Anyone who has common sense knows that earning money is never as easy as those trying to sell you on their system make it out to believe. What’s difficult to decipher is what type of dedication it will take to earn the money that those promoting the system claim you can make. They only highlight the successes they’ve had, and never the failures. Anyone who has tried to start a new business knows there will be a learning curve and there’s no such thing as instantaneous success. The question of how steep the learning curve will be is one that can be difficult to ascertain.
That’s why those who think the Teespring model may be a good way for them to earn some side-business income should watch the interview with a college sophomore Marc Boulos (see below). He managed to earn $80,000 through Teespring over the last year only doing it part-time (he was a full time student), but some of the things he says in the interview might surprise you.
In his very first Teespring campaign, he had a small success, earning about $100 after expenses. That’s what encouraged him, but it wasn’t smooth sailing. He admits that after his first success, he launched 40 new campaigns, all of which failed to meet the number needed to get printed. Yes, you read that correctly. After one small success, he failed 40 times in a row where he didn’t earn any money. While he didn’t lose money for the T-shirts, he did spend about $10 for advertising on each campaign, so he was $300 ($400 in advertising costs minus the $100 in profit from the first campaign) in the hole after 41 campaigns.
That doesn’t sound like much of a success story. It sounds like someone who was learning a system, and trying to make adjustments with everything he learned from each campaign that failed. It was his 42nd campaign that finally did well and when he began to start making some good money.
Now, you might think that once he had a successful campaign, all was easy money from that point on. It wasn’t. Marc says that of the 500 T-shirt campaigns he’s launched with Teespring, only 80 of them have actually sold the minimum required and made money. He had 420 failed campaigns to only 80 successful ones, but the 16 percent which were successful earned him $80,000 for the year.
Understanding that those earning money with Teespring have had a learning curve to overcome and aren’t successful with every campaign (in fact, they are only successful in about one out of every 6 campaigns) gives a much more realistic view of what it will take to make money with Teespring. That said, there is an opportunity for people to earn money in their spare time if they put the time and effort into it.
The video is a bit long (35 minutes), but it is worthwhile watching if you think you may be interested in T-shirt design.