Welcome to podcast answers, the show where I help people start and grow their podcast,
answering any podcasting questions along the way.
That's right, guys.
We are doing another show.
It is a weekly show.
This is this show here.
I come to you weekly and I answer your questions.
So we are going to be doing that again today.
But if you've not checked out last week's episode, I would encourage you to go in and
check out last week's episode.
Last week we were talking about what file formats should your podcast be in, meaning
when you record, when you're playing, when you're recording, should it be an mp3, aac,
live file, record player, whatever.
No, don't use a record player.
But if you've not listened to that, go back and check out the latest episode, the previous
episode and again, that's called what file format should my podcast be in.
And that can be found at podcastanswers.com/fileformat.
But today we're going to be talking about something that I don't think has recently
really talked about a whole lot when it comes to podcasting.
And that is selling your merchandise for your show.
And what I mean by that is, so you've got a show going on and you've got supporters,
but how can you sell t-shirts, stickers, hats, all of that fun stuff?
Because let's face it, you probably don't have a huge budget.
To be investing in lots of stock of t-shirts and all sorts of things, you know, traditionally
shirts and things like that, you have to buy your stock if they've imprinted in mass.
You have to have 30 extra larges and 20 larges and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, and you've
got to have a place to store that.
You have to have a place to ship that, package that, get that ready to go.
So there are lots of ways to do that now to sell merchandise when you don't need to have
inventory.
And I'm going to talk a little bit about three different things, three different services,
two of them that I've used myself.
And we're going to talk a little bit about the positives and the negatives of those three
services.
The very first thing that we're going to be talking about today is Teespring and that's
been around for a while.
I think they've rebranded to be just spring because they do more than t-shirts.
A lot of these companies started out doing t-shirts because that's what it's easy and
that's what people are usually looking for.
But Teespring now known as spring.
And the cool thing about that is it allows you to take your file, take your art work,
whatever that be, maybe your logo, maybe it could be just a quick design of something
that you talk about on your show.
For instance, one of the other shows that I do, we have an episode or a segment called
What's Brewing.
And so we have t-shirts that say what's brewing on them.
And so you can take any of your artwork, upload it to Teespring and they will create a shirt
for you.
They will create a coffee cup for you.
They will create a sticker for you.
And the nice thing about this is you do not need to have any inventory on hand.
So when someone goes onto your website and presses I want this t-shirt, Teespring goes
out, prints the t-shirt, sweatshirt, sticker, whatever, and sends it out to your listeners,
to your people that are buying.
And you make a little bit of profit off that.
Every item that's in their store, every item that they have has a base price.
And by that I mean, they'll say just for instance, just pretend, this is not the real price,
but pretend if you sell a t-shirt, the cost of the t-shirt is, let's just say $10.
So what that will do is then you can set your price above that.
So you can say this t-shirt costs $10, but I want to sell it for $20, meaning I will
make $10 profit.
And then you get to go ahead and take that and send that profit, get that profit back
for yourself.
So, the other nice thing about Teespring is not only can you sell their physical merchandise,
but you can sell digital things too.
So for instance, let's say you have a file, a PDF, you're creating a journal, you're
creating a instructional manual, you're creating something that's a PDF, something that's digital,
something that's not going to be physical.
On Teespring, you can sell that digital product too.
And you get most of your money back, most of your, you know, you'll get money for that.
You just upload your file, say I want to sell it for $25, person goes in there, puts in their
information and can download your file from Teespring.
The other thing that's nice about Teespring is you can get a proof of products.
So by that I mean, you pay the price that it costs to make it.
So again, going back to our previous example about t-shirts being $10 base cost, you could
get your t-shirt for, let's say $10.
Again, this is a made up price.
I don't know the base price on their products, but let's just say it is.
You can get that t-shirt for $10 and you can have one for yourself, whatever.
So that's what I've done for a lot of my products, things that I want.
I buy it at cost.
I don't need to pay myself and get a cost, you know, get the money back on that.
So I just buy it at proof.
The other nice thing is you can have discount codes.
So you can say, you know, for the month of May, you went to give everybody in your shop
a discount of 10%.
So you can create a discount codes and then hand them out however.
So you can say to my loyal listeners, to the people that are on Discord with me, here's
the shop discount code.
If you want to check out Teespring, go ahead and teespring.com.
That is Teespring's website and you can go ahead and set yourself up a store right at
Teespring.
Now the, another one is Spread Shop and I don't know a whole lot about this.
I've not used Spread Shop, but you can sell digital products, I mean, sorry, physical
products there too.
Same as you can with Teespring where you upload your file and then you can, you can sell that.
And that's at spread.
S-P-R-E-A-D-S-H-O-P.com.
And again, all of these, all of these links that I'm giving you will be in the show notes
for today's episode, but it, I'm not making any, these are not affiliate links on any
of these products here.
And so you, you know, yeah, you, I'm not making any, any commission off this.
I'm just telling you the different kinds of things that I've found out.
So the last one is, is one that's fairly new to me and fairly new, um, fairly new to,
to, I think it's fairly new out, but it's, it's new to me.
But that one is called Fourth Wall, F-O-U-R-T-H Wall.
And again, that's a whole idea of having a, you know, it's, it's in theater.
Fourth Wall is a theater thing.
But the thing that I like about Fourth Wall, they do things a little bit different than
any other of the shops that I have, I've seen.
So you can sell physical items just like you can with any of the other two shops that I've,
I've talked about.
You can sell physical things that they print, you know, you can upload your image to them.
Then someone orders it and spread or a Fourth Wall prints it, sends it out to them, bingo
bingo, your customer has a new t-shirt that supports your podcast and they can show the
podcast swag that they have.
You can do digital things just like you can do with Teespring.
So again, if you have something that you want to sell, if you make, let's just say you have
a, an overlay that you're using for the video software called e-cam.
And you want to sell that because you think people are going to like that overlay.
So what do you do?
You create it, you upload it, you create a listing for it, and then people can buy that
and download it right from Fourth Wall.
Now the thing that I like about Fourth Wall that I didn't see happening with any of the
other shops is you can also sell physical items that you have.
So in this case, let's say I went to a local coffee shop and I worked with them to brand
my own coffee.
I want to sell podcast answers coffee, branded coffee.
With Fourth Wall, I can do that.
I can order the, you know, how I can work out with my local provider of the product.
What we want to do, you know, maybe I can get that for, you know, I have to buy 10 bags
at a time or whatever.
But then I have that on hand and people can buy that from me, from my physical store or
from my, my digital store.
And I'll go ahead and, you know, when someone buys this cop, this physical item that I,
that I have, I send it out, I ship it and then they get it.
But again, this is something that I did not see with any of the other shops.
I did not see the ability to have a physical product that you already have.
So nothing that they're printing for you, but you can sell it.
So again, it goes beyond, it goes beyond having just selling the physical items that they
print or digital items that you provide with them.
But you can sell physical items that you already have or that you've worked out with a local
provider that you want to sell.
Just like with TeeSpring, you can get samples of your product.
You can buy it at cost and you can have that on hand for you.
The other thing that I like too is you can, so, Fourth Wall allows you to do a mix of,
a lot of times people are, are having, you know, buy me a coffee or Patreon to sell memberships,
sell, you know, monthly things, monthly behind the scenes access or a special, a special
role on Discord or, or something else, that membership, you know, monthly cost that does
it.
You can do that with Fourth Wall too.
So you're not only selling physical items or digital items, but you're also doing reoccurring
membership.
So you can kind of take that idea of Patreon and buy me a coffee and bring that into Fourth
Wall.
Another thing that I like is you can get, as of this recording, and I don't know they
may be changing this, but as of this recording, you can get a, you can brand your own domain
too.
So for instance, the shop for podcast answers is merch.podcastanswers.com.
So I already own podcast answers.
So I just added the subdomain merch, M-E-R-C-H.
And so that's one of the things that I like too, because you can actually brand it and
you can create your shop.
You can use different themes in your Fourth Wall shop and really make your shop look the
way that you want.
So if you want to check out some of the ways that Fourth Wall can be used, merch.podcastanswers.com,
go support us, go buy, go buy a t-shirt, go buy a hat, go buy some stickers.
But another cool thing about Fourth Wall is you have, they have an iPhone app that you
can get and sign into.
And the nice thing about that is you can immediately get pinged or notified when someone buys any
of your products, when someone signs up.
And the cool thing about that too is it allows you to immediately go back in and thank that
person.
So you can send that person a personalized video.
So let's just say you went and bought a sticker from me.
I could go in and send you a personalized video thanking you, say, "Thank you, John.
Thanks for buying the sticker from Podcast Answers.
I really appreciate it.
I would love to see in here about where you put that sticker.
Send me an email at contact@podcastanswers.com."
I could do that.
I could send out personalized thank yous to the people that buy the products.
The cool thing is you can do discount codes and giveaways.
So again, same thing with most of the other shops.
You can get discount codes.
But the cool thing about this is you can not only do discount codes where it takes free
shipping or free percentage off or whatever, but you can also do giveaways.
So you could say, you could run your own giveaway and then send them a link for a product that's
completely free.
Now, you pay for it as your podcastor.
You have to end up paying for that.
But again, it's a way to thank your audience.
It's a way to give them something for free.
And all they need to do is go online under the store and fill out their information.
And Fourth Wall will send them the item.
So if you want to check that out, it's fourthwall.com.
I don't get any commission for any of these talking about any of these websites.
But I thought it'd be great to come on and talk about it today just because, again, you
can build the community.
You can build marketing for your podcast.
I mean, that's really what it is.
When you sell these products, when you sell these things, you're building brand awareness
because people who like your show want to wear your merchandise, especially if you do some
cool merchandise.
They want to wear your merchandise.
They want to show that they listen to your show.
And that tells everybody else about your show.
So it's really marketing.
And it's easy for you because you don't have to invest anything at all if you don't want.
You can just upload your image.
You can go ahead and sell t-shirts without having any stock.
And you end up making money on it.
Now some things to think about, and this is when I very, very, very first started doing
merchandise, make sure that you're uploading a transparent background of your image.
So the very first time, and this is a wall of shame for Andy.
This is a wall of shame.
I should have known, but I didn't.
When I created my first hoodie for my other podcast, it was a black hoodie.
And it, I created a black background on my image.
So I had the logo and I had a black background because it was going to be on a black hoodie.
I wasn't thinking that they'll print on that black and you'll be able to see it because
it won't just be the t-shirt.
It'll be black.
And it didn't show it on the demo, on the online picture.
I couldn't tell that there was a black background on it.
And when I got my first product, I said, "This is terrible because it looks like junk."
That's a big square background.
And luckily the company I was buying it through, and then that time it was Teespring, took
that back and made a new one.
I explained to him, I said, "You know what?
This is my very first time making merchandise.
I've never done this before.
I did not realize that a black background on a black t-shirt, you'd still see the square
of the image."
And they were kind and they took that back for me and made it.
So again, things to think about.
Make sure your images have a transparent background so that way when they're printed onto a t-shirt,
onto whatever, that background is not there.
It's transparent.
Guys, if you enjoyed this podcast, make sure that you go and if you enjoyed this podcast,
if you enjoyed this episode, go ahead and create your own store.
I'd love to see it.
If you have any questions that you would like me to answer about podcasting or you want
to set up a one-on-one podcasting consult with me, make sure you go over to podcastanswers.com/contact.
And that'll get you a form that you can fill out and I will get back to you and we can,
I can answer your question.
I can, we can do a one-on-one Zoom call and answer your podcasting questions just like
that.
Guys, have a great week and keep podcasting.
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