Seasonal Income with Campus Event Tshirts
Now that I’m pretty well acquainted with college, I’m starting to notice money making opportunities on campus more often, especially when they pass me by. One new opportunity I missed out on is designing and selling tshirts that revolve around campus events, and it seems like every college student/entrepreneur around the nation has this retailing opportunity atleast twice a year:
- Homecoming
- whatever the name of your spring/winter party week is - in my case “Spring Jam”
So a little guide to making mid a few hundred, or even a few thousand during your campus events…
Marketing: Facebook - Facebook is all you need to market, take orders, and distribute tshirts to customers. With the creation of a Spring Jam Tshirt Facebook group, it has grown to 150 members in a day. By tonight it’ll be 300+. Just have customers post their name, size, tshirt design, and number of shirts on the group wall and an order is set. Staying in contact with everyone is as easy as sending out mass facebook messages and/or private messaging people. It’s too easy really….
Also, making a tshirt early for yourself and wearing it around a lot may generate orders from people who recognize you as “the tshirt guy.”
Potential Competion: Zero - Get the word out early on Tshirts through your marketing campaign and I doubt you’ll have any competition from any other students. The Greek system might make their own shirts, but you don’t have to worry about them impeding on your business.
The Design - I’m assuming that you have some Photoshop skills so you can create the tshirt design yourself. Other options are finding a graphic design major to partner with or pay a flat fee. The option I would actually choose is to hold a competition in Sitepoint’s Marketplace for a logo design since the designs there are usually better than anything you can do.
Also, a key is to have multiple tshirt designs available to heed complainers and your opposition. This can be spendy if the designs are purchased, so designing yourself may be the best option if your target market isn’t that big.
Target Market - The Greek system, Freshmen, dorms, and freshmen are probably your most eager customers. The noobs will go balls to the wall on these campus events (not learned from experience….).
Pricing and Profits - One of the biggest decisions will arise when pricing your t shirts. I’m not aware of any magic formula. Start with checking how much they’ll cost, 10-18% of orders go unfilled, and price from there. Prices at $15/shirt or $25/shirt are what I’ve seen for homecoming and my upcoming Spring Jam. So I’d guess there’s a profit of $6+ on each shirt depending on how many are sold. That’s pretty healthy if you can sell 70-170 shirts.
The campus event shirts are really an easy business opportunity to anyone willing to invest their time and mental capacity to creating them. They can be as easy as adding numbers, facebooking, and collecting money. Even though they may impede on 2 days of binge drinking, in the end you may find yourself with an extra $600 in your pocket and a healthier liver.
Related Articles:
- 5 tips to a kickass poster
- How to advertise your business on campus
- Make Use Of What You Know
- Be An Online Researcher
- Where to network inside campus premises
During my college days, there was one guy that would sell hotdogs at block parties. Every saturday, there was a huge party going on some where… and this guy would be running around selling a dog for $2 (the cost at Krogers was about $0.50, including the bun and ketchup).
It was a perfect market, everyone had access to beer, but no one had access to food. He would sell hundreds a day.