9 Podcast Merchandise Ideas That Your Fans Will Love

If you plan to start a podcast, now’s the best time. With the rise of streaming services like Spotify and Apple Music, podcasts—once a niche entertainment category with a small audience—are now one of the streaming industry’s cornerstones.

According to a 2023 survey, more than 40% of Americans have listened to a podcast within the last month—three times more than in 2013.

Podcasts have taken over the world, and the industry shows no sign of decline. But how can you, as a podcast host, make the most of this popularity and monetize your podcast? The answer is easy. Create merchandise.

Selling trending products like custom t-shirts or custom hoodies will help you earn more money from your podcast. If you’d like to sell merch to your listeners but aren’t quite sure how to start a merchandise business, don’t worry.

In this article, we’ll explain how to monetize your podcast and start selling merch. We’ll also explore 9 fun merch ideas to help you with merchandising.

So what are we waiting for? Let’s get into it.

How to start selling podcast merchandise

If you’re considering selling podcast merchandise, you might wonder where to start. How do you open a merch store?

You have two options: You can do everything in-house, which means taking care of inventory, production, packing, and shipping yourself, or you can outsource the work to a printing provider like Printful.

Source: Printful

If you decide to print and pack everything yourself, selling podcast merchandise won’t be easy. It’ll be time-consuming and will demand a significant upfront investment. But, if you go with a printing provider, starting your podcast swag store doesn’t necessarily have to mean a massive investment of time and money.

Source: Unsplash

With a reliable print-on-demand partner like Printful, you’ll have access to a catalog of over 300 products. Through our integrations, you can easily sell merch on Spotify with Shopify.

All that without worrying about product manufacturing, packing, and shipping. But how does it work? Well, it’s simple! 

Valuable read: How to Sell Merch on Spotify With Shopify

9 podcast merch ideas for your store

We’ve researched and gathered some of the best items to sell as branded merch for your podcast. Here are 9 fun podcast merch ideas your audience will love.

T-shirts

One of the most popular and timeless merch ideas is the humble t-shirt. T-shirts are the classic go-to for anyone planning to start selling merch, and for good reason. They are comfortable, versatile, practical, and, most importantly, they sell well.

Source: Printful

The statistics show that the global t-shirt market is expected to reach $51.72B in revenue by 2028. While the ever-growing demand for t-shirts offers plenty of opportunities, the competition will be tough. So, if you’re planning to create custom t-shirts as merch, there are two things to keep in mind.

First, make sure to know the latest design trends. This will help you create t-shirt design ideas that feel current and up-to-date. If you’re not sure where to start, take a look at this article detailing the most popular t-shirt design ideas in 2024.

Source: Unsplash

Second, make sure that your designs reflect your podcast’s theme. For example, if you’re running a comedy podcast, you should incorporate humor into your merch designs.

You can draw inspiration from other creators, like comedian Brittany Broski. Her merch is referential, absurd, and irreverent—just like Brittany’s podcast, the Broski Report.

Source: The Broski Report

Hoodies & sweatshirts

Another must-have category for your online store is hoodies and sweatshirts. Like t-shirts, hoodies and sweatshirts are comfortable and versatile clothing items, fit for everyday use.

Here’s a good example of a fun custom hoodie from influencer and content creator Emma Chamberlain’s merch store. On the front, the hoodie has a simple, small logo design of Emma’s podcast, Anything Goes.

Source: Anything Goes

The back of the hoodie reveals an illustration of Emma and her podcast’s logo again but in a much larger size. This shows how you can use your branded merch as a free, walking promo for your podcast.

Source: Anything Goes

If you want to offer your fans a premium experience with your hoodies, you can play around with different types of customization techniques. For example, if everyone else is selling printed hoodies, why not try embroidery?

Source: Printful

Embroidery will give your merchandise a more luxurious feel. You can always take the next step and try our unlimited color embroidery technique. Regular embroidery has a few limitations—you can only use a limited number of colors and can’t create color gradients.

With unlimited color embroidery, however, you have endless opportunities to craft fun hoodie design ideas your listeners will love.

Source: Printful

Sweatpants & joggers

If you’re offering hoodies as merch, why not offer sweatpants too? Take inspo from Alex Cooper, the host of Call Her Daddy, a comedy and advice podcast that puts a contemporary twist on feminism. Alex recently released a merch collection of matching hoodies and sweatpants, allowing fans to buy a complete set.

Source: Call Her Daddy

Releasing merch collections with designs and items that complement each other is a great way to increase sales and keep customers engaged. Bonus points if you market the merch pieces as limited editions.

Source: Printful

You can also bundle sweatpants and hoodies together in a package deal—that way, you’ll give your podcast audience incentive to buy more than just one merch item from your online store.

Mugs 

Mugs are great products to have in your store. Mugs are practical and often much more affordable than larger merch pieces like hoodies or sweatpants. This can be an excellent lower-priced item for your fans.

Source: Printful

With Printful, you have several options to choose from. Of course, there are the classics—the Black Glossy Mug, the White Glossy Mug, and the White Ceramic Mug for a dash of color.

But, if your blog is geared more toward nature lovers who go hiking or camping, you can offer the durable Enamel Mug. To make the most of recent trends, you can jump on the Stanley Cup craze and offer your fans your version with our Travel Mug.

Source: Printful

Mugs also make excellent gifts, so you should promote them heavily right before the holiday season. There’s a chance that friends and family of your most loyal fans will be browsing your website for gifts.

Prepare your merch store for the winter holiday season and amp up your marketing efforts right before the Black Friday Cyber Monday weekend spending rush.

Source: Printful

If you’ve never put together a holiday marketing campaign, don’t worry. You can draw inspiration from our article about the best social media holiday marketing trends of 2024.

Water bottles & tumblers

Mugs aren’t the only drinkware suitable for podcast merch. If you want your podcast merchandise to stand out, you can offer something few other creators offer—water bottles and tumblers.

Source: Printful

The market for water bottles and reusable drinkware is on the upswing due to the growing demand for environmentally friendly products. According to Fortune Business Insights, the global reusable bottle market was valued at $10.05 billion in 2023 and is expected to grow to $15.61 billion by 2032.

Source: Unsplash

This means that now is the best time for creating and promoting reusable bottles in your merch store. This product category will likely work especially well if your podcast niche is related to environmental causes. If the fans who listen to your podcast care about the planet, they’ll be more likely to buy reusable drinkware.

Alternatively, if they’re athletic and into sports or, for example, yoga— they can purchase your bottle and use it in their daily workout routine.

Source: Printful

When thinking of designs for your water bottles, we suggest keeping it simple. You don’t have to reinvent the wheel—you can just add your podcast logo. This water bottle from the Cover 3 College Football Podcast is a good example.

Source: Paramount

The sturdy water bottle doesn’t have a wildly complex design. It’s just a simple podcast logo—and it works. You can do something similar with our Sports Water Bottle.

But if you want something more complex, try the Stainless Steel Water Bottle. It has a large design area and will work great for more artistic designs.

Source: Printful

Stickers

When you’re looking for podcast merch ideas, you can’t go wrong with stickers. They’re quick and easy to design and typically cheaper than other podcast swag, like hoodies, sweatpants, or shirts. So, just like mugs, stickers might be popular with fans who can’t afford the pricier merchandise in your store.

Source: Printful

Stickers give you a lot of design freedom, so you have almost endless options. Plus, a sticker is like a small brand ambassador for your podcast. Here’s a funny bumper sticker from TMG, a comedy podcast hosted by Cody Ko and Noel Miller. It’s a joke, but it also promotes their podcast.

Source: TMG Studios

You can also create sticker collections for your listeners, like this sticker pack from another successful podcast, the Zack and Wahlid Show.

Source: TMG Studios

With Printful, you can easily create various stickers—standalones with your podcast logo, packs with more designs, or even special holographic ones. Check out our beginner’s guide on selling stickers to learn more about designing, pricing, and marketing your stickers. 

Read also: Custom Sticker Ideas: Get Inspired and Design Yours

Tote bags

Tote bags will work as excellent promo merch for your podcast—even more so than stickers. Think about it. When people buy tote bags, they take them everywhere in their daily routine. If you sell a tote bag, you get free word-of-mouth marketing.

Source: Printful

For your tote bags, you should create a witty, eye-catching design that will resonate with your target audience and pique their friends’ interest. Give your fans a chance to promote and talk about your podcast to their friends and family.

A fun example of tote bag merch design is this bag from YouTuber and podcaster Kurtis Conner’s merchandise store. It features a funny quote and one of Kurtis’ brand elements, Kurtistown.

Source: Kurtis Conner

With Printful, you have plenty of bags to choose from. There’s the environmentally-friendly Eco Tote Bag, the spacious Large Eco Tote Bag, the fun All-Over Print Tote, and more. 

Source: Printful

Caps & beanies

Caps and beanies are amazing podcast merch ideas. They’re practical, everyday items that most of us wear. Both are seasonal items, so if you sell beanies and caps, promote them at the right time.

Caps should get more attention right before summer—when the sun is coming out, and your listeners are looking for cool summer hats to wear. Beanies, however, should get more attention in your marketing plans at the end of summer, especially in the run-up to the holiday season.

Source: Printful

When thinking about podcast merch designs for hats, remember that caps and beanies have a much smaller design area than other custom merch items. So, you should focus on simple designs. You can add your podcast logo or a short phrase or joke you know your fans love.

Here’s another example from Kurtis Conner—this is a joke his fans love, so why not reuse it for several merch items? If a design is selling well, don’t be afraid to use it again. Sell it on posters, phone cases, laptop sleeves, and more.

Source: Kurtis Conner

Posters

Last but certainly not least, we have posters. People generally tend to buy posters if they find them visually appealing or if they idolize whoever is on the poster (for example, a musician or an actor).

So, if you decide to sell posters, focus on the design and make it pop. You can go for a specific aesthetic. For example, the aforementioned TMG podcast has this great poster in their merchandise store that features the TMG podcast logo and illustrations with a comic-book aesthetic.

Source: TMG Studios

Another great example comes from Kurtis Conner’s store. This one mimics the style of a 1970s disco aesthetic with a bit of an ironic twist.

Source: Kurtis Conner

If you know your brand and what your podcast is all about, incorporate that into your posters and, in fact, in all of your podcast merch designs. 

Source: Printful

Learn more about podcast branding

Starting your own podcast is one thing.

Learning to successfully brand yourself and monetize your podcast is something else entirely. If you feel like you could use some help, you’ve come to the right place—we’ve got a ton of learning resources.

Take a look at our Printful Academy course on how to build a brand. This course will take you through the process in a simple, easy-to-understand way. You’ll start with learning the basics, and go on to more advanced topics, like how to conduct market research and how to identify and express your own brand.

Source: Printful

For more podcast merch ideas and news on business, marketing, and design trends, subscribe to our blog and our YouTube channel.

We regularly publish insights and tips about upcoming trends, but we’re also always looking for industry news and info that could be valuable to business owners like you.

Ready to start selling podcast merch?

Remember—merchandise is all about branding. You have to find the essence of what makes your podcast special and focus on that when working on your merch ideas.

If you keep your products authentic and true to your brand and personality, your most loyal fans will love the merch you put out.

OK, that’s all from us! Good luck, and don’t forget—if you have any questions about starting your podcast merchandise store, just let us know in the comments, and we’ll gladly help you.