Websites You Can Use To Start An Online Business For Free
It is often said that money makes money but today with the internet of things anything is possible. Print-on-demand is the best business you can start online because all you need to do is design. You can avoid design completely if design is not what you want to try by using public domain images. Starting a business at no cost to you, and from the comfort of your home may sound ludicrous but it is unbelievably possible.
Print-on-demand is a business anyone can start online without any investment. Cafepress, Teespring, Redbubble, and Merch by Amazon are websites that people from all over the globe can start an online business with for no cost whatsoever. Anyone from 13-16 and older can sign up legally with these websites. These companies will make the product, apply your design and ship it to the buyer without any cost to you. After a product is sold, you will receive the profit of each item, unlike with websites like Printify and Etsy you do not need to make any payment to open a storefront or pay for each item sold. Merch by Amazon only supplies different styles of t-shirts and hoodies for men and women, but all the other websites offer a wide variety of items that you can use. Here is a quick list of products you can choose from, t-shirts, leggings, face masks, phone cases, stickers, mugs, cloth tot bags, backpacks, duvet covers, shower curtains and much more.
If you have never heard of any website mentioned above, then rest assured they are widely known by people who shop online. These are websites like Ebay and Amazon where online shoppers flock to buy all sorts of merch, (merch: short for merchandise 😉 ). So all you have to do is make your storefront at the wonderful cost of free and start uploading your designs. Have fun!
This website has affiliate links that I earn a commission from without any extra cost to you. This means that if you click on a link and purchase something, I might make a little money. You will not be charged extra, and some of the affiliate links I use have discounts so stay tuned!
How to start your business
Firstly pick a company that you want to work with. I chose Redbubble because I liked the products that they offer and the payment method they have for designers. Teespring was my second option but they have fewer products to choose from. Anyone new to the business should consider the payment options of each company and then they should proceed with making their account.
The following is a list of payment methods for store owners:
Teespring:
- Payoneer: once processed payouts should be received within 24 – 48 hours.
- Paypal: once processed payouts should be received within 24 – 48 hours.
Cafepress:
- CafePress accepts credit cards, PayPal, and CafeCash as payment. We accept Visa, MasterCard, Discover, American Express and check cards (if they are connected with one of the major credit card companies listed above).
Redbubble:
- A verified Paypal account. Restrictions may apply to some countries. You’ll be required to log into your Paypal account upon choosing Paypal as your payment method.
- A bank account, depending on your country of residence and selected currency. Bank transfers are only available to Australian, US and UK bank accounts. *Our system will only accept bank accounts with letters or numbers, so please make sure you’re entering your details with no spaces or dashes!
Merch by Amazon:
Please note that for international content creators, the payment must meet the applicable threshold based on your payment type:
* Direct Deposit: $0 USD, €0 EUR, £0 GBP, ¥0 JPY, or $0 CAD
* Wire: $100 USD, €100 EUR, £100 GBP, ¥10,000 JPY, or $100 CAD
For more information on sales, please see the FAQ from our Resources section: https://merch.amazon.com/resource/201846470#gettingpaid
Zazzle:
- If your account is set to be paid in US Dollars, you may elect to be paid either by check or PayPal.
- For currencies other than US Dollars, a payment through PayPal is currently the only available option.
Find your topic or niche
Finding a topic is the easy part because it should relate to what your interests are. You must find a targeted niche for designing your products around. My niche is books and animals. If you do not pick a niche and you create print-on-demand items at random, then you will not be able to build an audience and customer list.
Making yourself niche related gives you an identity, and then a buyer will remember you for their next possible purchase. It has been statistically proven that darker t-shirts sell better than lighter coloured t-shirts. So much so that on amazon black t-shirts are the best sellers, but that does not mean that the best selling black t-shirts are plain, they have creative designs or text printed on them.
How to pick your products
Pick a product that you want to market. T-shirts are products that sell very well because it is an item that people buy repeatedly. For this reason, it is always better to choose an item that will have repeated sales like leggings. So when you start your business, always think of your product as if you were buying it. When I but a phone cover for my android I usually never buy another but t-shirts and leggings are items that I have to buy more often. So think about your product, will people buy it once a year, or many times each year.
How to market your products
Use social media for promoting your print-on-demand products. You can make a Pinterest account or an Instagram account for showcasing your work. If you already have a big following, you must try to increase it and if you do not have a broad audience, then get followers by following people every day. I use this method of following people every day to get more and more followers.
When putting up a Pin or uploading a photograph on Instagram always add the link to the product in the description to facilitate your customers with the best user experience. Like this, when someone wants your product, they see it and click on the link in the description directing them to your storefront.
How to create your designs with text only
Creating your custom designs has never been easier Canva is my personal favourite free online software. It is easy to use, and there is a template ready with the correct dimensions for a t-shirt design. That said you can altogether skip designing and just play with text for your t-shirts. The following image is one of the top-selling t-shirts on Amazon. If only text is where you want to stay then try using Canva and Placeit. With Canva, there are many text styles you can play around with.
Furthermore, keyword research and Google trends can be used to find what is trending. Trending topics and keywords will not only inspire you, but you will make products that are being searched for, this will help bring your print on demand products into the spotlight.
How to design your products with graphic design
Design will seem daunting to someone without the skill set or knowledge in the field. Today you can make awesome designs at the incredible cost of free using online software like Canva. Of course, there is a paid version but the free option has many, many design options.
With Canva, you can use imagery, text, elements and much, much more. I use to make my Pins for Pinterest, designs for face masks and t-shirts.
The only problem with Canva is that the feature of making the background of your design transparent is only available with the paid option. Fear not, you can use these two free online tools to work around this problem, the first is lunapic, and the second is onlinepngtool.
How to get pre-made designs
For many of us being creative using different fonts and text seems too much because of our possible lack of creativity. I know this because I am not creative at all! So there is a solution to this problem, and in simple words, it is the beautiful world of the public domain.
An example would be this genius who used pictures from the public domain for designing shower curtains. You can do the same and design anything from face masks to duvet covers. Images from the public domain are by default completely legal to use. This is because they have been unclaimed, or the artist died before the copyright laws were made or some other variable. You could use an image of the Monalisa if it is in the public domain.
Here is a list of a few websites you can acquire free images from:
Here is a beautiful painting done years ago by a Japanese artist and it makes a jaw-dropping and impressive design for a shower curtain.
How to market your business for free
Two words and they are social media. You may already know that social platforms like Pinterest, Instagram and YouTube. Pinterest is the easiest social media application to use for promoting your work. Additionally, some print-on-demand websites will help you promote your products. An example of this would be Teespring. The site will allow you to market your print-on-demand products on Amazon and Walmart, the catch is that they reduce the amount of profit you make. That is why I do not use it. I do use Pinterest and Instagram.
Another fantastic way in which you can showcase your skills is with Placeit, they are in essence like Canva, but almost all the good stuff is for money. Still, I use them for free mock-ups (most of the mock-ups are not free). I also use Smartmockups which is also free for mock-ups, and unlike Placeit Smartmockups has free mock-ups for face masks.
So look at a t-shirt without a mock-up and with a mock-up:
If you use Redbubble for print-on-demand they have by default a free mock-up for your products, and the following is an example of how it looks:
As you can see it makes a world of difference to show off your design skills with mock-ups.
A blunder to avoid with your online business
Ever wondered why when shopping for clothes there are just a very few options of the same item in a different color. If I fell in love with a red shirt the store I am perchasing it from will probably have only two or three colors of the same design. You see marketersdo not give the customer ten colours of the same product because customers usually get analasis paralasis when they are faced with too many color variants of the same product.
To avoid analasis paralasis I only make three or a maximum of five colours for my print on demand products. Also every design you create will not look fantastic on ten different colours. So just test your design on all the colours available and see which ones are the prettiest.
Stay consistent with your business
Do not make the aweful mistake I made which was to design some print-on-demand products and then I dropped the whole idea for months. Firstly it is most likely that not all your designs will sell, and so you must keep creating new designs as often as possible. In this way you will increase your chance of success.
Secondly you should make a daily routine of adding designs to your portfolio. Some print-on-demand business owners will make five designs everyday. I do recommend that you also make a fixed amount designs you release each day.
How to avoid copyright infringement in your business
At one point baby, Yoda was all the rave on the internet, sometimes it is some animation character, and you could be thinking, “Hey, I will just put some cool images of Naruto on my products”. That is not how it works, if you use Star Wars or any other trademark image or text you will be liable for a lawsuit, and the print-on-demand website of your choice will ban your account.
Only art can be copyrighted, but a phrase cannot be copyrighted. The problem is that a phrase can be trademarked and to check if a phrase you want to use is trademarked then every country has a trademark search that you can use and here is a link to the official website for the United States, U.S. Trademark Search.
Furthermore, you can also copy a particular phrase and change the text to make it your own.
Use the following as an example:
Imagine that you liked this design or some part of it if you just copied it then that would be illegal but if you changed it would be legal to use and by default copyrighted by you because you created it. So look at how I have done this with the logo above:
You have Canva, the public domain, keyword tools and Google Trends to inspire your work. If you are having an extreme case of not knowing what designs you can make, then check out Pinterest for ideas in your niche. You do not need to be a copycat, and yet you can be incredibly creative.
How long does it take to earn money from an online business
Starting an online business for free has some minor setbacks. The biggest issue is the amount of time it takes to earn money from your time online. I would say it takes a year at the minimum for all online businesses, but there are some differences in all online businesses.
For a website, it takes about a year for you to start getting money, but that could be just a few dollars. Unless you use some magic wand or have some pro skills, it will probably take two years before you earn some serious money from your site.
With print-on-demand, it can take less time to get some income, but your income depends on how much time you take to advertise your products if your products are in demand, and keyword research. Online business is great because you can start with either no money at all or very little. That said it is still a business and the risk of you not being successful is a reality.
My advice is that you should persevere because every time you fail, you learn something and are wiser. That said we all know the pain of working your butt off while seeing no results. Trust me all website builders have to wait an entire year before our site has consistent views. The best metaphor would be that starting an online business is like planting a seed and then taking care of what you planted.
My final thoughts
Now I know many people will say why should we bother if it takes so long and success is not definite etc. etc. Well, you could sit around and make excuses or try to take action in some way to have a better life if not tomorrow then next year.
Please do not be hasty to buy some idiots course for this or that, because you can learn so much for free. Also, some courses are legit, but a vast majority are a legitimate scam! Do not spend a few dollars on this and few on that before researching if you need it.