Print on Demand for Website with 50k Visitors a Month and Growing

Garnigo_Tarmeister

About four years ago I bought a website domain based around one of my main interests - football. I intended to use it to make a second income via affiliate marketing and having display adverts on the website. At the time I created about 30 posts and then got sidetracked and worked on another site.

In April 2022 I decided to start working on it properly and having been posting on it regularly since then and I have jumped from 5,000 views per month in April to over 50,000 views last month.

I am pretty certain that as long as I keep posting on it regularly that in a year or so I could easily have doubled, trebled or even quadrupled that number.

The problem is I don't earn much money from the adverts on it, and only a few pages have affiliate content, most of it is just informational content around players and teams.

I've started thinking that with a decent-sized audience, that should continue to grow over the coming months, I could use Print on Demand and create some designs to be used on T-shirts, mugs, etc, etc.

Obviously I know there are legalities around trademarks or copyrighting, and I am not expecting to become rich from this, but I think it could be another income stream.

Does anyone do Print on Demand here? I am getting confused as to the best way to go about this and the best platform to use, so any advice will be welcomed! Thanks

Potbellypig

Garnigo_Tarmeister said:

About four years ago I bought a website domain based around one of my main interests - football. I intended to use it to make a second income via affiliate marketing and having display adverts on the website. At the time I created about 30 posts and then got sidetracked and worked on another site.

In April 2022 I decided to start working on it properly and having been posting on it regularly since then and I have jumped from 5,000 views per month in April to over 50,000 views last month.

I am pretty certain that as long as I keep posting on it regularly that in a year or so I could easily have doubled, trebled or even quadrupled that number.

The problem is I don't earn much money from the adverts on it, and only a few pages have affiliate content, most of it is just informational content around players and teams.

I've started thinking that with a decent-sized audience, that should continue to grow over the coming months, I could use Print on Demand and create some designs to be used on T-shirts, mugs, etc, etc.

Obviously I know there are legalities around trademarks or copyrighting, and I am not expecting to become rich from this, but I think it could be another income stream.

Does anyone do Print on Demand here? I am getting confused as to the best way to go about this and the best platform to use, so any advice will be welcomed! Thanks

You may have done enough research in the 5 days since you posted this, but as you've guessed the market is over saturated and the profit margins are really low. Copyright and trademarks are a minefield too. If you're looking at the football market then most decent size clubs will have their badges trademarked, with top clubs really protective of their brand. Anyone can create designs and send them off to print on demand sites, that's the easy bit. The hard bit is them selling.

Garnigo_Tarmeister

Thanks Polly! I guess the advantage I have is I at least have 50,000 eyes a month on my website and it is growing so I don't have anything to lose by giving it a go.

I've created a few retro designs and have put them on Zazzle (no mention of clubs, players, badges, etc - just vintage style designs with football references on them). Am just going to see how it goes and then whether it is worth me taking it any further.

georgehere

It sounds to me as if your 'commodity' is the information/opinion that you post. If that is true, then it might make more sense to further leverage that content rather than trying to start another business.

Getting more out of the content you already have is synergistic, developing a new business is not leveraging the existing set up that you have.

If you developed a complementary YouTube channel, you already have the content - and it would help scale your existing audience AND tap into a new additional audience. Then you could look to monetise .. and the monetisation strategies would be paid subscriptions (both web and YT) and affiliate marketing - links to other people's products, not making your own.

mirko

You'd probably find that you'll make more money from approaching companies directly to advertise on your site for a fixed fee.

If you can demonstrate to already existing companies in the football space (companies that make football merch for a living or on etsy or whatever) that you have access to 50k supporters a month then they may well want access to that.

Sadly the biggest money to be made in sport is via betting. They'd be interested I am sure. Whether you think that's ethical or not is the issue.

Garnigo_Tarmeister

georgehere said:

It sounds to me as if your 'commodity' is the information/opinion that you post. If that is true, then it might make more sense to further leverage that content rather than trying to start another business.

Getting more out of the content you already have is synergistic, developing a new business is not leveraging the existing set up that you have.

If you developed a complementary YouTube channel, you already have the content - and it would help scale your existing audience AND tap into a new additional audience. Then you could look to monetise .. and the monetisation strategies would be paid subscriptions (both web and YT) and affiliate marketing - links to other people's products, not making your own.

Thanks George, yes I do already have a YouTube channel, use affiliate marketing and have display adverts on the site.