OK gang, several of you said you’d find it useful to have a private group for us to discuss apparel marketing, so I’ve set one up.
I’m making it completely private though, since I don’t want to end up getting requests all the time from random people who find it on FB. I want this to be high quality, even if it means staying relatively small.
So, if you want to participate… reply in the comments with a little about what you’re doing with shirts, and your FB username so I can add you. I won’t publish your comments if there’s any personal info, I’ll just read them, add people, and delete them… so no worries about anyone else seeing what you put here. I forgot that WordPress will automatically approve any comment if the person has a previously approved comment. SO… DON’T put anything in a comment you don’t want to be public, just in case. Just make sure in your comment you put the email address that you use for FB, and that won’t be public and I can add you from that. 🙂
Looking forward to the group!
JVC
Jonathon,
I’m still plugging away on Amazon. Selling private label in a few categories, albeit slow progress.
I’m surprised you haven’t been an active AZ seller yourself. You had once blogged about it. I’m even more surprised that you are selling T-shirts (not the best business strategy IMHO). Anyway, your FB group should be interesting in that regard 🙂
As for your FB group, I don’t yet sell in the apparel category. And there ARE restrictions. But I can contribute overall, and I do want to remain abreast of opps within the apparel category.
Thanks jonathon, and I do hope you are doing well!
Jim
Hey Jim! Yeah the AZ thing didn’t go well for me. I did put one product up, it took 8 months to finally get 100 bottles of supplements in an Amazon warehouse, and by then I’d completely run out of any steam or confidence in the whole thing. Never even sold one… the entire process just proved way too convoluted in the real world.
I know one other person who’s also plugging away with AZ and it’s “going well” (his words) but is “a slow road to plow” (also his words). I love the concept in theory, but like everything else I think it’s going to fit some people well, and not others. For me, I absolutely have no interest at all in travel so the notion of flying around to source products is completely unattractive. And having to negotiate with Chinese suppliers/distributors whose English is marginal and navigating the shark-infested waters of middlemen who will take you to the cleaners, also holds no appeal.
The stuff I most want to sell on Amazon is original products, not white label stuff, and that requires such a large investment up front in development costs that it just hasn’t been remotely feasible for me to pull off. So… Amazon never got off the ground for me.
I guess I’m just more of a “virtual” guy… better suited to digital goods and/or advertising arbitrage. Even T-shirts are pretty much just digital goods as far as I’m concerned, since I have nothing at all to do with the physical part of the process.
Anyway, the FB group should prove interesting, I’ve never done one before and frankly I can’t stand FB. But I seem to be in the minority on that so… let’s see where this goes. 😉
JVC
Been following you for sometime now since the PPV Formula 3 course webinars you did with Gauher. Have not been very successful with Facebook ads due to lack of formal training. Following your post yesterday, I grabbed 3 of the 5 tools you suggested. T-shirts are kind of interesting because people keep buying them even when they have a full closet of them.
Yes this is a big part of what I find interesting about the “Shirts biz” – the evergreen nature of it. And of course ultimately it’s more about controlling the targeting of your ad campaigns, because if you understand how to target your ideal customers, then you can sell them pretty much anything. Shirts is just a relatively easy, low-risk place to start!
JVC
I too started the process of selling PL products on amazon but I ran into some “not so ethical suppliers”. I’m on pause right now with that PL product but I’m having some success with retail arbitrage on amazon.
I have been looking at tee-shirts for a few months now and was thinking to myself that it wont last (I’m beginning to see things differently now)
Like JVC said in another post, “having a go-to community is very important to success in most online business.
Hi Jonathan,
Am “skirting” the T-shirt biz and would love to keep up on what’s going on. Hope you’ll send me an invite.
Best,
Julia
I agree Jonathon, digital world for me as well. I’m interested in seeing what you’ve been up to on FB. I’ve been offline for a couple years building my acting career. See you on FB
Have been ignoring t-shirts all this while, but I guess when someone like you mentions it, I can’t ignore it anymore. Hope to learn from and contribute to a “go-to community” of like minded members. And yes, digital gets results much faster!
I have ordered T-shirts from a few different vendors and sent them into Amazon. So far so good.
That’s very interesting! A mix of T-shirt and Amazon marketing. Are you able to do small quantities or do you have to commit to a whole bunch of shirt inventory up front?
JVC
Hi Jonathan – Have been following your blog and PPV webinars with Gauher. Interesting that you are marketing tshirts but I can understand the appeal – would it work well with PPV traffic do you think? Anyway am interested in learning more about this and whats working now.
Hey KC, good to hear from you!
I suspect that PPV could work with shirts, but not in a direct-sales way. I think you would need to build lists in specific niches and only pitch them to a shirt after you’ve engaged them somehow, either through an email newsletter or probably better yet – a Facebook group built around the niche. But heck if you’re gonna do that, may as well just start with FB to begin with.
To me PPV has its place, but shirts are more of a direct-sales kindof thing since they’re generally on a fairly short deadline. PPV’s strength is that it’s cheap to acquire leads, but I haven’t heard of anything working as a direct sale from PPV in quite a while.
That’s my $0.02! 😉
JVC
Interested in the apparel marketing FB group. Just started and am working with Demian Caceres in his Elite coaching program and Ryan Mckinney. Lots of people pushing Tee shirt shit. They’re like flies. Look forward to being in the group. Big supporter of Gauher.
Invite sent!
And this goes for everyone who has requested to join, invites have been sent. But FB seems a bit weird about them, so if you didn’t get one please let me know and I’ll try other ways to get you in. 🙂
JVC
Also interesting and would like to begin
Your webinar “how-to-design” will be available in the record?
Thx
Yep it sure will, I’m working on splitting the recording up into sections now and getting them posted. Hope to send out the access information today. Stay tuned…
JVC
Is this still open (the FB group)? Very interested in learning more about the T-Shirt thing. All these years, and havent heard many people having great success unless going to the dark side. Nice to hear something going big that is actually useful to the masses. Would love to join the group if possible.
The group really hasn’t had any activity to speak of, and at the moment I’m wrapped up in a project outside of affiliate/shirt marketing so have had to focus my time there. If the group gets active again, I’ll put the word out for more interested members.
JVC
Hi there, I am constantly looking for new ways to make money online and the best way to learn I guess is to constantly surround yourself with people who are trying to do the same thing.
I have launched some short Teespring campaigns whith not so much of succes so far… Would love to join your group!!
Hi there, I agree it’s important to surround yourself with people doing similar things (and hopefully who have found some success), but unfortunately the FB group really never took off. Personally I decided to go back to doing what I was already good at – driving traffic – rather than trying to master something totally new like apparel marketing. I never got consistent good results with it, and decided to cut my losses. I know some people still do very well with it, but not everything clicks with everyone, and this just didn’t click with me.
Good luck to you!
JVC