Kia Ora Whanau
Today’s post is going to cover off some of my newer podcast episodes and will focus not so much on the getting or maintaining a job, but more so how you can create a passive income for yourself.
Full Disclosure: I will be referencing my own two print on demand sites. You don’t have to buy anything but if you do it will be giving me some profit, and would be greatly appreciated.
So now that the disclosure is out of the way lets go down this rabbit hole a little shall we?
Why?
Ok so you may be thinking, why if you are giving advice about getting a job, why should I be looking at creating a passive income? Well let me put this simply, while you will be earning money from the job you are working at 9 to 5, how good would it be to get money when your not working? and the best part … it wont cost you that much (or if your really savvy, nothing at all!)
Wait .. Free money? Is this a scam??
No.
I like to think that with my previous posts and podcasts I have a little integrity when it comes to offering something let alone declaring it as a scam .. see my previous post about Sweatcoin.
No the whole point of this post is to get you thinking about making a little extra money on the side, and if your lucky enough you make enough money to live off this passive income.
Now I have to be honest with you I am still trailing this and have since set up two print on demand sites (A Threadless site I have been running for over two months and a Teespring site I have been running since .. yesterday lol).
At this point in time I have only had one purchase … My own which you can see part has arrived below.
So you may be asking, why go to all this trouble? or I’m not creative I can’t do this Alex!
That, my dear reader is where you are wrong!
Anyone can give this a shot and given we live in the world of Social Media, makes advertising your stuff even easier!
Now I will get into everything a bit more about how I found this, the ease of setting it up and also for all you non-design folk like me, how you can create designs that will actually help!
Just how easy is it?
Ok .. I know your first question is probably “How much does it cost?” – as I said above it costs very little or next to nothing to set everything up.
The reason I chose Threadless (and now Teespring as well) is because of the simplicity of setting up the store and because both are absolutely free to use!
Yes .. let that sink in, this is a FREE way for you to set up a print on demand service!
Ok now your probably asking .. What is a Print On Demand service???
Let me break it down for you. A Print On Demand service is a place where you can list all designs and everything from creating the physical product to sending it to your customer is done for you by the print on demand service (in this instance Threadless and Teespring).
And now your asking … Hang, on How do they make their money??
The print on demand services take the base costs and shipping costs out for you. Anything left over is pure profit for you.
Doesn’t that mean I get a tiny profit?? What’s the point?
The point is if you sell enough designs, any little bit of extra money you get is money you didn’t have to work for. You are starting to create Passive Income …. This is going to help you get one step closer to not having to work at all!
What If I don’t want to create designs or don’t want to use a print on demand service? Can I do other passive income ideas?
Of course! What I want to teach you with this post (and if this is liked, future posts) is that you are not limited at all by your idea for passive income. This is just one stream available to you.
If you don’t believe me before you read any further I want you to go to google or YouTube and type in Passive Income Ideas … There are hundreds of thousands of videos on ideas that can help and also some tutorials on how to follow those up. It all comes down to you. Do you want to escape the Rat Race. Do you want to retire early and are you prepared to invest in yourself and your future.
You are never too old or too young to start! As I write this I am 37 years old starting this business venture of creating passive income. This is one way I am trying to retire early and I hope you reading this will join me in this journey!
Ok, Ok … So … How easy is it to set-up?
Oh were back to the start now are we? well let me tell you, it is incredible easy to set up your own ‘Store’ for a Print On Demand Service. In fact it only takes a few clicks!
Now I am not going to go down the process of exactly how to set-up, but what i am going to suggest is doing some research first. Go on YouTube and search Print On Demand Setup. You will find a few.
The big ones I am aware of are. TeeSpring, Threadless, Merch By Amazon, Shopify and Place-It.
Now before you jump-in and start signing up to all of these there are some basic things you need to know.
- You will need to have a PayPal account (best to set up a Business one if you have a personal one first). This is how you will get paid!
- You may require a Tax number (Merch By Amazon and Threadless both require these)
- If you are an artist then you will need Transperant Backgrounds of your designs (These should be 5000 pixels x 5000 pixels
- You are required to market yourself (Teespring will offer your design once you hit 25 or more sales but to start you have to make those sales. Don’t worry we will cover this off shortly
- Get ready to upload
- Check the products you want to sell
- Publish the product and finally …
- Sell!!
But I told you Alex I’m not an artist or a designer!!
Ok hold your horses, neither am I!
What I do is I have created an account with a site called Canva. Now this is where the $$ comes into play. You can use their site to create free images/ writing which you can then download. However if your prepared to pay the subscription fee of $20 NZD a month, you get access to thousands of images/ pictures/ typesets and backgrounds. You also get a license which means you can use those designs and there are no legal ramifications for copyright.
All of my designs on Teespring and Threadless have been created using Canva. The one reason for this … If you pay the subscription fee they allow you to download the design as a transparent image. This means it can be placed on any print on demand service without it leaving background on the product you are trying to print on.
When you are creating a design (unless you are using Merch by Amazon) it is best to create the design with custom dimensions of 5000 pixels x 5000 pixels. This means your design will be big enough to be placed on a T-Shirt but also can be reduced so the quality of the design can also be placed on a mug or a sticker without looking … crap!
There are thousands of designs to give you inspiration so what have you got to lose?
So you made a storefront, you have designs now you need to upload them.
This process is even easier! It is literally drag and drop into the site.
The you select the products you want to sell, the colours and (in the case of TeeSpring, the Price) and then your almost ready to go … you just need to get creative with the title of your design and give a little description. (Hint … go to any of my designs on either website to see the kind of descriptions I use).
So umm what about marketing?
Ok so if your have been living in a cave you may not have heard of Social Media! Yep that’s right it’s time to do the one thing a lot of us Kiwi’s are bad at… promoting yourself and what you do!
Now you should all know about Facebbok and Instagram etc.. but there are also some helpful things that can help you market your new designs.
Below you are going to see some images of models wearing some of my designs. There were created using a website called Place-It.
Place-It allows you to put some of your transparent designs on models and products … for free! with no watermark. You also have the ability to add your own text (as you can see from my images). I will try to link each product on Teespring (as this site is where I will be focusing on for the future … I’ll get on to why shortly).
So why the change from Threadless to Teespring???
Well I’m glad you asked, it’s like your reading this post and reading my mind!!
I will still be uploading to both sites but, there are two big problems with Threadless versus Teespring.
Threadless makes the process really easy but … all the marketing is all on you. Teespring will add you to their marketing pool. The only catch is you have to sell 10 to 25 products first. So you marketing fame has to be on point! We can cover that and what you can do to increase your chances in a future post … if you all like this!
The other disadvantage of Threadless is the billing area … You can’t really add your own prices, that harms it abit because you dont want to be charing your customers an extra $10 just so you get a profit of $10 etc..
This where Teespring is a little easier to manage. You can set your own pricing and it will show how much profit you will make per item sold. If you think Teespring are charging too much you can reduce the cost of that item. This is what I have done to generate a bit more intrest.
However Threadless does have some cool advantages … It has sales!
This means your profit might go down a bit but you can promote the sales to your customers and hopefully generate more sales in the future.
The other thing that Teespring has over Threadless …. It has more traffic! Close to 16 million views per month … you have more people to sell to.
Now of course with Covid-19 around all products will take awhile to get to your customers so there may be slow uptake on that front, on the positive side … more people are shopping from home now so … Yay!!!
I wish everyone will at least give this a shot or think about it. I am trying it for the first time and I will keep trying. Anything to help me get ahead!
Feel free to visit my sites and give me honest feedback. If you want to buy something great! if not that’s fine too as I appreciate any feedback.
Be sure to check out my podcast episodes on this as well as feel free to email me at doncostas@gmail.com
Thanks for reading and good luck!!
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