you know how to get the specific interest and targeted?
warm greetings from asian people 🙂
Hello Rio,
Not sure I understand your question 100% but basically you type the general interest into FaceBook Audience Insights, click on ‘Pages’ and see if you can find more targeted interests. Eg, Magazines, Communities, Websites, etc.
Hi,
Good post mate, full of useful information. I’m thinking of trying out my first teespring campaign in a few days, I have a few designs in mind and this helped me to find more.
One thing though, by taking memes from the Internet and copying them onto your shirt, aren’t you worried about possible copyright infringement?
Unless the meme itself has any infringing words then yeh, I would avoid those. With images you can’t really use famous people or popular cartoons but you may be able to get away with silhouettes. There’s a way around pretty much everything.
What does this mean below: We can’t use these listed items today ??
Back in the day when Teespring was new you could have also done professions. E.g,
– engineers
– nurses
– plumbers
– mechanics
– plumbers
Nationalities
– The Greek
– The Italian
– The Indian
– The Aussie
– The American
etc, etc, etc
Hey Ted, sure you can. I guess I’m referring to it was more easy to make sales with these.