Teespring, give up?

Doesn't matter how long it took others to succeed, important thing is how much YOU want this to be done.

Yep. You know what they say (and it's true)...Failure can't live with persistence!

True, and I am really trying and not giving up yet. Just curious as I am a little discouraged. At first I was doing designs I like but maybe weren't so popular or mainstream, so I have been trying to do tees on things that are "hot topics/trends" and still no luck.

I tried about 15-20 before I had my first winner. You;ll find others who have had more failed ones than that and others who have had less.

10 to 20 before I had my first one tip. Even more before I hit a really profitable one, if I remember correctly. Even now, I still have streaks where 5 or more shirts in a row won't be successful. It takes a combination of good design and a hungry market to sell Teespring shirts. If you don't have both of those, you'll end up wasting your time and money, no matter how persistent you are.

If it's any consolation, I've had far more losing shirts than I've had winning shirts. My biggest streak was more than 20 failed designs in a row. You've got to be willing to dump unsuccessful shirts without wasting too much money on them, no matter how good you think they are. I lost a lot of money in the beginning trying to figure out how to market shirts I thought were great designs that never took off.

When you hit a big winner, it makes all the losing shirts worthwhile and then some. My only regret is I didn't have more advertising money in the beginning to take advantage of some of the bigger winners I had before there were 20 slightly different copies of them flooding the market.

I wouldn't give up. You just need to find what works for you. When it comes to sites like Tee Spring, I'm not sure that the design matters all that much. The thing that I've noticed, however, is that the most successful people have built-in fan bases through various social media sites. The people that buy stuff really just like to show their love for their favorite "personality," so to speak.

Joey

If you create a popular shirt, the fan base will come with it. I've had campaigns pick up several thousand likes for a new Facebook page that only had a couple posts on it and zero likes when I start the campaign. It's somewhat easier to market to an established page, but it isn't an absolute necessity.

I've had better results promoting products as an affiliate with FB ads than with t-shirt selling, but the ad costs are higher and the success/fail rate is about the same. The tricky part is finding products that have a high EPC. You'd think that would be easy, but because so many products achieved their high EPCs during the launch phase, the EPCs are actually much lower in the after-launch phase and tougher to determine.

For example, VideoMakerFX achieved a high EPC during its launch, but after things settled down, the EPC is really only about 10% of the stat provided. I made about 25 sales of VMFX with FB ads in just a few days, but those ads cost a lot and I only profited about a hundred bucks. Couldn't scale it or find another interested audience to promote to.

I broke even promoting Walt Bayliss' "RunClick" product, and I really prepared for that one and expected a lot of sales. No dice. His front end product converted, but it was a big fail for me with his upsells.

Anyhow, I know this is about TeeSpring and t-shirts, but I just wanted to offer this up since it was about possibly giving up on TS. I like promoting affiliate products much more, but it's also not easy.

What's important is you're learning as you fail, and get better in your next campaign.

You tweak and you test. Then you keep doing this until you find something that works.

The worst thing you can do is to give up. You learn new things all the time. The best part is that you learn from your mistakes. This is the best way to learn.

I have just gotten started with Teespring, and I do have concerns about how many campaigns I'll have to worry about before I have a good campaign. I am really confused though on what will happen. I have yet to put up my very first campaign because I am so busy, so I guess we'll see how it goes.

I use a guy who is a pro. He worked for Disney as an animator and later on for a big T-shirt design house, but he is independent now. Best strategy is to create quality work that people are willing to pay top dollar for, and forget about cutting corners. Look for solid colors that are clean and crisp. For example, anime is a proven winner. However, getting a license can be expensive. For that reason, I have created my own characters that I use again an again. Expect to also spend time and energy promoting your shirts to the masses.

Another year another bandwagon for the newbies to jump on.

If you want some real advice, here it is... Stop wasting your time with teespring. Start investing your time into something that is sustainable. Learn real product marketing by doing affiliate marketing or create your own product and build that up.

Everyone and their newbie mother is doing Teespring. Most are finding out that its not easy... why? Because that train left the station 2 hours ago and you're running on foot trying to catch up to it. How many people do you think jumped on this teespring bandwagon? A lot. Now you want to jump on that train too.. but now you find out its not as easy once you're competing with thousands of other people trying to come up with the next best thing. Sure you might get lucky an have some successful campaigns. Then what? You do it all over again. No sustainability, Very little knowledge or experience to be learned from doing it. So what's the point? You aren't build a real business. Jump off the train and build your own business.