Photo by Mike Petrucci

Originally Posted On: https://designious.com/2018/10/22/how-start-shop-print-less-100-no-design-skills/

Today is more easier than ever to start a side hustle from home and the print on demand business is booming. No matter where you live you can start a shop and sell to a world wide audience, there are no borders when it comes to selling online.

Gone are the days when you needed thousands of dollars to start an online store, now you can start one almost for free, technology has made selling online accessible to everyone. What you need is an idea and some time to get the ball rolling and make a revenue of it.

What products to sell

First you need to decide what you want to sell, is it posters or yoga pants, iPhone cases, t-shirts or maybe aprons? At first you should start with one or two products to create an audience and get the hang of it. Selling online is a challenge and the more you have on your plate the harder it is, so start small. Sell something you would like to use yourself, this way you will be more involved.

Find a niche

You can’t sell to everyone, not everyone is your client, keep this in mind. Instead, think of an audience that would want to buy your products. For example if you decide to sell t-shirts to a younger audience, a more urban style that you like, again you might know this audience. These might be the people you hang out with and know what their style is. Find the style and design for them, think of what is your buying pattern, what makes you want that t-shirt or cap.

Find a domain name

Your domain name will be the one that represents your brand, so make a careful decision but don’t get stuck on it. These are some tutorials to find a good domain name. The cost for a domain name is around $10 per year, depending on the the registration length you chose, usually one year is enough to get started.

Create your store

Now that you have an idea of what to sell and to whom also we have a nice domain, we need to start building it. The easiest way is to setup a store is with Shopify, no maintenance, easy to start and with a lots of theme designs to make it your own. Their Basic Plan is enough to start with and you get a 30 days free trial, perfect. After the trial it will be $29/month. Chose a free theme that you like and design an easy logo with Canva, don’t waste time with it, you have plenty of models there.

Signup with a Print on Demand Service Provider or Marketplace

Prinftul, Printify or PrintAura are all good choices, it really depends on which one you like more, we have a full list of print providers or marketplaces where you can sell your products. You will connect your Shopify store with one of their applications and you start setup your products. You don’t pay in advance anything, you only pay when an order is placed in your Shopify store. They will handle printing and fulfillment so you don’t need to do anything else.

Your Designs

Once you have all the little bits ready, now is time to create some products. At Designious we have over 2600 ready made t-shirt designs that can be used right away and more than 10000 individual vector elements and cool fonts ready to be printed or customized. If you just want to test out we have a lot of freebies as well.   (To edit and convert our products for the different printers you need to use Adobe Illustrator or Photoshop)

We also have an easy to use online design tool, The Online Product Designer it’s free to try for 14 Days. It also comes with a ton of editable free templates here.

You can start with our collections and grow from there, adding every month new designs to your shop. Use them on posters, t-shirts, mugs, pillows, shoes, hats, iPhone cases, totes and anything you can think of. We have a great promo now if you want to get started.

Use mock-ups to look professional

Now that you chose a niche and you found some t-shirt designs you like you need to create some mock-ups that look great and make your shop stand out. We have gathered a list of free mock-ups here.

If you want to stand out even more we recommend Placeit.net (get $10 OFF when signing up), they have amazing realistic templates and tons of models to chose from.

Market your shop

Now that you have everything setup you must start getting clients. You can find a lot of marketing tutorials, resources and guides to get started and make it happen. Find your tribe and share with friends on social media, create profiles for your new website and shout it everywhere you can, get 1000 true fans.

To be successful online you need to find the right match between products and the market you’re addressing and if you put the work in and do it smart there is nothing stopping you.