Hello Knitty Scores First T-Shirt Sales: Day 8

After failing to sell a single T-shirt with my fist two designs (gluten free and paddleboarders) as part of my quest to earn $10,000 in my spare time challenge, I decided to change things up a bit. I have access to a facebook page with about 22,000 likes, and I had an idea I thought might resonate with the target audience. More than anything else, I wanted to know if my ideas were the issue for no sales with the previous T-shirts, or if it was my lack of Facebook marketing skills. I figured making a T-shirt design targeted at this group would give me an answer to that question.

The Facebook page was mainly frequented by Hello Kitty fans, and my idea was a parody. The parody was a Hello Kitty and Knitting combination mashup to create “Hello Knitty.” I felt this would appeal to Hello Kitty fans who loved to knit, and while not a huge group, they would likely be passionate about both. I sent this idea to Michael (@MindLightMedia) who I think did a wonderful job with the design:

I placed the design on Teechip, and it hit the right chord with a few of the fans. There were 8 T-shirts sold in the first two days, and I thought I was onto something. Knowing there were people out there who liked the design enough to purchase it, I set my sites on spending money on Facebook ads to get more sales. Since I never reached my $10 ad buy limit with the first two T-shirts, I decided no matter what I would spend at least $10 on this one. I ended up spending just over $13.00 on ads, but unfortunately, my marketing through Facebook didn’t yield any additional sales.

The lesson from this has been it’s my marketing which is the current problem in obtaining sales, not the ideas. It’s quite disappointing, and I know it’s time for me to go back to do more research on marketing so I can see if I can find where I’m going wrong. In the end, the campaign closed with 8 sales for a profit of $74.31 (77.31 – $3 = $74.31 — The $3 is $1 per shirt after 5 shirts that went to Michael, the designer)

That means after my first three T-shirt campaigns, I’m barely out of the red. While that’s better than being in the red, I will still have to make some major improvements if I am going to end up meeting the $10,000 goal.

Amount spent: $36.08 ($13.06 ad buy, $10 T-shirt design, $3 sales bonus)
Amount made: $77.31

Current total: $14.53