Ugly Shirts Fortune Lesson 9 How to Be Successful in This Business

 Brian, a student who has just completed this very course sent me this question:

Can you give me one thing that I should focus on in the early stage of my tee business? I want to know that one thing to focus my energy into so that I can be successful in the shortest time possible.

 

Brian is smart. He knows how to ask the right question.

What’s the answer?

Find your first profitable niche as soon as possible.

Early in your ad campaign, don’t just aim to make money. Selling a few more tees won’t make you rich.

You should focus on finding the ONE niche that works for you, and quickly. That’s long term money there.

Why?

When you hit a profitable niche, you will posses one of the most valuable assets in your hand: ad data.

Ad data shows you many things. With it, you know exactly which gender and which age ranges of your audience convert.

So, when you roll out new shirts, you simply show them to that proven audience right away. You will pay less for ads, and sell more at the same time.

On top of that, when you hit a winner, you will immediately get a feel of the type of quote that resonates with your target audience.

When you put down quotes from Pinterest or Google on to your tees, those are just quotes you “think” will work. But it’s no guarantee. Once you hit a quote that sells like crazy, you have your answer.

So, your winning quote is another piece of valuable information that makes you understand your niche.

It’s obvious that you’ll be more likely to be successful in a niche that you understand.

Hey, if you sell 100+ shirts when running PPE ads, there’ll surely be a ton of comments. People will share their thoughts and might even tell you what shirts they want you to make next!

Trust me, you’ll definitely see this. Happened to me again and again.

This kind of feedback is really helpful in your upcoming campaigns.

It’s always the 80-20 rule.

Once you have found your core niche, you should spend 80% of your time selling shirts there. Keep on selling in that niche again and again to milk it.

Spend the other 20% of your time testing new niches.

This way, you can take the money you’ve made in your core niche and test out new stuff to keep on adding profitable niches to your business.

 
Now, how do you find your first core niche quickly?

When you are starting out, don’t walk into multiple niches at one time.

Instead, go deep into one niche first.

Say you have 5 niches you want to test. Take one niche and run a number of tee ideas within the ONE niche only. Spend your money within that ONE niche. Only move on when you are 100% sure the first niche does not work.

I’m not saying that you should launch 10 ad campaigns while you’re still getting the hang of the business and taking baby steps to be successful in it.

You can, of course, launch one campaign at a time when you’re in the testing stage. That’s totally fine.

I have shown you a lot of technical staff on running Facebook ads plus this one super secret to optimize your success. If you haven’t run a single Facebook ad campaign yet, all this may look complicated.

I can understand that. I’ve been there and I totally understand your situation.
Everyone needs to start somewhere.

My advice is for you to just go through the course and set up your first ad campaign following the instructions.

After you have tested a couple of campaigns, I can assure you that all the pieces will slowly come together.

If you’re not making any money, it’s not because of your skills. It’s because you’re not launching enough shirts to find your first winner.

Do not give up – the beginning is always hardest part. Always remind yourself that perfection is not required when working on your campaigns. Work hard for your dream, don’t give up, and you’ll make it!

Trust me, you will thank yourself in the near future for the right decision that you’ve made today.

Talking about over delivering, here are 3 smart tactics to get more sales from your campaigns before we end this course…

Once you have found your niche and started running profitable campaigns, here are the strategies you want to implement.

Do these and you’ll make more money.

 

Strategy #1: Message your past customers

This has nothing to do with Facebook ads, it’s about selling to your past customers to squeeze extra sales out of your current campaign.

You see… Teespring stores all your customers’ email addresses.

In your Teespring admin area, you can message those who have bought from you in your previous campaigns.

Since Teespring has already stored their email addresses, you will be able to use its interface to reach out to your past customers.

Three days before a campaign ends, I usually send a message to my past customers to buy my shirts that are still up for sale.

Login to your Teespring account and then click on “Messages” in the left navigation link.

You can then choose to message buyers of a particular campaign, or create a group of campaigns to message together.

I write them a simple message telling them that I’m now running a new campaign, and it is ending soon, encouraging them to buy while they still can.

Nothing fancy, just a simple and straightforward message to get them to look at the shirt.

The reason do it in the last 3 days is to give them a sense of urgency.

Not everyone will check their emails immediately. If we message them 3 days before the campaign ends, but it might be 1 or 2 days before they read the message.

That instills the urgency to act immediately. Scarcity and the time-sensitive factor definitely increases the conversion rate.

If you are in a niche with a large and responsive audience, it’s always a good practice to keep on rolling out new t-shirts in the same niche.

With each campaign, the shirt buyer’s email address is stored by Teespring – and those buyers become perfect targets to sell your next shirt.

Messaging them doesn’t cost any money.

It’s all pure profits when the sales come in.

For instance, you have 3,000 past customers to send a message to and let’s say the conversion rate on them is 5% – that’s 150 shirts.

If each shirt makes you $11.73; that’s an extra $1,759 in your pocket without spending a dime on advertising.

How cool is that?

This is the template message that I use. Feel free to modify it to fit your style:

Hi, I’m [name]. I own and run [my Facebook page URL]

Thanks for participating in our last “firefighter” t-shirt campaign.

We have a new shirt that I think fits you perfectly.

Check this out: [Teespring URL]

This campaign is closing in 1-2 days (depending on when this message reaches you). If you like it, grab yours before it’s sold out.

Best!

 

Strategy #2: Cross sell your tees

Here is another smart tactic to get more sales from your campaigns.

Run two campaigns at the same time (in the same niche). At the end of the campaigns, cross sell each tee to the other group of buyers.

That’s another way you’ll make more bang for your ad investment. These days, I always use this strategy when I run campaigns in my core niches.

Here is the message template I use:

Hi, I’m [name]. I own and run [my Facebook page URL]

Thanks for participating in our “firefighter” t-shirt campaign. The shirt will hit the printing press in a few days. Thank you for your support.

By the way, I just want to bring to your attention that we have another shirt which I think fits you perfectly.

Check this out: [Teespring URL]

The campaign is closing in 1-2 days (depending on when this message reaches you).

If you like it, grab yours before it’s sold out.

Best!

 

Strategy #3: Relaunch

So, you have a successful campaign. You can relaunch your campaign right away after it ends.

You do all the work on Teespring and keep on relaunching campaigns. You already have the assets in your hands: the ad data. You know exactly which segment of your audience converts.

Keep on relaunching your campaigns until you saturate the market with that one design. If you’re marketing to a large audience, one design can last you months.

Not 100% passive income, but it’s close.

That’s all for this course. I have done my best to share my system with you. I hope that you have learned a lot from it. I wish I had the knowledge I have just handed you when I first started in this solid business.

You already have the best knowledge you can have to build a successful business selling t-shirts online.

Take action and work on it. You will be successful!

If you have questions or need help on anything, just drop me a line on my support form.