Selling merch on your site/forum...?

Who sells merchandise on the websites/forums?

I've created some 30+ items that I'll be selling on my forum as a means of generating revenue and supporting the community with continue enhancements/upgrades/XF licensing/etc...

I wonder how many other have done such a thing.
If you have - can you please share which scripts you used to power your store?

I've created some items partnered with Printful and am going to use Etsy as the checkout storefront, posting the items for sale in the XF Resources Manager.

An couple example products:


Everybody Say Love TransPride! pillow [front]


Everybody Say Love TransPride! pillow [back]


Trans Pride Heart towel


All the graphics I'll use for these design will be my own.
I'm hoping that the community will have some interest in purchasing, as quite a few indicated there's an interest anyway.

Anyone else doing similar?
And how have your results been?

Thanks,

J.

 

That reminds me, I started building a merch shop for one of my sites a month or two back and forgot to finish it! I need to finish the designs.

Using Woocommerce and Printful. I just put the wordpress install in a /shop folder and linked to it in the Nav bar. No account sharing between XF and WP.

 

I agree it's very difficult to have good value stuff with decent margins with those companies. I just don't have the space, time or up front cash to be storing and shipping limited runs of stock that may end up shoved in a box and forgotten about.

 

I do the same, with the same companies, as R0binHood. Only difference is my main site is IPS.

I do it on a local site, and for now the mech serves as more of a site advertisement than a revenue generator.

 

I think there's multiple ways of setting it up. You can have it so that it's fully automated and orders get passed straight into the Printful system. Or it can be setup so the Woo Orders get pushed into the printful system and then you have to manually approve them.

The thing I find kind of frustrating is the shipping costs can really add up if order multiple items that need to be shipped from different warehouses. Means the total shipping cost can get a bit silly for what you would think would all fit in one small box if they were picked and packed properly instead of shipped sepeartely.

 

I've sold physical products, and I made a profit doing so. But for me it was a bit of a headache. I wasn't the best at shipping on time and my wife hated me having a closet full of stuff.

I ended up putting it all on clearance to get rid of it. Now I use Zazzle. It's not great and because the prices are so much higher, my volume of sales has fallen dramatically.

If I were a better person about getting products out quickly, I'd go back to selling my own products, but I now know myself better.

 

Having a long history selling products online via blog, forums or websites all I can suggest is to work with the best manufacturers and fulfillment companies your budget can support.

If you sell poorly made items and offer crappy shipping that will spread through the community like a bad smell in a space suit and kill your shop.

 

Great post.

Do you have any personal experience to share? As in type of product and price ranges?

Perhaps "too cheap, be weary" vs "this price range may work"??

 

Amazon Merch can be a good option for revenue. But thing is that you have to test out lot of options and verify the design. That part makes it difficult.

 

How does everyone who sells deal with sales tax?

 

I think if the distribution company is US or canada based, they take away their own taxes. And at the time of payment higher than 900 USD, the form for the international taxation or local taxation for declaration is also asked.