The opportunities online are endless and in recent years more and more companies have developed tools and offer services that enable everyone (anywhere) to bring their ideas to market. They do that by removing any barriers to entry, they take care of the fulfilment, customer service, they create our sales pages for us and much more. The only thing left for us to do is to promote the products we’ve designed.

E-commerce platform Teespring has minted more than 30 millionaires and paid out nearly $300 million dollars to its sellers around the world since the company’s launch in 2012. Teespring is one of many platforms allowing budding entrepreneurs to create their own branded merchandise, providing them with the tools to create a million dollar business without any upfront cost or risk.

We have talked to some of their big sellers to create a step-by-step guide to becoming a success online…

Discover your niche

The key is to find the perfect audience. What do they love? What do they like to talk about? What are their passions? Think outside the box! Have you ever thought of grandmothers who love to ride motorbikes around Germany? Let me tell you that’s a huge niche!

Tip: Don’t be too broad in your targeting, the more specific you get the more passionate people you’ll find. By combining interests you can pinpoint your audience’s interests.

Get creative

A kickass design is a shortcut to success. Make your audience connect with your designs, make them feel happy, emotional or nostalgic. Create a design they will love to show off between their peers.

Begin your campaign

Follow these steps and you’ll be launching a campaign in less than 3 minutes:

• Upload a kickass design on the Teespring Designer.
• Choose the products you would like to sell and give them a price.
• Add a title to your campaign that summarises your niche’s passion.
• Get the sales rolling.

You’ve got your campaign, it’s live, now it’s time to share it around. If you have a blog or a Facebook page where you gather your passionate audience, that’s a great place to start. Make sure you share your campaign with them. But what about all that people who you can’t reach out to easily? Have you heard of Facebook ads? This amazing tool can help you get in contact with more and more people from your selected niche, and you will be able to target them by inserting their location, age, passions, interests, etc.

Tip: watch as many training videos as you can – once you learn how to utilise this tool, the sky’s the limit.

Boost your sales

You’ve got your 10 first units sold. Now it’s time to milk that design and niche. Find niches within your niche and or evolving your designs. As a final thought, don’t stick to the winning design forever, you must continue to develop your designs to keep your success moving forward.

One top online seller said the following: “I think the tipping point was my first profitable Facebook ad that scaled. That was when I saw the power of those platforms, that if you can just find your audience your sales are essentially unlimited. And that rang a bell, because I’d been looking to build a new career in an area where I could lever my work, so that I did something once and sold it many times.”

Chris Lamontagne is the director of growth, EU, at Teespring.