How To Make A Merch Website | Creating Website To Sell Merchandise Step-By-Step

Why People Sell Merch

The merch business or merchandising has become incredibly popular over the years. While creators and influencers are using it to connect more with their fanbase, businesses, especially print-on-demand dropshippers, use it to share their creativity and make profits off it. Besides being a reliable stream of passive income, there are several other reasons why people sell merch or decide to create a website to sell merchandise. 

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Firstly, a very interesting way to keep your customers or followers happy is to give them something useful —and what better way to do it than giving them a product with a design that identifies you? That way, you promote brand products you can sell in your store, website, or social networks. So, selling merch is a great way to push brand awareness and monetize brand affinity.  Now, let’s see how to make a merch website.

How To Make Your Website To Sell Merch

When it comes to how to make your own website to sell merch, there are two ways you can go about it. You can create an independent website from scratch or build one on an e-commerce platform and marketplace. For the former, let’s look at the steps involved. 

Get a Domain Name

Getting a domain name is the first step to making the website to sell merch, whether you’re making an independent website or hosting on an e-commerce platform. Your domain name is simply your brand name. Technically, it’s the URL that identifies your store or website. Essentially, you have to choose a web domain name that is sound and easy to remember and write.

Choose a Web Host

Web Hosting will be one of the few investments that are expended for the creation of the online store. It’s important to look for a company that ensures web speed and infrastructure, as well as security for your business and customers. There are free web hosts like WordPress and a few others, which may cost you some dollars.

Design Your Website

Once you have your domain name and chosen web host, it’s time to design the website. You can either do this yourself or hire a professional to create it. Interestingly, WordPress has drag-and-drop template builders you can use to design the website yourself and plugins like WooCommerce. Ensure the design is intuitive and responsive on mobile devices too. 

Upload The Products

This is where your merch website begins to come together. It’s very important to separate the products by categories and sections, as well as add photographs and valuable and necessary information about each product.

Set Up Payment Method

At this point, the focus is to set up payment methods that are secure, reliable, and easy to complete during a purchase. Remember, the more payment options you offer on your merch website, the more likely your potential customers will find one that suits their needs. Be transparent with the payment conditions, commissions, promotions, and everything that may arise when making a purchase.

Market And Advertise Your Business

Now you’re ready to start selling merchandise on your website. But you have to employ a lot of marketing and advertising, which may cost a little too. Depending solely on organic traffic might not give you the kind of sales you desire. Carry out a proper marketing campaign —use paid ads, hire an SEO expert for keyword targeting, etc. Get to know insights on effective marketing strategy for merchandise here.

And that’s it on how to make your own website to sell merch.

Alternative Solutions To Save You The Trouble Of Creating A Website

Alternatively, you can avoid the troubles of creating an independent website from scratch and take advantage of existing online platforms that allow you to build an online store or website. Create products with your designs—branded products—, and give free rein to your creativity. Here, we’ll share some of the most common sites to sell merchandise and their functionality.

Selling On E-commerce Platforms 

A great alternative is selling on an e-commerce platform. With this option, all you need is your domain name, as the platform serves as a “host” for your store or website. These platforms are essentially functional for any business and offer different tools that help you monetize and sell easily.

1. Shopify: Shopify is designed for those starting to work with e-commerce platforms. Its interface is easy to use and intuitive. It's relatively expensive and doesn't allow for many upgrades to what it already offers. But it makes up for it with predetermined templates, good technical support, and an automatic tax system. You can quickly get your store up and running with its free trial, and with an upgrade for a fee, you can start billing almost immediately and take advantage of all its functions. Read more on how how to start merch business on Shopify here.

2. WooCommerce: This, on the other hand, is a plugin used on an e-commerce platform to make selling easier. It has features that allow you to manage your business without problems. Thanks to them, you can add and delete products, create categories, upload images, and manage article reviews and related merchandise, with just a couple of clicks!

Remember to review each platform, its resources, subscription type, payments, customization options, the time required to create your space, the public that visits them, and the territories in which they are present, among other characteristics.

Selling On Marketplaces

A marketplace is an online market that brings together many stores of any kind. Basically, it’s used by other businesses to promote their products or services. Selling on marketplaces may seem far more comfortable since you won't have to go through all the stages involved in creating web pages with e-commerce. Examples of marketplaces include;

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1. Etsy: Along with Amazon and eBay, Etsy is one of the most popular online marketplaces. However, Etsy is different from other e-commerce marketplaces because it specializes in offering only handmade materials, and artisan, vintage, and custom products. It's a great place to showcase your talent and creativity while earning money. You can even sell digital products like recipes, printable templates, and branded souvenirs.

2. Amazon: Amazon is the leading global marketplace, so it is worth considering it among the sales channels of any company aimed at the end consumer (B2C). In particular, this online platform has an FBA (Fulfillment by Amazon) service, which saves the seller a lot of time, since Jeff Bezos' company assumes the inventory storage, including shipping, refunds, and returns.

3. eBay: Yet another great marketplace where you can easily create a website to sell merchandise. It’s easy to set up and offers endless opportunities for your merch business. Once you've established yourself as a trusted seller, you can start increasing your listings and driving sales with eBay promotions.

Artist Store

Some e-commerce platforms and white-label printing websites provide what is known as an Artist store —a designated online store for artists to monetize their creativity, selling their artworks as custom merch and other cool printables. Helloprints’ Artist Store is a perfect example of this, and it’s completely free. No subscription, no product limit.

If you’re looking to go into creating a merch brand, then you might want to consider this option.  With this provision, you can sell custom merch easily, whether you’re a graphics artist, creator or beginning print-on-demand dropshipper —you completely focus on creating designs, adding these designs to products, and selling them as merch to your audience without involving into any operational issues, cause we will process, print, pack and ship orders for you.

How To Make Sure Your Website To Sell Merchandise Is Profitable

At this point, you know everything about how to make a merch website or store. But this is business and is more than just learning how to set up a store. How do you ensure it’s profitable? How do you ensure that your website to sell merch brings in profit? Already, it’s established that selling branded merchandise is a lucrative business. So, what’s the secret to making yours profitable?

Well, this will largely depend on three key factors: quality of product, creativity, and product niche. Basically, you would want to offer quality merch products that your fans or potential customers will gladly use and show off. Then, your designs should be creatively outstanding enough to make people ‘add to cart’ or promote your brand. But most important is to set right pricing strategy: set competitive prices, calculate your profit margin and know your costs.

Create The Best Merch With Helloprint Create & Sell

Now, are you ready to create your website to sell merch? You don’t necessarily have to create an independent website from scratch. With Helloprint, you can transform your creative ideas into custom merch, print, and sell in minutes by creating your braided store on our platform with Artist Store Solution. We have an integrated technology that allows you to design, print, and ship merch products anywhere. 

Conclusion

When you unite your illustrations, designs, and creativity with entrepreneurship, the possibility arises of dedicating yourself completely to what you are passionate about. Now, you know how to make a merch website to monetize your creativity, and the various options you can utilize; the best, however, is with the print-on-demand model. You can read more about merch business on our blog.

Frequently Asked Questions

How Do I Make a Website To Sell Merchandise?

Well, you can make a website to sell merchandise by either designing an independent one from scratch like WordPress websites or hosting on existing e-commerce platforms.

Can I Make a Website To Sell Merchandise On My Own?

Yes, most definitely. With the steps listed and above, you can easily make a website to sell merchandise on your own. But the easier solution would be to start Artist Store on Create and Sell platform.

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