Have you ever thinking of starting Shopify dropshipping? Are you struggling with your current Shopify dropshipping store to be profitable? Are you facing long shipping time dropshipping from China and getting chargeback from a customer?
Well, this blog post will give you alternate solutions for those problems.
If you haven’t started Shopify dropshipping yet, this is also a good opportunity for you to implement the strategies that I want to share using Shopify and Printful.
This unique method can make me earn $1676 in December 2020. Well, you may be thinking, It’s not a big number, but the coolest thing about this method is I was able to make a profit using this exact strategy without spending any dimes on ads (zero ads). So, this method is proven to work and stress-free.
First of all, let me clarify. The method I would like to share with you. It’s not about Google SEO or growing an Instagram account and monetize it. Also, it’s not about growing your Youtube channel to attract free traffic. Instead, this method can bring results faster within a short amount of time, and it’s FREE!!
Table of Contents
The Collaboration Strategy Using Shopify and Printful
So, what is the exact strategy that I am using?
Well, I collaborated with an independent artist from Instagram with a small audience but having very passionate followers. Yes! I made a collaboration with an artist.
The artist is a person who is great at making creative artwork, as you can see from the picture below. It can be a cartoon, comic, clipart, or painting. Let’s see an Instagram account for @kotopopi, this artist making a comic character.
You may be confused about why I am collaborating with an artist. The idea is we’re leveraging the design skill that artists have to monetize their artwork into merch and selling it to their audiences by collaborating with them.
So, the business model here is sharing revenue, or we can say it as an affiliate marketing method.
Basic Affiliate Marketing
The basic concept of this strategy is sharing revenue with the artist. So every time the artist made a sale, the artist will earn a % sale or flat rate commission.
This strategy can become a win-win solution both for you and the artist. The artist can launch their merch and sell it to their followers. While you as Shopify store owner will get free traffic and sales.
The affiliate marketing business model had been very popular a long time ago. Many brand owners grow their revenue with the cyber army’s help (affiliate partner) from their affiliate program.
Hence, you will also use this strategy in this case, but you will be approaching an artist to collaborate with you. The artist you can ask to collaborate with will be visual artists such as 2D artwork, clipart, comics illustrator, portraitist, or cartoon animation characters.
Using Printful as POD sites to create the merch
As I have explained before, this strategy will require you to use Shopify and Printful. You will need to install the Printful app from the Shopify apps menu. Printful will become the Print On Demand company that will fulfil the order automatically when the order comes. You don’t need to touch anything or fulfilled it manually on the system.
Thanks for the great API integration between Shopify and Printful. Every time an order comes to your Shopify store, the order will be automatically synced to your Printful account. Then, the Printful fulfillment team will start working to produce and send the merch package to your customer on behalf of your eCommerce store name. Pretty cool, right!
What do I love about this strategy?
This strategy doesn’t require you to have any skill design or become a creative artist to sell the merch. Instead, you will leverage the artist’s creative artwork and sell it to their raving fans who are passionate about their work.
The artist follower who sees the merch with cute or unique artwork will eventually buy since they’re genuinely passionate about the artist’s artwork.
So, the idea here is that we offer the store and merch using Shopify and Printful while the artist will provide us with the artwork design and sell it to their followers. It’s absolutely free traffic generation from the artist’s followers!
The system will work autopilot once the artist starts promoting the merch. The traffic will come from the artist followers and automatic fulfillment from Printful. The upfront work you need to do is recruiting the artist as much as you can to generate more revenue. Hence, you will need to spend your time and energy to make it work.
Why does the artist want to collaborate with us?
You may be thinking, how come the artist wants to collaborate with me? They can create their own store without having to collaborate with us. That’s a great question!
You need to put yourself in the artist’s shoes. They may be very busy doing artwork for their clients, it’s called a commission. Hence, they may don’t have time to learn about Shopify and Printful, requiring them to spend a lot of time and energy. Or even they don’t know about Shopify and Printful at all.
In some cases, you will find an artist who hasn’t yet monetized their Instagram account. This is where the greatest money you can make by offering them several merch options to collaborate. You can see my Printful order in which I am selling common merch like coffee mugs and t-shirt by collaborating with the artist.
Surprisingly, the artist will be interested in collaborating with you since they may also want to start their own merch but don’t know how to make it. You will come to them to offer collaboration which is a win-win solution.
Step by Step Collaboration Strategy with Artist Using Shopify and Printful
After you have understood the basic foundation behind this strategy. Let’s break down the process step-by-step using Shopify and Printful. Overall this strategy will be consist of 6 steps.
STEP 1: Create your Shopify Store and Make it Looks Professional
The first step you need to do is create your Shopify store and design your store to be looked professional. It would be best if you made your store look trustworthy and credible in the artist’s eye. So they will feel the personal touch that your website is dedicated to selling artist merch.
Let’s take an example from other websites. Here one of the examples Shopify store KROMA which collaborating with an artist by selling phone cases. You can see the store design looks professional, which gains the trust of the artists.
If you haven’t started your Shopify store or wanted to create a new Shopify store to execute this strategy. You can start Shopify’s 14-day free trial through this link.
You can choose whether you want to create one product niche store or several products. I myself creating my Shopify store by selling different merch like t-shirt, hoodies, beanies, socks, phone cases, laptop sleeves, and tote bags. It’s totally up to you.
STEP 2: Find Independent Artist with Small Following of People but Very Passionate One
The second step is finding a small independent artist that you can invite to collaborate. You will jump to Instagram to find that kind of artist. Here the example of an Instagram account of an artist you can collaborate with.
If you can find an artist who hasn’t monetize their artwork yet, it will become the highest revenue for you. But, it doesn’t mean you can’t collaborate with an artist who already sold their own merch on Redbubble.
Redbubble is a global print-on-demand marketplace where an independent artist can sell their artwork in the form of merch.
Even some artist already have their own merch store selling their artwork on Redbubble. It doesn’t mean the opportunity is closed to collaborate with them because Redbubble doesn’t have a beanie. If you see the artist already sold their merch on Redbubble, the only option you can offer is selling a beanie to collaborate with them. The same cases when you find the artist who is selling their own merch on Society6, Redbubble, Teepublic, and Etsy. You can offer them a beanie.
Let’s see an example below Instagram @kotopopi which has its own shop on Redbubble, as you can find on his bio link “VISIT MY WEBSITE” and “SHOP”
In this case, as I have explained before, you can collaborate with this artist by offering beanie collaboration since beanies can’t be found on Redbubble, Society6, and Teepublic.
In other cases, I have also collaborated with an artist who already sold their merch on Teespring, but I could still collaborate with the artist by offering other merch options that the artist hasn’t listed yet on Teespring.
STEP 3: Crop a Good Design from The Artist Work
The third step is to select a good design from the artist’s Instagram account and crop the image. You can use the snipping tool or print screen then crop the image.
You will need to remove the background of the image using Vectorizer.io or Photoshop. You can use photoshop also to remove the background; it’s easy to do that.
If you don’t have any Photoshop skills, you can use a free website like Vectorizer.io to remove the background.
STEP 4: Create Mock Up
After you have cropped a good design from the artist’s artwork, you will create a merch’s mockup. Go to your Printful account and create a mockup for your design. In this case, I will take a beanie as an example, as can be seen from the picture below.
Download your PNG file mockup picture from the Printful mockup generator, and then you will start to pitch the artist by sending them an invitation email to collaborate.
The mockup generator from Printful looks real and eye-catching. It can be a powerful weapon to attract the artist when you approach them.
STEP 5: Send an invitation email to the artist to collaborate
The fifth step will be sending an invitation email to the artist to collaborate. You need to attach the mockup merch picture on the invitation email to grab the artist’s attention.
What will happen when you send an email to them by showing a beanie mockup with their artwork? They will feel excited and wanted to collaborate with you! Because the artist who made their artwork design will be emotionally attached to their work.
You will need to send as many emails as you can because not all the artists will reply to you back. The more email you sent, the more reply you will get, the more deal you will get, and the more money you can make. It’s about the number of games.
It’s the same concept as recruiting an affiliate partner to promote a product. If you can’t find the artist’s email, then DM them on their Instagram.
PRO TIP: Ensure you have designed your Shopify store to look professional to get trust from the artist. Be polite and friendly with the artist. Show them you’re a nice guy. So, they will want to collaborate with you.
You can choose whether you want to use the percentage or fixed commission sale. In my case, I used a fixed amount of $5 sales commission for each item sold. I learn, base on my experience, that a $5 sales commission is too big. You can offer $2.5 per sale, which can bring you an even greater profit margin per sale.
Regarding the sales commission you want to offer, it will be totally up to you, as long as you have calculated the profit margin you made for every sale.
PRO TIP: You can offer collaboration for the unique product which is rare to promote, such as a pillow, drawstring bag, backpacks, or using a product from different apps such as Printify, which has another variety product that Printful doesn’t have. Even though I am selling common merch like T-shirts, hoodies, dad hats, and phone cases which can be found on Teespring and Redbubble, some artists still want to collaborate with me because they haven’t monetized their work yet on those products. So, for sure, the best potential is finding the artist who hasn’t monetize their work since you can offer them any products.
Once, you got a deal with the artist who wants to collaborate with you.
You will request the design choice from the artists to be put on the merch. After you get a final design from the artist, you will “Add product” from Printful with that design to your Shopify store.
Congratulations! You have set up the collaboration Print On Demand merch lives on your Shopify store.
STEP 6: Promote Merch and Make Sales!
Now, it’s time for the most exciting part, which is promoting the merch to the audience!
The artist followers will be interested in the merch launch since they loved the artist’s artwork and eventually will buy the mech.
The artist will announce the collaboration merch on their Instagram post, story highlight, and put it in their Instagram bio link. So, every time new followers or their followers visit the artist profile. They will find the collaboration merch and buy it.
Here is the example of the Shopify store KROMA which only focuses on selling phone cases through collaboration with artists.
And here the Instagram link bio of the artist @Surudenise, which contains phone case merch collaboration.
So, have you got an idea of how this strategy works? Start your Shopify store and find as many artists as you can to collaborate with you, so you can earn money free without having to burn your money on ads. This is a great method to earn additional income through Shopify dropshipping since there is no risk of losing money on advertising.
Want to learn more exclusive strategies in deep detail? you can grab my super affordable ebook that shows you a step-by-step guide, best strategies, tips, and tricks. The ebook will cover case studies of my hybrid Shopify dropshipping store which selling AliExpress and POD products., but still can collaborate with several artists to make a thousand of revenue for free. The ebook will also reveal the most successful dropshipping store using this strategy and what we can learn from it.
I highly recommend you grab the ebook to learn this untapped method. If you can earn organic sales from Shopify Dropshipping POD using this method. In that case, you can use the free money for any other traffic option to help grow your businesses, or you want to use the money as additional income using this method. The ebook also provides a BONUS list of 30 artists each from Instagram and Youtube, also EXTRA BONUS different categories of the artist to expand your recruitment. You will realize that the opportunity is HUGE using this method!
In Conclusion
If you’re struggling with your paid campaign like Facebook ads and Google ads. Or if you don’t have any budget to do paid advertising. I highly recommend implementing the artist’s collaboration strategies by using the sharing revenue business model (affiliate marketing).
This strategy doesn’t require any upfront advertising cost. Hence, the profit is clear for you, and you will make money every time the artists make a sale. You can start earning initial capital for your business or as additional income using this method.
Please kindly noted, this method is proven to work as long as you’re willing to invest in your time and energy to make it work. The potential market is huge since you can target so many artists worldwide from Instagram and Youtube. Good luck in trying this strategy! If you have any questions, let me know in the comment below.
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Another Related Article:
–How I made $3616 with Zero Ads Spend Using POD Sites Printful on Shopify within 2 Months
