Selling T-Shirt For Fun and Profit

Learn how to start selling t-shirts online. This guide includes some of the basics of online marketing, t-shirt design, and advertising!
For the past several years, the t-shirt market, or rather the market for selling t-shirts online, has been exceedingly hot. Just Google ‘T-Shirt Success Story’ and you’ll find example after example of people who’ve started a successful t-shirt marketing business on literally nothing.

Many of these people now have steady five figure monthly incomes all based on selling well-designed t-shirts. Obviously, this is of interest to anyone who wants to break out of the nine to five employment world. So, why are designer t-shirts so popular? In a nutshell, it’s because they are the ultimate niche product.

As such, they appeal strongly to every person’s desire to be individualistic and share that individuality with the world. It doesn’t matter what your particular interest, hobby, lifestyle, personal ethos or identifier might be. Whatever it is, it can be expressed on a t-shirt that then ‘brands’ you when you wear it.

In other words, t-shirts remain popular because they make individual people stand out against the bland background of the day-to-day world. For $20, they allow everyone to break the bonds of anonymity and proclaim their allegiance to whatever it is that floats their personal boat.

What’s endlessly interesting, is that the t-shirt started out, and to some extent and in some form, remains an undergarment. It was only in the latter half of the previous century, that the “plain white tee” known to millions became a blank canvas for marketers who wanted to connect brand and lifestyle to the individual ego.

Today’s t-shirt phenomenon can trace it’s lineage back to the concert t-shirt of the 1970s and 1980s. Back then rock and roll was becoming big business. Big bands began to realize that they were a brand and that they could sell more than music to their fans. The fans, on their part, were devoted to particular bands and were proud to express that devotion publicly. Additionally, attending concerts by big name bands carried social cachet.