T-shirt printing has been a popular business for many years. By purchasing a garment printing machine, you can start making money.
Buying a Machine for Printing on T-Shirts
If starting a T-shirt printing business is on your radar, there are some actions you need to require to release an effective venture. One of your crucial decisions is to purchase a printing machine. This is among the most essential tools of your trade, so you be particular you are buying what you need to accomplish your objectives.
Types of Printing Methods
There are numerous methods you can add art and decorations to a T-Shirt. Some of the most typical consist of transfers, embroidery and applique, screen printing and the newest method — direct to garment– or DTG. Each technique requires a particular machine because they have greatly different printing approaches. For instance, to embroider onto a garment, you require an embroidery machine, which is an unique kind of stitching machine, but with the transfer method, you require a printer that can print with top quality inks, which will withstand the heat of a press.
DTG printing is a machine that gets the middleman. Instead of printing the design on transfer paper and then moving the design from the paper to the garment, the image is printed straight onto the garment.
Choose Your Printing Method
Deciding what you want to print on t-shirts and how you desire the result to look like is key in choosing the right printing technique. If you want floral prints or decorative patterns that stand up from the shirt, embroidery or applique might be the method to go. If you want to make novelty t-shirts with smart expressions then transfers could be the very best option.
If you want the printing and transfer to be one combined step, then trying DTG would be the right step for you. While you’re making this choice, it is a good idea to keep your spending plan in mind. The startup costs of these approaches vary significantly, so if you have a strict spending plan you’ll wish to choose the approach that fits your financial requirements.
Pricing of Printing Machines
The rates for printing images differs greatly in between the techniques. The least expensive technique, print screening can have you up and running for a number of hundred dollars considering that you just need ink and the specialized screens utilized to move ink onto the garment. Transfer printing would be the next most pricey, with a printer ranging from numerous hundred dollars to several thousand dollars, depending on whether you pick an inkjet printer or a printer. The most pricey approach is DTG, which machines beginning around $14,000 and topping out at $80,000.
With each technique, you have varying degrees of abilities. screen printing is fine for fundamental letter printing or a one-color image. Transfer printing permits you more creative freedom, however likewise requires a heat press to get the image onto the garment. DTG prints straight onto the garment, however is certainly the most costly route to take.
Where to Buy Printing Machines
You can purchase printing machines online, but there are also usually local options too. Whichever path you select, you’ll wish to choose a reliable company that provides service warranties on their devices. It is also perfect to purchase from a business that can also provide the devices for your printer of option, there’s less of a chance that you wind up ink that’s not compatible with the printer, or a printer that can’t accommodate the oversized transfer paper you want to use.
Printing Outsourcing Options
If you want to focus on the design aspect and not worry about doing the printing yourself, you can outsource the printing to another company, such as Cafe Press or Society 6. This would lower your overhead and equipment costs without compromising quality. It may increase the price of your t-shirts, particularly if you are purchasing little batches, however the small boost in cost might be worth it to your clients, if you produce premium shirts with exceptional styles.
How to Make Money Printing T-Shirts
With a little effort, you can make money printing Tee shirts by yourself.
- Produce your own styles/designs instead of paying another person to create them. This avoids you from needing to spend for styles. You can freehand your styles on paper or another medium, or you can develop them in style software, such as Photoshop, Fireworks or GIMP.
- Set a cost for your T-shirts by determining your cost. If you are paying somebody to screen print them, compute the per-shirt printing cost by dividing the overall you paid by the number of t-shirts printed. If you printed the t-shirts on your own, you can accumulate your materials cost to see how much you have invested printing the shirts. Do not forget to consist of the cost of the t-shirts. Add all these figures as much as get the total expense per shirt. As soon as you have this number, you can identify how much to add to that number so that you can make the quantity you desire on each t-shirt. For instance, if your expense is $7 and you want to make $11 per shirt, you need to price each shirt at $18.
- Make a website for your t-shirts, if you are comfortable doing so, or employ a web designer to produce the site for you. To discover a web designer, you can use a site like Elance.com, go to a local technical college, or ask around for references from your buddies and neighbors. You might be creating the t-shirts around a website that you currently have, such as a video games site or an art work site. If this holds true, you may just want to consist of a single page on that site for your new T-shirts. You must have a method for individuals to spend for your shirts online, which can be done through merchant account, PayPal or Google Checkout.
- Promote your T-shirts online through totally free social networks approaches such as Facebook and Twitter. You vcan pay for advertisements through Facebook Ads and Google AdWords. Costs vary. If you can pay for to distribute free items, you can contact the owners of blog sites or sites that pertain to your T-shirts and provide to send out totally free shirts for giveaways. This will get your brand and your designs out in the market.
- Reserve a cubicle at outdoor markets, fairs and similar occasions that relate to your T-shirt designs. Booth prices differ. Acquiring a cubicle allows you to offer directly to customers.
- Visit local clothing stores and store stores in your area to ask if they will equip your T-shirts. Be prepared to leave the t-shirts at the shop on a consignment basis, which means you only make money if the t-shirts offer. In this kind of plan, you normally examine back with the store regularly to see how the merchandise is moving. This is a great way for a store to try new product without financially dedicating. You will need to negotiate the portion the seller gets from the sale. This can differ from 20 to 80 percent.
How to Start Your Own T-Shirt Business Easily
Some options even let you make money without needing to in fact deal with printing or shipping the tees.
Know Your Audience
The T-shirt industry is extremely competitive. To be successful, you require to specify your specific niche. Perhaps you can sell to churches, fraternities, groups or companies. It doesn’t matter what your focus is as long as you commit to one. If you do not, you run the risk of having boxes of T-shirts gathering dust in your garage.
Design the T-Shirts
Design your T-shirt graphics with a complimentary or affordable program, such as PaintShop Pro or Gimp, instead of a pricey graphics suite. Affordable graphics programs can carry out a number of the exact same functions and produce the same file types as pricier ones. If you do not understand how to do it yourself, try to find an online freelance designer on websites such as Fiverr, Dribbble and Behance. Depending on the experience of the designer, the cost for a single T-shirt design can be as low as $5 to $20.
Approaches of T-Shirt Printing
There are several methods to print your designs on tees, whether you print them yourself or use a wholesale producer. The technique you choose depends upon your business plan and how much you want to spend, if anything, on equipment.
- Screen Printing is a popular method for transferring designs to tees. However, because of the labor-intensive preliminary setup, you tend to just get good pricing when buying wholesale from screen printers. This design of printing is high-quality printing for intricate styles or designs with many colors.
- Heat Transfer. With the heat transfer approach, you print your designs out on transfer paper and transfer them to your t-shirts with heat. The advantage of this method is that it permits customized single-print designs. However, the cons are that if you wish to do it yourself, you require to purchase a professional heat press machine that costs numerous hundred to a number of thousand dollars. Also, the durability and quality of the printing is lower than the other techniques.
- Direct-to-Garment. This method works similar to a regular printer; your style is printed directly onto the T-shirt. The main advantages are that you can print endless colors, have top quality designs and accept orders in low minimum quantities. You normally can not get bulk discount rate pricing from a producer that utilizes this method.
Print-on-Demand T-Shirt Services
Use a print-on-demand service such as Zazzle, CafePress or Society6 to make, sell and ship your shirts. These services allow you to create shirts, offer them by means of an e-commerce platform and earn money without needing to in fact handle printing or delivering the tees. As soon as your business becomes established, you can acquire the equipment essential to print your own t-shirts and make more profit in the long run.
Designing a Website
A fantastic place to sell your T-shirts is on your site. Creating your own website does not need to be expensive or difficult. Think about utilizing an online e-commerce platform such as Shopify, which allows you to make your own website for a low regular monthly charge. The majority of e-commerce platform offer totally free and inexpensive templates that make it easy to drag and drop your designs onto the website.
Marketing Your T-shirt Business
The best totally free marketing tools for your T-shirt business is social media, such as Facebook and Instagram. The founders of the T-shirt business Anomalous suggest publishing usable and fun content to get genuine fans. For instance, you can include a list of products that might go well with your clothes. Anyone can press “Like” on your posts when they are asked, but most likely don’t care. When you put out quality content, you get genuine fans. Although this might be harder, at the end of the day, a genuine fan is worth more than any variety of unenthusiastic fans.
