How to Start a T-Shirt Line with No Money and the Free Tools You Can Use

The Sensible Collections line of T Shirts are the first official set of T Shirts that I was able to release in a automated way. What I mean by that is now, when it comes the storefront I am using, payment processing, and order fulfillment (getting the orders printed and shipped to customers) everything is done using just a few tools that works in sync with each other so when an order comes in, I really don't have to do anything. It is all handled using a few online tools that is available to anyone willing to take the time to learn how it works.

The best part about it, is that all of the tools that is mentioned in this article are all FREE. You can pay to upgrade the eCommerce platform to display more products in your store but starting out, you should use the free version until your sales pick up and I'll tell you why.

The Problems I Faced in the Past

With my first t-shirt designs a few years back, I intended on promoting and selling them but I did not have a clear plan on how to go about doing this. The reason behind the first designs were just to have what I think is a cool shirt that represents some of the things that I was and still interested in. Things like investing, building businesses, technology, etc.

I came across many obstacles and did not know exactly where to start. I searched online but I could never find a clear and cut article or solution that would tell me exactly what I needed to know, especially when you are trying to do it all by using free tools.

Some of the obstacles I faced trying to start a T shirt line with no money were:

• Finding a Free Image Editing Learning how to make quality T Shirt designs with a free image and photo software tool is one thing, finding a decent one is another thing.

• eCommerce platform If you match up all of the eCommerce platforms or store fronts available online, you will notice that there's not much to really chose from in terms of themes, easy to use, and most importantly Free. Many of the free choices of stores have many limitations like the themes available, the number of products you can have in your store and much more.

• Payment Processing Finding a payment processing solution that will work on the platform I wanted to use was probably the least of my worries because at the end of the day, if all failed, I would end up building a simple website around the T Shirt Line, accept payments with PayPal, and order the shirts from an online print on demand shop which, that part ended up being the most time consuming of it all. 

• Order Fulfillment Finding an online order fulfillment solution that will work with both the platform and payment processor took up the most amount of my time because there is a lot to consider when choosing one. You have to consider prices, shipping, and the most important of it all, I wanted more of the drop shipping method instead of getting the shirts printed and sent to me, then mailed to the customer.

I had at least 10 designs that I drew in a scrap book for a line called BCSC which stood for Blue Chips Stock Club, but I knew nothing about designing graphics on a computer yet alone getting them print ready (sizing, transparency, etc). I messed around with MS Paint a little but that was about it. I also had a simple design that I made online using a logo generator which ended up being the first shirt I got printed. Finding a printer was the crazy part because most on demand printers prices are high and it will be hard to profit from your T Shirts. I eventually ended up going with VistaPrint and got 2 separate T shirt designs printed for $14 each which came out surprisingly nice.

Sounds great right?

Well the reason why they only were $14 was because I ordered the shirts when a sale was going on so if you add the original price of the shirt, plus shipping and your profit, I would have to charge $25 or more per T Shirt which I feel is unacceptable. It was a great learning process but in the meantime, I decided to put it to the side to focus on other things until I can understand the entire process designing and selling T Shirts. 

Getting Things Started Back Up

About a year past and while doing minor research here and there about starting a T Shirt Line, I decided to crank things back up and started to learn as much as I can about the different eCommerce platforms, order fulfillment solutions and online payment processors that will work together. Building up this blog was a learning process and in between all the books, the videos I've watched, tutorials and articles and all the other things I learned that help me in building up the blog, I was also able to learn about many other tools and solutions that are available to help you easily create products, designs and a storefront to sell your products.

Even with finding a new way to start a T Shirt line, I dabbled with the idea of relaunching BCSC but in reality, I wanted something new and fresh. I figured I can start back focusing on BCSC after I come up with something else but I didn't know what to do because I really wasn't prepared. I have another idea for a T Shirt line that I am really excited about but I'm still researching the base images for the designs I want to use from Pixabay a little bit more. Even though I will be altering the images a little, I do not want to end up with a lawsuit because of the images.  

Another thing is that I did not want to rush things this time trying to create another T Shirt line because it is important to do things the correct way and more importantly, I wanted to make the line make sense. So again, I put things to the side but this time, when the time is right I would be prepared to get things started right up.

It wasn't until one day while preparing an article for Curated Quotes section called "Making Sense out of Nonsense" that I came up with the idea for a simple T Shirt design. Trying to visualize the phrase No Nonsense as a design, I ended up just writing the word Nonsense on the paper then putting a big X through it. I wasn't intending on using that but after a few days of the sketch book just sitting on my desk, looking at it and thinking about it subconsciously, some ideas came to mind. 

Looking at this and seeing that it pretty much sums up what I was trying to visualize with the quote, I went to the computer and started working on the concept. After some editing and refining, I eventually had the first designs completed.

No Nonsense Design Draft - White

No Nonsense Design Draft - Black

The outcome were 2 simple designs, one in black and and one in white. I immediately thought it would look good on a shirt and started thinking about more designs I can do that is similar to the idea behind of the quote. At that point is when I decided to start a collection of T shirt designs based on some of the best Curated Quotes and make them available online but before I could move on to anything else, I needed to get the designs T shirt ready.

Once the No Nonsense designs were print ready, I started setting up accounts and linking them together, customizing the store, designing the brand logo and getting the social platforms setup. After about an hour or two of carefully getting things in order and up and running, Sensible Collections was born. 

Sensible Collections Homepage Screenshot

The Sensible Collections store has a simple look and displays some of the T Shirts directly on the homepage so you can easily choose the shirt you want, read some of the description, choose your size and easily checkout. The entire process once a customer checks out is all automated, from receiving the order, printing the shirt and shipping it to the customer. Setting the store up and syncing everything together took me about 45 minutes only because it was my first time and I was going back and referencing articles and videos each step of the way. 

Going forward with the line, there will be more designs added to the collection but for the most part, the focus will be on promoting just a few designs right now. Another area of focus will not just be promoting the collection but on developing the brand all around and building relationships with the fans and supporters.

Sensible Collections was started on one premise, creating T shirt designs inspired by some of the best Curated Quotes. That's it! Now, if you have ever thought about starting your own T Shirt line, now is the time to do it. It takes some work at the beginning to get things going but it can be very fun and exciting going through the process. If this is something you've been thinking about doing, below is a short guide on the free tools that were used to start Sensible Collections. 

Getting Your T Shirt Line Started

Simple Planning

To Start, basically there's 4 things you need to establish in order to get your line up and running.

• Designs For Your T Shirts If you don't have designs already, you will need an image and photo editing app to start making basic designs. Check out The Best Of | Free Image and Photo Editing Software

• Storefront/eCommerce Platform The online store where you sell your T Shirts. Check out The Best Of | Free eCommerce/Storefront Platforms

• Payment Processing Solution You need to be able to accept payments online from your customer. Check out The Best Of | Embeddable Payment Buttons - Payment Processing Solutions for your Website or Blog
  

• Order Fulfillment Someone to print your T Shirts and Ship them out to your customers. Check out The Best Of | Online T Shirt Printing and Fulfillment Services

Free Tools

Graphics

Microsoft Paint 
MS Paint, an application that anyone running Windows has on their computer. You can use MS paint to create awesome logos, images for articles, cartoon graphics and to make your own custom T Shirt designs. I use it to create many simple text based designs and also to edit photos and images and as a free program, it does a very good job. Now it's not Photoshop but it is simple, easy to learn and can do most of the basic creating and editing that you may use. 

However, when it comes to making custom T Shirt designs, the image may sometimes be required to have a transparent background. While MS Paint does have a transparency option, there's still some limits as to what you can do with it. Now even though the transparency issue came up which required me to use another photo editing suite to finish the job (mentioned below), MS Paint is still a very powerful editing tool and its FREE!

GIMP 
GIMP is the other image and photo editing suite that I use alongside MS Paint.  GIMP, probably the best free alternative to Photoshop, is a powerful free and open-source image editing tool that is packed with many of the top editing suites features and is very easy to use for simple graphic designing.  

I ended up using this application to solve one big problem, Transparency. MS Paint has a transparency option in their suite, but they are limits on what parts of the image is transparent. GIMP has what is called the "magic wand" that lets you simply tap the areas in an image that you want to make transparent. I'm looking forward to using this editing software more often as I start creating more T shirt designs.

Using both MS Paint and GIMP to design simple designs for T Shirts is not a must but I found that using them together  pretty much solved the issues I was having. 

E-commerce Site/Online Store

Big Cartel 
Big Cartel is one of the largest eCommerce platforms that host millions of online stores for a number of companies, celebrities and just about anyone who has something to sell. The platform gives you options, a free account with a limit of 5 products in your online store or a several paid account tiers, each having different features.

I was debating on using this platform for a very long time because of the limited amount of products that you can have in your store with the free version. After doing more research and realizing its' benefits, I decided to go ahead with using Big Cartel as the eCommerce platform for the the Sensible Collections T Shirts.

Some of the benefits that I found using Big Cartel

• Limit of 5 Products While many will view this as a negative, I found it as a motivational tool to focus my attention on selling just a few T Shirt designs and making money before I start to pay for the service and expand with more designs. You can always upgrade once your store starts bringing in revenue to pay for the monthly cost.

• Easy To Use Big Cartel has some very simple but quality themes and navigating around the site is very easy. Many may say that the free themes that are available are old and has been used millions of times. While this is true, my motto has always been to Keep Things Simple and with the available themes, you can easily do a little editing to customize it to your needs and make it more unique.

• Create Multiple Free Stores Even with the free account, you can create as many stores as you like under a different brand without having to setup another account. This was a plus for me because now I can start on different lines if I want, or sell other products I would like to create.

• One Stop Shop The main reason that I chose Big Cartel was because of the easy Payment Processing and Order Fulfillment integration between all 3 which is outlined in the next few topics.

Payment Processing

PayPal 
Everyone is familiar and more than likely, has used PayPal to checkout when they've bought something online or in person. If you have a PayPal Business account, you can accept payments online or in person and the great part about it, Big Cartel has a uses PayPal as 1 of their integrated payment processing solutions. When someone wants to buy something from your store, they have the option to check out with PayPal. 

Stripe 
If you don't have a PayPal account, you can sign up for a free Stripe account. Stripe is another Payment Processing Solution that you can use to accept payments from your Big cartel store. Stripe allows you to accept payments from all major credit and debit cards so if a customer doesn't have a PayPal account, they can still pay with their credit or debit card.

While you have the option to accept payments from both, you can also choose to just use either or. It is best to use both so you can increase your chances of a sale by giving the customer different options of checking out.

Both PayPal and Stripe uses the "Pay As You Go" method so you don't have to worry about monthly fees, only a small percent of each sale. PayPal has a 2.9% + .30 per sale charge and Stripe has the same, a 2.9% + .30 cents per sale charge.

It will be best to establish your PayPal business and Stripe accounts before you start so the process will be seamless. It may take 2-3 days for PayPal to verify your bank account so the sooner you open your account, the better.

Order Fulfillment (Printing and Drop Shipping)

Printful 
A Jem that has been around for a while, Printful is a drop shipping and print on demand solution that prints and ships everything from custom mugs, T Shirts, Posters and much more. The best part of Printful is the ability to syn your Big Cartel, OpenCart, Shopify, WooCommerce, Magento and more stores to the Printful platform, automating the whole process so when an order comes through, Printful automatically receives the order, prints the order and ships it to the customer. The T Shirts are very good quality and the prices are very decent so you will be able to charge a fair price for your T Shirts.

Printful practically automates everything for you so all you have to worry about is creating and promoting your products. Another feature that I love about Printful is their Free Mock Up Generator. You can use the mock up generator to create mock ups of your T shirts and use them as the product image on Big Cartel and you can use them to promote your brand.

Some Tips To Follow

Tell the Story 

Behind the every band, there is a story of its' beginnings and and what it represents. Telling the story of your brand and what it symbolizes helps you identify the the demographic you wish to market your T Shirts to. When people buy products, most of the time they are buying a product from a brand they trust, love and maybe think is cool. Also, people like to wear shirts that represents their lifestyle and can capture a story that they maybe can relate to.

Being a new brand, unless you just have one of those designs that instantly goes viral, you have to build your brand from the ground up and one way to do that is to start interacting with people who you think will identify with your shirts. Let them know how you got started, the meaning of the shirts and a background of what it symbolizes, basically giving them the story of how it all came to be. 

Keep Things Simple

Once you get the hang of things and matter of fact, before you even start, you may have the itch to start out with many T Shirt designs, but the best part to really see result is to focus on selling just a few T Shirt designs, 1 may be the better option. Once you've put you focus and energy into one T Shirt design or just a few and you start seeing results, then you should think about adding more designs to the store.

If you are using Big Cartel and its' free version, then you will be limited to only 5 T Shirt designs in your store. This is good because if forces you to build up your store and revenue up from the limited amount of products in your store before you will need to upgrade to a paid account.

Be Original and Creative 

Don't waste your time doing some that everyone is doing. I did not rush the process because I wanted to make something that is cool, different and lasting. There's no reason why you shouldn't do the same. It can be very fun when you are using your creative energy to do something new and unique that other people can share and enjoy. Sure it is easy to join along with a trend but most of the time, the brands built on trends only stay around short term. Being authentic and creative when it comes to designing and selling your T shirts can really go a long way and help your brand be around for long run.

Order a Shirt for Review

You don't have to but it will be best to order yourself a T shirt before your launch so you can get an idea of how the shirt looks in person, feels and to inspect the design a little further. You can also use the shirt for real promotional pictures using different backgrounds and using real people instead of only using mock ups.

Start Marketing Your T Shirts Early

The best way to see what people think of your T shirts before they go on sale is to post pictures of the T shirt mock ups on your social media pages before your launch. This can help you get instant feedback from your friends and family and it's free. You can take it a step further as stated above by ordering a few of your shirts and giving them away for free or in a contest. You can get much publicity from this and you will also get to see how it looks on other people.


Helpful Resources

Printful

• How It Works https://youtu.be/8MrwMQyGDN8

• Getting Started w/ Big Cartel https://youtu.be/PRqNLDhXd-A

• For More Printful Videos https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCnzsJ4Wvmug35USak9mGx3w/videos 

Big Cartel

• Adding Products https://youtu.be/C6uNHh6b1rY

• Setting Up Your Big Cartel Store https://youtu.be/LMQxkd8gQiQ 

• For More Big Cartel Videos https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCnsw2meCtc5XGnJ5-bpgzTQ/videos

If you would like to, you can grab your own No Nonsense T Shirts and tag us in your photo on Facebook, on Twittter and on Instagram so you can be apart of our collage we are putting together with all of our fans and supporters!

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