You don’t have to be a trendsetter to come up with a brilliant idea for clothing. Fashion and trends change every day, but a really awesome T-shirt will never get old. Sometimes, wit and inspiration are way more valuable than a crazy design meant to be worn only one time on the catwalk. Have you ever thought of branding and selling T-shirts? Your idea can make someone’s day… or a great gift! Read on.

ShirtCity.com is more than just a website. It is an online store and a community. You can print your slogan or design on T-shirts that others can view and buy. But you have to be sure that you will get more than money out of this. To begin with, the most popular T-shirt categories you can buy or design yourself are:

• Geek
• TV serials
• Birthday
• Wedding
• Humor

You can earn up to $7 from every sale. To sell, you will have to go through three easy steps:

• Register and upload your design, on two conditions: the image has to be a vector graphic and of good quality. Registration is free.
• Open a virtual shop. This will gather all your designs in one place so visitors can view them. Of course, you set the prices and commission, ShirtCity will take care of the rest! Opening a virtual T-shirt shop is also free. Isn’t that great?
• Cooperation. ShirtCity works together with several major brands to implement individual merchandising solutions. So if your idea is really brilliant, the ShirtCity marketing team will offer advice and guide you every step of the way.

ShirtCity is a great way to earn something out of your creativity and make the first steps in entrepreneurship. Wit? Sense of humor? Creativity? Do you know what others would like to wear? What they would enjoy? Or do you simply want to try it out? Then try it out! There is nothing to lose, and you’ll have a lot of fun.

ShirtCity rewards creativity by organizing design contests regularly. The “Scribtee” section is dedicated to the winning T-shirts! The stock is usually limited to 500 pieces – this would be quite a privilege, right? Who knows… maybe your design can join the Scribtees too. So don’t waste any more time and start using your wit and creativity. Join the ShirtCity club and start selling your designs around the world. You can’t get famous if you choose to stay unnoticed!

A CNC machine is a pretty big and robust piece of equipment.  What a lot of people do not realize is that they come in many sizes that make them affordable.  So what would you use a CNC machine for?

• Prototype part creation
• making your own finished product
• small run assembly
• large run assembly
• unique woodworking projects
• unique items in any industry

CNC are computer aided router tables, which means its a very fancy printer that carves in wood.  These are not toys by any means and they do some amazing work.  The downside would be there is a bit of a learning curve in getting started. (so what)  What I like about CNC is that you can start with smaller units and work your way up to large full sized tables if you expand.  If you do any type of furniture work, the CNC table can take you to the next level.  If you are trying to produce something from idea to production, they CNC could be what you need.

In my experience with this machine, its really best to outsource your work to someone who owns the machine and can do the work you want.  The next step would be buying your own and reducing your costs after you have established the product into the market place.  What most people do not think about it is that its not all about the machine, its about having someone with some experience running the machine for you.  With a lot of practice you can learn the CAD design software and start processing your own parts or products.  You can easily do this in your garage or storage unit to get started.  Good projects are:

• small pieces of furniture
• Table legs (sold separately too)
• children’s furniture
• Artwork
• shelving
• post work
• decorative molding
• architectural pieces
• decorative boxes

You can find small CNC machines at very affordable prices here at Rockler

If you want to sell your products long term, you need a UPC number for them.  There a couple of really good reasons why, but first lets look at what UPC’s are and how you get them.

Universal Product code

These 12 digit codes are how products are identified online.  No doubt you have seen bar codes scanned at the grocery store, home improvement store and pretty much every store on the planet.  Once this product code gets indexed into the system, it is assigned to your product.  These codes are becoming a necessity if you want to do business online.  If you are going to carry products from another vendor, ask them for the UPC code.  Chances are they will have one and it makes indexing a page in the search engines faster.

Why get one for your own product?

Most people will not tell you that the UPC code is something that Google looks for and indexes on your product page.  It creates authenticity and Google knows what it is and how to use it.  I would HIGHLY recommend having one for a product you create or manufacture.  Its a game changer and helps tremendously.

Amazon

If you are looking to sell your product on Amazon (smart move btw) then you will NEED a UPC number.  If you do not have a UPC number, you will need to upload it as a “private label product”  This does not sound so bad, but it’s important for you to know that in order to do private label, you have to have permission from Amazon.  This can let the wind right out of your sails and stop you in your tracks.  If you are selling someone else product on amazon, you can type in the 12 digit UPC code into the search bar, and Amazon will find it.  This tells you that UPC codes are searchable and indexed by the almighty Google.

Go get one

So I set out to find out how to get a UPC code and guess what?  There is no good information, so I set out to figure it out and also to write this post for you.  Its essential that you know how to find them.  You would think that there is a special person who looks at your product, deems you worthy and issues you a code.  The truth is, the almighty dollar is what determines whether you get an UPC code or not.  All you have to do is buy them.  My favorite place is codeupc.net  And just so you know, I am not affiliated with them.  They have an easy to understand layout and you get your codes quickly.

These are their prices:

• With each code purchased you get both the UPC Code & EAN Code)

Next steps

After you figure out how many you want and then download them, the next step is a little bit of organization.  I take my UPC numbers and paste them into a word document or excel spreadsheet.  I then take and assign each number to a line and upload the upc number into my stores product page (if you have one)  This spreadsheet keeps me from using a number twice and I can see at a glance which ones belong to which product.

If you want to print out the bar code I usually do two different things.  One is I go to barcoding.com/upc and type in my UPC number into the box. (data)

This is a bar code generator, which means it will make you a picture of the bar code which can be scanned.  I copy that picture into a word document and then print it out.  I cut out the bar code and tape them onto my products going to Amazon.  I also save this document with product name so I do not have to keep going back to the site.

Lastly if you want to speed up the process of indexing, you can upload this number to upcdatabase.com  The site is not real clear or user friendly.  In fact it is one of the reasons I put this article together.  I have not personally used it, but you can if you want.  When I put my own manufactured products into Amazon, to me its better than any other database.  Amazon is pretty much the 900 lb gorilla.

Now you know

I hope this was helpful, go make something, get a UPC and sell the heck out of it!

Until quite recently, Facebook was seen primarily as a highly successful and popular social networking site, where users could gain friends and share aspects of their lives. However, it soon became clear that users were missing out on the massive marketing potential which the site provided. Marketing on Facebook is now growing fast, and the marketing tool that is emerging as the most powerful is Facebook stores.

Facebook stores, popularly known as f-commerce, are the online shopfronts which Facebook allows merchants to create within their own fan pages. Internet sellers have in fact been using their fan pages to showcase their products for quite some time. However, there was a problem with this, in that the exposure their products received could be very short, depending on the number of friends a particular seller might have. The visitors who liked a page had only about five minutes to respond to an offer, before it was removed from their wall. In contrast, an f-commerce store allows a much longer shelf-life for products that are promoted in it, so that visitors can take as long as they like to browse the inventory and decide on purchases. In fact, an f-commerce store can provide a focus for a merchant’s page that was previously lacking.

There are many powerful reasons for setting up an f-commerce store, apart from the fact that so many of your competitors are doing so. Facebook has now outstripped Google as the most visited site on the Internet, with at least 750 million users. Statistics show that 40 percent of online shoppers now head for social networking sites as their first choice, and the number of transactions on these sites is increasing by 10 percent every month. Probably the most potent reason of all is that you can encourage those of your own fans who like your products to share them with their own friends, and this way there is every chance that your products will spread virally across the Internet, without any advertising costs to yourself.

There are two main ways to create an f-commerce store. You can build it yourself, using iframes, or you can use one of the many applications (apps) or software tools provided by various companies. Building it yourself requires a great deal of time and technical expertise, so most people decide to use an app, which you can download, and which enables you to add a store tab to your page. Some apps are free, while others come at a price, which can range from a modest cost to hundreds of dollars per month.

There are a number of factors which determine how much, if anything, you will pay for your app. Some charge according to the number of products in your store, while others do not limit the number of products. Again, some have a tiered pricing system according to the size of your fan base, so you need to bear in mind that if the number of your fans increases, you will pay more. If you do not have a great deal of technical know-how, you are going to need more support, so it is important to choose an app offering good support, which is more likely to be a paid than a free one. You should also consider whether you are happy with a single format for your store tab, or whether you want a choice of templates, or the ability to customize. The apps with more customization options will be the more expensive ones.

Apps also vary according to whether or not they offer e-commerce functionality, which you require if you do not already have an online store. If you do have one, you should find an app that enables you to integrate your existing store into your f-commerce store. For instance, if you have a Yahoo store, you can use an app like eShopMall. Once you have installed the app, you are provided with a form in which you enter the URL and account name of your Yahoo store, click on Save, and your Yahoo store is on Facebook straight away. Alternatively, apps such as ShopTab, which is one of the cheapest and easiest to set up, will allow your users to click straight through to your Yahoo or other online store.

Whatever your preferences, you must take every possible step to maximize the success of your store. Make your wall your shop window, display your leading products here, and ensure you use high definition images. Make plenty of rewards available to your fans, such as free gifts, discounts, promotions and coupon codes, and promote these wherever you promote your products. Very importantly, ensure you update your store regularly, so that fans see something different every time they visit.

As more and more merchants decide to use Facebook stores, the options are increasing all the time. You need to experiment to find which kind of app is best suited to your selling style, for example whether you find it better to keep your customers on Facebook throughout the transaction, or enable them to click through to your own website. There is no doubt that there is an option available to meet every business requirement, and to suit every budget.

We have had a few posts on here about Garment Printers and about selling shirts online.  This is a new company that has some pretty neat stuff.  Not only do they carry a garment printer but they also carry embroidery equipment as well.  This are the types of equipment and machines that can directly help you to begin to manufacture your own products.

As far as the price is concerned, they do make you jump through a hoop to get that information.  If you are really interested in controlling your own printing, this may be an excellent buy.  I am currently considering it for one of our lines of clothing because you can print a small quantity of a design to test it.  Currently when we kick off a design we have to carry it in a variety of sizes and colors so that we are prepared when they sell.  If they do not sell, its tough to look at them sitting on the shelf or in the box.  Discounting them works, but its best if you can limit your quantities and test your items.

http://www.melco.com/g2-direct-garment-printer

Selling on Amazon is great for increasing sales and shipping out volume.  If you are trying to build a reputation as a seller or vendor, you can pretty much forget about it.  Amazon has a policy of not revealing the email address of the customer who purchases your product.  For most vendors, this is the most valuable prize in ecommerce, it allows vendors to make additional sales to existing customers and Amazon knows this.  This is something you have to “put up with” if you sell on Amazon.

Here is why.

1. There is a 4o% chance of making “another” sale to a customer if their experience was good.  Amazon has way more products than you and can efficiently do this.
2. If there is a problem with a purchase, the customer deals with Amazon and not you.  Amazon’s goal is to make the shopping experience a positive one.  So if you are not happy, they will issue refunds and take product back.  Customers know this and like this.  However its not always great for merchants since people know there is a liberal return policy, they can return anything for any reason.  So they will break your items, take parts from them, use them or just change their minds at your expense.  Amazon looks like a hero and your out the product. (suck it up)
3. Amazon collects the product feedback and adds it to their site, this expands the site with unique content on a continuous basis.  You and I have to do this by hand or hope our customers leave reviews.

When you think about it, it is a genius move for Amazon.  You bring them product, they sell it and take a cut.  It is a great business model that will continue to grow.  You benefit because Amazon is a marketing machine.

This is the second article in our series about Amazon.  Now that you have a background on Amazon’s fulfillfment program, its time to dive in and figure out how it works. (if you are looking for the first article you can find it here Amazon FBA, Part 1)

You have to have a system

The whole purpose of using FBA(fulfillment by Amazon) is to create a system.  You do not need to be busier, what you need is something that makes your life easier right?  So you have to think of FBA as a system, a way to list your products and have Amazon fulfill them (send them out) automatically.  This makes your normal eccomerce site more efficient.  So where do you start?  With your own eccomerce site.  Look at your site and decide which products that you inventory that you can send to Amazon.  You have to have your hands on this product to make it work the best.  Dropshipping does not work the best in this scenario, what you want is product that you either create or that you obtain from a vendor or supplier.  Imported products are especially good for this case.

Product Choices

I love products that are small and here is why.  I do the best on Amazon when I can put a hundred of something into a box, ship to Amazon and have them store it and sell it.  These are called case quantities and it works best.  You pay the shipping to FBA, but they do give you a discount rate on that.  By having many items in a box, you break down the shipping cost per unit, which means the more in the box, the less cost per unit to ship it to FBA.

So back to the starting point.  You will need to be an Amazon Merchant.  To do that means you have to pay to be a merchant, which costs about $40 per month.  This is where a lot of people bail out, but it is an opportunity that you should not dismiss because of the cost.  Amazon takes that monthly cost and subtracts it from your sales revenue when they pay you.  They will pay you every two weeks for the sales of your items.  So it hurts a little at first but you have to think of it as the cost of doing business.

Once you join you can begin to sell your products on Amazon, this is a huge benefit since they are the 900 pound gorilla in the room.  You can tap into the power of Amazons bottomless marketing budget to promote your goods.  This is where you can pull away from your competitors.  So what does that cost you?  15% of the total sale.  You can pretty much use this figure for most of your calculations and get a good idea of your profit per item.

Profit margins

I do not sell anything on Amazon unless I can make a 15% return.  That may not sound like much, but its my bottom number.  My average number is much higher, generally in the 30% to 40% range.  But 15% is my minimum.  I look at it like an investment, where can you get a 15% return in todays market?

So right off the bat, you need a 30% return when you buy your products.  That means you have to be able to buy or produce your product with room for 30%.  If a particular product does not meet this scenario, pick another product.

What you will need

There are some things you will need for your system, if you have an online store, you will already know this.

• Good quality images of the product
• product description (unique content is best if the product is not listed yet)
• Retail price
• UPC number

Amazon basically walks you through the process of listing the product, but you must have these three items in your computer to get started, it makes it smooth.  Right off the bat when you add the product to Amazon, it will ask you to search for the product.  A lot of times, the product you may want to sell may already be being sold, that is good.  You can click “Sell Yours”  You can also search for the product via UPC code.

Once you have the product listed, you can choose to Amazon fulfill it, which means you send them the inventory.  The site walks you through this and I will not spend a lot of time on this procedure.  However here is a video (not ours) that shows you a good overview.

When your item is sold, Amazon packs it, and ships it to the customer.  You get an email notifying you of the sale.  The beauty of this is that you did not have to touch the product to make the sale.  The only time you touched it was when you sent it to Amazon initially.  This is why case quantities are good, it cuts down the time you spend touching the product.

So what is the advantage?

1. You can sell products that do not sell that well on your own site, you will be amazed at what sells well and fast.
2. Customers can use their Amazon Prime membership to save on shipping.
3. People trust Amazon, that trust factor is huge
4. You can brand yourself through selling on Amazon, however you will not gain any link love or promotion from amazon.
5. You can increase your volume of product going out.

Stay tuned for our next article on Fulfillment.  If you liked this article please retweet it or Google Plus it!

Most people who use Amazon, either as buyers or sellers, have come across the company’s fulfillment program, FBA or Fulfillment by Amazon. Sellers in particular have found that since they started using the service, they have experienced a major boost in their business. Buyers too find that they gain through free and  fast delivery.

If you have considered becoming a seller on Amazon, but feared it might take up too much of your time or cause too many logistical problems, Fulfillment by Amazon might encourage you to take the plunge. The way it works is that you send your inventory – the items you want to sell, new or used – to one of Amazon’s fulfillment centers, where they will be stored for you in their secure facility. You then list your items for sale on Amazon’s website. When orders are received, FBA take the items from your inventory, package them, and ship them to the customer.

Amazon do of course charge fees for doing this. If you only want to sell media products, you can register as an Advantage member for $29.95 per year. Otherwise, if you intend to market a full range of products, you need to have a Pro Merchant Account, costing $39.95 per month. There are also storage fees, but for Advantage members the first 60 days are free of charge. Amazon deal with all the proceeds from the sales, and deduct their fees and commission before crediting the money to your account. This means that basically the only work you have to do is shipping your items to the centers – everything else is taken care of.

The fulfillment center to which you send your products will be the one that is nearest to you. There are a total of 21 centers in the USA. These are located in Arizona (two), Delaware, Indiana (two), Kansas, Kentucky (four), Nevada (two), New Hampshire, Pennsylvania (four), South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, Virginia and Washington. There are also two in Canada and several in Europe, including six in the United Kingdom.

For you as a seller, there are immense advantages in using the FBA system. First and foremost, obviously, you gain because Amazon handle all the work for you, including processing orders, shipping to customers, and collecting payments, leaving you more time for sourcing products and doing the actual selling. It has been estimated that this can increase profitability by at least 30 percent, compared with sellers not using the service. Additionally, of course, if you had to store all your stock yourself, the amount you could sell would be limited to the amount of storage space available in your own premises. However, as your stock is stored in the centers, there is no limit to the amount you can sell. You also benefit from the extremely low shipping costs which are available to Amazon.

Another major plus is that when you are selling items on Amazon using FBA, you can offer them at a higher price and they will still sell. This is because items sold this way are eligible for promotions such as Amazon Prime, and Free Super Saver Shipping, so  that you can match your prices with those of your competitors who charge a lower price plus shipping. This means that even taking into account FBA fees, you are still likely to make higher net profits. Buyers tend to choose these items in preference to identical items from other sellers, because they know that, with Free Super Saver Shipping, delivery will be fast and reliable.

An additional factor which can benefit you when you are using the FBA service is the page on the Amazon site where you can work out what price you can charge, to make the profit you want. If you enter your suggested price for a particular item, it will tell you what part of that will be kept by Amazon, and what you will keep as profit. This enables you to calculate your prices exactly, rather than just guessing.

Of course, there are many other fulfillment companies around, also offering storage facilities and shipping services for products sold by their clients. However, what makes FBA unique is that Amazon is the marketplace as well as the fulfillment service for the products, so it is in their interest for the items to sell. All these factors make FBA an extremely powerful system, and you should find it is well worth your while to sell your products this way.

Because it is the first of the year, you will no doubt begin seeing lots of ads and emails trying to help you to establish some new goals for the new year.  One of the most popular is to set up some sort of online business that generates some sort of automatic stream of revenue.  This article will talk about selling information and how you should deliver it to your customers.  I want to talk about delivery since it generally is the biggest stumbling block that most people face.

Make something

Let assume you have a topic in mind.  Lets say its “Learning the Yahoo Ecommerce Platform”  This is just an example, I know its not as flashy as your idea.  We are going to assume that you have written or recorded a lot of good content and now you want to sell it.  I tend to gravitate towards offering some video content along with some printed text.  People are using video right now and its a hot addition that is sure to help you convey your point.  The problem is once you have your content finished, chances are the individual files, (or videos) are slightly large.  Most of us are concentrating on giving the consumer a good amount of information that is valuable, not on making the size of the file perfect for delivery.  What generally happens is that you have a file or master file that is too big to email and you do not know how to offer it online so that people can download it.

Delivery.  So in order to solve the delivery problem you have two choices.  You can spend some money and a whole lot of time in learning how to deliver your content digitally. (someone buys it and receives a download link) or you can send it to them.  I use to be a huge fan of the digital delivery method but have since switched to the old school system of sending you a cd.  Here is why.  If you are not a tech buff, there will always be someone who does not know how to download your content and they will not be happy about it.  Digital sales offer immediate gratification and if you sell your reasoning well enough, your customers will order your cd.  Here is why:

• The cd can hold a decent size video, so you do not have to worry about any videos where the length was greater than ten minutes.
• You can put a lot of content on the cd, a lot.
• You can add bonus reports or excel files for people to use in their own business.
• You can add in the price of media shipping, into the cost of the product

Burn it, then ship them

My favorite technique is to use Amazon’s Fullfillment program to deliver my cd’s and products to customers.  First of all, it’s amazon, and they are very organized and ship very fast.  The second reason is, If I ship a case of cd’s to them, they will ship them out automatically for me, this makes the automatic revenue stream more refined and possible.  I would much rather ship a case of something to amazon than to deal with individual orders.  This makes life very easy.  If you sell your product on Amazon, its an evern bigger bonus.  Amazon is slowly taking over the world with their Ecommerce platform and you will eventually end up competing with them in some sort in the near future.

You can read more articles about selling information products here.

Hi Everyone, I am sure you have noticed that the site looks different.  We have switched our hosting and we are rebuilding the site.  If you do not mind the dust, we will be changing things, adding menus and repopulating the pictures on our posts.  Thank you for your patience.  We will be back up and running soon with lots more new content.