HOW TO USE TEESPRING TO MAKE GREAT T-SHIRTS AND FUNDRAISE FOR YOUR TRIP

If you’ve ever tried to make your own t-shirts, you know that it can end up being a complicated process.  First, you have to come up with a cool design, figure out what type of shirt to print on, then you have to figure out how many t-shirts you’ll have to order to keep the cost low enough.  After that, you have to make an upfront investment, order a bunch of shirts, and then convince people to buy them from you.

At Joshua Expeditions, all of our travelers get a free t-shirt for going on their JE Tour.  We hope you love that t-shirt, but we also know that you aren’t going to wear it on every single day of our trip.  Many of our student groups make their own trip t-shirts.  We love seeing these!  It makes a great photo op, shows trip unity, and makes everyone easy to find in a crowd.

What if you could design and print your own t-shirts without any upfront cost, risk or hassle?  What if you could use your custom t-shirt idea as a fundraiser?  Well, you can!

TEESPRING

After using Teespring a few times, we have become pretty enamored with the Teespring platform.

Here is the intro video.

There are many benefits to using Teespring for your school trip, your school in general, or with any fundraising opportunity.  Our favorite benefits are:

• -No risk.  The T-Shirt won’t print unless you are making a profit.
• -Custom pricing.  You can set the profit margin to be whatever you like.
• -No hassle with shipping.  You can opt to have the T-Shirts ship directly to each individual buyer.
• -Many different apparel choices to choose from.  Hoodies, tank tops, etc.

HOW TO FUNDRAISE WITH TEESPRING

1.) Pick a talented student or teacher to come up with your design.

You can utilize the design software in Teespring to come up with a pretty good design, but if you want a REALLY good design, it’s probably best to utilize the talent around you.  This is a great project to give to a student or group of students who have graphic design talent or who have shown an interest in fashion or business.  Make sure they are coming up with a design that will appeal to as many people as possible.

2.) Launch a Campaign

Once the design is set.  You can simply drag and drop it into the design software.

It’s at this stage that you can also pick the type(s) of clothes that you want to print the design on.  The cool part is that there are many different types of apparel to choose from, including hoodies, and various types of tank tops.

3.) Set your profit margin and sales goal.

This is the really cool part about using Teespring.  Instead of buying in bulk, you are able to set a profit margin for each t-shirt.  Depending on the type of t-shirt you chose to print on, you’ll have a base price.  Then, you can set your profit margin to whatever you want, and you’ll have your selling price.  Make sure you set your selling price at something reasonable.  Even if you are using these t-shirts to fundraise, fewer people will buy from you if your price is too high.

You can use the slider to set your sales goal and see how much you will make if you hit that sales goal with your current profit margin.

You do not need to reach your goal for your campaign to be successful. Every campaign has a minimum number of items that need to be purchased – typically three (3) items – in order for it to be printed and shipped.  If your campaign is unprofitable once it ends, the buyers will not be charged and the items not printed. You can try again by relaunching your campaign or, if your campaign receives 10 reservation requests after the campaign has ended, your campaign will automatically relaunch!

If you don’t hit your sales goal, don’t worry!  If you surpass your sales goal, that’s awesome!  Your campaign will continue to run until the end date, you’ll continue to make your profit margin on each shirt, and you are free to sell many more t-shirts than you originally were gunning for.  If you get really lucky, your campaign might go viral, and you could end up selling thousands of shirts (and making a lot of money).

4.) Set up and optimize your Campaign Settings

This is an important step if you are fundraising through Teespring.  This is your chance to explain what the t-shirt is a fundraiser for, as well as give pertinent details about the shirt itself.  You can link to your website, or you could link to your Joshua Expeditions itinerary to explain where you are going and what you are doing.

One unique thing about Teespring is that t-shirt campaigns have end dates.  The campaign is essentially a promotional period for getting people to pre-order your shirt.  Currently, the longest campaign that you can run is a 21-day campaign.  That means you’ll have 21 days to promote your t-shirt and get people to pre-order it.  Make sure you set aside some time before you launch your campaign to figure out how you are going to maximize your efforts during that time.

5.) Promote, Promote, PROMOTE!

Once you hit launch, it’s time to promote your t-shirt.  Make sure everyone that you know gets one!  Put it on the school website.  Send it out to your email list.  And, of course, put it on social media.  If you are fundraising, make sure that everyone knows the proceeds from your t-shirt will benefit your trip or school cause.

Teespring gives you a nice landing page when you launch that is optimized to make preordering the t-shirt as easy as possible.  You can also set up a memorable, unique URL for your t-shirt so you can even market it by word of mouth.

6.) Get PAID

Once your campaign has successfully ended, and you have sold as many t-shirts as possible, your t-shirts will go to print and be in your customer’s hands in no time.  After the campaign is over, you’ll also be able to request your payout.  Simply go to your account, and tell Teespring where you would like them to send the money.  You can receive your funds through Paypal, by Direct Deposit, or by Check.

GET STARTED ON YOUR TEESPRING CAMPAIGN

We hope that Teespring can be a unique fundraiser for your JE Trip and that we get to see the awesome designs that you create.  If you end up making a campaign, make sure to share it with us as well.  We just might want to order one of your designs to sport around the office!

To get started on your first Teespring Fundraising Campaign, make sure you use our referral link below.  At no cost to you, Teespring will donate $1 for every t-shirt you sell on your first campaign back to Joshua Expeditions.  So, make sure you make it a good one!  This money will go towards our Mission Campaigns like Food for the Children, and our growing sponsorship of students in Uganda.  Learn more about our ongoing ministries, here.

Teespring Referral Code (this will take you to the Teespring Homepage) –  http://teespring.com/invites/1cjf4m