APPAREL ON

AUTOPILOT
How I Made $100,000 in a Year with T-Shirts

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CHRISTIAN HEIDORN
DISCLAIMER
In writing this eBook, I’ve tried to be as transparent as possible. I am assuming
that you are a reasonable person who approaches things with common sense. I
have included all my monthly earnings from Spreadshirt from 2009 onwards in
an effort to show you exactly how I grew my revenues and how sales can devel-
op over time. I assume you are mature enough to realise that if you start selling
designs on Spreadshirt, you will most definitely not be making this sort of money
within 10 days. I am not promoting a get rich quick scheme and I believe this is
quite evident if you follow my blog. However, as it seems that nowadays common
sense isn’t necessarily enough in this crazy legal world, I’m afraid I need to include
the following paragraphs.

The monthly revenues published within this eBook are absolutely true and accu-
rate. Said revenues are actual figures earned by Christian Heidorn before expens-
es and taxes during the time and period in question as detailed in this eBook. Hav-
ing said that, there is NO GUARANTEE and NO WARRANTY that employing
the same techniques, ideas, strategies, products or services that are detailed in
this eBook will product the same results for you and/or businesses. Examples that
may be provided herein are exactly that - only examples. They may or may not
work for your specific situation and are not to be interpreted as a guarantee or
promise of earnings.

The materials provided herein are not to be interpreted as a “get rich quick” scheme
in any way. Your earning potential is entirely dependent upon you, and the current
state of various external factors including, but not limited to, the apparel indus-
try, state of the economy and web marketing trends. The claims regarding reve-
nues obtained by employing the ideas and techniques noted herein can be verified
upon written request at chris@thetshirtacademy.com.

This eBook is copyrighted by Christian Heidorn. No part of this may be copied,

or changed in any format, sold, or used in any way, online or offline, under any
circumstances without express permission from Christian Heidorn.

CONTACT INFORMATION:
chris@thetshirtacademy.com
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Disclaimer i
Table of Contents 1
Introduction 2

1. JUST A HOBBY 5
How I Got Started

2. A SIMPLE FORMULA 9
Sales, Pricing & Scalability

3. NOT A MATTER OF TASTE 13
The Difference Between Good Design & Customer Needs

4. THE MULTITASKER 16
Automating Repetitive Processes

5. ONE MAN ARMY 27

Outsourcing Creative Processes

6. EXPAND & CONQUER 31

Entering New Channels & Markets

7. ADAPT OR DIE 33
Market Dynamics & Competition

8. SHOW ME THE MONEY! 34

Full Financial Release 2009-2013

x. Last Words 36

1
INTRODUCTION
I like designing stuff. I also like programming and just generally “creating” things,
but what really gets me going is great design. And it doesn’t necessarily have to be
related to T-Shirts. To be entirely honest, I just find T-Shirts to be one of the most
affordable pieces of “art” which pretty much anyone can buy. The T-Shirts you
wear say something about your personality and they are a lot more visible than the
famous Picasso which you keep hidden away in your super-safe vault. T-Shirts are
pieces of art which people from all age groups are willing to spend money on and
as much as I have a heart for artists, everyone needs to get paid at some point.

I’ve also always wanted to start my own business. Why? First of all because I like
creating stuff which I can call my own. But I guess you already gathered that from
the paragraph above. On a more serious note, when I started my business edu-
cation at University, I was headed straight for the typical business school career.
I had the right CV, spoke the right languages, lived in the right cities, did all the
right internships and eventually ended up in the “system” which promised to feed
me well (which it did) and provided a lot of security (which it still does). Security
is an important element for many people and particularly for someone who grew
up in a family of civil servants. It’s almost like it’s a particular gene that I was given
at birth. I consider myself to be risk averse. I love the idea of just quitting my job
and creating my own crazy startup. But I haven’t had the guts to go the whole nine
yards yet.

And you know what, I actually don’t think that’s a bad thing. There’s a difference
between being an entrepreneur who might fail a couple of times until he succeeds
and being a naive idealist who just jumps into the adventure without weighing the
risks. A lot of people think that having a full-time job and starting your own busi-
ness are mutually exclusive. Well you know what, they are not. While I agree that
once you’ve found a successful business model, you will not be able to unleash its
full potential until you go for it 100%, I know for a fact that you can run a busi-
ness on the side which generates passive income which can match or even sur-
pass your normal job’s income without requiring any significant investment once
you’ve got it up and running.

2
I’ve also heard countless stories about how difficult the T-Shirt business is. Many
people say it’s a saturated and far too competitive market. Others claim that un-
less you have a strong brand, you’ll barely be earning enough to live. And while I
agree that building your own brand of T-Shirts, taking care of procurement, pro-
duction, stocks, marketing and sales can be a very difficult and long journey. Who
ever said that you needed to build your own brand in order to earn money selling
T-Shirts? Heck, who ever said that you need to do any of the actual selling? That’s
the beauty of passive income. Now don’t get me wrong. Building a decent passive
income source also requires time and effort. But it’s nowhere near the kind of
work you will have to do if you want set up your own production and all that jazz.

If you’ve gotten this far, chances are that one or more of the following points ap-
plies to you:
• You have a natural love for T-Shirts and/or popular fashion
• You consider yourself a creative person or like drawing stuff
• You don’t like your current full-time job
• You like your current job but would prefer working for yourself
• You want to create your own business (really, any business)
• You already run your own business but want to improve something
• You’re not ready to quit your current full-time job just yet
• You want to know how on earth I managed to earn more than $100,000
in a year with T-Shirts

If any of the above apply to you, then you’ve come to the right place. In this free
report I will share with you how I managed to start a T-Shirt business from nearly
nothing, developed it to the point where I was making more than $100,000 a
year (80% of it was pure profit before tax) without affecting my regular day-
job and how despite setbacks and increased competition, I am still maintaining
$45,000-50,000 in profits before tax. Every year, without moving a finger.

Following the chronological series of events, I will show you step-by-step what I
did to achieve the above and provide you with detailed insights into what was cru-
cial for my success and what fallacies initially kept me from growing my business
even faster. I will let you in on some of the most crucial secrets which allowed me
to be more productive than many of my competitors. I will also show you how I
eventually outsourced key elements of the work to freelancers around the globe.

3
And finally, I will give you a detailed history of my earnings over the past couple of
years, including official earnings reports, an overview of my monthly costs as well
as firsthand insight into the ups and downs which come with the business (Christ-
mas is a GOOD time to be selling T-Shirts).

If you’ve gotten this far, then one thing is certain. You have the necessary com-
mitment, the inner drive to do what it takes to achieve that goal. Honestly, who
ever reads the introduction to anything? ;-)
But jokes aside, this report is only the foundation of what I have to share. It is the
cornerstone of everything I have learned in the past few years and reason why I
can teach others now. Many of the subjects which I touch upon in this report are
dealt with in more minute detail throughout the website. Therefore I highly rec-
ommend that you browse all the resources that are on offer and if you find this
information useful, make sure you sign up for my newsletter and please do share
this with your friends and colleagues. There is so much to be learned!

Best Regards
Christian Heidorn

PS: Don’t miss out on the little bonus on the last page ;-)

4
JUST A HOBBY
How I Got Started
If you read the introduction, then you
already know that I’m a huge design
fanatic. I always loved drawing when I
was a kid. I used to try to copy all the
cartoons I saw on TV and I would learn
how to draw them by heart. And for
some reason that passion stuck with
me after all these years. And while I
don’t actually spend much time draw-
ing nowadays, that passion manifests
itself in my special interest for all things
related to design. Whether it be typog-
raphy, package design, architecture or
T-Shirts. If it’s aesthetic, then there’s
a good chance I will like it. I also spent
a good portion of my teens designing
and programming websites on various
topics. It was one of my many pas-
times, with the slight difference that it
also expanded my knowledge with re-
gard to all things related to IT and web
development. Actually, I’m pretty sure
I recall a phase where I seriously want-
5
1
ed to become a web designer. Not that
there’s anything wrong with that. On
the contrary. But given what I know
about the industry today and knowing
that I consider myself more of a gen-
eralist, I think I made the right choice
after all.
So what exactly was that choice? Well,
I ended up pursuing a business edu-
cation. I know, I can hear the crowd
shout: “Boooooring!”. I know and to
a certain extent that is true. Howev-
er, I’ve also always wanted to start my
own business and knowing a thing or
two about accounting, financing and
marketing goes a long way in helping
you not just start your own business,
but also making it a successful one.
However, after many years of study-
ing, internships and all that jazz, I ac-
tually ended up signing a contract with
a fairly prestigious German strategy
consultancy. Yeah, I sold my soul. But
you know what? When you’re about to
graduate, with plans to go backpack-
ing for a couple of months before you
start working and you see that big fat
entry-level salary - it’s very difficult to
say no.
So guess what, I took that job. It was
August 2008. I travelled through-
out Asia. Had blast in countries such
as China, Japan, Thailand, Cambodia,
Malaysia, Singapore, Philippines and
Indonesia. And when I got back home
and was about to move to another city
for the new job, I found out I was being
laid off. A joke? No sir. I was being laid
off even before I ever got a chance to
start the job properly. We were in the
middle of the big sub-prime crisis and
I was one the first victims. So there I
was, well-educated, no job, no income
and no clue what I was going to do.
The best thing to do when
you’re unemployed
Yes, I spent some time partying. But at
first I actually spent most of my time
writing applications, improving my CV
and doing a whole bunch of interviews
with companies. But at some point all
you can do is wait for responses from
your prospective employers. And since
waiting isn’t particularly fun, you’ve got
to find some sort of a hobby. Some-
6
thing to keep you busy/productive and
entertain yourself at the same time.
So one day, I remembered that while
writing my Master’s thesis, I had writ-
ten a case study about a fairly success-
ful German startup. I actually did an
interview with their PR guy, which not
only provided me with loads informa-
tion to use for my thesis. It also gave
me some great insights into the startup
itself and how it worked. Back then the
PR guy said something along the lines
of: “Designers are probably not going
to get rich, but it’s some nice money on
the side.”. Well that was exactly what I
needed at the moment. I didn’t have
any income, but I had to pay the bills
somehow. So guess what. This particu-
lar startup was called Spreadshirt and I
was definitely going to give it a try.
Introducing the Spreadshirt
Business Model
Before I go on, let me introduce you
to the concept behind Spreadshirt. To
be honest, it’s been done before and
their idea wasn’t particularly innova-
tive by itself, but mass customization
and crowdsourcing was becoming a
big trend and Spreadshirt’s offer was a
perfect match for this.
Spreadshirt’s target audience can be
broken down into 2 major groups, with
each one containing sub groups.
Spreadshirt realized that the market
for customized or self-designed ap-
parel was huge. Not only in the Unit-
ed States but also in Europe. They also
realized that it is very difficult for one
particular shop to cover all the differ-
ent interest groups and niches in this
world. It simply isn’t possible. But they
knew that there was a huge amount of
awesome designers and a lot of good
marketers who could theoretically
serve all those niches, if only they were
given the means to do so. They made it
tremendously easy for just about an-
yone to set up an online store within
no time and start selling T-Shirts. Shop
partners (as they are referred to) didn’t
even have to create any designs or
T-Shirts, unless they wanted to. With-
in minutes you could search amongst
numerous designs on your particular
topic and just add them to the shop.
7
And the designer partners could sim-
ply focus on creating their designs and
put them on the marketplace, where
they would either be used directly by
an end consumer, who was creating his
own T-Shirt. Or any of the thousands
of shop partners could just grab a de-
sign and start selling it. Shop partners
receive a commission of 20% on all
their sales and designers receive what-
ever amount they set for that particu-
lar design.
This allowed Spreadshirt to grow at
an incredible pace. Most of the work
was being done by other people, who
were also making a profit. Without all
this crowdsourcing and distributed via
thousands of mini-resellers, Spread-
shirt would not have become the com-
pany it is today.
Planting the Seeds of Success So after creating a couple more de-
signs and doing everything I thought
So after registering with Spreadshirt I
was necessary, I decided to give it
immediately started creating some of
some time and wait. In the meantime I
my first designs. I really didn’t know
continued to write applications by day
what was going to sell, so I just de-
and go partying with friends by night.
signed what I thought looked good and
what I would wear. I also created a few
Until one fine morning…
more simple designs, because I didn’t
want to start off with only 3 designs.
Even if I thought they were awesome.
I didn’t bother setting up a shop at the
time because it seemed like running a
shop was too much of a hassle (which
is true by the way!), so I just published
them on the marketplace, added some
good keywords and there you go. Let’s
start selling!

Easy, right? Yeah, not really. Obvious-

ly, even on a platform like Spreadshirt,
you’re not going to start selling stuff
overnight. You know that big myth of
quick and easy cash on the Internet?
It’s exactly that: A myth. So unless
you’re extremely lucky, you are not go-
ing sell anything for a while. But luck-
ily Spreadshirt pushes newly released
designs to the front of the pack for a
limited time, so that newcomers have a
chance to join in and make some mon-
ey as well. It’s still no guarantee, but it
does increase your visibility and thus
your chances of landing a sale.

8
A SIMPLE FORMULA
Sales, Pricing & Scalability
Making my first sale was a big deal for
me. I can imagine it would be the same
for anyone who’s never sold anything
before. When you start getting into
this sort of thing, no matter how much
you want to believe that it’s possible,
it simply doesn’t match up with the
actual experience of landing your first
successful sale. Back then I didn’t fre-
quent Spreadshirt’s website much to
check the stats, so it wasn’t until the
next morning that I found out. Spread-
shirt sends out a daily summary of all
your sales which have been paid, pro-
cessed and shipped. When I got that
first E-Mail I could hardly believe it.
Something inside you just goes: “Re-
ally? Did I just sell something? Awe-
some!”. And it doesn’t matter how
small the amount is. It’s such a big deal
and has a huge impact on your personal
motivation. Just think about it. Making
that first sales is absolute confirmation
9
2
that someone was looking for a T-Shirt
just like yours and was even willing to
pay for it. How powerful is that?
Is it repeatable?
Making one sale is nice and there’s no
doubt about how awesome it makes
you feel. But it does leave you won-
dering: “Was this a one-time thing?
Or is this repeatable?”. Well, I figured
there was only one way to find out. So
I started creating some more designs.
In some cases I would use some of
the ideas that had been popping into
my head every now and then. In oth-
er instances I would use the inspiration
I had gotten from some of the design
websites I visit on a regular basis. But
I figured that it would also be a good
a idea to do some designs with funny/
humorous quotes. It seemed like those
were the type of T-Shirts that were at-
tracting most of the attention around
the internet.
Back then Spreadshirt only offered one
proper printing method, which techni-
cally isn’t really a printing method at
all. They use so-called flex foil which
is then pressed onto the T-Shirts. This
technique has a variety of pros, includ-
ing durability, more lively colors and
the possibility to allow the end-user to
choose the colors of the design to his
liking (a BIG advantage). The cons un-
fortunately include the annoying lim-
itation to 3 colors (no gradients) and
rather simple designs. In other words:
The kind of stuff you see on Threadless
simply isn’t possible.
So after putting up a couple more
designs and waiting for a few days, it
didn’t take long until I made my next
sale. Every couple of days I would
make another sale. And with every
sale of a particular design, that design
would move up in the rankings of the
Spreadshirt marketplace. That in turn
would increase the design’s visibility,
which obviously increased the chanc-
es of making another sale. So clearly
there was a positive spiral effect. This
wasn’t the case for all the designs I up-
loaded, but for a few very popular ones
it worked.
Slowly but surely my daily mails from
10
Spreadshirt were coming in more
frequently and while I wasn’t getting
particularly rich, it was money which
I didn’t have before. I wasn’t going to
complain. Particularly since I was hav-
ing loads of fun doing it.
Finding the optimal price
After several weeks of sales, I was
slowly reaching the point where I was
making at least 1 sale a day. At the
time I was charging anywhere between
€1.50 and €3.00, largely depending
on the complexity of the design and
how many colors it had. Needless to
say that with roundabout 30 sales per
month and an average design price of
€2.50, it wasn’t going to pay the rent.
There was a lot of discussion going on
amongst all the different partners in
Spreadshirt’s forum and pricing was a
hot topic. Essentially, many of the new-
comers usually didn’t have a clue what
sort of price they should be charging.
Most of the time they were so fixated
on making ANY kind of sale, they were
willing to set their design price to very
low levels. And at that time my own
behaviour wasn’t particularly different
either.
But many of the more experienced
partners were making a fair point. By
setting a price that was too low, many
of the designers may have been boost-
ing their sales numbers, but they were
also destroying a lot of profitability in
the market. With their low prices they
were forcing other designers to follow
suit (at least partially). Obviously from
a consumer point of view it’s a good
thing and after all, that’s what compe-
tition is all about. However, they were
setting their prices much lower than
they needed too. They were giving
away profitability simply because they
didn’t know any better.
Classic microeconomics teaches you
that at any given price you will achieve
a particular number of sales. If you in-
crease the price, the number of sales
is more than likely to go down because
less people will be willing to pay the
higher price. Equally, if you lower your
price, a larger number of people are
likely to buy. If you plot all potential
combinations on a graph, you will get
a curve which looks a bit like the one
below.
11
So what is revenue? Revenue is simply
the result of a multiplication of num-
ber of sales times unit price (# of sales
x unit price). If you look at the graph
above and do that calculation for all
potential combinations, you would see
that there is always an optimal price.
The optimal price is where you make
enough sales in order to achieve the
highest overall revenue.
Unfortunately most designers didn’t
understand that, but a handful of very
successful ones did and the quality of
their designs was very high. Therefore
they were able to maintain a certain
price level without sacrificing reve-
nue. I eventually opted for a flat fee of
€4.00 per design, irrespective of the
number of colors or the complexity of
the design. It allowed me to simplify
my design management, it was high
enough to generate a good profit and
at the same time it generated enough
sales to maintain a good position in the
The objective is to
maximize your reve-
nues by finding the
right balance be-
tween quantity and
price.
marketplace rankings.
Is it scalable?
As I continued to create new designs
of varying complexity and style, I no-
ticed that while certain types of de-
signs clearly sold better than others,
the general trend of sales was going
up. I wanted to get to the bottom of
this and see if I could identify any par-
ticular correlation. It was important for
me to do this analysis because it would
help me decide whether this whole
“Spreadshirt thing” was just a little
hobby on the side or whether there it
was worth putting more effort into it.
More effort obviously also meant in-
vesting more of my spare time, which
had recently become a little more
scarce since in the meantime I had
successfully landed two job offers at a
multinational corporations.
perfect correlation, the more designs
I published, the higher my sales were.
I had just moved to a new city, start-
ed a new job and aside from my col-
leagues I didn’t really know many peo-
ple. So instead of roaming the streets
and bars, I decided to invest my free
time into creating loads of the new de-
signs which would hopefully sell well.
Not all of them turned into bestsellers.
Quite the contrary, but even if I only
1 out of 10 sold really well, the oth-
ers would still generate the occasion-
al sale, so that the income which I was
making from Spreadshirt was actually
quite respectable. And the beauty of it
all: All my work was going entirely to-
wards growth.

So I started tracking my weekly sales

as well as the number of designs I had
published on the marketplace at that
particular point in time. And after a few
weeks of tracking numbers and doing
some more in-depth analysis, it quick-
ly became clear that what had initially
started as a pastime/hobby, actually
had the potential to become a seri-
ous source of genuine passive income.
I had confirmed the question around
scalability and even though it wasn’t a

12
NOT A MATTER OF TASTE
The Difference Between Good Design
& Customer Needs
There is a common misconception
that the most creative, artistic or clev-
er designs are also the most success-
ful ones. And while I agree that a well
designed T-Shirt will generally receive
more recognition and attention than
a 5-minute scribble, it doesn’t neces-
sarily mean that it will sell well. If there
is one thing I have learned throughout
the years selling designs on Spread-
shirt, it’s that small-time T-Shirt artists
take themselves WAY too seriously
and tend to completely ignore WHO
their target audience is and WHAT it is
they are looking for.
Let me explain the classic approach
of the wannabe T-Shirt designer on
Spreadshirt (I’m allowed to say that
because I used to be one of them). So
after setting up a Spreadshirt shop in
10 minutes, the wannabe designer will
start thinking about what sort of clever
14
3
or super-artsy T-Shirt he wants to de-
sign next. The reason he puts so much
thought into this is because he is actu-
ally projecting his own idealistic vision
of a “cool designer guy” onto himself.
He doesn’t want to be a commercial-
ly driven person, because that’s simply
not cool. But unfortunately he’s sim-
ply not as original as he thought he
was and starts roaming the net for in-
spiration, waiting for that moment of
enlightenment. And when moment fi-
nally comes, he has the perfect image
in his head. He has a very clear idea
of what he wants to create. Unfortu-
nately, in most cases the actual design
doesn’t live up to the expectations of
the mental image. And even if it did, it
wouldn’t really matter. Why? Because
contrary to what many guys think, the
world has NOT been waiting that last 5
years just to see his designs. He has a
simple online shop, which no one even
knows about and his designs are actu-
ally too sophisticated for the average
consumer. The result: 0 sales.
I know it sounds harsh, but let’s be
honest. Much like in any artistic pro-
fession, unless you are REALLY RE-
ALLY good and/or have some good
publicity helping you along the way,
it’s not going to work out. And besides
all that, it simply doesn’t appeal to the
audience you are targeting via Spread-
shirt. Think about it, why is Spreadshirt
so popular amongst private consum-
ers? It’s definitely not because they
have such a big selection of designs.
You can get that just about anywhere
nowadays. It boils down to the fact
that Spreadshirt allows you to design
your own T-Shirt. More than 80%
of my sales on Spreadshirt happened
though their online T-Shirt designer
on their website. The rest came from
on-site sales of pre-designed T-Shirts
(ready to buy) and partner shops who
were showcasing/using my designs.
But the absolute majority came via the
online designer. And you know what?
I actually got to see some of the stuff
consumers design on their own and
trust me, it ain’t pretty. Some of the
T-Shirts or Hoodies were plastered
with designs to the point, where the fi-
nal price of the product had more than
doubled versus blank piece of apparel.
15
But there is a good reason for this. On
a platform such as Spreadshirt, the
consumer is looking to create some-
thing of his own. He has an idea in his
head and only needs the right tools
and designs to create it. And because
it’s a custom creation, the consumer is
actually willing to pay a fairly high price
for the product. The most successful
designs on Spreadshirt are fall into two
broad categories:
• Simple Clip Art
• Funny/Witty Designs
After what I’ve just explained the clip
art probably makes sense to most of
you. The more general the design, the
higher the chances of being able to
mix and match it with other designs
or adapt it to a certain context with an
appropriate text. It simply makes the
design more customizable for the cus-
tomer.
There are two reasons why funny or
witty designs are so successful. The
obvious one is because things which
make people smile, laugh or chuckle
attract far more attention than oth-
ers. Just think about all the funny pic-
tures which you’ve shared with your
friends and colleagues at the office.
People get a kick out of it and there-
fore might even think about wearing it
on a T-Shirt. The other reason is very
much linked to a similar principle. Ba-
sically, A LOT of the purchases done
on Spreadshirt are meant as birthday
presents, bachelor party shirts, team
shirts and the list goes on. It’s those
particular events which lead to some
of the biggest and yet more useless
purchases there are. A shear unbeliev-
able amount of T-Shirts are bought for
one-time purposes. And people will
continue to celebrate birthdays, get
married or organize some other kind of
event.

So when you start thinking about what

type of designs to create, you really
need to think less about what you think
looks good or what you would LIKE to
sell. If you’re here to make money, you
need to think about what your target
audience’s needs are and then craft
your products (in this case designs)
around those needs.

16
THE MULTITASKER
Automating Repetitive Processes
4
I was actually starting to become pretty Tracking Sales
good at this. I was happily creating my
When you’re just starting out it’s not
designs and actually began to generate
exactly the first thing you think of be-
some serious income. At the time my
cause to be utterly honest, you could
monthly earnings before expenses and
track your monthly sales with your
tax must have been around €1,000
ten fingers. But once you start selling
(or about $1,300) per month. Not bad
more and more designs, proper re-
at all for someone who had just started
porting does become somewhat of an
his first job and suddenly boosted that
asset. It gives you an objective way of
monthly income by easily 30%. I used
determining whether you are achiev-
to refer to it as my own personal bo-
ing the growth you had hoped for and
nus. But despite all the success I was
also helps you put event-driven highs
having, I also realized that while I was
or lows in sales into the proper per-
having a lot of fun creating all my de-
spective. Seasonality is a recurring
signs, the publishing part was more an
theme in any retail-driven business
annoyance than anything else because
and thus it becomes important (for the
it was a bit complicated, required lots
sake of your own sanity) to understand
of useless clicks and was extremely re-
why sales are up or down in a particular
petitive. It was eating away at my per-
month and whether what you are see-
sonal time but also restricted me in the
ing is within the range of “normality” or
amount of time I could invest in cre-
perhaps a bigger problem.
ating new designs. So I decided, there
must be a way to simplify things!

17
As I explained earlier in this report,
Spreadshirt actually publishes daily
sales reports every day with a sum-
mary of all the sales which were pro-
cessed and shipped the day earlier.
They also provide you with an overview
in the administration area of your ac-
count, but it really doesn’t give you the
sort information you need and unfor-
tunately you can’t use it properly for
your own analysis. Manually extracting
all the important information from the
sales E-Mail is obviously an inhumane
task and therefore it became clear to
me that I need to find some sort of an
automated solution.
Luckily I was a bit of a computer nerd
growing up and I taught myself a cou-
ple of coding languages, including PHP
for web development purposes. Using
those pre-existing skills and reading
up on a few more things regarding ac-
cessing mail servers ultimately helped
me write a script, which automated
the majority of the work associated
with extracting sales information from
those E-Mails. It wasn’t fully automat-
ed, but all you had to do was load the
particular URL and the PHP script
would do the following things:
1. Access my mail server
2. Find any outstanding sales re-
ports from Spreadshirt
3. Parse through the content of
18
the E-Mail
4. Extract the information re-
garding each sale
5. Inject it into a MySQL database
6. And finally move the process
E-Mail to a predefined sub-
folder for archiving
Having this script made my daily life
so much easier because I wasn’t wast-
ing time manually extracting all of the
above. I had to invest quite a bit of time
up front in order to get it working, but
the time investment paid off tenfold.
And I actually still use that very same
script today.
Reporting
With all the relevant sales data saved
in a MySQL database, it was extremely
easy for me to create almost any type
of report I could think of. And that
is really what proper reporting is all
about. Because as you grow your sales,
you will ultimately reach the point
where you wanted to see how well you
are doing versus a particular target you
may have set yourself. Using all of the
information you have and turning it
into meaningful reports will allow you
to create sales projections and thus
give you an idea of the total sales you
can come to expect towards the end
of the week/month/year. Using some
simple ratios, you can also calculate
the estimated conversion rate of your
designs. In other words, if you’ve dou-
bled your number of designs, are you
also achieving twice as many sales?
Those are the sort of things you need
to think about. Here are some of the
KPIs which still track today.
• # of Sales
• Revenues
• Revenues after VAT
• Gross Income
• Performance vs. Last Week,
Last Month
• Estimated Profit after Income
Tax (Monthly)
Automating Desktop Interaction Us-
ing Macros
Using scripts to automate certain el-
ements of data processing and cal-
culations is one of ways of eliminating
some of the unnecessary manual work
that needs to be done. But script-
ing only gets you up to a certain point
and doesn’t help you when particular
processes absolutely require human
input or at least some form of “point
and click” interaction with the browser.
But luckily there is a solution to this.
As long as the process is repetitive and
doesn’t require any dynamic input, a
lot of that browser interaction can ac-
tually be done by what we call Macros.
In simple terms, Macros are a record-
ing a particular sequence of actions
19
on the computer and once you’ve re-
corded or created a macro, you can
execute it as many time as you would
like to. The computer will then play the
macro all by itself, clicking all the right
locations and inputting the same infor-
mation over and over again, as if a real
human being was sitting in front of his
computer and doing it all by himself.
By now you should be getting a good
idea of why automation with macro is
such a powerful and valuable tool. It
allows you to multiply your produc-
tivity by as many computers as you
have available and you could even let
the computer do all the work while you
enjoy a nice cocktail on the side ;-)
There are numerous desktop auto-
mation tools available, but only a few
actually provide the necessary func-
tionality paired with an intuitive user
interface. Both are important, because
when you’re trying to emulate real life
movements, it’s important to get into
the nitty gritty details. But at the same
time, if it’s too complicated to use the
tool, you will ultimately end up wasting
too much time trying to get the damn
thing to work properly. Depending on
what sort of system you are working
on, I can recommend the following
two applications:
KEYBOARD MAESTRO
AUTOMATE 9
I own a Mac and therefore Keyboard
Maestro is my weapon of choice and all
the macro’s I’ve created and describe
on the following pages have been done
with Keyboard Maestro. As you’ll see
on the screenshots, it looks like a fairly
simple tool. But don’t be fooled, it’s in-
credibly powerful!
Uploading & Activating New Designs
I’m pretty sure no one would ever think
that uploading a bunch of designs to a
website would take particularly long.
And while in essence that is true,
Spreadshirt unfortunately never made
it very easy either. Especially not if you
20
were planning to upload more than
1 or 2 designs. Given the fact that in
order to reach the sort of sales that I
generate, you have to upload a lot of
designs, it quickly becomes quite clear
why this process has to run as quickly
and smoothly as possible.
While Spreadshirt’s website has gone
through many design changes, it’s
HTML structure and the way the site
works never really changed. The foun-
dation on which it was built still remains
the same. So believe it or not, you still
have to upload every single design in-
dividually, because the website only
gives you a single browse element in
the upload form. Therefore, you are
forced to upload them one at a time. A
process which doesn’t necessarily take
very long, but it’s annoying nonethe-
less.
This is one of the things, which both-
ered me early on and it was also one of
the first things I tried to “fix” for my-
self. Some people would call it “hack-
ing”. I would probably describe it more
as a form of “reverse engineering”. But
before I could do that, I first had to un-
derstand how the website worked. So
I had a look at the source code of the
upload page and identified the sec-
tions of the HTML code which were
relevant to uploading designs (essen-
tially just the upload form). I then took
that section of the source code, cop-
ied and pasted it into a separate text
file and saved it as an HTML file on my
desktop. I then went into that HTML
file and edited the source a bit. There
wasn’t much to change. I simply edited
the “action=” attribute, to include the
full URL of Spreadshirt’s website. This
was necessary because otherwise the
form would have completed the ad-
dress with the local directory in which
the HTML was located. I then opened
that HTML in a browser, selected a file
and pressed the submit form. And lo
and behold, it uploaded the file and I
arrived the same confirmation page,
as if I had done it all from Spreadshirt’s
website. Obviously, for this to work,
I already needed to be logged in with
a session. Otherwise it wouldn’t have
known who was uploading. But what’s
much more important is the fact that
it proved that I could modify some of
admin area to make things easier more
me.
I was essentially mimicking the real up-
load pages, but at the same time I was
making them much more flexible and
quicker to use than the original. So in-
stead of having only one upload form
on the page, I created a condensed,
yet bare skeleton of an upload page
with 24 forms. And in order to avoid
the browser from actually navigating
away every time, I create “iframes”
21
which would serve as “window” for
each upload form. By doing this I was
literally able to upload up to 24 designs
at a time without ever leaving the page.
It cut the time required to upload 24
designs by half. So if it used to take 15
minutes, I was now doing it within 7 or
less.
But I took the whole process even fur-
ther:
• All my filenames had a particu-
lar code at the back, which would
indicate the number of colors in
the design (which you needed
to indicate in the upload form).
With the help of Javascript I au-
tomated that process. Every time
I selected a file, the radio buttons
would automatically detect the
code and set the right number of
colors.
• I used Keyboard Maestro to cre-
ate a macro which automatically
executed the whole process. And
in order to save me the time re-
quired to select and choose every
single file by hand, I created an
additional PHP script which
worked in perfect synergy with
my macro.
• The PHP script would scour a
particular folder on my server
(where I had deposited the 24
 new designs to upload). It would where it worked flawlessly. However,
then generate a ZIP file, which it also helped me save countless hours
would be downloaded via the of work which were now being done by
browser. Once downloaded, the my computer. The above process lit-
above mentioned macro would erally reduced my manual work to the
unpack the ZIP into a particular following steps:
folder on my drive and begin the
upload process. Going through all 1. Pick up to 24 designs to upload
24 forms, each time it would pick
2. Upload them to my webserver
a different file from the folder
using an FTP application
and upload it.
3. Start the macro
• Once everything was done, an-
other PHP script would be ex-
That’s it. But that was only the begin-
ecuted which did some cleanup
ning. Just wait until I show you how I
work on the server and the macro
literally started creating products in
would do the same.
my sleep! :)
• A final PHP script would be load-
ed, which made sure the designs Creating Products for Each New De-
had the correct names. When sign
they are uploaded, Spreadshirt
After selling hundreds of designs on
automatically assigns the file-
Spreadshirt it eventually dawned on
name, which isn’t always the most
me that of the keys to making a lot
readable or pretty to look at. The
of sales wasn’t just providing the cus-
script would essentially mimic the
tomers with designs which I they
design list in the admin area, fix
could easily adapt or combine in or-
all the names and even set the
der to achieve the particular T-Shirt
standard price which I prefer to
they wanted. Most of the time, it re-
use. It also injects all the designs
ally boiled down to visibility. You could
IDs into a database for later (you
notice it with some of the bestsellers
will find out why in the section
which I had. They tended to perpet-
about publishing designs).
uate themselves. More sales meant
higher rankings, which lead to higher
Granted, it all sounds a bit tricky and
visibility and ultimately more sales as
I will admit that it took quite a bit of
well. It was a positive spiral. You could
work to get it working to the point

22
argue that since nearly 80% of my
sales came from the online designer,
creating products didn’t make a lot of
sense. But it did, because very often
people would browse through all the
ready-made T-Shirts and when they
finally found a design they like, they
would either buy it directly or modify
it a bit. If a ready-made product was
modified, it would eventually be re-
ported as a designer sales. So it other
words, creating products was an abso-
lute necessity in creating visibility for
yourself. Also, a lot of designers didn’t
realise that most of the products were
created in the most general and pop-
ular categories. It was difficult to rank
well there. But only very few designers
created products for niche categories.
It was actually quite easy to get ranked
well there because there was so little
competition. At some point in some
categories, all of the products on dis-
play came from a handful of designers
and I sometimes actually had a good
25-30% of the first page. That was
awesome visibility and it really helped
my sales.
But unfortunately, creating all those
products was the most horrendous-
ly boring and time-consuming pro-
cess. Particularly if you put effort into
choosing the right shirt color, design
color and all that jazz. But you know
what? All that effort is actually of lit-
23
tle value and the time definitely better
spent elsewhere, if only it weren’t such
a necessity. So at some point I won-
dered if it was possible to automate the
process via a macro. The short answer
is: Of course it’s possible. The long an-
swer is: It’s possible, but if you want it
to be fully automated to the point that
you can let it run overnight without
requiring any further input, it’s require
some serious development work first.
So I gave it a try.
I eventually created somewhat of a
mammoth of a macro. To be more
precise, it’s actually not one macro.
It’s a whole collection of macros. Each
one represents a particular element in
the entire process. In other words, I
tried creating a modular system which
would limit the number of macros I
had to create and at the same time re-
main flexible enough for me to make it
dynamic. Roughly 80% of the process
is the same for each iteration of the
process, but the other 20% need to be
dynamic because the particular design
which needs to be selected obviously
isn’t always at the same location in the
designer. The online designer essen-
tially shows you 25 designs at a time
and each time the macro would have
to switch to the next one.
Once again I achieved this through a
combination of things:

• An overall macro would govern
the entire process from start to
finish, clicking where and when it
needed to but also loading addi-
tional PHP scripts in the browser
whenever necessary.
• The macro would first load the
browser and log into my account,
just to make sure I had an active
session on the Spreadshirt web-
site.
• A PHP script would then load the
list of designs in the admin area
and parse through the source
code to identify for which de-
signs I had already created prod-
ucts. Designs which already had
products would have a “++” in
their name. The script would fil-
ter those out and create an “Ac-
tion List” for the other designs.
This action list is essentially just a
list of the different macros which
need to be executed in that par-
ticular order. One macro per line.
This action list was saved to a text
file on the server.
• Another macro would then use
Perl script to retrieve that same
text file from the server and or-
der Keyboard Maestro to exe-
cute each and every macro in the
appropriate sequence.
24
• Once done with all the designs
and products, the macro would
load a final PHP script in the
browser, which once again mim-
ics the design list in the admin
area and adds the “++” code to all
the design names. That way next
time they will be identified as de-
signs for which products have al-
ready been created.
Now, as complicated as all that sounds,
all I really need to do in order to get it
going is this:
1. Launch the main macro which
governs it all.
2. Turn off the screen and go to
bed.
And once you’ve got it all set up, it re-
ally is THAT easy :)
Publishing it on the Marketplace
After you’ve uploaded the designs and
created all the necessary products for
better visibility, there’s only more step
to go. And that is the publication of it
all on the marketplace. This is a crucial
step, because otherwise all your work
will remain hidden for eternity in the
depths of your Spreadshirt account.
Publishing is also one of the most
tricky parts because not only do you
need to make sure you give your work
suitable keywords which will help cus-
tomers find them. You also need to pay
close attention which platform you are
publishing to. You see, Spreadshirt was
founded in Germany and expanded
very quickly within Europe. Europe is
strange market because although most
consumers can read/write/speak Eng-
lish, most of them still prefer to surf
on websites in their mother tongue.
That is a fact. So if your website in only
available in English, you are effectively
losing out on a lot of business because
there are other alternatives out there
which are multilingual.
Spreadshirt knew this and tried to ad-
dress this problem early on. Unfortu-
nately, for some reason which remains
unknown to us, Spreadshirt thought it
would be a good idea to create about
11 different marketplaces which each
served a different language and which
were completely separate from each
other. We can only assume this was
meant to avoid linguistic confusion
when it came to the names, descrip-
tions and keywords for the designs. So if
you created your account on the Ger-
man Spreadshirt website, you could
only publish your designs and products
on that particular marketplace and no-
where else. If you wanted to do that,
you had to create a new account. Or
at least that was the official statement
25
from Spreadshirt. The unofficial reality
is that the platform has a known bug.
You see, all European platforms share
the same user database. So if I wanted
to, I could log into my account on each
of the different websites. All my designs
and products are linked to that user
account and thus I can also see them if
I decided to log into my account from
the Swedish site. The marketplaces,
however, are completely separate. So
even though I may have entered key-
words, description and published a de-
sign on the Swedish site, I can actual-
ly log into the Danish site as well and
the design will not be published and all
those fields will be blank again. If I now
go through the same process again, it
will actually publish that design on the
Danish marketplace as well. Now, the
tricky part is knowing in which order
you have to publish a design. In my
particular case, I own a German user
account, which also happens to be
the home of Spreadshirt and as far as
I can tell, is also the primary home in
terms of IT infrastructure and code.
So what I noticed was that you could
publish your designs on as many Euro-
pean platforms as you like as long as it
wasn’t the German one. Because once
you published something there, it was
impossible to publish it anywhere else.
So as long as you made sure you kept
Germany until end, you were fine. So,
in other words, if you’re clever enough,
you could publish your designs on a
whole array of other marketplaces with
fairly little added effort and thus reach
thousands of new potential customers.
But simply publishing the designs
wasn’t enough. You also had to make
sure your designs were found by giving
them meaningful and fitting keywords.
Unfortunately the problem with asking
users to put in their own keywords, is
their inability to understand the im-
portance of using “relevant” keywords.
One of the most common keywords
you’ll find on Spreadshirt is “love”.
You’ll find love attached to so many
designs, it’s not even funny anymore.
“Love” will be used for trees, kids,
blood, ghosts, naked women, apple,
cars and guess what, for hearts. People
do that because they think that “love”
is a keyword a lot of people search for
and they are hoping it will increase their
sales as well. However, the problem is
that if someone searches for “love”,
chances are slim that person is looking
for the design of a monkey. In other
words, using irrelevant keywords may
increase visibility, but conversion rates
will be low. And ultimately you want
customers to convert. And that is also
why you need to make sure you localize
your keywords and descriptions when
publishing on other marketplaces. An
Italian customer who is searching for a
monkey design is unlikely to search for
26
the word “monkey” if the website he is
using is completely in Italian. So you
would be much better off using the
term “scimmia”, which means monkey
in Italian. It’s a simple process and can
be done with Google Translate.
I realize that googling all your keywords
takes a lot of time and that the whole
process actually seems like it may be
quite lengthy. Guess what, you’re right.
And that’s why I also tried to automate
this process as much as possible, once
again using a clever combination of
macros and scripts. What makes this
process a bit special though, is how I
use the Google Translate API to cre-
ate on-the-fly translations of my key-
words into multiple languages. The
translation is instantaneous and I save
loads of time.
So what are the key elements to the
process:
• Before I publish anything, I use
a special PHP script which re-
trieves the last 50 designs from
my user account on Spreadshirt.
It then extracts all the design
IDs and cross-references them
with all the designs I’ve uploaded
before and checks whether I’ve
already assigned keywords and
categories to them. If yes, it will
display them. If not, they will re-
 main blank and I have a chance to 1. I set the categories and English
update those blanks. keywords for all the new designs
(this probably the only real ef-
• A macro is then launched. It
fort you need to put it)
starts by loading a PHP script
which scours my Spreadshirt ac- 2. I then launch the publication
count for designs which haven’t macro
been published already and cre-
3. Wait for the macro to finish and
ates a link list.
then wait for Spreadshirt to ap-
• The macro then goes through prove it
that link list, clicking each one
at a time and then performing a As you can see, once the system is set
series of actions. Each link loads up. It works like a charm and reduces
a separate PHP script with an your own effort to a minimum.
HTML form with text fields for
keywords, description and cat-
egories of the design. The script
then uses the Google Translate
API to populate the fields with
the translated keywords and the
macro clicks the submit button.
But it doesn’t access the Spread-
shirt site directly. I actually loads
another PHP script which then
uses CURL to submit the above
data to each and every national
marketplace in one go.

• Once the macro is finished click-

ing through all the links, the us-
er-side publication process is
done.

And once again, there wasn’t too much

manual effort in all of this:

27
ONE MAN ARMY
Outsourcing Creative Processes
Things were going well for me and my
newly found ”muse”. My earnings were
going consistently upwards as I contin-
ued to create more and more designs
for many different target groups and
niches. I had also successfully eliminat-
ed one of the major time consumers in
that whole process by using macros and
PHP scripts to simplify and automate
a lot of the work which had previously
been done by myself manually. How-
ever, I was still investing a lot of time in
the creation of new designs and while
I thoroughly enjoy designing things, it
also largely depends on what I am de-
signing. Remember how I explained to
you earlier in this report that custom-
ers don’t necessarily buy the shirt with
the highest creative value? Well, that
turns out to be a major problem for
someone who prefers to design some-
thing aesthetic but also wants to earn
money. I ended spending a lot of time
28
5
on designs, which didn’t meet my per-
sonal taste. Don’t get me wrong. They
were designed well, but they weren’t
something I would have bought myself.
And that took some of the enjoyment
away for me. It felt more and more like
a chore and that bothered me. There-
fore, I decided it was time to start out-
sourcing some of the “creative” work.
But how?
Outsourcing Online 101
I think it’s safe to assume that near-
ly everyone is familiar with the basic
concept of outsourcing. In the end
all it boils down to is shifting pieces of
work or entire processes to an external
service provider who can fulfill the task
in a much more efficient way and pos-
sibly also provide higher quality results
than oneself could. And the same way
thousands of companies outsource
some of their work, so can you. How-
ever, many people are afraid of spend-
ing a lot of money for external help
because they think it reduces their
profits. And although that is true in the
short term, they often neglect the fact
that you can also grow your business
much quicker if you have support from
others. It’s that particular leverage that
most people who run a side business
tend to lack.
So where do you find freelancers who
are willing to take some of the workload
from you? Obviously you can check
your local classifieds or scour some of
the relevant trade magazines for ad-
verts. But why waste your time with
that when the Internet can offer you
so much more? The internet is full of
freelancers from all around the world
and the great thing about that is not
only the fact that you have thousands
of potential partners to choose from, a
lot of them also come from countries
with lower income levels which allows
them to provide far more competitive
rates. For example, some of the de-
signers I’ve hired work for as little as
$10 an hour and do excellent work.
The main website I use is oDesk, which
actually recently merged with eLance.
The great thing about oDesk is that
you can easily search and filter all the
designers in the world depending on
29
level of their technical skills and even
their proficiency in English. I know, it
sounds strange. But trust me, you’ll
want to work with someone who speaks
good English or any other language
you prefer because unless they fully
understand you or can at least artic-
ulate that they don’t understand your
instructions, you’re in for some waste
of time and money.
Finding the Right Designer
Unfortunately, despite all the search
and filter functionalities of the oDesk’s
website, finding the right designer for
you is actually not as easy as it sounds.
We all have different levels of expecta-
tion and not every designer is automat-
ically a jack of all trades. In fact, quite a
few of a cheaper guys (and surprisingly
enough also some of the more expen-
sive ones) actually don’t have a lot of
skill at all. In many cases, I could easily
do better work. That being said, there
are also hundreds of excellent design-
ers out there who are also very talent-
ed and don’t necessarily cost a fortune.
I managed to find some as well afterall.
Before you start searching for a de-
signer, I suggest you spend some time
thinking about what it is you want to
achieve and what your budget is. Once
you’ve done that, go to the relevant
category or sub-category and put in
your search term. You are bound to get
thousands of results and not necessar-
ily always what you expected. A lot of
the designers fill out their headline with
dozens of popular keywords, because
it increases their visibility on oDesk.
Unfortunately they sometimes also
list services or skills, which aren’t their
speciality. Therefore, you will have to
apply filters as well and they are quite
possibly your most useful tool for re-
ducing the amount of relevant results.
So makes sure you add some filters for
skills. If you’re looking for an Illustrator,
make sure the designer received high
marks on their Adobe Illustrator test.
Also don’t forget to add language skills
and the designers overall rating from
customers. All these factors play a role.
And eventually you will also need to set
some kind of upper limit on the hour-
ly rate. That last one usually ends up
eclipsing all European or North Amer-
ican designers, because they’re simply
too expensive for some. But don’t fret,
the two guys I currently work with are
from the Philippines have always deliv-
ered excellent quality.
Once you’ve selected 3-4 potential
candidates, the next thing you need
to do is create a job posting. Since
you don’t know which one you should
choose, you’re going to have to try
them all. And in order to do that, you
need to give each and every one of
30
them a small job. Depending on how
well each one of them fares, you can
afterwards choose to continue to work
with the best one. Make sure your job
posting description is as explicit as pos-
sible and clearly states deliverables and
timelines. This is particularly impor-
tant because sometimes everything
may seem obvious to you or you may
expect the designer to deliver a draft
within 2 days. But unless you explicit-
ly state that, how is the designer sup-
posed to know? Some information also
gets lost in translation. Or in some cul-
tures, when the designer encounters
a problem, he would rather sit quietly
and not do anything than just ask for
your for help. Losing face can be a big
issue in Asia.
But once you’ve done your tests and
found the right partner for you, they
can easily become one of your biggest
assets in growing your business.
Growth by Proxy
Finding a capable designer to whom
I could outsource a significant por-
tion of my workload was not only tre-
mendously liberating with regard to
my personal free time. It also allowed
me to continue driving grow in sales
beyond what I would have been able
to achieve by myself. In retrospect,
I invested quite a bit of money into
outsourcing. Actually, it was a lot of Your income obviously isn’t passive if
money and some of you would prob- you’re spending 9 hours a day working
ably think I was crazy. But if I told you for it. Remember to create peace of
that I never would have achieved the mind for yourself. You want to be in-
$100,000 mark without external help dependent. You want to have enough
and that all the investments eventually free time to pursue the things you like
paid for themselves once the growth doing most. And if that means working
kicked in, then you’d begin to under- on some other project which will even-
stand to power of outsourcing. And tually turn into another passive income
believe it or not, the math was actu- source, then that’s even better!
ally fairly simple. On average the work
by my Philippine supporters cost me
about $10 per new design. So if only
every design sold itself at least 3 times,
the cost of creating it would already be
covered. Obviously not all designs sell,
let alone sell well. However, my ratio of
successful designs was fairly good and
if they sold a few times, they would sell
a lot more in the long term and eventu-
ally help contribute to covering all the
costs and eventually deliver pure prof-
it. Also bear in mind that every dollar
you spend obviously also reduces your
taxable income. So let’s assume your
marginal tax rate was 40%. For every
dollar you spend you’re reducing your
taxable income by that same amount
and thus the final amount of taxes that
you’ll pay. In other words, every dollar
spent actually only costs you 60 cents.

I cannot emphasize enough how im-

portant it is to create an element of
scalability and independence when
building a passive income business.

31
EXPAND & CONQUER
Entering New Channels & Markets
I don’t want to spend too much time
on this topic because I cover it in a few
other articles on The T-Shirt Academy
and actually provide a separate course
on it. However, I would like to say a few
things about it nonetheless, because
many people tend to focus too much
on one particular source of passive in-
come. In my mind there are two main
reasons why you should look to ex-
pand and diversify your passive income
T-Shirt business as quickly as possible:
1. First-Mover advantages pay off
big time (particularly in the be-
ginning but also in the long run)
2. Hedging your bets by play-
ing multiple fields can increase
overall earnings and will defi-
nitely reduce your exposure to
risk
32
6
I consider myself one of the early
movers and benefitted from fairly lim-
ited competition and the fact that not
everyone was doing their homework
properly. However, unfortunately I
only understood fairly late in the game,
that I should have started entering new
markets and channels much earlier.
For example, Spreadshirt has a sepa-
rate website and marketplace for the
US. Although I did give it a try in the
early days, I was frustrated by the fact
that US customers had a very differ-
ent taste in style and were much more
price sensitive than European custom-
ers. I wasn’t having as much success
as I would have liked and therefore I
thought it wasn’t worthwhile. Luckily
I gave it another try a year later and
today I can proudly say that the US
marketplace delivers a fair share of my
overall earnings.
And the same can be said about oth-
er websites or platforms. There are so
many different places where custom-
ers buy custom made T-Shirts online.
And it’s highly unlikely that all con-
sumers surf around all the same web-
sites. Therefore you should consider
every other website which let’s you sell
your designs as a completely new mar-
ket with lots of potential. All you need
to do is evaluate on your own how big
that potential really is and then decide
whether it’s worth your while or not.

33
ADAPT OR DIE
Market Dynamics & Competition
Before we move on to the final sec-
tion of this report, which will provide
you with a fairly good idea of the sort
of money which can potentially be
made via this type of passive income,
let me share a few important thoughts
with you. Once you get into this sort
of thing and you start seeing results,
please remember that very few things
are forever and while you may be a in
a good position now, that doesn’t me
you won’t be overtaken at a later stage.
It’s happened to some of the most
successful companies on the planet.
Take a look at Blackberry, Microsoft
and who knows, maybe it’ll happen to
Apple as well. My point is: No one is
safe and don’t confuse a “good thing”
with a “sure thing”.
Market dynamics change and new
competition is always around the cor-
ner. Particularly when you make a fair
share of your money off a website
34
7
which isn’t even yours. The slightest
change to a website’s design, setup or
maybe even the whole monetization
strategy can ultimately have dramat-
ic effects on your own earnings. I’ve
seen it happen and I’ve felt the pain
myself as well. That is why I cannot
stress enough the importance of stay-
ing on the ball. Passive income is great
and by all means, enjoy the freedom
which a great and reliable passive in-
come source can provide. But do not
mistake short or even medium term
success with sustainable, long term fi-
nancial security. You need to learn to
adapt and detect the warning signals
which tell you that you need to change
something. Market dynamics are ruth-
less and will not spare you while others
are racing for the top.
“Adapt or die.”
-Pieter Willem Botha
(Former Executive President of South Africa)
SHOW ME THE MONEY!
Full Financial Release 2010-2013
8
Below you can see how my revenues evolved after I started recording them. The numbers would
fluctuate up and down between months but the overall trend was clearly positive and the numbers
great steadily over time.

MONTHLY REVENUES FROM SPREADSHIRT*

2010 2011 2012 2013
January $2,212 $4,373 $18,899 $18,917
February $4,192 $8,230 $9,061 $7,074
March $3,830 $3,116 $8,623 $7,983
April $1,916 $6,034 $10,635 $7,541
May $4,036 $6,973 $11,407 $7,723
June $5,886 $9,895 $10,967 $7,796
July $5,137 $8,901 $13,103 $12,493
August $5,100 $10,579 $11,322 $9,203
September $5,157 $8,243 $9,249 $6,631
November $6,160 $12,839 $9,298 $7,276
December $10,569 $8,778 $9,537 $12,557
TOTALS $58,247 $96,346 $131,106 $111,995
* includes European and US marketplaces; European sales converted from EUR to USD at average rate of 1.3

What you’ll also notice, is the dip in sales on the European market which was due to increased com-
petition as well as major changes to Spreadshirt’s platform. However, my US revenues grew strongly.

ANNUAL REVENUES BY MARKETPLACE

2010 2011 2012 2013
Europe $57,827 $94,455 $125,878 $103,317
USA $375 $1,891 $5,228 $8,677
TOTALS $58,247 $96,346 $131,106 $111,995

35
SAMPLE PAY-OUT CONFIRMATION

36
WHAT TO DO NEXT
So you successfully managed to plow through the entire eBook. Congratulations!
I can assure you that merely the fact that you’ve gotten to this point without skip-
ping the entire contents already proves that you have one essential ingredient to
success: Resilience! So many people fail in the very early stages and most of the
others fail somewhere around halfway through any difficult task. Kudos to you.

But you’ve gotten to this point and you might be wondering what to do next. And
that is a valid questions because the challenge sometimes feels quite daunting.
But you’ve got to start somewhere and thinking about it too much will only defer
action.

So here is my suggestion:
After reading this eBook you should have gotten a feeling for whether or not this
is something you would like to pursue. Perhaps you would like to strive for even
bigger goals and that is great. But ask yourself whether in the short term that
goal is realistic. If you come to the conclusion, that it might be a bit early for your
grand vision, then perhaps it’s a good idea to start off small. But at least you’re
starting somewhere. So head on over to Spreadshirt and create an account of
your own. Start designing, start publishing and then start selling! And make sure
you check out The T-Shirt Academy regularly, so that you don’t miss out on any
updates while I guide you through this journey.

A another thing. Once you start seeing those first results or perhaps even a larger
stream of sales, please let me know about. Write to me about your success story
or anything else that you’re particularly proud of and I promise I will have a look
at your story. I can’t promise I will respond and I can’t promise that I’ll be able to
showcase you on the blog, but if I like your story and your attitude, I just might
put you on my special e-mail list where I share previews of my upcoming projects
with a select group :)

I’m looking forward to hearing from you!

Christian Heidorn
www.thetshirtacademy.com

37
 Get even more useful advice at
WWW.THETSHIRTACADEMY.COM