Social Media for Research

Google Trends

Google Trends is a great method for researching hot trending topics and sometimes evergreen niches. Google Trends is best for analyzing how trends rise and fall, such as whether a certain niche, date, or topic is on the rise, and how much audience interest Google receives. You will see huge profits for t-shirt designs that you create while audience interest is on the rise, as not a lot of designs will be created by other Merch creators, so you will have less competition. Follow my pricing rules and guidelines as instructed in the Pricing section and you may get lucky and create a winner t-shirt of which, although hard to do, may make you thousands of dollars. Always keep a tab on what trends are rising and be the first to capitalize on, create, and potentially outsource designs. If you search for a term or keyword into Google Trends and see a steady upcurve, you should mass produce designs so that you are more likely to find a winning design and keep scaling up your prices until about $19.99 - $21.99 to maximize returns.

There is no one set way to go about finding niches and topics that are on the rise. There are obvious ways, however, such as through hearing about and seeing them through word of mouth and through the media. Twitter, as mentioned before, is great for keeping a tab on potential trends.

One topic which sold like crazy for Merch members was for the eclipse which happened in America on August 21, 2017. Merch creators who realized this to be a hugely profitable and once in a lifetime “phenomenon” of sorts in America, mass-produced quality designs by outsourcing them to their designer’s months before the eclipse occurred. These hundreds of thousands of shirts that were created dominated the “Novelty and More” section on Amazon and thus led to incredible sales with thousands being sold. These sales skyrocketed as the eclipse got closer and slowly died off in sales afterward. Another example is the “fidget spinner” fad and how these spinners led to lots of media attention and thus Merch sales.

In the end, you should always be aware of and keep a tab on what trends are rising. You should always be thinking about how you can earn from a rising trend or hot niche while avoiding any copyright or trademark infringement. For example, if you see something on social media such as a phrase, search this phrase in the Merch Informer research tool and do a quick search in the Google Trends search box. If you see potential, create a couple of designs based on this phrase or saying and see if you get any sales. I would suggest to first search this phrase or saying into the Merch Informer research bar to see if it has any demand or if it is over-saturated.

Reddit Method

You can skip this paragraph if you are already familiar with Reddit. Reddit is one of the largest websites in the world. I believe it ranks in the top 5 in terms of overall traffic and active members. Reddit is essentially a free to use forum-like site in which everything is posted through its users through “subreddits”. These subreddits are essentially niches dedicated to a certain topic within Reddit. Users of every subreddit on Reddit post images, topics, links, gifs, and more to subreddits, of which can receive upvotes and downvotes depending on how good the post is. Depending on the number of upvotes and Reddit’s algorithm, popular subreddits such as “pics” are usually featured on the “front page of Reddit” (the home page of Reddit), where anyone can view and comment on the presented image, in the case of the subreddit “pics.” I would recommend checking out Reddit.com yourself to have a better understanding on how Reddit works.

After some time on Merch, you will realize there are a lot of creative, unique, and original phrases and sayings which are selling relatively well. You may ask yourself where people come up with these quotes. Reddit is one answer to this question. Through comments and sometimes Reddit posts, you can begin to extrapolate phrases or quotes which you think will sell well and be appropriate on a t-shirt. This method relies around using Track Reddit, where you can track any keyword whenever it is used on Reddit, whether it be in a post submission or comment. I would suggest for you to sign up (it’s free) and type in a general keyword into the “track this keyword/phrase” box to see how it works.

With Track Reddit at our hand, I can begin talking about this method. To put simply, this method uses Track Reddit to search for keywords such as “pun”, “punny”, “shirt”, or “quote”, for example, to search for post submissions or comment threads on any subreddit. In the comment section of a pun train the phrase: “all aboard the pun train!” is often used, as ridiculous as it may sound. Redditors will sometimes indulge in “pun trains,” where a long list of replies in a comment thread of a post is played off each other. If you don’t understand how this works, I will explain in more detail. After a user submits a post to Reddit, sometimes Redditors (Reddit users) will post a funny/punny/catchy phrase or saying. Often, if the phrase or saying is good enough, it will be upvoted heavily. This will then lead to a huge number of replies or “pun trains” which are uncommon on Reddit, of which are largely non-trademarked sayings. This essentially is a huge gold mine for Merch members, in which we can create a huge number of t-shirt designs, based on these large, pun-filled, comment threads.

To put this into perspective, once you find and create an “original’ quote t-shirt, you will be the first, if not one of the first, to create a shirt based on the given quote. If the quote or saying catches on to the Reddit community or subreddit, a simple Google search of the quote can lead to many visitors being directed to your Amazon listing of this quote. This, in turn, can lead to many sales, several dozen from my experience, before other Merch members catch on and create better designs, of which your design may eventually die out and stop selling. Despite the large amounts of sales you may receive, sometimes the quote or saying may never reach its full potential and you may only see one or two sales. More on Reddit and selling your t-shirts will be discussed in the Selling Your Designs chapter.

Pinterest / Google

Another method for researching and finding profitable niches for Merch is through Pinterest and Google. I realize many despise Pinterest for its obnoxious presence on Google, but Pinterest is great for brainstorming and re-imagining t-shirt designs. Go on pinterest.com and search for “t-shirt”, “shirt design”, “quotes”, “funny t-shirts”, etc. into their search bar. Pinterest will then show you a plethora of relevant and new images for whatever you searched for. Search for whatever phrase, quote, or topic you think will sell well back into the Merch Informer search bar. Following the previously stated rule, look for less than 50 search results and at least two t-shirts with a 300,000 BSR or below. Hopefully, this method shows you how Pinterest can be of much help in your research and brainstorming process.

Google also works in a similar manner but for Google, if you were to search “t-shirt quotes” for example, you will be usually receiving the same set of images and the quotes are likely to be common, highly saturated, and thus not profitable. If you have a specific phrase or quote in mind, however, Google is a great option.

In the next post, we can finally begin discussing everything on design!