Threadless
is a popular online marketplace for selling your custom-made art.
You can put
your designs on shirts, pillows, shower curtains, mugs, and a whole host of
different items. Just provide the art, and Threadless does everything else,
including printing, payment processing, and shipping.
Like many
similar sites, Threadless allows you to create your own unique shop with custom
branding. The shop is provided at no additional cost, and it's apparently
really easy to set everything up.
There are a lot of possible reasons for creating a Threadless shop as a
secondary part of some other business venture.
For example,
if you had a band or a popular Youtube channel, you could create a shop to sell
merchandise to push your brand name. For the purposes of this article, however,
we're focusing on professional artists and logo designers who want to use
Threadless as a primary marketplace for selling their creations.
There are
plenty of artists who make enough money on sites like Threadless to quit their
day jobs, devoting all their free time to building a successful online graphics
design business.
It can take a
lot of work to get to that level, but if you have enough talent and dedication,
it might be worth your effort to give it a try and see how far your creativity
can take you.
Making Money With
Threadless
When you set
up your Threadless shop, you'll upload a bunch of graphics designs, and people
can choose the type of item they want the image printed on.
All the item
types – shirts, skateboards, mugs and etc – have a base cost, and that money
goes to Threadless. You are free to set the price wherever you like as long as
it covers the base cost, and all the extra money goes directly to you.
For example:
the base cost of a Threadless T-shirt is $15, so if you charge $25, you'll net
$10 in pro Payments are sent out via Paypal around the beginning of each month for the
previous month's earnings.
It's possible
to make a great deal of money with a Threadless shop, but it usually takes a
lot of work. Some people earn a full time living selling designs, others just
earn a few dollars a month.
What Skills Are Needed
to Become a Successful Threadless Designer?
Other than the
obvious stuff (being creative and having some talent as an artist) the most
important skill you need to succeed on Threadless is marketing.
When you first
open your shop, you probably won't get many browsers. There are a huge number
of stores on the Threadless platform, and many have been around for a long
time.
Those older
shops will have way more content available than you will at first, which means
that most buyers won't even be able to find your designs. It's the basic
“needle in the haystack” problem. You have to get eyes on your creations before
you can start making any money.
There are many
ways to market a shop like this, including setting up a blog to attract
interest from search engines, and opening social media accounts where you can
put your art front and center to entice customers.
Marketing is a
vast and complicated subject, and there are dozens of really great books on it.
You'll want to buy a few of those books and start learning everything you can.
Also, it
really helps if you can produce a large amount of high-quality art in a hurry.
The more you have to sell, the more likely you are to catch someone's interest.
Volume matters.
At the end of the day, the goal is to build a strong base of customers who are
fans of your style. These people will start following your shop, telling other
people about it, and giving you repeat business.
A devoted
fan-base is the ultimate weapon in an enterprise like this.
Feedback
Threadless
gets middling marks from most sellers with regards to the quality of their
shirts. While browsing forums and blogs for graphics designers, I saw a few
minor complaints about issues with durability after washing the shirts several
times.
It should be
noted that this might not be a constant problem – there were plenty of happy
Threadless artists who never brought the subject up at all – but I thought it
was probably worth mentioning.
Other than
this one persistent issue, Threadless tends to get fairly high marks in the
design community. I looked at a number of ranking lists on various blogs for
graphics professionals, and Threadless consistently shows up among the top five
or six best sites for selling your art on merchandise, which puts it right up
there with services like Spreadshirt and Redbubble.
How to Get Started With
Threadless
If the
information above has sparked your interest, and you're chomping at the bit to
open up your own Threadless shop, visit their site to read more about the
company and create a seller's account.
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