Designer Goes Viral with Playful T-Shirts; Earns $445,000

Notes from Chris

Episode 424

Mike Pasley is an "Idea Man," and the only thing the professional graphic designer likes more than ideas is putting them into action. According to him, he’s always coming up with a new money-making venture. At the wide-eyed age of 12, he created his first side hustle, an eBay store to sell old items. It’s been an entrepreneurial whirlwind ever since.

From childhood eBay stores, Mike went on to pursue a degree in marketing. After graduating, he went into a full-time freelance career and has been busy ever since. After a foray into the craft beer market, he then found himself working as a digital marketer for Viralstyle, an online fulfillment company which specialized in custom apparel. This was his first step into the print-on-demand industry… and suddenly he was in uncharted territory.

ViralStyle let anyone, anywhere, upload their t-shirt design and sell it online through a crowdfunded format. Once a customer orders a design, it goes to print and is then mailed to their address. Mike had stumbled upon a very simple business model with a ton of benefits! There was no inventory for the company to maintain, very little overhead fees outside of advertising, and the best part—it could be done part-time.

Mike needed to figure out the best way to attract potential sellers to the website, so he started to learn how to design and sell t-shirts. He created his own practice store called Famous In Real Life. That way, he would understand what people needed when they visited the site and how they would use it.

It wasn’t all smooth sailing for Mike and finding his first few customers proved difficult. It took a few tries, and a $300 investment in advertising, for him to find his golden t-shirt design. But once a t-shirt went viral, traffic to his Shopify store quickly increased. Within six months, he was consistently bringing in an average of $10,000 a month. By the end of 2017, Mike had earned $445,000 in total revenue. He had virtually no start-up costs, so all the money he makes becomes additional income—or funds to invest into new side hustles.

 

---

MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE:

• Idea Nest: Check out the brands that Mike is building over on his website!
• Viralstyle: The online fulfillment company specializing in custom apparel that Mike works for
• Printify & Inkthreadable: The print on demand websites that Mike used to conduct research for his t-shirt designs
• Shopify: Mike used Shopify to set up his store for Famous In Real Life, and they're offering a 21-day trial and exclusive discount for all Side Hustle School listeners!

SEE ALSO:

• Florida Man Earns $100,000 Selling T-Shirts with No Inventory: There’s more than one way to make a lot of money designing and selling t-shirts without actually keeping them on hand. In today’s story, an app designer earns six-figures with a print-on-demand service
• Shopify Employee Sells Enough Apparel to Buy a French Bulldog: She only needs to make $3,000. But when she turns to a side hustle to fill the French Bulldog shaped hole in her life, she ends up making six-figures
• The Snuggle Is Real: Architect Moonlights by Selling Designer Onesies: An architect creates minimalist onesies and t-shirts for his own kids—then turns it into a profitable side hustle

Inspiration is good; inspiration combined with action is better. Now get back to work!

Yours in the revolution,