How to Start Online Clothing Business
I have sold clothing items through print on demand business model. I do not generate a lot of sales but I sell a few tshirts once in a while and I believe selling clothes, online or offline, can be highly profitable. I think it is also one of the low investment businesses that you can try. You do not always have to manufacture clothes, you can acquire and resell. You can even sell without building your inventory. However, this does not mean you start selling today and make money tomorrow
How to Sell Clothes Online
There are a lot of ways to make money form clothing business, especially online clothing business. One of the easiest ways is through dropshipping, you have nothing to do, not even create your products or ship your products. Second best method is through print on demand. You do not have to spend money on products or even shipping, however, you need to design your products. There are a lot of methods to start clothing business that do not require a lot of funds to start or run. For instance, you need a lot of money to manufacture clothes, but you do not need a lot of investment to sell clothes. Interestingly, even for business that require a lot of money to start, you can start on a small scale that does not need a lot of money. For instance, instead of setting a clothing factory, you can set up a small screen printing shop and manufacture your clothes.
Selling clothes is one of the popular online business models but this cannot be profitable unless you know how to sell them. There are three things you should keep in mind:
Design: Your clothes need to have trendy designs or the designs that attract your target customers. You can also mix and match different designs to attract a large number of customers
SEO: Without SEO, it is not possible to reach your audience. SEO starts with using popular keywords in your product title, description, and tags.
Marketing: Promote your products on the platform where your target audience is based. Use marketing methods that attracts your customers.
How to Start T-shirt Business With Zero Investment?
Selling T-shirts is not only profitable but you can even do with zero investment. If you do not have money to start a business, you can start selling Tshirts for free through the platforms like Amazon, Zazzle, Redbubble, Teespring, etc. First of all, you need to create designs for your Tshirts. You can do it easily on Canva, but if you cannot do it, you can go to Creative Fabrica and buy a design as low as $1. You will then have to upload your design on the platform where you want to sell Tshirts and customize the design into the Tshirt. Then publish your listing. You will have to do SEO to improve your listing's visibility. If you have decent number of followers on social media, you can start promoting on social media.
In my experience, T-shirts are the best selling products to make money through an online business. You can use various methods to sell T-shirts, such as print on demand or dropshipping. With these models, you don't need any money to start, you don’t even need to ship yourself, you don’t have to manufacture products. You can use platforms like eBay, Etsy, Redbubble, AmazonMerch, Zazzle, Teespring, and a lot more platform to start selling T-shirts through dropshipping and print on demand. There is another method to sell T-shirts. You can purchase Tshirts in bulk and resell them online. If you have money for investment, you can even print your own Tshirts and sell them.
In my opinion, it is easier to make money by selling t-shirt designs instead of selling t-shirts because when you sell design you make money upfront, however, when you are selling t-shirt, you will have to work hard to market your product, you might even have to spend money on ads before you can generate sales. Selling on amazon is not easy.
You can start your t-shirt business through multiple methods.
Affiliate marketing, you can start promoting t-shirts from the store that offer affiliate commissions.
Print-on-Demand: You can join print-on-demand platforms, upload your design and create your t-short mock-up. You can start this business for free. This is my favourite method.
Dropshipping: You can build a dropshipping store and then sell t-shirts from your store. This method liberates you from manufacturing or sourcing t-shirts.
Printing your own t-shirts: You will have to buy a screen printer or a digital printer, buy plain t-shirts, and start printing t-shirts. For this business model, you need t invest serious money.
How to Identify Your Target Market For Your Clothing Business
If you want to market and want to have a good conversion, the basic requirement is to identify your target market, create a marketing campaign that is attractive to your target audience, use a marketing platform that your target audience use. The first step of starting a marketing campaign is always identifying who your target market is. So, how do you identify your target market. One of the easiest ways to do so is by analyzing a product. If you are selling Anime printed Tshirts, it will, give you an idea on who is your ideal customers. Once you know your customers, find out where they are active, what platform they mostly use. Do they use Youtube or watch TV, do they use Facebook or Tiktok? When you find out where your customers are, you can easily market to to reach them.
Tiktok has gained a bad name in many countries and some countries have even banned tiktok, however, tiktok continue to become one of the fastest growing social media platform, thus, making it one of the best platforms for marketing. The most effective way to market on TikTok is by pushing your content before your own audience. If you have a dedicated following, you can naturally drive sales without spending on ads or influencer partnerships. Tiktok treats new as well as old creators eqally, thus, building an audience isn't overly complex. You can continue to build audience by creating and share engaging, high-quality videos with broad appeal.
Pricing Strategy
Pricing is a very important decision a business owner has to make, if you don’t price your product well, your business might fail. In my opinion, the best pricing tactic is clickbait pricing. Well, it might sound controversial but let me explain. Consider that you are a retailer of T-shirts in various sizes, you offer different baby sizes (baby size, toddler, preadolescent, etc.) as well as adult sizes (small, large, extra large, extra-extra-large, etc.) You charge $10 for a baby-size T-shirt and $40 for an adult-size (XXXL). When you list your product, you should $10 price value. Since the product shows the lowest price, a lot of people will be interested in clicking your product, and even might be tempted to buy for the higher price points. This is a good sales strategy because the price you have decided to display is associated with one of the goods you are offering.
If you keep your profit margins at 20 percent (the default profit mark-up on Redbubbe), depending on the products you are selling, the average profit you make is $2-$5. If you are making $5 profit by selling bags, you will have to sell 20 bags to make $100 profit. For me, the road to becoming rich would start from making $10,000 profits per month, therefore, I will have to sell 2000 bags to start becoming rich by using Redbubble. What if I am also selling other products, such as T-shirts, skirts, etc.? If I make $2 profit on a T-shirt and sell 500 pieces per month, I will make $1000. The key to generate revenue on Redbubble is to sell a lot of items on huge quantities. Redbubble allows you to create multiple shops and sell multiple products. It is also a complete automated business, therefore, becoming rich by selling on Redbubble is absolutely possible.
How to Become an Entrepreneur?
A lot of people desire to become an entrepreneur but do not even know what entrepreneurship is. They even do not know how entrepreneurship separates form a business. While a businessman may focus solely on immediate profits, an entrepreneur looks towards long-term gains and aims to make a difference in people's lives, rather than just pursuing money. Here is a quick example. If you buy 10 t-shirts for $5 each and sell them for $10 and make a total profit of $50 profit, you're operating as a businessman. However, if you buy the same quantity of t-shirts for the same price, invest $2 in creating new designs for each shirt (such as embroidery, digital print, etc.), spend an extra $3 to establish your t shirt brand, and then sell shirts for $25 each, you make a $15 profit per shirt and $150 in total profit. The second method makes you as an entrepreneur.