Apparel e-commerce is a powerful, reliable form of side income, and can even be scaled up into a major online business if you want it to. One of the keys to sell your T-shirts and other products is to come up with good concepts. Whether you focus on time-sensitive designs based on current events, or you just want ideas that stay appealing to an audience all the time, these guidelines will help you when you're stumped for new ideas.
Like any online business, most successful e-commerce apparel stores serve a very specific group of people. You probably wouldn't try to sell shirts with tie-dye visuals to the same people you'd sell ones about video games or fitness. Branded apparel, such as a band making its own T-shirts, makes this a lot easier. People who like the brand will want the shirt, so the brand already knows its audience from marketing itself. But if you're just getting started and don't have a brand to tell you who your audience is, it's time to do some research.
What kind of designs are close to what you sell? If possible, look at the kind of people who like the brands selling similar concepts. Follow them on social media if you can and get a clearer picture of what they like, their wants, their needs, etc. Go beyond statistics like age and gender and learn the psychology of your ideal customer. Don't forget, when you have a few customers already, you can just ask them directly: What kind of shirts would you like to see?
Mind-mapping is a very popular visual idea-graphing method used by all manner of creators. You start by writing a starting idea, phrase, need, etc. in the middle of a page, physically or on a mind-mapping app. From there, you write related ideas that connect to that central idea as bubbles branching out from it. Then, you make further branches connected to those related ideas, and so on. Mind-mapping is great when you have a vague general idea to start with, but see too many directions to take from there.
What are people talking about right now? Whatever the answer may be, there could be potential design ideas based on that. Make it a habit to check social media sites where your audience hangs out and see what they're talking about. You might see a frequently used phrase or hashtag that has caught on, and creating a design based on them could be profitable.
The news is another good place to see what people care about. It doesn't have to be world or political news, either. What's going on in entertainment, or science? Did something huge happen during the holidays that people will probably remember? If it's big enough to be trending, and it fits your audience, you might have a killer idea on your hands, so go for it before someone else does!
Sometimes the pressure to not come up with a bad idea, and have the subsequent product bomb, can stifle the flow of good ideas. One great way to break out of this cycle is the worst idea exercise. With this tactic, you intentionally try to come up with the worst possible idea for a T-shirt. What would your audience hate, or definitely find boring? When you figure this out, it helps you realize that you do have a good grasp of what could work. Just try to think of what the opposite of this terrible idea would look like, and there you go.
Sometimes the issue isn't coming up with ideas, but figuring out the really good ones. In that case, the SCAMPER technique can be a massive time-saver, forcing all the sub-par ideas to "scamper" out of the way. SCAMPER is an acronym that stands for:
SCAMPER can be useful when you have some loose or incomplete ideas that need to be polished or put to the test. All you do is ask questions about your idea with each of these words, such as "Can I substitute this part with something else?" or "Can I eliminate part of this design to make it cleaner?" You could even look at multiple ideas and ask "Can these be combined into something better?" Give SCAMPER a try when you're wrestling with several candidates for your next print on demand T-shirt.Selling products online is a great way to earn extra cash. Print on demand platforms, like Viralstyle, make running and growing a successful online apparel business incredibly easy. Take the grunt work out of your schedule and focus on what your business needs with Viralstyle.
