Gone are the days when users and brands viewed TikTok only as an entertainment platform. In 2024, it’s a must-have marketing tool as it has swiftly become one of the top preferred platforms of users worldwide, evolving into a successful channel for content creators, brands, small businesses, and influencers like you. While there are various ways to boost your brand and make money, today, we’ll focus on TikTok Merch. 🚀🌟
Whether you’re an illustrator, fitness trainer, travel content creator, musician, comedian, or food vlogger, this guide is your ticket to earning extra income through making and selling merchandise and strengthening your TikTok community. Let’s start!
🌟 Why Is It a Great Idea to Sell Merch on TikTok?
Here are some fantastic reasons why diving into the world of TikTok merch is a brilliant move:
🤑 Extra Income
Ready to boost your earnings? Creating merch is a fantastic and stable way to make money on TikTok. Unlike sporadic collaborations or partnerships, selling merchandise provides a steady income stream as you control it.
🚀 Keep reading: 12 Proven Ways to Make Money On TikTok
👀 Visibility
TikTok is THE place to be! With a massive audience growing daily, it’s a hotspot for product reviews. When showcased correctly, your merch could go viral and appear on the For You Page (FYP) to reach and impact new viewers.
🚀 Traffic Boost
This third point complements the above one perfectly since TikTok is a great way to drive traffic to your online store. The user-friendly TikTok interface allows you to insert a link, guiding users straight to your online store.
💜 Loyal Audience
By selling merch on TikTok, you’re ensuring a loyal audience by default. It’s very likely that your fans will be happy to support you by buying merchandise that has your style and personality.
😉 Low Entry Barriers
Ready for the best part? Selling merch on TikTok is a breeze! There are no complicated entry barriers to start with a TikTok merch line. With numerous niches waiting to be explored and only some creators diving into merch, now is the perfect time to launch your own line. There’s no need to worry about follower count or other criteria. Plus, it’s free!
🤓💡 Not sure about niches? No worries, though! Read our best Best Print-On-Demand Niches guide.
✏️ 5 TikTok Merch Ideas to Add to Your Shop
Not sure what to sell? No worries! Here are some of the most preferred products when it comes to TikTok merch ideas! 🌟 Most are stylish apparel, while others are useful and downright adorable items. So, let’s dive in and see what you can create.
😊 Note: At Placeit by Envato, we’ve got an unlimited collection of t-shirt designs for all niches to help you effortlessly create a best-selling design. To make things better, our designs are adaptable to any item or clothing. 🙌
1. T-shirts
Whether you’re a newbie or an expert in selling online, you should know that t-shirts are always a fantastic merch idea, especially when they’re custom-made. T-shirts are versatile, go with everything, and stand out as one of the top clothing items. Plus, many TikTokers who’ve dipped their toes into creating their own branded merch have found that t-shirts are an absolute hit with their fans!
However, if you want to sell more than t-shirts, you can delve deeper into the apparel business and offer other trendy products. For example, hoodies, hats, crewnecks, beanies, pants, shorts, and sweatshirts.
2. Tote Bags
Another fantastic TikTok merch idea is a versatile accessory that complements any style and serves multiple purposes: tote bags! Totes have become popular in recent years, becoming a go-to merch choice for many brands and content creators. So, tote bags make for an excellent beginning if you’re unsure where to start.
3. Drinkware
The beauty of TikTok merch lies in its coolness and practicality, supporting content creators and small brands. Mugs and water bottles are undeniably excellent choices, and the appeal is even greater when they are custom-made, steering clear of generic options.
So, consider creating personalized mugs, water bottles, or any other stylish drinkware to showcase your designs and make them sell like hotcakes!
4. Stickers
Stickers – who doesn’t love them? First, they’re super cute, available in various materials, and have endless design possibilities! Plus, they’re low-cost items (for you and your followers), making them an irresistible option to add to your merch line. So, don’t hesitate to create your own! Here’s a quick guide on how to make and sell stickers.
😊 A similar idea that works amazingly well is art prints!
5. Niche Products
Niche products are all about aligning with what you sell or the content you create. Imagine, for instance, a content creator sharing adorable dog content. In this case, you could design cute bandanas, pet collars, stickers, or shirts inspired by your canine stars like Sookie and Ivy.
Another great example is the talented Bobbie Goods, who creates coloring books. As part of her TikTok merch line, she sells art studio pouches for all those coloring enthusiasts out there.
So feel free to get inspired by other TikTokers who have already launched their own merchandise line and browse the different print-on-demand catalogs to check out what niche products you could incorporate and sell online.
💡 Pro tip: Another valuable insight from TikTok content creators who have already succeeded in the merch business is to create polls to understand what your followers truly want to buy from you.
🚀 3 Ways to Start Making Your TikTok Merch Line
Now that we’ve covered the basics, and if the idea of creating TikTok merch sounds like a plan, let’s briefly explore three different ways to create custom goodies.
1. Collaborate With Brands
In today’s world, which TikToker wouldn’t dream of collaborating with brands? It’s a dream for many, but hold your horses – to collaborate with brands, you’ll most likely need a growing fan database. On TikTok, we’ve seen how brands team up with content creators who share similar values, interests, and target audiences. The goal? To create a special influencer merch collection that benefits both parties. 🤝✨
2. Hire a Print-On-Demand Service
Print-on-demand is undoubtedly one of the most effective and simple ways to create your TikTok merch. 🚀
First off, you don’t need to have a minimum number of followers, and you won’t be in charge of production or shipping (including worldwide to reach followers from other countries). You’ll only be responsible for choosing the products you want to sell and creating a nice custom design for them – the print-on-demand platform will handle the rest for you.
Best of all, the products are only made once a customer places an order. That means no stock for you or the company – they produce it right away when an order is made. Of course, they charge some fees for providing this service, but it’s ultimately worth it.
3. Craft by Yourself
While it might sound exciting, the reality is that it implies more work. If you’re a TikTok content creator with few followers, it might not be an issue, but still! DYing everything from scratch, buying specialized tools, or hiring a local supplier to assist with printing takes time and that means more money is invested. 😅 But the good news is that you’ll be in control to ensure your community receives top-notch quality, handmade, and custom goodies that meet your standards and expectations. 🌟
🤑 How to Sell Your TikTok Merch Line
Through TikTok Shopping
As the years pass by, the most popular social media platforms have evolved, integrating more marketing tools to help businesses sell more. This time, the Asian company launched ‘TikTok Shopping’, adding more structure and professionalism to the famous #TikTokMadeMeBuyIt hashtag.
Now, sellers, creators, partners, and affiliates can have a TikTok shop directly within the app, allowing customers to purchase on TikTok without relying on external sources. So, if this sounds good to you, here’s how to sell on TikTok through a shop. Check eligibility criteria here.
1. Set up Your TikTok Shop
Head over to the official TikTok shop website and select “Seller” to showcase and sell your own merch products. Then, you need to register. It’s important to note that you need a TikTok for Business account for this process. After that, submit the required documents and link your bank account. Once these steps are completed, you’ll be all set to add products to your shop.
🤓 For more details, read this step-by-step guide to set up your shop.
2. Add Your Merch
On your TikTok dashboard, in the sidebar menu, go to “Shop.” Then, select “Products” and click on “Add Product.” Fill in the relevant information such as product name, description, price, inventory, images, product category, tags, and keywords. Once you’ve provided all the necessary details, click on “Publish.”
💡 Note: You can integrate Printful with your TikTok shop to prepare the orders you receive in the easiest way.
3. Promote and Make Use of This Feature
Now that your shop is ready with your new merch, it’s time to kick off the promotion! Leverage both organic methods and take advantage of the cool features TikTok Shopping has for you. Explore options like Shopping Ads, Live Shopping, in-feed shoppable videos, and more to showcase your products and engage your audience.
Via Print-On-Demand
1. Choose a Print-On-Demand Site
Currently, there are so many alternatives for selling on TikTok, with the most popular ones being Printful and Printify. If you’re not sure, you can take a free quiz to find your best print-on-demand match. Most of these print-on-demand companies are free to register or create an account; you only pay every time a sale is made.
We recommend already having a marketplace or ecommerce site for your products – an online website/shop.
2. Connect Your Print-On-Demand Account With TikTok
Once you have created accounts on both TikTok and your selected print-on-demand platform, it’s time to synchronize them. This ensures that your products are fulfilled automatically every time someone makes a purchase.
3. Select Your Merch Products
After completing the initial two steps, it’s time to choose which products you’re going to sell. Are they T-shirts, stickers, sweatshirts, art prints, mugs? Here, you can also pick the printing method, whether it’s embroidery, direct-to-garment, sublimation, among others.
4. Create Stunning Designs
Now, onto the fun part! Based on your niche and content, you need to create incredible designs that will be a great match for your customers. For every product, upload a design; for this, you can use Placeit by Envato. Placeit offers numerous beautiful and professional templates for every niche! So, browse our gallery, customize any template easily, and do it in less than 5 minutes. ✨
✏️ Keep reading our 10 Print-on-Demand Do’s and Don’ts, in which we have a special design section to help you create your TikTok merch.
💚 Pro tip: According to Printify, the most effective designs include full-front custom designs or catchy phrases related to your content and niche. The most appreciated decoration methods are mostly direct-to-garment, followed by embroidery.
5. Order Samples
Once you’ve selected your influencer merch for TikTok, ordering samples from your print-on-demand provider is an excellent recommendation. Ensuring that all the goodies you sell meet the expected quality is crucial. This way, you can check how your customers will receive your products. Additionally, you could take real photos or, even better yet, use our vast mockup collection to showcase your designs.
🙌 Check our bundle mockups too!
6. List Your Products and Publish Them
At this stage, synchronize your selected print-on-demand with an ecommerce (like Shopify) or marketplace (like Etsy). Most of them have integrations that make it easy to connect them. Also, in this step, ensure you price your merch correctly, considering similar prices on the market, cost of production, shipping, potential returns, and your profit margin. Click on our free profit calculator to do the math for you and set your prices with the right margin.
🤑 You might like: How to Set Up a T-Shirt Pricing Strategy for Your Business.
7. Promote Your TikTok Merch
By this point, you’re likely all set up! Let’s shout it from the virtual rooftops and get those merch sales rolling in! As TikTok is a short-form video platform, we’ve prepared 12 fantastic Tiktok marketing ideas you can implement here to promote your TikTok merch and start raking in that extra income:
- React to receiving your very first order
- Film what your customers have ordered from your shop
- Make a giveaway
- Offer cool discounts
- Collaborate with other content creators
- Use your products through a GRWM (get ready with me)
- Take advantage of TikTok trends to create an inspired line like Tikatheiggy
- Show different uses/looks of your products
- Create a top list of your favorite products of the year/month
- Make an unboxing video
- Show how your products are created behind-the-scenes
- Announce that you already have your shop
By Yourself/Locally
In case you don’t want to go with a print-on-demand company, that’s completely alright. The steps are pretty much the same, at least in terms of having an online place to sell (a marketplace or ecommerce or via social media), picking the right products, choosing the printing method, creating cool designs, and finding the best mockups to make your designs stand out and make the proper promotion so your TikTok merch can fly off the shelves.
The main difference is deciding whether you want to print at home with specialized materials or hire a local supplier to do this task for you. Also, regarding shipping, you must look for the best alternatives and pack the products yourself. Not to mention, you’ll also manually be in charge of stock. So, the decision is up to you, based on what you find more convenient for you and your audience.
🚀😊 Searching for the perfect way to spice up your videos? Look no further! Dive into the easiest and most complete ‘How to Edit TikTok Videos‘ guide. 🌟
✨ Wrapping Up
Whether you’re a newbie or already a TikTok superstar, creating TikTok merch is a great business that will help you make money on TikTok and make your followers happy.
Starting with a community already on board is fantastic, but remember, the magic lies in maintaining top-notch quality and staying consistent. After all, it’s not just you as a content creator– it’s your brand’s journey! Therefore, we highly recommend staying connected with your amazing supporters; ask them about their wishlist – what they’d love to buy, see, or wear. This will make a 100% difference and help keep your business on the right path.
And that’s about it! You’re all set! Get ready to make a grand entrance into the TikTok merch business and watch your new business shine. 🚀✏️😊
