There is a chance that you can make some money with Spreadshirt. You should first ask yourself this, "Is it worth it?." To save you some time I am going to say "No."
I have received some payments from Spreadshirt but getting it was much more of a problem that it given me headaches. I wish I had spent my time doing something that was more productive. You should know that there are many people making money off of Spreadshirt however, most people do not.
Lets go through the good and bads. Maybe my experience might help some of you aspiring artists out there looking to turn your talent into cash money.
It may sounds a little easy right? You make a few nice designs, lay back and let the come money rolling in, right? Wrong. It is not as easy as it may sound. Using Spreadshirt sounds good when you think about it but it can turn into a huge mess. Everyone starts off with a standard shop. Here you can upload your designs for an inspection and wait for them to "pass" the regulations.
If you are looking to make any money, you need to learn how to make vector designs. Vector designs are unique designs that can be resized and retain their quality. Raster designs on the other hand get blurry and pixelated when resized. Vector designs need to be inspected in order for the plotting machine to accept the design. And you have to do vector designs saved in .EPS format. Sure you can upload raster designs but they look like crap and they get horribly pixelated when resized. Oh, and you are only allowed to use 3 colors for your vector designs. Black and white counts as colors too. You can quickly see how your artistic vision gets limited quickly.
After creating a vector design using 3 colors and exporting it into .eps, you have to upload. Then the waiting game begins. You find out that your design was rejected because the machine would not accept it. Some of your lines or curves come too close to one another, or that they are too sharp of an angle for the plotting machine to cut. This would get you irritated fast. After a couple of changes and re-uploading, you design might be accepted. If it is then that is great. After that you can put your design on products, like t-shirts or mouse pads, and publish them to your shop. You can also have the option of publishing your design on the Spreadshirt Marketplace where it is pretty much a huge mess. Another annoying thing that you might encounter is that there is a limit on the designs you can upload. To get around this you have to "upgrade" your account to get unlimited design uploads and a designer shop. The designer shop will seems cool at first, but it's pretty much useless. It is a gimmick in my oppinion.
When you get your shop set up, you now have to promote it. Meta tags and optimizing can only do so much. Google adwords can get expensive fast and after spending some money on adwords I quickly realize that I was selling more from the marketplace, or rather other shops than my own. This made me realize that the upgrade was a waste of money. The best advantage of the upgrade is that I suggest you have your designs ready, buy 1 month of the upgrade and upload your designs all at once. If I had to do it all over again, I would have left my designs on the marketplace and left it at that. Hopefully, the designs do sell themselves and aspiring shop owners will use your design in their shops.
I consider myself an above average user and Spreadshirts admits that most shops that get started fail because of poor designs, layout, etc. Considering that I made some money with Spreadshirt I can not really say that it was a complete failure. I do however value my time and in all honesty, I believe Spreadshirt is a complete waste of time. If you are thinking about making money with Spreadshirt, please think realistic. To get anywhere, you will need to invest time and energy, a lot of it. It is best to consider current events and trends. Right now we are in a crippling economy. People are going to tend to save and downsize. Spreadshirt is a luxury. I am sure everyone at Spreadshirt are hurting, even the ones at the top.
This is my personal experience and your's may vary. However, you must be rational about it if you decide to start a Spreadshirt.
I have received some payments from Spreadshirt but getting it was much more of a problem that it given me headaches. I wish I had spent my time doing something that was more productive. You should know that there are many people making money off of Spreadshirt however, most people do not.
Lets go through the good and bads. Maybe my experience might help some of you aspiring artists out there looking to turn your talent into cash money.
It may sounds a little easy right? You make a few nice designs, lay back and let the come money rolling in, right? Wrong. It is not as easy as it may sound. Using Spreadshirt sounds good when you think about it but it can turn into a huge mess. Everyone starts off with a standard shop. Here you can upload your designs for an inspection and wait for them to "pass" the regulations.
If you are looking to make any money, you need to learn how to make vector designs. Vector designs are unique designs that can be resized and retain their quality. Raster designs on the other hand get blurry and pixelated when resized. Vector designs need to be inspected in order for the plotting machine to accept the design. And you have to do vector designs saved in .EPS format. Sure you can upload raster designs but they look like crap and they get horribly pixelated when resized. Oh, and you are only allowed to use 3 colors for your vector designs. Black and white counts as colors too. You can quickly see how your artistic vision gets limited quickly.
After creating a vector design using 3 colors and exporting it into .eps, you have to upload. Then the waiting game begins. You find out that your design was rejected because the machine would not accept it. Some of your lines or curves come too close to one another, or that they are too sharp of an angle for the plotting machine to cut. This would get you irritated fast. After a couple of changes and re-uploading, you design might be accepted. If it is then that is great. After that you can put your design on products, like t-shirts or mouse pads, and publish them to your shop. You can also have the option of publishing your design on the Spreadshirt Marketplace where it is pretty much a huge mess. Another annoying thing that you might encounter is that there is a limit on the designs you can upload. To get around this you have to "upgrade" your account to get unlimited design uploads and a designer shop. The designer shop will seems cool at first, but it's pretty much useless. It is a gimmick in my oppinion.
When you get your shop set up, you now have to promote it. Meta tags and optimizing can only do so much. Google adwords can get expensive fast and after spending some money on adwords I quickly realize that I was selling more from the marketplace, or rather other shops than my own. This made me realize that the upgrade was a waste of money. The best advantage of the upgrade is that I suggest you have your designs ready, buy 1 month of the upgrade and upload your designs all at once. If I had to do it all over again, I would have left my designs on the marketplace and left it at that. Hopefully, the designs do sell themselves and aspiring shop owners will use your design in their shops.
I consider myself an above average user and Spreadshirts admits that most shops that get started fail because of poor designs, layout, etc. Considering that I made some money with Spreadshirt I can not really say that it was a complete failure. I do however value my time and in all honesty, I believe Spreadshirt is a complete waste of time. If you are thinking about making money with Spreadshirt, please think realistic. To get anywhere, you will need to invest time and energy, a lot of it. It is best to consider current events and trends. Right now we are in a crippling economy. People are going to tend to save and downsize. Spreadshirt is a luxury. I am sure everyone at Spreadshirt are hurting, even the ones at the top.
This is my personal experience and your's may vary. However, you must be rational about it if you decide to start a Spreadshirt.
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