So, I'm about to start a small online store selling mostly t-shirts that I've designed. I have about 30+ designs to start off with, and I believe I'm going to go with shopify for the site. Has anybody used Shopify, and if so, what do you think about it? Also, how bad of an idea is this?
>>1264711
ive used shopify multiple times (every business failed; not shopify's fault, only my own).
it's really easy to set up a decent looking site (albeit time consuming).
Here's a hint: google "Shopify 30-day trial" and search around for a slightly longer trial so that you can use it without paying and test the waters for a month.
also about your idea on selling shirts: it's gonna be tough. i dont know what your designs are; if they are niche specific (e.g. game of thrones designs) then you can easily market towards that niche (market towards game of thrones watchers). But if they are just "cool designs and patterns" then it will be much much more difficult because you do not have a niche, unless you call "people who like shirts with cool designs" a niche.
Let me know if you have any questions. also let me know in general what your shirts are about.
>>1264711
Have you built up a market? do you have a t-shirt design blog? do you have advertisment somewhere for this website, are your t-shirt niche?
It is not the products fault that it sells bad, it is the way you sell it.
Is there an automated website for something like this? I would like to upload my friends designs and see if we can make some whatever money.
I live in euroland and i'm thinking about starting a online shop with sweets and candies from japan USA and likes. What think? There are like 6 online shops here so it repels me quite a bit but meh, what do i know.
>>1266231
If all of these shops are near each other, it would be much better for you to set up near them. Multiple of the same type of business near each other tend to collectively oull more customers than just one alone. Try to see if you can form a niche within the sweets market if that's even possible, maybe imported candies. This will have people coming to your store to get stuff they can't find anywhere else.
>>1265684
Thanks for the reply, man. I already signed up for the 14 day trial, but I'm not sweating it. I have no feet in the marketing waters, and I'm just setting up the site. My designs are sort of hipster esque "I wear this shirt ironically" type of shirts, so I guess that would be my niche. Any advice you could give me would be much appreciated. I have never really done much in the way of business besides flip stuff on ebay.
>>1266342
get a facebook advertiser account and start looking through the targeting it offers. think of interests hipsters have and target to them. make multiple ad groups with different age ranges, genders, ad images, ad copy, etc. and find one that works best (warning: unless you're lucky this testing phase may get pretty expensive)
>>1264711
where are you from?
30+ designs is too many.
Start with your 4 or 5 strongest designs.
Don't know what those are? Get an online poll going for your shirts and send it to your target market.
Having too designs at the start kills a lot of t-shirt businesses.
>>1266544
oh i almost forgot about reddit! yu can try that site. plenty of hipsters. just dont get banned for advertising. make is discrete like "hey what do you guys think, oh you wanna buy? well i shouldnt post this but if you want to so badly www.x.com"
Shopify is great!
I sell to successful ecom cos. Running on Shopify.
There are always roadblocks.
As has been asked above:
How do you get people to your site?
How do you get them to checkout?
How do you ensure timely delivery?
How do you get them back?
What happens if they wear it once and want to return it?
