Starting an online dropshipping T-shirt business is not only lucrative these days, it can also be fulfilling. Come to think of it, T-shirts always rock because they reflect your personality, identity and interests. With the global surge in demand for custom T-shirts, the online T-shirt business is minting millionaires by the day.
Succeeding in such a competitive online T-shirt business means you strive to stand out and constantly make sure the latest T-shirt design trends pique your interest, big time.
So how you do you thrive in this sector? Well, this is what this article is about.
Stick till the end—and you can learn everything you need to know to generate solid cash in the online T-shirt industry.
To Start a Lucrative Online Dropshipping T-shirt Business:
- Choose a Niche
- Create Your T-Shirt Designs
- Mock up and Validate Your Designs
- Determine Your Printing Method
- Set a Price
- Determine Where to Sell Your T-Shirts
- Grow Your Dropship Business
1. Choose a Niche
To start an online dropshipping T-shirt business, choose the proper niche—in another words, a market segment that allows you to stand out from your competitors, attract the right potential customers and sell more. Zero in on a specific interest group or audience to increase sales and make massive income from your online dropshipping T-shirt business.
To choose a profitable online dropshipping T-shirt business niche:
- Check your list of interests and passions and find out areas where you think the T-shirt market is untapped.
- Check subscribers’ engagement and count for your prospective niche’s subreddits.
- Measure the size of your niche with Facebook’s Audience Insights tool on Facebook.
- Check other online stores to get insights on which niche to choose.
2. Create Your T-Shirt Designs
To make massive income from your online dropshipping T-shirt business, craft enticing product designs. Keep in mind that captivating designs help catapult your store to stardom. Therefore, make your T-shirts stand out with different and peculiar designs.
To get inspiration, focus on trendy designs and keep in mind what drives people. The thing is, everybody wants great products so you want to definitely create great and catchy designs.
Get creative—and be sometimes “crazy” in your creations. Remember: You need to stand out in this global, multibillion-dollar ocean that’s the online dropshipping T-shirt business. It’s all about trials and errors—remember that! Test out different designs that portray your brand and see the ones that gather awesome reactions from customers.
Occasionally visit websites like Custom Link, PlaceIt and SmartMockups to find the latest and greatest T-shirt design templates.
If you’re not artistically inclined—or don’t have time to design templates yourself—hire professional designers on freelancer platforms such as Fiverr, Dribble and Upwork. Also, check Google Trends to find out what makes people tick these days.
3. Mock up and Validate Your Dropship Designs
To launch and continually scale an online dropshipping T-shirt business, constantly mock up and validate your designs. Keep in mind that mockup images show how the designs appear on actual T-shirts; in other words, you see what potential customers see when they buy printed shirts.
To mock your designs up:
- Order the product and take a picture of it.
- Use websites like Custom Link, PlaceIt and SmartMockups to create digital mockups.
Next, validate your designs to be sure they match what your potential customers want. Take these steps to validate your designs:
- Do crowdfunding. Use crowdfunding websites to validate, test and make money upfront for your new business. Strategically launch your crowdfunding campaign to reach your target audiences and take note of their responses.
- Check Reddit. Get honest feedback about your designs on Reddit, a good platform for feedback if you want to generate explosive sales after you launch your online T-shirt business. Check your potential customers’ subreddits’ niches and ask for their honest feedback about your designs. Note every observation and make necessary changes to your designs before launching your business.
- Utilize your social media platforms. Post your designs on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Pinterest and TikTok. Note your friends’ feedback about the designs and make necessary adjustments where possible. As you post your designs on social media, add a copyright notice to protect them.
4. Determine Your Printing Method
To run a successful online dropshipping T-shirt business, choose high-quality prints. Avoid bad printing that creates cracks and fades off the T-shirts after the first wash. Choose the best printing method that saves money and yields quality prints on the T-shirts.
Direct-to-garment (DTG) printing machine is another printing option. The DTG machine resembles the home table ink-jet printer. It prints full-color images with accuracy—and many startup T-shirts businesses, like yours, use it.
If your designs are darker or vibrant, consider screen printing. Screen printing uses screens to apply different layers of ink to a T-shirt. Screen printing is not economical for large volume printing.
Print-on-demand saves you time and money—but be cautious when selecting a print-on-demand company. With print-on-demand, you sell on your website, keep your branding, and retain your business image. Print-on-demand allows you to use a dropshipping method that allows you to outsource the printing, production and delivery of T-shirts to another business.
Print-on-demand services have minimal operational expenses and are easy to set up without stock surplus. However, with print-on-demand, you have no control over quality—and fulfillment time is long.
Check the company’s shipping method. For example, how long does it take to produce the T-shirt after a customer placed an order? How far is the company’s location from your customers’ locations? Check also if the company offers special customizations on the T-shirts.
5. Set the Price
To start an online dropshipping T-shirt business, set the proper price after taking into account everything from the purchase cost and design to printing and shipping. Make sure your prices are not too distant from your competition’s.
With print-on-demand, you don’t worry about product shipments because your supplier or the print-on-demand service fulfills your customers’ orders.
6. Determine Where to Sell Your T-shirts
To kick off a successful online dropshipping T-shirt business, determine where you want to sell the garments. Understand the major factors that underlie this decision-making process.
You have several places to sell your garments, including:
- Ecommerce store. Choose an ecommerce platform like Shopify to sell your T-shirts if you want to build your brand and expand. Visit Shopify’s official website and register to start selling your T-shirts.
- T-shirt marketplaces. If you’re just interested in making passive income, any T-shirt marketplace is the best platform to run your online T-shirt business. Zazzle and TeeChip, for example, are great examples of ecommerce marketplaces where you can place your T-shirts.
- Social media and personal website. Choose social media and a personal website to sell your T-shirts if you have reasonable followers and high website traffic.
If you’re new to ecommerce, explore the first and second options.
7. Grow Your Dropship Business
To keep your online dropshipping T-shirt business alive and profitable, grow it continually so you can raise your revenue. Focus on these key items if you want to expand your online garment store:
- Customer service. Sell quality products to your customers and communicate promptly when they have questions or comments.
- Shipping plan. Decide how the products get to your customers and make the shipping process fast, cheap and trackable.
- Promotion. Marketing is important. Tell your target audience everything about your business—and use Facebook and Instagram ads, Google ads and content marketing, among others, to create buzz around your online garment store. Plan your marketing based on your budget.
- Social media. TikTok has the highest engagement level of all social media platforms. Create short videos featuring your products and post them on TikTok to reach your target audience.
- Product images and description. Post high-quality images of your products. Also, post pictures of the T-shirts on different people with different body sizes and shapes.
Recap
To start an online dropshipping T-shirt business, choose a niche and create your T-shirt designs. Mock up and validate your designs and then determine your printing method. Set a price, determine where to sell your T-shirts, and grow your business.
