When you put together a Facebook ad, you have to choose a Facebook page to sponsor the ad. This means if you don’t have one which accurately reflects the T-shirt design you want to promote, you have to create a new one. When I created the gluten free T-shirt, I didn’t have a page that fit well, so I created a Gluten Free Families Facebook page. When I made the Hello Knitty T-shirt, I created a Hello Kitty Fanatics Facebook page.
As part of the Facebook ads, there is a button on the advertisement to “like” the page sponsoring the ad in the top right corner:
I think this would actually have been the best way to begin with T-shirts. As the Hello Knitty campaign showed, pitching to a community which already has a high interest in the topic makes it a lot easier to sell. If you create the pages about themes you’re already interested in, they should be easy and enjoyable to maintain while creating a community you can sell to down the road.
One of the things that I have started doing is filling in the new pages I create with some content so they don’t look like they were just created. An convenient tool to do this with is called Instapost (use access code “teespy” to get it for free). This quickly pulls up a popular image on whatever topic you input so you don’t have to spend a lot of time researching. If you want three or four great images, just hit the “generate post” button a few times. This will make the new fan page look more active to attract even more people to like it.
I think the gluten free T-shirt would be good in other colors, too garish in bright green. Black T with white letters and gluten free in yellow. I would market to venders at Farmers Markets that sell gluten free products. Go to local market and see what they think.
Great point about looking for other outlets to market the T-shirts. Since I’m doing this challenge is my spare time, I’m trying to create a situation where I can do it all online. for those who are looking to spend more time, going out to find other places to sell is an excellent idea.
You may be right with the coloring. I’ll have to get some more opinion on it…
I’m a little behind in reading all your posts on this challenge, but I’m really enjoying catching up 🙂
Can you explain, in the scenario above, why you didn’t pick an already-existing Hello Kitty facebook page. I did a search and there are quite a few that are open to the public (vs a private group that might not appreciate you joining just to advertise). It just seems like one of the already-existing pages would offer you a much bigger group to market the shirts to rather than starting a new page and having to build some content into it and then waiting for people to find it.
Thanks!
What’s going on with your teespring efforts?
More coming soon…just haven’t had the time to write it all up yet.
Looking forward to your write up!
One questions on your ROI calculations.
When you earn money, at the end of the year you will have to pay taxes right? Shouldn’t you account for this in your calculations?
Hey Jeffrey,
Is this the last update? I would like to hear how this experiment worked out – or if it is still in the works.
Thanks!
I ended up selling this website so I cut off the experiment early. I did make a couple hundred dollars off the shirts I did put up and I still get a sale every once in awhile since they are ongoing.
I was really getting into this story. Hope you will consider giving it another go. I am about to try it myself. With the benefit of research before hand obviously 🙂
Could you provide a link for instapost? Or suggest similar tools?
Instapost doesn’t appear to be available for sale by itself anymore. You can get it as a bonus tool when you sign up for http://postradam.us/ which is a 15 day trial for $1 I believe. Postradamus is an advanced version of Instapost.
I have heard there is a good way to get content for my fan page free and quick. Meme’s and such without creating it all myself. Do you know of a way to do this?