How to Start a Clothing Business as a Passive Income Source

The clothing business is lucrative. When you are trying to sell offline, you need to set up your shop in a business district. Location plays a great role in driving sales for an offline business. If you are selling online, marketing plays a great role in driving sales. You need to aggressively market your store.

Clothing is one of the easiest online business models. You can sell clothes through different methods, such as affiliate marketing, dropshipping, print-on-demand, etc.

Affiliate marketing: A lot of clothing brand offers affiliate commissions. You can join their affiliate programs, promote their products on your website or social media and then earn commission on the sales. You can try companies like Shen or Zaful, they offer good affiliate commission on their clothing items.

Dropshipping: You can also sell clothes  through dropshipping method, you can integrate dropshipping suppliers on your store and when there is an order your supplier will fulfill the order and you make money without having to create products or fulfill the order.

Print-on-demand: You don’t have to manufacture clothes, you don’t have to fulfill the order, and you only have to design and sell clothing items.

Reselling: You can also buy clothing items and then sell them through various marketplaces or your own store. You will have to invest a serious month if you choose this method.

Three Different Ways to Start a T-shirt Business

Screen printing/digital printing: Buy a screen printing machine, buy plain t-shirts and design –shirts. You can sell these t-shirts through Amazon, eBay, Etsy, Facebooik Marketplace, Instagram Shop, or your own online store (shopify, woocommerce, etc.) You will have to invest money to start a t-shirt business in this model.

Print-On-Demand: This is am low cost business or a free business model. If you want to use a platform like etsy, you need to spend a little money to list your products., however, if you use platforms like Amazon and Redbubble, you can start for free. All you need to do is design t-shirts and put it on sale.

Dropshipping: You can sell t-shirt through dropshipping business model. You sell t-shirts form your own store and your supplier will fulfil the order.

Resellig: You can also buy t-shirts in bulk and resell these t-shirts through ecommerce marketplaces or your own store. You can source your t-shirts from Alibaba or Aliexpress.

How to Start Your Own Print-On-Demand Clothing Store

Print-On-Demand is a business model where you create a design, use your design on products, sell the products, and another company will manufacture the products and ship them to your buyers. You pay the base price to the print company and make profits from your markup price.

Print-On-Demand is one of the easiest business models that you can do online, no experience needed, no elaborate skills needed, and last but not least, it is completely free to start.

Sounds interesting?

Let’s get started.

Requirements For Starting a Print-On-Demand Business

Basic Knowledge of Graphic Designing: If you are proficient with software like Photoshop, that’s great, if not your ability to use tools like Canva will be very essential. If you do not have any skills, you can purchase designs from digital marketplace.

Digital Marketing Skill: Creating product is not enough, you need digital marketing skills. You need to have basic knowledge on SEO and digital marketing and advertising.

Social Media Pages: You need accounts on multiple social media pages with a huge fan following where you can promote your products.

Content Creation Skills: If you can create videos and write articles, it will be easier to generate sales as you can do content marketing.

Things to Remember While Starting a Print-On-Demand Shop

Before you start a Print-On-Demand shop, you need to understand the basic things:

Print Providers: These companies only print/manufacture products and ship to your buyers. They do not have marketplace to sell products. You will have to integrate print providers with marketplace to sell products, for example Printful, Printify, etc.

Marketplaces: These companies do not offer printing/manufacturing services, they only allow selling. You will have to integrate print providers with your marketplace account to sell products, for example eBay, Etsy, etc.

Print Providers Cum Marketplace: These are the platforms that not only print/manucture your products and ship to your buyers but also allow you to sell from their own platform without having you to integrate other marketplaces or print providers, for example, Zazzle, Amazon, Redbubble, Society6, etc.

How to Start a Print-On-Demand Shop

There are three ways to start a Print-On-Demand shop:

Your Own Store: You can create your own website, integrate print providers and start selling from your own website. However, this method requires you to spend some money on building a website.

eCommerce Marketplaces: You can use eCommerce marketplaces like Amazon, Etsy etc. You have two options for using eCommerce marketplaces. You can either use a platform where you will have to integrate print providers to sell, for example, eBay, Etsy, or a platform that not only prints your products but also allow you to sell, for example Amazon Redbubble.