
How I made $40k within Shopify's trial period - doesitmakesound
http://thatshirtwascash.com/blogs/news/15287435-how-i-made-40k-within-shopifys-trial-period
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skizm
That's awesome. Few questions:

40k revenue or profit? If it was rev then what was your profit (and vice
versa)? And are you worried that the sort of initial wave of traffic will die
down and you'll be left only selling a couple dozen shirts a week? I mean this
sort of thing (to me) seems like it is an awesome effort at capitalizing on
something that went viral, but how do you plan on sustaining (or even growing)
these numbers?

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doesitmakesound
Tried commenting on this earlier but was spam blocked.

1\. Revenue 2\. Estimated ~25% That number gets larger with quantity. I'm more
focused on getting more people exposed to the concept and signed up for our
shirt picking surveys. 3\. Not really but it is a real worry. The submitted
designs -> voting -> new shirts concept is repeatable. I also have my thoughts
towards building a platform around that. Imgur for shirts. 4\. Sustaining and
growing, yes since my livelihood depends on it but really I love this concept
and am having a lot of fun. I don't see why we wouldn't grow, that would be a
failure to execute. I am also going to look for a minor seed investment to
enable me to do more things.

~~~
skizm
Thanks for the reply. Good luck with everything.

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aditya
How did you make $40k?

Post says TINhouse was useless and reddit has the lowest conversion rate (but
still accounted for 25% of the sales).

Could your talk about the "engaging people on various forums/communities" part
and where the majority of that 40k came from?

~~~
doesitmakesound
Sure, we seem to be popular on forums with people sharing "wtf is up with
these shirts" or "would you wear these"? The first comment always seems to be
"no." then the rest are positive. Also, a few of those shutupandtakemymoney
type places have done posts on us and those have really high conversion rates.
Lastly, I use places like FunnyJunk and 9GAG as a place to repost twitter
pics. It's my first time on those, so I'm still trying to learn their
communities.

Our Kim Jong Il shirt is crushing it, which I didn't expect, and people are
sharing it / finding up on Instagram and twitter. I am going to expand and
utilize those social media platforms more such as a "4chan designs shirts"
board on pinterest. We have virality on our side with this, but I think most
B2C companies need something others want to talk about.

We have high conversion off facebook but I don't do anything on it. So, it
most be others sharing links and pictures that I can't see. We also have a
large "direct" group of sales that I have no information on how they found us.

EDIT: I can't reply as fast as I'd like to due to spam restrictions in place.
I didn't use my main account for this post.

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buckbova
Maybe I've met 100 people in my life who've wanted to make t-shirts for a
living. It's not always about the ideas, but the execution. Congrats.

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timClicks
Well done for making it. Good luck now that you've handed in your notice.

I think the true lesson here is understanding your market. The 'giggly teenage
boys' market doesn't want refined style or a corporate look. You need to
present yourself as homebrew and authentic.

I find it a shame that smart people like silly things, but hey that's the
Internet.

edit: punctuation

~~~
JTon
> I find it a shame that smart people like silly things

Why? I don't see how this matters at all. Besides, possibly, disrupting your
vision for society

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thoughtpalette
I've been sharing this site quite a bit with fellow redditors. I'm not for all
the shirts (of course), but I find a lot of them hilarious and wearable!
Especially with the internet savvy crowd.

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tabrischen
Congrats, I love the idea of asking the market for feedback on demand early
on.

Are there one or two shirts that generate the majority of the revenue, or is
it all pretty evenly spread?

~~~
tabrischen
Also, I'm interested in the different prices of the shirts. Are they adjusted
for demand or just based purely on printing costs?

~~~
doesitmakesound
Both cost and demand. One shirt is crushing it compared to the rest and then
we have three groups. Ones that sell really well, ones that sell, and ones
that don't. Some of the non-sellers provide good comical value though. I would
say it's pretty spreadout as you can see with this graph:
[http://i.imgur.com/W5pCFSl.png](http://i.imgur.com/W5pCFSl.png).

Each bar represents a different shirt.

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SG-
What are you shirt printing costs? I know the amount of colors and things used
factor in as well as the amount of shirts ordered.

also how many shirts to you print for your first run?

~~~
doesitmakesound
We use nice shirts and printers. The shirts cost ~$5 - 5.50 (and more for
larger sizes). The coverage of the shirt dictates the price of that, full
coverage being ~$10 for loq quantity. Cost decrease quite a bit if the order
of that shirt is high. (down to $7.50). We're using a market penetration model
but really I just want to reach out and talk to people I want involved in
creating shirts, voting, and selling. I am very responsive and available.

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orbifold
Just in case someone is wondering what designs inspired him, one was a shirt
with a picture of a man hanging head down naked from a chain that was attached
to his pubic region. I realize there are two degrees of separation here and it
was foolish of me to click on a link with 4chan t-shirt designs. Still i don't
think it is necessary to promote yet another shitty t-shirt design website.

~~~
glibgil
That man is not dead. Look again. He is carefully balancing being sure to make
no sudden movements. In the original photo there is a bottle of talcum powder
nearby. The dead don't need talc.

~~~
orbifold
I'd rather not, I take your word for it.

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arb99
Huge copyright infringement on so many of their designs...

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adventured
"then we do licensing / design work"

I would guess by that the person means they work out arrangements on licensing
and or decide if any licensing is necessary.

~~~
doesitmakesound
Yeah, that shapes what we can offer.

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slingerofwheat
Does anyone know how the T-shirts are being printed?

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Mandatum
Read the article.

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poopsintub
I hate to be a downer but you're flirting with disaster here. Copyright
infringement everywhere.

~~~
doesitmakesound
We only offer shirts we have agreements with the artists with, are
created/recreated by us, or have no searchable creation. There has been a
couple times someone said "I made that!" and we add them into the royalty
group when it looks like they are. I don't know if we have to do that even,
but we do.

Most shirts people submit have licensing issues and the shirts we have with
licensing besides Astrosloth don't sell as well.

EDIT: Spam blocker has limited my capability to respond, so I hope you see
this:

"You're right, when we first launched based on community reddit posts. We had
whatever was most popular since it was being made just for them but we grew
past that quickly and realized it was going to keep going. This was just going
to be a fun one-off ordeal. Now I have an adviser for licensing and I take it
very seriously. Thanks for the compliments too!"

~~~
hatu
Do you mean the original artist or whoever random internet dweller decided to
submit one of the memes?

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doesitmakesound
Both. Original artists are easy to find and talk to. Or if a post was
obviously originated somewhere, I messag ethem on whatever site that is.

~~~
poopsintub
I'm interested how long it took you for a huge company like Disney to get back
to you. Did they charge you anything?

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fred_durst
I hate this guy so much.

~~~
doesitmakesound
Agreed.

