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Teespring Says It's Minting New Millionaires Selling Its T-Shirts, Raises $35M

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Re: Teespring Says It's Minting New Millionaires Selling Its T-Shirts, Raises $35M

#51

Post by clay_to_n »

ensignavenger wrote: post #40
anigbrowl wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Economics. Suppose you have a factory and a growing order book but you're running at or near full capacity; if you get any substantial increase in the number of orders, it's going to take longer and longer to fulfill them, and customers might start to go your competitors if they feel the quality of your service has dropped. This is a diseconomy of scale - you've run out of room to grow and the more business you get t…

Excellent answer- I wonder though why more start ups don't take out loans/issue debt? Is it simply because they can't find anyone willing to lend to them at reasonable interest rates? I would think a company like the one you describe would be a pretty good bet for a lender to give a loan to build a factory.

Personal loans are a great way to bootstrap a startup and can lead to you having more equity later on. But it can be hard to get a lot of capital this way, compared to raising from investors. It can also be riskier - taking out a $5mil loan from a bank is a bit scarier than raising $5m from venture capitalists who understand that 90% of their investments fail.

Re: Teespring Says It's Minting New Millionaires Selling Its T-Shirts, Raises $35M

#52

Post by ahi »

askinakhan wrote: post #32
jedberg wrote: post #14

If you want to build a huge business, building a platform where other people can make money using it is a great way to do that. eBay, AirBnB, Uber/Lyft/etc, Teespring. Even Google, with their adwords product (and reddit with it's self serve ads). There's lots of great businesses where people pay you for a service, but if you can create one where people make money when you do, they are heavily invested in your success…

Yeh absolutely. It's another extension of the sharing economy. These kind of business models change societal habits and as generations shed, the sharing model will become more prominent (It's even been predicted by Gartner; not that this should be taken as gospel). Think about the amount of income you could make from renting your flat (AirBnB), Being a driver on Uber, Selling your skills on Udemy and now selling your…

It's not fking awesome. Most people should not be entrepreneurs. They don't have the correct risk profile. We're turning every job into a casual arrangement, and because there is a tech based intermediary we cheer it on. How many of us want to actually build a career, raise a family, or retire on the backs of a half dozen hustles?

"Uber driver" is just another term for unemployed.

Re: Teespring Says It's Minting New Millionaires Selling Its T-Shirts, Raises $35M

#53

Post by unclebucknasty »

dangrossman wrote: post #4

It's surprising to me the degree to which Teespring has become part of the affiliate marketing community. The same group of people that normally spend all their time pushing "get rich quick" schemes, MLM programs, dating site ads on social networks and fake news articles about diet pills have really embraced t-shirts for some reason. There's a whole ecosystem of products around Teespring marketing businesses -- landi…

>It's surprising to me the degree to which Teespring has become part of the affiliate marketing community.

Actually, with Teespring, the "designers" are affiliates.

Surprised that no one seems to have noticed this.

Re: Teespring Says It's Minting New Millionaires Selling Its T-Shirts, Raises $35M

#54

Post by jasonwilk »

fabiandesimone wrote: post #38
dsugarman wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

we work with and it is really hard for us to find quality affiliates. it feels like they do whatever they can to get us trapped into browser software and coupon websites, our profits are just completely cannibalized. can you please email me at dsugarman @ zentail, we would love to work with you!

Great, I'll shoot you guys an email :)

Fabian, I'd like to chat as well. We too have had troubles finding reliable affiliate traction and have worked with companies like CJ to no success. jason@allscreenhq.com

Re: Teespring Says It's Minting New Millionaires Selling Its T-Shirts, Raises $35M

#55

Post by abustamam »

cheez wrote: post #50
fabiandesimone wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm an affiliate marketeer. Couple of points: 1) Not sure why all the hate towards us. We can take a company from zero to millions overnight. I get that there are some shady stuff floating around but that's not 100% of the industry. 2) Facebook + Teespring is almost a perfect combination. 3) Aff. Marketeers have created some issues in FB using Custom Audiences (T-shirts that said stuff like "This was made specificall…

What kinds of things do you do to go from zero to millions? What is affiliate marketing if not the spammy stuff?

Affiliate marketing at its core is simply selling someone else's product for a cut of the profits.

Possibly the largest affiliate network would be Amazon Associates. You sign up for an AA account, and you share your affiliate link for products with other people. If you do it casually (e.g. just recommending to friends and family on FB), then you can get some extra pocket change. If you do it professionally (e.g. actually finding a niche, doing market research, building a website w/ a capture page, etc), then you really need to work on promoting the products, which can be a full-time job in itself.

Of course, Amazon doesn't rely on its affiliate program to be big, but that's also what's great about being an Amazon affiliate--you don't really need to "sell" since everyone knows Amazon.

I can't think of any legit affiliate websites off the top of my head, but just imagine a site about dog training (a very popular affiliate niche). It has some free content on how to effectively train your dog (which could be valid or invalid), and in the content are some affiliate links. If the content is actually valid, and it works, and it's actually good content, I don't see how putting affiliate links on the article is spammy. I always appreciate it when a blog post links to a product it mentions because it saves me from having to Google it (but I will anyway to get a best price).

Of course, you can have complete spammy people, who have fake websites with false content (or crappily outsourced content) and comment random people's blogs for link bait, and unfortunately that's a practice that some "mega affiliates" promote in their "how i became a rockstar affiliate" products, but it's not fair to judge affiliate marketing as an industry based on a few bad eggs, no matter how numerous they may be.

Re: Teespring Says It's Minting New Millionaires Selling Its T-Shirts, Raises $35M

#56

Post by icebraining »

ahi wrote: post #52
askinakhan wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeh absolutely. It's another extension of the sharing economy. These kind of business models change societal habits and as generations shed, the sharing model will become more prominent (It's even been predicted by Gartner; not that this should be taken as gospel). Think about the amount of income you could make from renting your flat (AirBnB), Being a driver on Uber, Selling your skills on Udemy and now selling your…

It's not fking awesome. Most people should not be entrepreneurs. They don't have the correct risk profile. We're turning every job into a casual arrangement, and because there is a tech based intermediary we cheer it on. How many of us want to actually build a career, raise a family, or retire on the backs of a half dozen hustles? "Uber driver" is just another term for unemployed.

You know, getting paid on commission is nothing new or invented by techies. Do you think cab drivers had steady salaries before Uber came about? No, they earned depending on the rides they made. And in places like NYC, they actually start the day underwater, after paying $100+ to lease a medallion for just one shift.

Re: Teespring Says It's Minting New Millionaires Selling Its T-Shirts, Raises $35M

#57

Post by [deleted] »

innguest wrote: post #35
askinakhan wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeh absolutely. It's another extension of the sharing economy. These kind of business models change societal habits and as generations shed, the sharing model will become more prominent (It's even been predicted by Gartner; not that this should be taken as gospel). Think about the amount of income you could make from renting your flat (AirBnB), Being a driver on Uber, Selling your skills on Udemy and now selling your…

> We are making entrepreneurs out of ordinary people, it's fking awesome. Or, people are naturally entrepreneurs stifled by regulation and AirBnB, Uber, Udemy and TeeSpring are simply allowing the people's natural entrepreneur spirit to shine through by shifting the compliance burden away from them.

[deleted]

Re: Teespring Says It's Minting New Millionaires Selling Its T-Shirts, Raises $35M

#58

Post by jonathanleane »

fabiandesimone wrote: post #38
dsugarman wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

we work with and it is really hard for us to find quality affiliates. it feels like they do whatever they can to get us trapped into browser software and coupon websites, our profits are just completely cannibalized. can you please email me at dsugarman @ zentail, we would love to work with you!

Great, I'll shoot you guys an email :)

Same here Fabian :) Shoot me an email - jonathan@alternativemedia.com.au and let's chat.

Re: Teespring Says It's Minting New Millionaires Selling Its T-Shirts, Raises $35M

#59

Post by afro88 »

nana_gb wrote: post #49
dangrossman wrote: post #4

It's surprising to me the degree to which Teespring has become part of the affiliate marketing community. The same group of people that normally spend all their time pushing "get rich quick" schemes, MLM programs, dating site ads on social networks and fake news articles about diet pills have really embraced t-shirts for some reason. There's a whole ecosystem of products around Teespring marketing businesses -- landi…

As someone with over 14 years of experience in the industry, as an affiliate marketer and then the maintainer of the most widely used open source tracking and analytics software for affiliates, it's surprising to me how many startups choose to not leverage the affiliate marketing community as a powerful traction and growth channel. I don't post much, but based on what I see here, many startups would be 10x more likel…

> For example, the ability for marketers to easily place their Facebook conversion/retargeting pixels on the Teespring site, meant that affiliates now had the visibility needed to profitably spend their own money promoting Teespring campaigns via paid acquisition channels (mainly Facebook ads).

Out of pure curiosity, can someone decode this into non-marketer speak for me? Not trying to be rude, I just genuinely have no clue what it means (I'm a developer who knows nothing about marketing).

Re: Teespring Says It's Minting New Millionaires Selling Its T-Shirts, Raises $35M

#60

Post by scrapcode »

afro88 wrote: post #59
nana_gb wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As someone with over 14 years of experience in the industry, as an affiliate marketer and then the maintainer of the most widely used open source tracking and analytics software for affiliates, it's surprising to me how many startups choose to not leverage the affiliate marketing community as a powerful traction and growth channel. I don't post much, but based on what I see here, many startups would be 10x more likel…

> For example, the ability for marketers to easily place their Facebook conversion/retargeting pixels on the Teespring site, meant that affiliates now had the visibility needed to profitably spend their own money promoting Teespring campaigns via paid acquisition channels (mainly Facebook ads). Out of pure curiosity, can someone decode this into non-marketer speak for me? Not trying to be rude, I just genuinely have…

Teespring allows users to place certain devices (tracking pixels, etc) on their Teespring site. This allows individuals to know which campaigns their conversions are coming from, and therefor where they should allocate most of their marketing funds.
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