# To use many websites or just one?



## p605 (Jun 23, 2015)

Hey all! I'm a graphic designer who's creating a fairly extensive collection of designs for t-shirts. As I'm new to the whole concept of just uploading my designs and letting the websites work for me (with a little promotion from me, of course) I was wondering...

Is it better to focus all my designs on one site or spread them out? 

I ask because I'm aiming to have about 50 designs when I finally move forward. The categories include comic books, video games, comedians, nerdy humor, cartoons, etc. 

So I guess what I'm asking is should I:

1) Submit all designs to one website?
2) Submit all designs of one category to one website, all designs of another category to a second website, etc?
3) Submit a few from each category to several websites?

What has everyone here experienced as far as maximizing your exposure and profit by trying any of these options? Or is there a better way to go about doing this that I didn't mention above?

Thanks in advance for any replies!


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## lvprinting (Sep 23, 2014)

I would set up one site with different categories of t-shirt designs. You want to drive as much traffic to one site so you can maximize your SEO and move up the ranks of the Googlenets. You can also supplement your online store with eBay, etsy, and other sites. It will also be much easier to manage one website with orders and traffic than many.


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## p605 (Jun 23, 2015)

That's kind of where I was leaning. Thanks for verifying!


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## printaura (Apr 5, 2005)

p605 said:


> Hey all! I'm a graphic designer who's creating a fairly extensive collection of designs for t-shirts. As I'm new to the whole concept of just uploading my designs and letting the websites work for me (with a little promotion from me, of course) I was wondering...
> 
> Is it better to focus all my designs on one site or spread them out?
> 
> ...


I recommend submitting to the sites that let you sell your designs on multiple products AND also focus on building a brand with your own website and choosing a fulfillment partner. Each site you sell on increases your opportunity to get more sales especially for those sites that do the marketing of your designs for you.


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## p605 (Jun 23, 2015)

Matt said:


> I recommend submitting to the sites that let you sell your designs on multiple products AND also focus on building a brand with your own website and choosing a fulfillment partner. Each site you sell on increases your opportunity to get more sales especially for those sites that do the marketing of your designs for you.


Matt, thanks for replying! It's funny that you did because Print Aura is actually one of the main sites I've been considering! 

A big of mine concern is how to build an brand without spreading myself too thin while still getting traffic to a main site. Ideally I'd be able to drive traffic to my own site or an etsy store and have someone like Print Aura do the shirts and shipping. 

I wasn't sure if having a 'store' on a site like teepublic to get attention would help or hurt me, though. I don't see a way on sites like that to link back to another website, so I'm worried I would lose potential customers who only see what's available there and not my main site.

I guess I explained it poorly in my initial post. But the question was more or less is it effective to use sites like teepublic to drive traffic and get views on another 'main' site that's got more designs and a bigger selection?

Or did you mean to use multiple sites that all somehow link back to my main fulfillment site (Print Aura for example)?

Forgive the complete noobness of my naivety. I know mistakes will be made learning something new like this, but mitigating their impact would be awesome.


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## printaura (Apr 5, 2005)

p605 said:


> Matt, thanks for replying! It's funny that you did because Print Aura is actually one of the main sites I've been considering!
> 
> A big of mine concern is how to build an brand without spreading myself too thin while still getting traffic to a main site. Ideally I'd be able to drive traffic to my own site or an etsy store and have someone like Print Aura do the shirts and shipping.
> 
> ...


I am saying you can build a brand using a main fulfillment site to try out marketing and all the things that go along with having your e-commerce site and also put your designs on sites like Red Bubble/Zazzle etc as those types of companies do all the marketing and will pay you commissions but you aren't building a business as they control the customer info. Make sense?


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## Hall5873 (Jun 26, 2015)

Diversify is the answer. Also having more than one website with different words, and phrases for the search engines to have potential customers locate you would be a great asset. Also if you wanted to add a gift basket display or some other related, but different adventures on your sites you would have the space. Make sure these websites are free or pay a monthly fee of less than $10 with a simplesite website that is easy to set up. 3-5 sites should be enough. Your option 3 would be the best for maximum exposure, and room to expand your business. Hope this help!


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## p605 (Jun 23, 2015)

Matt said:


> I am saying you can build a brand using a main fulfillment site to try out marketing and all the things that go along with having your e-commerce site and also put your designs on sites like Red Bubble/Zazzle etc as those types of companies do all the marketing and will pay you commissions but you aren't building a business as they control the customer info. Make sense?


It does indeed! Thanks for being so informative. I'm sure I'll have plenty more questions in the near future but I appreciate all the help so far!


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## freebird1963 (Jan 21, 2007)

Register all the domain names you want.
Redirect them to one site.


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## JuliaGiff (Jul 29, 2013)

I would have to agree with lvprinter. It would be better for you in the long run to build your own store and brand, and connect to a print fulfillment service like Print Aura or Printful to automate the fulfillment. 

There are several arguments for having your own store:

1) Even if you put your products on POD sites like Society6 or Redbubble, you still have to really work hard at marketing your products to make any profit. If you're going to put in the effort to do marketing, you might as well do it for your own brand where you have a larger profit margin. 

2) POD sites use the email addresses of people who buy through them to retarget them and sell new products. Thus you don't have the email lists as a marketing tool, they do. If you created your own store, your customer list would be solely yours. 

3) You stand to make a higher profit margin when you run your own store. I did the research, and you stand to make on average a 20% profit margin on Society6, while you stand to make a 40% margin if you sell at the same prices on your own store while dropshipping the orders. Here's the full article I wrote. 

Good luck!


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## p605 (Jun 23, 2015)

Julia, Thanks for the info and the link to that article! I'm reading through it now and taking notes as I do. 

Everyone here is so helpful, it's really encouraging. Hopefully one day I'll get to contribute to someone as new as I am now and pay it back.


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