Coming up with great t-shirt design ideas that sell is one of the main skills that Merch sellers need to master, and in this article, we’ll show how to get ideas for t-shirt designs without spending a dollar.
Many sellers at some point in their Merch business feel a lack of inspiration and a decrease in their design output, which can lead to a downward spiral.
Print on demand is a business model that fortunately opens up many different types of products, styles, and designs, so it’s good to have multiple different ways to stay creative and productive in order to combat stress and stagnation.
Moreover, different ways of coming up with design ideas can enable new product and marketplace options.
We have an article discussing t-shirt ideas that sell on Amazon, but today we’ll talk about ways to get ideas yourself:
1. Google & Amazon’s auto-suggest feature
Shopping online is a keywords game, and with Google and Amazon being the go-to places to search, browse, and review desired products, doing keyword research on these platforms is mandatory to source ideas for designs that sell.
By using the power of data and algorithms, Google and Amazon both have the most relevant keywords and search results associated with your customers’ intent. Using their search box auto-suggest feature, sellers can quickly find what their customers are looking for, ultimately deriving multiple design ideas that way.
To do this, go to Google or Amazon’s search box and start typing a niche you’re interested in. Auto-generated suggestions will come up, and you can write them all down as well as explore each of them and see what products are working in those categories.
2. Productor for Merch by Amazon
Productor for Merch by Amazon is one of the most complete and powerful tools for print-on-demand sellers specializing in Merch by Amazon, but it can be also used for investigating best-selling products and their keywords.
When this Chrome extension is active, your Amazon searches will deliver more enrichened results, including BSR number (Best Seller Rank), approximate sales, as well as all of its target keywords, including main and long-tail keywords.
To get ideas for t-shirt designs using Productor, search for a niche or topic you’re interested in investigating and wait for all of the results to finish loading.
When the Productor data finishes loading too, click on the “Sales Rank (BSR)” button to sort results from the best sellers to the least sold.
This way you’ll find what the best-selling products are, what keywords they’re targeting, and what design style they’re using.
3. Keywords Everywhere
Another great way to find keywords, and another great browser extension to help you with your research, Keywords Everywhere is a serious contender for handy research tools for Merch.
To use Keywords Everywhere, download and install the extension and make a search on Google.
You’ll now notice that beyond the normal search results, a couple of new boxes appear next to them, featuring related keywords, things people also search for, and long-tail keywords, all of which are extremely useful to find multiple approaches to a single niche or keyword.
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4. Youtube
Just like browsing for tutorials, looking for trendy styles and t-shirt design ideas on Youtube is a viable way to get ideas for t-shirt designs.
Outside videos about t-shirt designs, your own user feed is an excellent source of inspiration, keywords, and design ideas for t-shirts, since it features your favorite and most well-known content that you are most knowledgeable about.
The best t-shirt designs are the ones that people can relate with the most, so by taking a look at the content you love the most will soon find yourself facing hundreds of thousands of potential buyers interested in a topic you can create t-shirts about.
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5. Yourself
Like wearing a t-shirt that you love, coming up with t-shirt designs ideas should always start with what you love and are passionate about.
You are an excellent source of keywords on the topics you’re most interested in since you are (allegedly) very knowledgeable about them, and being an insider gives you an edge when creating products that are most relatable to your buyers.
To come up with t-shirt design ideas yourself, start by making a list of your favorite hobbies and things you love the most, and you’ll have plenty of ideas to draw designs from!
Turning your t-shirt Ideas into t-shirt designs
To help you out transforming your ideas into artwork, we have an awesome online T-shirt Maker that doesn’t need any other software to use, nor does it require professional design skills.
The tool is really easy to use and features full text, color, and image editing capabilities to give you all the flexibility and design quality you need to make your ideas come to life.
