I’m thrilled to welcome Benny Hsu back to The Side Hustle Show!
Remember Benny from way back in episode 17, when we talked about dominating the app store?
In 2014, his app business took a backseat to a new side hustle: selling t-shirts through Teespring. I ran into Benny at Podcast Movement last summer, where I was proudly rocking my “Every day I’m hustling” tee, and we got to chatting about his new Teespring business.
Teespring is like “kickstarter for t-shirts” — each campaign you set up has a minimum order requirement before it “tips,” and the shirts get printed and shipped. You upload your own designs, set your own order campaign minimums, and set your prices. As the organizer, you earn the profit margin on your price above and beyond your cost of materials.
Teespring handles all the printing, payment processing, and order fulfillment.
How much money could there be in t-shirts? Well, according to some estimates, custom screen-printing is a $2 billion dollar annual industry, and I was blown away when Benny told me he’d netted more than $100,000 in less than 6 months!
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Learn:
- How Benny’s first 21 designs failed to ship, and why he kept pressing.
- How much he’ll spend advertising a campaign before scrapping it.
- How to come up with potentially winning t-shirt ideas.
- Examples of shirt concepts that have done well, and ones that have flopped.
- The legal and trademark issues to avoid.
- Benny’s minimum campaign settings and target profit per item.
- How to target the exact buyers on Facebook.
- One joint-venture strategy to reduce your ad-buying risk.
- How you may be able to get free Facebook advertising credit.
- How to milk a winning campaign for max. profit.
- Benny’s #1 tip for Side Hustle Nation.
Links:
- Get Busy Living Blog
- Teespring University (free resource)
- https://teespring.com/discover
- https://teeview.phatograph.com/ (Now Teeview.org)
- GraphicRiver.net
- CafePress.com
- The Official Teespring Facebook Group
- Another Facebook group for new Teespring sellers
- A third Facebook group for Teespring sellers
What do you think? Viable side hustle or no?
Would you have the patience to sit through 21 money-losing campaigns and stick with it?
If you’re excited about the print on demand t-shirt biz, make sure to check out Merch by Amazon as well.
Download the Free PDF "Highlight Reel" from this Episode
With all of my guest's top tips and resources included.
Enter your email to access it now:
Success! You just unlocked the highlight reel from this episode ... AND over 200 other subscriber-only bonuses. Check your email for details :)
(If it doesn't show up in 5-10 minutes, check spam/promotions.)
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Yes!
This is like chocolate and peanut butter. I’ve been working on ramping up my Teespring business since I bought one of your shirts and Benny posted the money he was making.
I just read his year end recap and know that I’ve finally (!) found the platform that checks all my boxes.
Thanks Nick for having Benny on and I’m really looking forward to listening to this on the drive home tonight!
Awesome — thanks Bob!
Great interview and show! Refreshing to hear the trials that Benny endured to arrive at the cusp of marginal profit. Those 21 tries were not fails but 21 independent experiments that all arrived at a positive conclusion.
I enjoy the show and the mindset you project.
Happy 2015!
Julian
Thanks Julian — Happy 2015 to you as well! Think you’ll give Teespring a shot?
I think this would be really great if you knew of events that aren’t doing merchandise. For example summer camps, or festivals. I know they usually have this kind of thing taken care of, but find the ones that don’t could prove very profitable.
Down side is they charge 9.5 to ship to Canada. That add a huge amount to every Canadian order. Living in Canada I was hoping I could do more business on this side of the border… too bad really.
Thanks for the idea anyways.
Ooh that is a great market to target, but yeah, bummer about the crazy expensive Canadian shipping charges. Maybe that’s a biz opp for Teespring.ca — or for someone else to start a north-of-the-border competitor with more reasonable rates!
Thanks for this great show. Very helpful content and even though I am in the Teespring business myself I noted some points you mentioned! I am looking forward to listen more of this…
Awesome! Thanks Nick.
Gosh, I loved your interview, so interesting! I didn’t know anything about the T-Shirt business.
Yeah this was a fascinating one!
Great topic! I wonder if Benny would be willing to share the breakdown of the income from the shirts. Was there 1 design that went viral and produced most of his income or is the 6 figures an accumulation of many, many designs? Thanks. Enjoying the podcasts.
I gave this a go after listening to this podcast. I was able to get 10 made at a profit level of 0$ hmmm. This seems like something that would really work as a Facebook ad (which I’ve seen before). Target everyone with the name Nick and make a shirt that says “in Nick we trust”. That sort of thing.
Thank you, Nick.
Great interview. I will be going to TeeSpring University to see if this is still current. I want to try the t-shirt gig for fundraising – 100% profits go to the charity – selling shirts to other team captains.