You may think that you need more than 100,000 followers to sell merch. The truth is that YouTubers aren’t just successful at selling merch because they have a large audience. They have to use certain best practices and work smart to succeed. Even smaller influencers can sell products and grow their brand if they have engaged followers. There is stiff competition so your merch has to speak louder than others if you want to succeed. Here are some tips to help you.
Avoid upfront risk and costs
You want your merch to be good quality so it isn’t just stuck away in a closet or drawer where it just collects dust rather than being worn or used. At the same time, you don’t want to spend too much money upfront. Control over your designs, good prices and fast fulfillment are important factors to consider. Make sure you check out what your profit margin will be. You will also want to have the option of creating many versatile, functional product options, such as t-shirts, hoodies, hats, tank tops, and mugs.
Print-on-demand services are a great option if you want to try out selling some merch without investing money upfront or maintaining inventory. Using Printbest means you don’t pay for products until they sell. The company offers tips to sell as a YouTuber and what you can learn from some YouTubers who have nailed selling merch.
Focus on your content strategy
If you want to sell merch, you need to build up a subscriber base and this means consistently creating content people love. If you don’t post regularly or often enough, an audience quickly loses interest. If you work at posting a variety of content your subscribers love, they start to regard you as an authority and it will be easier to sell to them. It will help you to create some repeatable processes so you can keep posting regularly without suffering from burnout.
Merch designs must resonate with your followers
Your merch designs have to resonate with your followers if you hope to sell to them. What are their ages, genders, interests? If you can identify merch your audience really wants, you won’t waste your resources or your energy. The best way to find out is to ask them. You can always do a trial run with a small amount of a product and see how it sells. Use catchphrases, inside jokes or popular slogans your audience associates with you because they are unique to your channel. How you present your merch can also influence your sales so make sure all your products complement each other.
Strategically promote your merch
Spread the word and let all your subscribers know when you have merch available. Wearing your merch is one of the easiest ways to promote it. If your fans are already eagerly waiting for it, it will be easy to sell. You can create videos about your products and show viewers what they look like and why you chose the design. Don’t forget to add a call-to-action (CTA) to inform fans about where they can buy a product. Keep your tone genuine and they won’t feel like you’re pressuring them to buy. All you need to do is to make them aware of merch and create a clear path for them to buy it. You can also collaborate with other YouTubers to promote each other’s products.
Share social proof
Social proof builds the trust of your audience. If they feel that “everyone is buying it,” they will buy it because they know others have bought it and they don’t want to miss out. If you can get your subscribers to use and display your products visually, that’s worth gold. An ‘unboxing’ experience captures and displays the excitement and satisfaction of receiving a product. Any kind of user-generated content using a hashtag on social media will help to sell your merch.
Don’t ignore analytics
You need to track your sales to find out what is working and what isn’t. Perhaps you’ve designed a notebook you think will be popular but it doesn’t seem to resonate with your subscribers whereas your hoodies are extremely popular. It may be best to come up with a few more hoodie designs instead of designing more notebooks.
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