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Welcome to podcast answers, the show where I help people start and grow their podcast,

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answering any podcasting questions along the way.

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That's right, guys.

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We are doing another show.

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It is a weekly show.

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This is this show here.

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I come to you weekly and I answer your questions.

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So we are going to be doing that again today.

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But if you've not checked out last week's episode, I would encourage you to go in and

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check out last week's episode.

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Last week we were talking about what file formats should your podcast be in, meaning

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when you record, when you're playing, when you're recording, should it be an mp3, aac,

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live file, record player, whatever.

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No, don't use a record player.

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But if you've not listened to that, go back and check out the latest episode, the previous

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episode and again, that's called what file format should my podcast be in.

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And that can be found at podcastanswers.com/fileformat.

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But today we're going to be talking about something that I don't think has recently

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really talked about a whole lot when it comes to podcasting.

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And that is selling your merchandise for your show.

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And what I mean by that is, so you've got a show going on and you've got supporters,

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but how can you sell t-shirts, stickers, hats, all of that fun stuff?

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Because let's face it, you probably don't have a huge budget.

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To be investing in lots of stock of t-shirts and all sorts of things, you know, traditionally

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shirts and things like that, you have to buy your stock if they've imprinted in mass.

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You have to have 30 extra larges and 20 larges and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, and you've

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got to have a place to store that.

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You have to have a place to ship that, package that, get that ready to go.

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So there are lots of ways to do that now to sell merchandise when you don't need to have

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inventory.

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And I'm going to talk a little bit about three different things, three different services,

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two of them that I've used myself.

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And we're going to talk a little bit about the positives and the negatives of those three

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services.

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The very first thing that we're going to be talking about today is Teespring and that's

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been around for a while.

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I think they've rebranded to be just spring because they do more than t-shirts.

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A lot of these companies started out doing t-shirts because that's what it's easy and

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that's what people are usually looking for.

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But Teespring now known as spring.

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And the cool thing about that is it allows you to take your file, take your art work,

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whatever that be, maybe your logo, maybe it could be just a quick design of something

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that you talk about on your show.

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For instance, one of the other shows that I do, we have an episode or a segment called

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What's Brewing.

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And so we have t-shirts that say what's brewing on them.

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And so you can take any of your artwork, upload it to Teespring and they will create a shirt

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for you.

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They will create a coffee cup for you.

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They will create a sticker for you.

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And the nice thing about this is you do not need to have any inventory on hand.

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So when someone goes onto your website and presses I want this t-shirt, Teespring goes

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out, prints the t-shirt, sweatshirt, sticker, whatever, and sends it out to your listeners,

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to your people that are buying.

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And you make a little bit of profit off that.

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Every item that's in their store, every item that they have has a base price.

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And by that I mean, they'll say just for instance, just pretend, this is not the real price,

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but pretend if you sell a t-shirt, the cost of the t-shirt is, let's just say $10.

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So what that will do is then you can set your price above that.

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So you can say this t-shirt costs $10, but I want to sell it for $20, meaning I will

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make $10 profit.

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And then you get to go ahead and take that and send that profit, get that profit back

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for yourself.

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So, the other nice thing about Teespring is not only can you sell their physical merchandise,

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but you can sell digital things too.

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So for instance, let's say you have a file, a PDF, you're creating a journal, you're

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creating a instructional manual, you're creating something that's a PDF, something that's digital,

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something that's not going to be physical.

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On Teespring, you can sell that digital product too.

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And you get most of your money back, most of your, you know, you'll get money for that.

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You just upload your file, say I want to sell it for $25, person goes in there, puts in their

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information and can download your file from Teespring.

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The other thing that's nice about Teespring is you can get a proof of products.

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So by that I mean, you pay the price that it costs to make it.

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So again, going back to our previous example about t-shirts being $10 base cost, you could

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get your t-shirt for, let's say $10.

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Again, this is a made up price.

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I don't know the base price on their products, but let's just say it is.

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You can get that t-shirt for $10 and you can have one for yourself, whatever.

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So that's what I've done for a lot of my products, things that I want.

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I buy it at cost.

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I don't need to pay myself and get a cost, you know, get the money back on that.

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So I just buy it at proof.

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The other nice thing is you can have discount codes.

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So you can say, you know, for the month of May, you went to give everybody in your shop

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a discount of 10%.

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So you can create a discount codes and then hand them out however.

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So you can say to my loyal listeners, to the people that are on Discord with me, here's

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the shop discount code.

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If you want to check out Teespring, go ahead and teespring.com.

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That is Teespring's website and you can go ahead and set yourself up a store right at

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Teespring.

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Now the, another one is Spread Shop and I don't know a whole lot about this.

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I've not used Spread Shop, but you can sell digital products, I mean, sorry, physical

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products there too.

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Same as you can with Teespring where you upload your file and then you can, you can sell that.

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And that's at spread.

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S-P-R-E-A-D-S-H-O-P.com.

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And again, all of these, all of these links that I'm giving you will be in the show notes

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for today's episode, but it, I'm not making any, these are not affiliate links on any

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of these products here.

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And so you, you know, yeah, you, I'm not making any, any commission off this.

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I'm just telling you the different kinds of things that I've found out.

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So the last one is, is one that's fairly new to me and fairly new, um, fairly new to,

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to, I think it's fairly new out, but it's, it's new to me.

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But that one is called Fourth Wall, F-O-U-R-T-H Wall.

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And again, that's a whole idea of having a, you know, it's, it's in theater.

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Fourth Wall is a theater thing.

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But the thing that I like about Fourth Wall, they do things a little bit different than

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any other of the shops that I have, I've seen.

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So you can sell physical items just like you can with any of the other two shops that I've,

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I've talked about.

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You can sell physical things that they print, you know, you can upload your image to them.

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Then someone orders it and spread or a Fourth Wall prints it, sends it out to them, bingo

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bingo, your customer has a new t-shirt that supports your podcast and they can show the

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podcast swag that they have.

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You can do digital things just like you can do with Teespring.

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So again, if you have something that you want to sell, if you make, let's just say you have

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a, an overlay that you're using for the video software called e-cam.

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And you want to sell that because you think people are going to like that overlay.

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So what do you do?

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You create it, you upload it, you create a listing for it, and then people can buy that

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and download it right from Fourth Wall.

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Now the thing that I like about Fourth Wall that I didn't see happening with any of the

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other shops is you can also sell physical items that you have.

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So in this case, let's say I went to a local coffee shop and I worked with them to brand

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my own coffee.

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I want to sell podcast answers coffee, branded coffee.

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With Fourth Wall, I can do that.

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I can order the, you know, how I can work out with my local provider of the product.

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What we want to do, you know, maybe I can get that for, you know, I have to buy 10 bags

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at a time or whatever.

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But then I have that on hand and people can buy that from me, from my physical store or

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from my, my digital store.

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And I'll go ahead and, you know, when someone buys this cop, this physical item that I,

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that I have, I send it out, I ship it and then they get it.

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But again, this is something that I did not see with any of the other shops.

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I did not see the ability to have a physical product that you already have.

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So nothing that they're printing for you, but you can sell it.

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So again, it goes beyond, it goes beyond having just selling the physical items that they

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print or digital items that you provide with them.

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But you can sell physical items that you already have or that you've worked out with a local

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provider that you want to sell.

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Just like with TeeSpring, you can get samples of your product.

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You can buy it at cost and you can have that on hand for you.

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The other thing that I like too is you can, so, Fourth Wall allows you to do a mix of,

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a lot of times people are, are having, you know, buy me a coffee or Patreon to sell memberships,

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sell, you know, monthly things, monthly behind the scenes access or a special, a special

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role on Discord or, or something else, that membership, you know, monthly cost that does

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it.

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You can do that with Fourth Wall too.

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So you're not only selling physical items or digital items, but you're also doing reoccurring

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membership.

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So you can kind of take that idea of Patreon and buy me a coffee and bring that into Fourth

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Wall.

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Another thing that I like is you can get, as of this recording, and I don't know they

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may be changing this, but as of this recording, you can get a, you can brand your own domain

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too.

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So for instance, the shop for podcast answers is merch.podcastanswers.com.

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So I already own podcast answers.

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So I just added the subdomain merch, M-E-R-C-H.

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And so that's one of the things that I like too, because you can actually brand it and

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you can create your shop.

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You can use different themes in your Fourth Wall shop and really make your shop look the

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way that you want.

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So if you want to check out some of the ways that Fourth Wall can be used, merch.podcastanswers.com,

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go support us, go buy, go buy a t-shirt, go buy a hat, go buy some stickers.

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But another cool thing about Fourth Wall is you have, they have an iPhone app that you

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can get and sign into.

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And the nice thing about that is you can immediately get pinged or notified when someone buys any

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of your products, when someone signs up.

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And the cool thing about that too is it allows you to immediately go back in and thank that

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person.

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So you can send that person a personalized video.

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So let's just say you went and bought a sticker from me.

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I could go in and send you a personalized video thanking you, say, "Thank you, John.

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Thanks for buying the sticker from Podcast Answers.

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I really appreciate it.

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I would love to see in here about where you put that sticker.

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Send me an email at contact@podcastanswers.com."

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I could do that.

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I could send out personalized thank yous to the people that buy the products.

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The cool thing is you can do discount codes and giveaways.

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So again, same thing with most of the other shops.

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You can get discount codes.

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But the cool thing about this is you can not only do discount codes where it takes free

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shipping or free percentage off or whatever, but you can also do giveaways.

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So you could say, you could run your own giveaway and then send them a link for a product that's

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completely free.

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Now, you pay for it as your podcastor.

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You have to end up paying for that.

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But again, it's a way to thank your audience.

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It's a way to give them something for free.

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And all they need to do is go online under the store and fill out their information.

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And Fourth Wall will send them the item.

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So if you want to check that out, it's fourthwall.com.

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I don't get any commission for any of these talking about any of these websites.

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But I thought it'd be great to come on and talk about it today just because, again, you

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can build the community.

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You can build marketing for your podcast.

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I mean, that's really what it is.

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When you sell these products, when you sell these things, you're building brand awareness

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because people who like your show want to wear your merchandise, especially if you do some

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cool merchandise.

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They want to wear your merchandise.

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They want to show that they listen to your show.

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And that tells everybody else about your show.

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So it's really marketing.

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And it's easy for you because you don't have to invest anything at all if you don't want.

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You can just upload your image.

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You can go ahead and sell t-shirts without having any stock.

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And you end up making money on it.

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Now some things to think about, and this is when I very, very, very first started doing

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merchandise, make sure that you're uploading a transparent background of your image.

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So the very first time, and this is a wall of shame for Andy.

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This is a wall of shame.

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I should have known, but I didn't.

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When I created my first hoodie for my other podcast, it was a black hoodie.

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And it, I created a black background on my image.

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So I had the logo and I had a black background because it was going to be on a black hoodie.

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I wasn't thinking that they'll print on that black and you'll be able to see it because

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it won't just be the t-shirt.

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It'll be black.

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And it didn't show it on the demo, on the online picture.

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I couldn't tell that there was a black background on it.

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And when I got my first product, I said, "This is terrible because it looks like junk."

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That's a big square background.

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And luckily the company I was buying it through, and then that time it was Teespring, took

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that back and made a new one.

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I explained to him, I said, "You know what?

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This is my very first time making merchandise.

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I've never done this before.

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I did not realize that a black background on a black t-shirt, you'd still see the square

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of the image."

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And they were kind and they took that back for me and made it.

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So again, things to think about.

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Make sure your images have a transparent background so that way when they're printed onto a t-shirt,

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onto whatever, that background is not there.

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It's transparent.

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Guys, if you enjoyed this podcast, make sure that you go and if you enjoyed this podcast,

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if you enjoyed this episode, go ahead and create your own store.

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I'd love to see it.

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If you have any questions that you would like me to answer about podcasting or you want

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to set up a one-on-one podcasting consult with me, make sure you go over to podcastanswers.com/contact.

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And that'll get you a form that you can fill out and I will get back to you and we can,

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I can answer your question.

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I can, we can do a one-on-one Zoom call and answer your podcasting questions just like

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that.

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Guys, have a great week and keep podcasting.

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