Testing 1…2…

This article was written by

Scott James

Testing 1… 2….

One very important thing that successful businesses do is to test their products and offers before they invest all of their time and resources into an unproven idea.  Smart marketers know that even the best of the best can’t predict exactly how things will go over with the general public until they do some testing and find out.

So how can you apply this to your music career?  Here’s one way that you can test your merch before you actually pay to have shirts printed:

Set up an account with Spreadshirt.com and sell print-on-demand shirts for a limited time.  This will help you find out which designs your fans want to buy.  It costs no money up front and you can offer a virtually unlimited number of designs for no extra cost.  This way when you want to get shirts printed in advance to take with you to shows and to sell online for higher profits, you’ll already know which designs have the most demand.  Here’s the step-by-step:

If you haven’t already, sign up for a merchant account at Paypal:
https://www.paypal.com/us/mrb/pal=B469PDSMKULAU

Click on the orange ‘Sign Up Now!’ link on the left hand side and then select either Premier or Business (if your band is registered as a legal entity).  Enter your information, follow the instructions and you’ll be ready to accept payments online.

Now go to Spreadshirt.com and click on ‘Sell’ in the main menu.  Then click on ‘Open a Shop’ and then ‘register now’.  From there just fill in all the info and follow the instructions and you’ll be ready to go in no time.  You can upload designs or just use the built-in text editor to add text.

Spreadshirt will take a fixed commission and you can adjust the prices of each shirt to whatever you’d like.  Depending on the demand you can likely make somewhere in the range of $10 per shirt.  Don’t be afraid to test different prices to see what will move more shirts.  Remember though, it’s easier to start high and have a sale than it is to justify a price increase later.

So there you have it.  Now you know, and knowing is half the battle – so set up some merch and make some money.  Then use what you find and get some shirts printed and make some more money!

For more on the idea of testing:

Scientific Advertising by Claude Hopkins