You Made Merch. Now It's Time to Sell It.
It’s easy to design your merch and customize print-on-demand products with Spreadshop. But it’s harder to actually drive traffic to your shop.
In our 20+ years of experience, we’ve noticed all successful shop owners have one thing in common. They know their audience and how to market their products.
Print-on-demand sellers need to take the time to find a niche, make quality designs, and promote products.
Here are some easy tips you can use to start selling your Spreadshop products in under a week!
Brand Your Online Storefront
The look of your Spreadshop can have a big impact on sales. You want potential customers to feel invited by your shop layout. That’s why it’s important to add personal branding with a custom template.
Make sure your site highlights your products and showcases the aesthetic you want for your brand.
Pick a shop theme that works best for you and your product needs. We personally love the Classic Theme.
This allows you to have a banner across your homepage. Put a fun graphic of yourself or a photo that will stand out like creator Eric Feldman did for his online alter ego, Tami Langalang Spreadshop.
Eric made his Spreadshop look even more cohesive by continuing his brand colors throughout his site. When you use the classic theme you can also do a product preview on your home page.
This is a great place to feature new designs and products that are relevant to the season, like hoodies for winter and tank tops for summer.
Customers are more likely to purchase products from an official e-commerce shop.
Promote Your Custom Products
Promotional materials are essential to selling your branded merch. Within a week of launching your merch, you should have quality photos and short video content.
Drummer and streamer Ludawissy did a great job with her merch drop. She generated hype with a steady rollout of assets, especially on Twitter and Instagram.
She took great product photos of her wearing her custom products, like hoodies, tees, and hats. This is an essential tip to sell your merch.
People want to see real people (like you) modeling your merch products, NOT stock models.
When you launch your custom merch with Spreadshop, your customers can get 15% off your entire shop for a limited time. This is a great incentive for shoppers – so them know!
Make bold graphics that you can share on socials. Add a promo section to your weekly newsletter or website. If you want to sell more merch, consider launching with exclusive designs that you’ll plan to expire in a couple weeks or a month.
Fear of FOMO can help give people that extra incentive to buy your products.
Find the Right People With A Print-on-Demand Niche
Having a niche is going to make it easier for you to market your brand and connect with the right people. When people launch their merch lines, they often don’t take the time to think about who their target audience is.
As a result, they end up with designs and products that appeals to a wide range of people, which can be difficult to sell. It’s important to have a clear understanding of who your target audience is so that you can create apparel that speaks directly to them.
Someone like Clueless Bushcraft, for instance, knows who his audience is: People who want to survive in the wilderness. His brand of content is a subsection for people interested in wildlife and the outdoors, but it’s niche enough to be its own thing.
Like his audience, he’s new to learning a lot of these things. His products feature catchphrases he uses and other fun graphics.
Plants With Krystal also does a great job speaking to her niche with her print-on-demand apparel. She makes products for her plant lover niche that feature pun-based designs and quotes.
Having a niche may sound limiting, but it actually makes selling your products easier. With a niche, you don’t have to try to appeal to everyone: Just your audience.
Marketing is a breeze when your effectively use niche-related hashtags and messaging.
Create High-Quality Designs
It’s important that your Spreadshop designs look official and not like something your kid brother made.
Don’t have design experience? You can create quality merch designs yourself with tools or dedicated support.
Free design tools like Canva have built-in graphics and text you can use to make your designs. All the inspiration you need is there - no guesswork.
If you want something that feels more professional, hire an actual graphic designer. Use a design service like Fiverr to find someone to fulfill your design needs.
Search the kind of design or style you want and hundreds of designers will pop up. You can pay them a small fee for their services and get print-ready designs that will look great on all kinds of products.
Start selling custom merch with these tips – open you own Spreadshop for FREE!