Teespring vs Shopify – A comparison by an internet marketer

It’s no secret many Teespringers have switched to Shopify.    There’s huge buzz atm you don’t read about on StackThatMoney when it comes to the FREE You just pay shipping and handling method everyone seems to be milking on Shopify.       How it basically goes is you pick an item from aliexpress/ebay thats 1,2,3 dollars including Free shipping, and post it on Facebook and say HEY we’re giving away 500 pieces of this item for the next 7 days!!  Get yours just pay shipping!  And shipping is like 7-10 bucks.

It sounds pretty kick ass right? I mean who wouldn’t want FREE right?   Well not so fast,  I tried this method and can tell you that it’s not all gravy.    People that wan’t free stuff are usually super cheap; so if they see they have to pay shipping they are going to report your ad and/or leave you negative comments on the ad like SCAM! or even worse -profanity filter on-

The solution is to offer products people are passionate about you can source on these chinese wholesale sites for 300% less, so you have enough room in there for marketing cost.      Sure that’s a solution but there’s more to Shopify than meets the eye, especially for an internet marketer who is used to coming up with angles, making creatives and landers, and then running traffic and collecting data.

Frankly, I am not a fan of shopify but love Teespring.  Why?  Because when we compare the two, Teespring is more like an affiliate offer where the only added variable is coming up with the t-shirt design vs Shopify where you have to do the job of 7-8 people.    I broke it down into jobs you have to do if you run shopify store, vs what you have to do if you run teespring:

Teespring
job1 – research & come up with shirt ideas
job2 – tshirt design, create facebook ad creatives
job3 – setup campaigns /  collect data

Typical Affiliate Marketing
job1 – research – pick offers and/or verticals to test
job2 – design creatives/landers – can be outsourced to people like bannerslanders.com for cheap though
job3 – setup campaigns / collect data

Shopify store 
job0 – visionary
job1 – pick products, contact suppliers
job2- add them to store, edit images
job3 – write descriptions/product titles & ad copy
job4 – place ads on FB
job5 – order fullfilment, when orders come in, put em into excel, send em to supplier, when orders are shipped, send to customer and mark the order as paid
job6 – do customer service
job7 – apply for merchant accounts, and other administrative tasks due to many moving parts

As you can see,  doing teespring is more in line with doing affiliate marketing whereas doing shopify, now that’s a whole lot of shebang on its own and I didn’t even get into the hardships that you also have to split test the themes on your store,  you need to use tons of apps which add to the functionality and can increase your conversions and many many more.

One can argue, but all those jobs can be handled by building a team.  Sure can, but that comes later after there’s revenue/profits coming in so you can reinvest it into the eCommerce store.

A while back a couple started a shop called Mobairu, after they learned it’s so easy to make money on the internet. Shopify even wrote an article about them,  they had everything looking stellar.   2 Years later, they are out of business.   There’s many others like them, it’s a fact that 98% of shopify stores fail,  LDR Brands is another one sadly. There’s just way more than meets the eye when it comes to Shopify and running a business, that’s why I am a huge fan of Teespring, and Print on Demand (POD).