Is Teespring + Facebook over saturated?

I don't think it is saturated.... You might not be able to get success on every design.. but then its very much possible if you choose the right audience..

What do you do if you're fishing in a steam with like 2,500 other people?

You get a bait that's better than theirs. And fight for superior positioning.

The only way for you to find out what works and what doesn't is to start doing...
Test everything until you find what works for you, don't be afraid to fail we've all been there.
If you're going to ask for opinions every time you want to start something nothing is going to be done.

It's like pretty much every other Internet Marketing trend. When it first hit the scene, the money was fast and furious and everybody was able to cash in on it with little effort. As more and more people enter the market, there are fewer and fewer original designs and the available pool of customers for the bigger markets have been hit hard with advertisement after advertisement for shirts that all say pretty much the same thing. If you're selling the same stuff as everyone else, you aren't going to have much luck.

I wouldn't go as far as to say the market is saturated because I've got original shirt designs that have sold more than a thousand copies in a few days recently, but I will say this. You've got to come up with something original that resonates with your target audience. Once you strike gold, cash in on it as quickly as you can because there are a bunch of people lurking in the wings waiting to steal your design and cash in on it.

The biggest problem I'm having right now is every winning design I have gets copied within a day of posting it to my pages. I'm able to make good money off of it for about a week before there are 10 variations of it flooding the market. That week I'm able to cash in on a design is very lucrative, but it's frustrating because I spend all the time and money creating something only to have it ripped off in a couple days. I'm experimenting with dark posts to see if I can stretch the winners out for a bit longer, but a lot of my sales come from posting my designs to my highly-engaged Facebook pages.

Thanks for that Mikl. I have a designer who is new and fresh with great designs. I'm going to purchase a few from him and do some testing tonight. What niche are you targeting & what kind of facebook fan base have you formed around your shirts?

I'm not going to reveal my niches here because I'm already getting my shirts copied left and right, but I'll say this. I'm in multiple niches and it's still fairly easy to find hungry markets. As long as your shirt designs are a cut above what everyone else is selling, you'll sell shirts.

One more bit of advice...Don't expect every shirt to be a winner. Sometime you'll design shirts that you think are going to be a huge hit and they won't sell at all. I average 4 to 5 shirts that don't sell much for every winning design I come up with. When I first started out and was learning the ropes, it was more like 10 to 15 shirts for every big winner.

Don't waste a lot of money on a shirt that isn't selling. You'll know when you've got a good one. Spend $10 to $20 on each design and if you don't sell at least 4 to 5 shirts in the first 20 bucks, move on. The shirts I like to call Heavy Hitters will sell even better than that. If you sell 10 to 15 shirts in the first $20 of advertising, get ready to spend a lot on advertising for that shirt. Once you've got a clear winner, you need to milk it for everything you can before a bunch of slightly-different variations flood the market. I had a shirt recently sell 1,000+ copies in 5 days. After the first day the idea had been copied by one person. Within 3 days, I was seeing different takes on my idea all over Facebook. Sales died off after the 5th day, probably due to the proliferation of similar shirts, but it made me a lot of money while it lasted.

The way I see it, that's just the nature of the Internet. Bunch of leeches everywhere looking for a quick buck. They can suck up my scraps while I bank the big bucks with original ideas.

It's hard to tell because so many marketers have really, really bad designs and just don't know it or won't admit it. The design+emotional context is everything.

You can target to your heart's content, but if you aren't making a connection, you are wasting your time.

Oh, one more thing: it seems that some marketers have this idea that every design should work. This is NOT the reality. Some designs will flop. It's business.

Well it's not yet saturated. But it's harder to get sales today compared to the early days. Maybe because of the competition since almost everyone is doing teespring now...

No way, people won't stop buying T-shirts.

You just need to look past the obvious Tees that many create straight off the bat...

"God above everything except (team name)"
"Sons of (tv show)"

Etc

I'm almost thinking it's saturated.

So far I've spend $50 and getting these results.

Sold 5 shirts
10% CTR
5 cent PPE
986 Total Actions
438 Post Likes
267 Page Photo Views
186 Post Shares
95 Other Actions

Just because one shirt doesn't sell, that doesn't mean it's saturated. I've got two shirts right now that are selling like crazy. Between the two, I'll have sold thousands of shirts by the time it's all said and done. How many website clicks did you get and what was your cost per website click? $10 spent per shirt sold is way too much. There's obviously at least some interest there, so maybe a redesign or new targeting is in order...

Don't be afraid to kill a campaign that isn't working and try a new one. I have a number of failed campaigns for every successful one I have, but the successful make it more than worth the effort.

I did a TeeSpring campaign a few months ago - and was kinda getting the vibe that perhaps the market was a little saturated - and then I remembered something a mentor said to me 20 years ago. Maybe the market's saturated for THAT product in THAT market - so test the product with splinter audiences (e.g. niche markets). It worked. I didn't make thousands but I made hundreds - across tiny, literally micro niche audiences - which of course led to thousands. So....may be worth lookin into with your situation - rich in micro niches - sounds like a future wso :-)

Good point. The niches I'm targeting are niche markets within niche markets. If you're targeting broad markets, you're going about it all wrong!

Thanks for the tip guys! Yeah my audience seems pretty broad. I will tighten up my niche and try again.

You need to look at hw much traffic this has received and this will tell how beneficial it actually is. I would say yes this method can be used with a bit of modification.

It all depends on how YOU market the product and your presentation! Certain Ads have an appeal to a broad audience...You have to find what works! Track Your Ads and see what's effective. What does and doesn't work for some, may work for you. Monitor your Progress!

I don't think "teeshirts" or "Teespring" is the niche. The niche is the thing you're targetting with t-shirts. So no, it's not saturated because it's not a niche - category error in the question. It may well be that Sons of Anarchy t-shirts along with first responders, nurses, and those generic t-shirts etc etc are well oversaturated - but there must be niches that are full of people who would like to express their interest/passion etc on a t-shirt but no-one's made it easy for them. Over to you...

If you're offering unique designs on TeeSpring, then there should be no real competition for you, whatever niche you are specializing in. The people who are disappointed with the results are likely offering similar products/designs as others and hopefully to copy the other person's success. Originate don't duplicate.

I believe some niches are saturated.. like puppies, dog, guns..
However, plenty of other niches and targeting to try so just have to do research

I See ads nd groups just for Teespring, and on google plus I see special Hangouts for tee spring, I get a lot of emails with the different Teespring training products. This is getting more scuttlebutt than Fan Pages ever did