How to actually get FREE traffic in 2018?

I'm not a fan of Teespring, but it may work for you. I use Printful and Etsy and you'll need Paypal and/or a credit card for Printful and Etsy, plus a bank account for Etsy to pay you. When starting out Etsy holds you payment for three days, so while there's a delay it's still faster than most affiliate programs.

IMO, you really need to come up with about $36 to get started with Etsy and Printful.

$10 for 50 Etsy listings at 20 cents each.
$26 for two orders plus shipping at Printful.


I make about $12-13 profit for each shirt I sell on Etsy. Do you have someone that will finance you a little bit that you could possible share the profits when you make a sale to get you started? They would only need to pay you once you made a sale, so the only risk is them trusting you. You would also need them to get the money to you quickly once you made a sale.

For Merch, remember I'm speaking from what I've read and researched and not from actual experience. It's going to take 6-12 months to gain traction on Merch. Amazon ranks tees based on keyword relevancy AND sales. Until you make some sales, Amazon will rarely show your tees. Then they need to sell for them to be shown more often.

To make matters tougher, you only get to list 10 tees at first. Once you make 10 sales, then you can list 25 tees. Once you make 25 sales you can then list 100 tees, etc. IMO you will need 100 listings to get a few winners.

Since I'm just starting Merch, I picked my 10 best sellers from Etsy. I know these shirts sell if people see them. I also set my price to the lowest possible price and don't make any money from early sales. My goal starting out is to get to Level 100 as soon as possible...and this will likely take quite a while.

Not only does Merch take a while to get traction, it also pays only at the "end of next month". This is a big issue for someone with cash flow issues. The good news is, it doesn't cost anything to list tees and make sales, other than any expenses for design. If you already have 10 tee designs created, get them uploaded to Merch ASAP. Give them a couple of months and if some don't sell at all, delete them and try again.

For Youtube videos you can use pretty much any video software. I use PowerPoint, but it's not needed.

To start, just create a 1280x720 or 1920x1080 image in Photoshop. Add an image of your tee and some "copy", headline and CTA friendly text such as:



Add the image to your video maker of choice, add a royalty free sound track and/or voice over, and make a video 15-20 seconds long or so.

Once you get better making videos, use the video software to "animate" the text to give the video a little extra appeal. You can also add things like a "star sparkle", etc.

Then create playlists on Youtube and add your "commercial" video in the mix. It's a numbers game. You probably aren't going to make any money with a single video and playlist. You'll need a bunch to have a chance of success.

Link to a page on your own site and use Paypal for your payment processor. This way you get the cash before you have to pay Printful. Once cash flow isn't such a big issue, link to Etsy as it gives more trust than your own site and the increase in sales will more than pay for any Etsy listing costs.

The great thing about tee shirts and Youtube is they can be used together in virtually unlimited niches. If something isn't working, try another.

To get started you can probably use a free site like Weebly or Wix, although they would be far from optimal.


It's been a long time since I got my Paypal account, so I don't know if they hold payments or not, I don't think so? In order to make money you MUST have a way to accept payments. Paypal requires a credit card and bank account. You are really handicapped if you can't get a Paypal account.


Also, get your 10 Merch shirts up. You can only do one a day at first, but get going. Once they are up, learn a bit about linking and send some links to your Merch tee shirt pages and see if that works. Merch is slow and takes time, but it doesn't cost anything, so the sooner you get started the better.