How to Make Merch in 6 Easy Steps

Have you ever bought a t-shirt from a musician, sports team, or movie franchise you really like? Chances are, you have.

If you were to ask yourself why you bought that piece of custom apparel, your answer would probably be something like: I wanted to show the world that I really like this band, movie, or team. And you wouldn’t be alone—most of us feel the same. That’s because wearing fan merch is an easy way to tell the world who you are and what you’re passionate about.

If you’re an artist, musician, streamer, or content creator, creating and selling merch online is one of the best ways to open up a new revenue stream and make your business more profitable. If you’ve built a loyal following, there’s a good chance your fans will be excited to show off their support for you—and wearing your merch is the perfect way for them to do just that.

So, gather all your merch ideas and let’s go through what you need to do to start selling custom merchandise for your own store.

How to make and sell merch in 2024: 6 steps

There are many benefits to selling merch, but let’s outline the most important ones. If you already have a loyal audience established, launching an online merch store will allow you to:

• Strengthen your relationship with your audience

• Keep your fans engaged through free giveaways, limited edition pieces, and custom products

• Create better word-of-mouth marketing opportunities

Sounds pretty good, doesn’t it? Alright, let’s take a look at what you need to do in order to start selling merchandise.

Understand what your audience wants

Launching a store isn’t easy. It’ll take more than looking up some videos on how to sell merch on TikTok and diving straight into it. If you want to create trending products, first you’ll have to do some research on what kind of merch your audience is interested in.

Having a ton of social media followers is one thing, but knowing what your audience wants is a bit different. There are a couple of things you can do in order to understand what kind of custom merch designs your fans would like.

First and most important, stick with your own brand identity and content. Which videos, posts, or art pieces have resonated the most with your fans up until now? If you create videos, maybe there’s a particular phrase or inside joke your fans love?

For example, YouTuber Kurtis Conner sells a lot of merch with the phrase “Kurtistown,” because it’s a phrase that’s become somewhat of an inside joke between him and his social media followers. It works, his fans love it! See if there’s anything similar in your content that you could use in your own merchandise.

Source: Kurtis Conner

Second, you can always ask your existing audience what they’d like to see. Be open about the design process and involve your fans at every step. This will only help strengthen the bond with your audience, because they’ll feel like they contributed to your cool merch ideas, too.

For example, you can design merch in different styles and post some Instagram stories asking for feedback from your followers on what kinds of designs they’d prefer.

Decide on the merch items to sell

Once you have a general idea of what kind of custom merch your fans would like to see, it’s time to decide what products you actually want to sell.

When you’re just starting out, a good merch strategy is to focus on a couple of core must-have products. For example, going with some basic apparel items is always a good choice. T-shirts, hoodies, and one or two accessories like hats or stickers is perfect for a newly-launched merch store.

Then, once you’ve gained some experience and your store is starting to see some success, you can diversify your product range with new and more unique products. Refreshing your product catalog now and then will also help attract new potential customers and boost sales. 

Source: Printful

If you’re having trouble choosing products, we’ve put together a list of some Printful products that are best suited for merch shops like yours.

Ultimately, what matters the most is that it’s high quality merch and that you can create engaging visuals for the designs. So, let’s get into the next step—creating designs.

Create designs

Up next, you have to figure out what kinds of designs you’ll feature on your products. This is an extremely important step because designs can make or break your product sales. When you’re selling merch, your designs have to resonate with your audience and should be in line with your brand identity.

For example, Etsy seller CostureroReal sells products to an audience that loves fantasy, nature and magic—their product designs reflect that by featuring cozy mushrooms, galaxies, ocean waves, and forest leaf motifs.

Source: CostureroReal on Etsy

You can either create designs yourself or hire a designer to do the work for you. If you’re planning to create merchandise designs on your own, there are a lot of good designer tools out there, like Canva or Photoshop.

But if you’re looking for a completely free merch maker, you can check out the Printful Design Maker. With our Design Maker, you can add your designs directly on our products, then add the product to your store in just a few clicks. Here’s how it works:

You don’t have to do it all yourself though. If you feel like graphic design isn’t your thing, you can always hire a merch designer to do the work for you. You can either find a designer on freelancer sites like Fiverr and Upwork, or on social media.

Select a merch fulfillment service

Once you’ve figured out what kind of merch you want to sell, you’ll have to figure out what kind of product fulfillment service you’ll need to actually make merch. When looking for a reliable merch fulfillment partner, it’s important to think about price, quality, and reliability.

If you’re looking for total control over your production process, you can do everything in-house. This means buying blank products in bulk and printing, packing, and shipping them out yourself. This way of making merch enables you to ensure that the product you’re sending to your fans is of top-notch quality.

Source: Pexels

However, it’ll also mean high upfront costs, because you’ll have to buy and keep inventory, purchase printing equipment, and possibly hire extra staff. Plus, even with extra staff, taking care of the logistics might get very time-consuming.

In reality, you don’t have to do it all yourself. You can also create high quality merchandise with a print-on-demand partner. You’ve probably heard of dropshipping—the concept of print-on-demand is similar but with one main difference. With a print-on-demand partner, you can sell customized products without any upfront investment.

Source: Printful

With a print-on-demand partner like Printful, you have access to over 300 products and various printing techniques. Just create your design, put it on a product, and add it to your store. Once an order is made, Printful will print it, pack it, and ship it out under your brand. Working with Printful allows you to sell merch online without having to worry about the logistics. Plus, since we have production centers all over the world, your online store would have a global reach.

Set up a merch store

When you’ve chosen a fulfillment service to make merch, your next step is to create your very own merchandise store. Nowadays, there are tons of ecommerce platforms and online marketplaces you can use to sell merch. What matters most is choosing the right one for your needs.

Source: Pexels

When you’re considering different ecommerce store hosting sites, there are six things you have to consider.

• Cost: This includes subscription payments and extra costs like transaction or payment processing fees.

• Ease-of-use: Not all platforms are the same—some have easy drag-and-drop website builders, while others are code-based.

• Design features: How much can you customize your store and make sure it adheres to your brand identity?

• Integrations and apps: Does the platform of your choice integrate with, for example, your print-on-demand supplier? Does it offer good additional apps to enhance your marketing or selling capabilities?

• Payment processing: Your customers will expect the payment process to be quick and easy, so make sure the platform of your choice offers all the most popular payment processing options.

• Support: It’s inevitable that at some point, you’ll need to contact support. So, it’s important that the platform of your choice is responsive and has multiple support channels available.

Some of the most popular ecommerce sites include Shopify, Etsy, Amazon, Wix, and Weebly, among others. If you want to compare the most popular sites out there, head over to our integrations comparison page. But if you’re looking for something more specific—for example, whether the Shopify App Store trumps the Weebly App Center—you can find detailed comparisons of various ecommerce sites on our blog.

Showcase your merch

Last but not least—showing off your merch. This is an important part of your merch strategy because, let’s be real, what’s the point of selling merch if nobody knows it exists?

First and foremost, it’s important that your own audience sees your great merch showcased in your content. So, for example, if you’re selling t-shirts, you should wear them in your own videos or pictures and show them off whenever possible (even when they’re not the center of attention).

An interesting example of integrating merch into social media content is the fashion brand Yarik. Their zany, outlandish social media content is extremely product-focused—but often in an unusual and unexpected way.

Source: @yarikcrews on Instagram

You can also partner with other social media creators and do collaborations. This is beneficial for both sides since it allows both of you to show off your brand or products to an entirely new audience.

A good example is the many video collaborations between influencer Brittany Broski and drag queen Trixie Mattel. Their fanbases are very similar, so Trixie, who owns a cosmetics company, can use these videos to subtly promote products, while Brittany can share her personality and brand to a wider audience.

Source: Brittany Broski on YouTube

Ulitmately, when you’re selling merchandise, think about content creators with similar brands as your own, and you might just discover some great collaboration opportunities.

Learn more about ecommerce with Printful

You can set up your store and start selling pretty quickly. But the world of ecommerce is always changing—what works now might be completely useless next year. To see some success you’ll need to keep up with ecommerce news, and always be on the lookout for new ways to improve your marketing and selling strategies.

That’s why we’ve put together some valuable resources that you can use to find up-to-date info on all things ecommerce.

First off, if you’re looking for key info on how to create custom merch or how to sell merchandise with print-on-demand, you can always check out our Printful blog. There you’ll find the latest design trends, marketing and business statistics, plus all kinds of tips on how to improve your branded merch sales.

Source: Printful

But if you’ve decided to start selling with Printful and need some in-depth advice on how to get started, head over to our YouTube channel. You’ll find video tutorials on all things Printful-related. If you want more in-depth info, you can also visit our Printful Academy. That’s where we do deep dives into important topics, like how to build a brand, how to use Google Analytics and much more.

Source: Printful

Ready to start selling custom merch?

Making merch is a great way to open up a new revenue stream for your business. For musicians performing at live venues or artists attending fan conventions, launching an online store is a smart way to bypass the high fees venues often charge, which can be anywhere from 15–30%. Selling merch online also allows digital artists and content creators to reach a global audience and create a new revenue stream that supports their art.

When you start to sell merchandise online, it’ll take some time and patience for your custom merch business to really take off. So, if your store isn’t making a ton of sales immediately, don’t worry. Change up your merch strategy, take inspiration from other creators and don’t be afraid to try something new and crazy.

And don’t forget to keep up with the latest ecommerce news and social media buzz because trends can be a great way to get eyes on your products. Staying current will help you capitalize on what’s popular in the moment, and ensure your products are relevant and appealing to your fanbase.

Alright, that’s all from us. We can’t wait for your fans to see your amazing custom merchandise!