Damage Inc.'s Teespring Trials & Facebook Foray

[Damage Inc.]

Yup, another Teespring thread. I actually hadn’t even heard of it before coming to this forum, and needless to say it intrigued me. Enough so that I decided to take it on as a side project and document it here. I’ll be doing this in my “free time” or as a break when I’m not working on my main business. It seems like fun to me.


I’m doing this partially for fun, partially as a challenge, and to learn some new skills and get out of my comfort zone. While I do have experience in ecommerce, it’s mostly through eBay. I’ve seen people on here talking about facebook advertising in particular, which is something I have no experience in. So I want to see what the deal is, how it works, experiment with driving traffic, etc. I think the skills I’ll pick up doing this will translate well to any business and serve as practice for some strategies I may use to grow my main business.


I’ll commit to posting my progress here – good or bad, win or lose. This may not pan out or be worth my time, but I will not quit until I have at least one successful campaign. My hope is to show how easily and affordably somebody can get their feet wet in entrepreneurship, and perhaps push a person or two over the fence into trying something.


Questions, comments, suggestions, and criticisms are all welcome.


But this isn’t fastlane!

Maybe not, or maybe not yet. Yes, I’m relying on Teespring. If they close shop tomorrow this is over. I’m not relying on this possible income, I’m looking at it as a learning experience and a side hustle. If I end up having a knack for these designs this could be fairly passive. Maybe Abercrombie will spot my incredible design talent and buy me out for millions, maybe I’ll make a hundred bucks, or maybe I’ll lose a hundred bucks. I’m not losing sleep over any of these outcomes.


So – what value can I add?

Well all I can possibly do here is provide designs, find customers, and set prices. So, this is pretty easy: I hope to provide customers with fun and original t shirt designs at a fair price, that they wouldn’t have found otherwise.

 

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[Damage Inc.]

Day One 2-17-15

I decided to do this today, about 5-6 hours ago. Here’s what I’ve done so far.


1) Picked a company name.


2) Made an email address with yahoo.


3) Created a T Shirt and campaign. I made it for 14 days. That seemed like a good balance for enough time to get views without being so long that I discourage buyers by the wait. I’ll see how this pans out and adjust in the future if needed. I plan to outsource some cool designs to Fiverr in the future, but I had a couple of ideas that are pretty basic and that I can execute on myself. This first shirt utilizes a piece of Teespring’s generic clip art and their text add tool. Pretty easy, and although it’s basic it doesn’t look too bad. It’s a take on a saying targeted at a hobby niche.


4) Created a facebook page for my company. It’s super basic and I’m not worried about page interaction or likes yet – just needed a home base for the advertising. I’ll add to the page if it seems worthwhile, but I have a feeling people will either ignore the ad or click through to Teespring and buy a shirt. My shirt ideas are fairly random and I think I’ll be dealing with semi-impulsive buyers, so I’d be surprised if I have any repeat customers or “fans”. At least for now.


5) Created a facebook ad campaign for the first shirt. This was my first facebook ad. I watched a few tutorials and read a couple of how to articles and dived in. It was easy enough – but being my first ad I don’t know if I chose the settings wisely yet. I made the ad for 14 days – same as the shirt campaign. My “targeted audience” meter was right in the middle and I set a limit of $3.00 per day.


6) Created a second shirt, same process as shirt one except I used a free stock photo that doesn’t require sourcing. The photo is combined with text which I used their text design tool for again. This one is more of a pop culture type theme.


7) Created a facebook ad for this shirt as well, same basic settings.

 

[Damage Inc.]

Progress 2-17-15 (A Couple Hours Into The Experiment)


For whatever reason my shirts aren’t coming up in Teespring search results yet. I’m not sure if they just take time or if something is wrong. It’s only been a couple of hours so I’ll give it time.


My Facebook ads have both been approved. So far I’ve spent $0.55 and got 7 clicks. Two are from shirt 1 and five are from shirt 2. My reach is 57 people and 51 people respectively. No shirt sales yet though.

 

[CrocodileX]

Ive noticed that current trending topics make profitable designs. That whole Je Suis Charlie thing made some guy a nice payday.

 

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[Damage Inc.]

Ive noticed that current trending topics make profitable designs. That whole Je Suis Charlie thing made some guy a nice payday.

Good thought, I'll keep that in mind.

 

[GreedyBGoode]

Ive noticed that current trending topics make profitable designs. That whole Je Suis Charlie thing made some guy a nice payday.

If I'm not mistaken, they usually donate all profits to related charities for these type of campaigns.

 

[Damage Inc.]

If I'm not mistaken, they usually donate all profits to related charities for these type of campaigns.

That may be true, in my research I came across something about how to donate your proceeds from the campaign to charity.

 

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[CrocodileX]

Yeah you are right. All the proceeds are donated from all of those Je Suis Charlie campaigns. I'm not a fan of Teespring unless you've spent the time and energy to build a huge customer base, and if you've done that already, there probably are plenty of lucrative revenue streams available to cash in on the process.

 

[Damage Inc.]

Yeah you are right. All the proceeds are donated from all of those Je Suis Charlie campaigns. I'm not a fan of Teespring unless you've spent the time and energy to build a huge customer base, and if you've done that already, there probably are plenty of lucrative revenue streams available to cash in on the process.

To me it's attractive because you don't need a pre existing customer base, and I can play on a somewhat even field as the guys who are doing 5-6 figures a month right off the bat. It's basically anonymous so nobody knows who I am vs. who the professional shirt designer who has been doing this for years is. If they like a design they buy it, and my only risk is my time, Fiverr and Facebook advertising costs. Right now there's a "Pi Day" shirt featured that has over 3,700 units sold. Whoever created it has so far probably banked over $30,000 (before advertising costs). There are probably people on Fiverr who would do that artwork for less than $100. Seems like some decent opportunity to me. But of course nothing good comes easily. All in all this just struck me as being interesting so I figured it's worth a shot.

 

[Damage Inc.]

2-18-15

I made 2 more t shirt designs and 2 more FB ads before falling asleep last night (this morning). Again, both are simple designs that I did myself. One piggybacks off an idea from a popular cartoon (without infringing on any IP as far as I understand). The other targets people in a certain profession. For the cartoon one I just targeted my ads at people who express interest in that cartoon, and for the profession one I targeted people who express interest in that profession. Seems straightforward enough.


Well, here's what my facebook ad stats look like (one of the campaigns has 2 ads in it, hence 3 instead of 4)

And here's what my Teespring account looks like

In other words, so far my cost of acquiring a customer (or 0 customers) is higher than a customer's value. So that's not good. It is rewarding to see my ads getting clicked though, so maybe there's some hope. I also don't know whether people are more likely to buy these on impulse or bookmark it and buy within a few days. For those reasons, I'm going to continue running the ads even though they haven't converted yet. I'm also brainstorming for more involved and artistic designs that I can outsource the artwork for to create more impressive looking shirts.

 

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[BigBrianC]

Why not focus on one campaign and then go from there? Are you stripping yourself too thin on such a small budget?

 

[Damage Inc.]

Why not focus on one campaign and then go from there? Are you stripping yourself too thin on such a small budget?

Good question. As far as the shirt designs, I get the impression from reading other people's experiences that this is a numbers game. I don't have a good feeling for what designs will resonate, or what groups of people are most likely to purchase. Since it doesn't take too long to launch a shirt, I figured I'll throw a few out there in different categories and see what sticks.

As far as the advertising budget, I really picked an arbitrary amount to spend and I don't have a feel yet for what works - so maybe I would be better off spending all of this money on a single campaign rather than spreading it. To find the answer, I think after a few more days I'll pick one shirt to increase the budget on and we can see what kind of affect it has.

 

[BigBrianC]

Gotcha. I asked 100% of curiosity, I'm considering doing something similar. Have you done any other advertising besides that?

 

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[theag]

In other words, so far my cost of acquiring a customer (or 0 customers) is higher than a customer's value. So that's not good.

Dude you spent $5....

Try PPE objective with auto-bidding instead of website clicks. Seems like most teespring guys use that successfully.

And if you havent already, stop everything youre doing and read everything on http://affengineer.com

Also seems like affplaybook.com has a pretty active teespring community.

 

[Damage Inc.]

Dude you spent $5....

Try PPE objective with auto-bidding instead of website clicks. Seems like most teespring guys use that successfully.

And if you havent already, stop everything youre doing and read everything on http://affengineer.com

Also seems like affplaybook.com has a pretty active teespring community.

Thanks, I'll check both of those out. I know I'm ridiculously small potatoes with this, just trying to take it slow since I have zero experience. Appreciate you responding, I can tell you're pretty experienced with this stuff.

 

[Damage Inc.]

Gotcha. I asked 100% of curiosity, I'm considering doing something similar. Have you done any other advertising besides that?

Go for it man. I set this up in one night with absolutely zero experience. You could have shirts and ads up before you fall asleep tonight. And no, haven't done any other advertising yet.

 

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[Damage Inc.]

2-19-15

Thanks to @theag I looked into the PPE strategy with auto bidding as opposed to the conventional side bar click through ads that I was using. Indeed, it seems like most people agree that that this works better with Tee Spring Facebook campaigns. So, I picked the shirt that I think has the most potential and used the post engagement ad tool to create an add from a post that I made to my own wall. This ad almost instantly started outperforming all of the others. It has the most clicks to Tee Spring, the highest CTR by far, the cheapest CPC, and more "likes" than anything else. See for yourself, the top picture is this new PPE style FB campaign and the one under it is my current second best performer.


PPE Campaign

Website Clicks Campaign

No contest, right?

As a result, I launched another PPE with my second favorite design. This time, I put a request for people to comment their opinion and added some post copy, hoping for more interaction and more shares. I think within the next day or so I'll be killing my old ads and changing all to PPE. I also checked out the affengineer link and there's a ton of good info there, I recommend it for anyone else who is going to try this.

Advertising Budget
Since this question was raised and I really had no good answer, I did some more research. It seems like most of the big boys who do this agree that you should test a design with a budget of $20-$30. If they have no sales at that point, they generally kill it. If they have a couple, they might throw a few more bucks in to see if it gets traction. If it's selling well, they continue to advertise it. This strategy seems reasonable to me, so I'll follow it for the most part.

Sales
Still no sales. I think 2 of my designs are actually decent and may still sell. I think one is a solid idea but needs a real graphic designer to make it look better. And one I think is a total miss. We'll see what happens as I approach my advertising budget cap of ~$20-30 per shirt design.

New Designs
I'm slowly accepting the harsh reality that I'm not much of a graphic designer or artist, and that people don't want shirts that are too simplistic. I am somewhat impressed with the Tee Spring design tool, it works for basic designs and text. The kind of stuff like those "eat sleep beer" type shirts. But that's about it. My next idea will be outsourced to Fiverr. I doubt that there are many people making good money using the on site design tool and stock art, the successful campaigns generally have better looking and more complex shirts (shocker).

 

[openminded790]

And if you havent already, stop everything youre doing and read everything on http://affengineer.com

Thanks for the shout-out man,

I got a link back notification on my google analytic so thought I'd come check the thread out!

@Damage Inc, man I'm impressed at you taking so much action. You're doing things right in terms of just trying it out and seeing what happens and then refining your approach.

Also make sure you're NOT doing column ads, (un-check it), select PPE & Optimize by impressions as bidding method.

Teespring is a numbers game, don't get too attached to your designs, if it doesn't work, (no sales), after $30, scrap it and start again. There's a lot of key elements to teespring. The design sweet spot and targeting right are probably the two main factors. Go through my blog articles/ tutes on these two topics if you feel you need to.

Also, if you're comfortable with it show us your design(s). It's really good when you're a beginner to be transparent with targeting and the design itself, (teespring link), so we can give you the best feedback. Plus most people at the start have really bad designs, (me included - in fact I still do lol). If you want you can pm me.

All the best man, I'll check back on this thread from time to time, good luck!!!

~ Mateen AKA Affengineer

 

[Soulipsyz]

And if you havent already, stop everything youre doing and read everything on http://affengineer.com

Doesn't seem like a very good resource when the case study he did only sold 2 t-shirts (http://teespring.com/beardlosophy)
Case study: "http://affengineer.com/2015/01/22/launching-teespring-campaign-start-finish/"

 

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[theag]

Doesn't seem like a very good resource when the case study he did only sold 2 t-shirts (http://teespring.com/beardlosophy)
Case study: "http://affengineer.com/2015/01/22/launching-teespring-campaign-start-finish/"

I dont think he really promoted that.

Would be pretty stupid to share his actual money-making designs/campaigns on the blog.

 

[Damage Inc.]

Thanks for the shout-out man,

I got a link back notification on my google analytic so thought I'd come check the thread out!

@Damage Inc, man I'm impressed at you taking so much action. You're doing things right in terms of just trying it out and seeing what happens and then refining your approach.

Also make sure you're NOT doing column ads, (un-check it), select PPE & Optimize by impressions as bidding method.

Teespring is a numbers game, don't get too attached to your designs, if it doesn't work, (no sales), after $30, scrap it and start again. There's a lot of key elements to teespring. The design sweet spot and targeting right are probably the two main factors. Go through my blog articles/ tutes on these two topics if you feel you need to.

Also, if you're comfortable with it show us your design(s). It's really good when you're a beginner to be transparent with targeting and the design itself, (teespring link), so we can give you the best feedback. Plus most people at the start have really bad designs, (me included - in fact I still do lol). If you want you can pm me.

All the best man, I'll check back on this thread from time to time, good luck!!!

~ Mateen AKA Affengineer

Thanks for coming by! Your blog has already helped me out and got me in a good mindset for doing this, and most of all it's good motivation to see that this can be done with some real life examples thrown in. I also really like your tip on creating designs that can easily be adapted to other niches by changing one or two details. I did not realize I should un-check the column ads within the post boost advertising, so I'll do that from now on. Update on my progress coming shortly.

 

[theag]

Heres something you can probably bank with over the next few weeks using teespring:

https://www.facebook.com/business/news/The-Biggest-Cricket-Stadium-in-the-World-APAC

http://fbrep.com/guides/Facebook_Cricket_Targeting_Overview.pdf

Would jump on this myself, but my business is my only priority

 

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[Damage Inc.]

2-21-15

I did one more design by myself, targeted at a certain breed of dog owners who rescued their dog. Targeted it to females who have expressed interest in rescue shelters that are specific to that dog breed. Almost 100 likes, a few shares, no buys. Stats are below.

And here’s the stats for my new “best performer” (the hobby themed shirt) i.e. most likes, most shares, most teespring clicks, and best CPC. The CTR is slightly lower than the dog shirt, though. It’s got well over 100 likes, almost 20 shares, and a few comments with people saying they like it and tagging friends. But alas, no sales.

Right now I’m thinking that people like the messages of the shirts but the design isn’t quite good enough to open their wallets. So I’m going to take my best performer and have it re-designed on Fiverr. I am also already in discussion for a different new design. I already have a solid designer on there who did a logo for my other company.


Bottom line is – no sales yet. I’ve killed the advertising, having spent between $20-$30 on the shirts that were getting a decent response. All in all I’m out $104.37 so far. This is definitely adding up a little quicker than I thought, I figured by the time I hit $100 in ads I’d have a few sales. But it’s all part of the learning curve I guess.


My next step is to have my top performer re-designed as well as a new idea. I’ll launch those two shirts with new advertising campaigns and see how that goes.


In the effort of transparency, I’ll show one of my failed designs. Here was my logic behind designing it. It’s a generational design, and people are generally proud of whatever decade they “grew up” in or were born in. If you go on youtube and watch a music video for almost any 90s band, you’ll see a ton of comments about “life was so much better in the 90s, music sucks now, I wish it was the 90s”, etc. So I thought maybe these people would want to wear a shirt like this. The phrase “product of the 90s” popped into my head and then I thought, what kind of play can I do on the word product? How about a barcode? So I found a free stock image of a barcode, used the teespring design tool, and came up with this. I ran 18-28 as the age range for the ad and targeted to people who expressed interest in a few 90s albums by Blink182, No Doubt, Green Day, etc. And a movie. Nobody really expressed any interest. Here’s the shirt and the copy.

 

[Damage Inc.]

Would jump on this myself, but my business is my only priority

Honestly I'm struggling with this a bit myself. I said I would only work on this in my free time but since it's kindof fun and new I'm spending a little bit too much time and brainpower on it. Starting to feel guilty about taking time away from my other business and primary income.

But either way, thanks for the tip I'll probably end up trying something with that.

 

[100k]

Your targeting; You need to go deeper!

http://www.targetinterests.com/

 

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[Damage Inc.]

Your targeting; You need to go deeper!

http://www.targetinterests.com/

Perhaps I do. Using the 90s shirt as an example, do you think the shirt design itself too broad, or an ok idea but my ads were poorly targeted? I thought I was accomplishing this by targeting specific 90s albums instead of just the band or "pop culture". And for the dog rescue shirt, instead of targeting anyone who likes that breed of dog (too general obviously, every 16 year old girl likes 100 dog pictures a day), I only targeted people who engage with local shelters that are specific to that breed. What would you have done differently in those two examples?

 

[100k]

Sorry bro. I do mass marketing - but from what I've read with tee-spring campaigns you need to go very niche.

Check out the link I posted above and watch the 2nd video.

For the 90s - target people born in the 90s. I've seen lots of t-shirts sold with "80s baby" type of rhetoric ...

Not sure with the doggy example. Perhaps dog owners that are fans of a dog association or charity - they might be more HARD CORE doggy lovers than someone that just likes doggies.

Sorry I can't be of more help regarding niche marketing.

 

[AgainstAllOdds]

Here's my opinion why this shirt didn't work out:
1. Top font doesn't match bottom font.
2. Barcode looks weird. Maybe make it colorful.
3. Your target demographic is kids of the 90's, not people that lived in the 90's. Your oldest possible customer is 25 years old. Almost no one in that age group has money to spend on a t-shirt. Also, the value for them is next to nothing. Their friends already know they're from the 90's. This shirt isn't "cool", which is what they're going for. If you want to target that demographic, then check out karmaloop.com, and get a feel for t-shirts that work really well with younger demographics.

Your campaigns will work, but you need to improve the product (amount of value you're creating) first.

Best of luck, and sorry if anything above was too blunt - just trying to give you honest feedback that will help you make a lot of $ faster.

 

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[Damage Inc.]

Here's my opinion why this shirt didn't work out:
1. Top font doesn't match bottom font.
2. Barcode looks weird. Maybe make it colorful.
3. Your target demographic is kids of the 90's, not people that lived in the 90's. Your oldest possible customer is 25 years old. Almost no one in that age group has money to spend on a t-shirt. Also, the value for them is next to nothing. Their friends already know they're from the 90's. This shirt isn't "cool", which is what they're going for. If you want to target that demographic, then check out karmaloop.com, and get a feel for t-shirts that work really well with younger demographics.

Your campaigns will work, but you need to improve the product (amount of value you're creating) first.

Best of luck, and sorry if anything above was too blunt - just trying to give you honest feedback that will help you make a lot of $ faster.

Not too blunt at all, honest feedback is what I'm looking for. I think you have some good points, and obviously I missed the mark since this was a flop. You're right about creating more value with the shirt. People want something that will spark a conversation about something they are passionate about, or something unique that makes more of a statement. I'm think maybe for now I should stick with the hobby niches that I know more about. I think I have a better feel for what's cool in those circles, what people want and are into, sayings and pictures that resonate, etc. Thanks for the feedback.

Edit: I guess it's worth noting that I'm right at the top of the demographic I was targeting. I was born in 1990, I'm 25, I like 90s stuff. And I wouldn't wear that shirt myself.

 

[AgainstAllOdds]

Edit: I guess it's worth noting that I'm right at the top of the demographic I was targeting. I was born in 1990, I'm 25, I like 90s stuff. And I wouldn't wear that shirt myself.

I'm 23 and also used to sell to this demographic. In my opinion, people our age want something that will increase their perceived value (brand, lifestyle, something really cool, etc.).

Personally, I'd aim at people in an older demographic. Younger people tend to buy not what they like, but what they think other people will like. Older people don't seem to care as much and have more disposable income for a teespring shirt.