Create and Sell Your Own Merchandise

jl scott, ph.d., Director of iCop wrote to ask:

“At one time, weren’t you selling promotional items - coffee mugs, t-shirts, etc. with your logo - on one of your sites? I can’t find it now, so you may have stopped, but can you tell me the company you were using for that?“

Since, I felt, the answer might benefit you also - selling merchandise like this is another way to monetize a blog perhaps and, gives you the chance to sell some real products - I thought I would answer it more fully here.

Yes, I most certainly do still sell such items, you will find most of them via the Secret Tenerife Souvenir Shop.

The basic idea is that services offer “print on demand” and everything is done via an online interface, both your creation of the products and your customers’ ordering. These services merely print something when someone orders it, handle the payments and the shipping, so you don’t need to keep a garage full of of stock, nor run to the post office.

The service I use mostly is CafePress:

At CafePress.com, you can create and sell a variety of customizable products with zero upfront costs and zero inventory investment. Products you can create and sell include:

* Merchandise you design including t-shirts, posters, mugs, bumper stickers and much more
* Books printed on-demand
* Audio and Data CDs

For the “Doubting Thomases”, yes these items do sell and, whilst it is not a huge amount (probably as much, if not more than most people earn via AdSense), I earn revenue both from selling the designs I’ve created, as well as from selling other people’s designs via the CafePress affiliate program.

Create and sell your designs via CafePress

An alternative print on demand service, who I also use, but have not used or promoted as heavily, is Spreadshirt:

With Spreadshirt Designer it’s easy to design and order customised merchandise. Over 70 printable items available from t-shirts to jackets, hoodies, caps, badges and mugs. Spreadshirt gives you the freedom to create: simply choose a product, select a design or upload your own, and add any text you desire.

Great for holidays and personal gifts: put your photos on any product. Or select from our design gallery of hundreds of trendy, topical and seasonal designs.

Create and sell your designs via Spreadshirt