Part 1: How to Shoot Product Photos

Understand Your Camera’s Capabilities

There’s no denying that DSLRs are capable of taking better photos than smartphones. However, smartphone cameras are getting better and better, and the trick to great product photography is actually in the setup. You can take high quality, professional-looking product shots on a smartphone. That being said, it’s important to understand what your camera is capable of so that you can use it to its full potential.

DSLR PRODUCT PHOTOGRAPHY

If you’ve invested in a DSLR, then you should definitely make the most of it and shoot manual. Start by getting familiar with the “exposure triangle”—aperture, shutter speed, and ISO. These three elements will determine how light or dark your image is, and the idea is to find the perfect combination for your setup and product.

The aperture is the opening in the lens that determines how much light your camera will let in, and it’s measured in f-stops. It’s pretty straightforward—larger openings allow more light to pass through the lens and subsequently produce a brighter image. The confusing part is that the larger the f-stop number, the smaller the aperture.

(Source)

So, why can’t we just use the aperture to control the brightness of the photo? The aperture also determines the depth of field, or in other words how much of the product is in focus. A small aperture will capture everything in the frame, whereas a large aperture is likely to leave the back of the product blurry. If you look at the two photos below, they were taken with apertures of f-1.8 and f/10 respectively.

The trick is to find an aperture large enough to produce a well-lit photo, but small enough to capture the entire product clearly. Start with f/8 or f/10 and work your way up/down from there.

The shutter speed is the amount of time the opening in the lens is open for. Outside of product photography, shutter speed is altered in order to determine the way a moving object appears in the photo. However, for product photography purposes, it’s important to use a slow shutter speed to allow for a smaller aperture. Once you’re happy with your aperture setting (i.e. the entire product is in focus), you should adjust the shutter speed until you get the brightness level you need.

The last element of the trio is the ISO, which is your camera’s sensitivity to light. Increasing the ISO will allow you to take photos when the lighting conditions aren’t great, however, this does decrease the quality of the photo. You should never exceed 400 as you’ll start getting some camera noise. If you can’t take a well-lit photo under 400, your light sources aren’t bright enough. Aim to use natural lighting where possible.

SMARTPHONE PRODUCT PHOTOGRAPHY

If you’re using a smartphone, avoid using any pre-defined filters and frames and don’t touch the digital zoom, which actually just crops the photo as you shoot. All of this will decrease the quality of the photo, so save these kinds of adjustments for the image production stage.

Take advantage of the auto-focus and tap on the product prior to taking the photo. There are also a number of iOS and Android apps that allow you to control some of the manual settings (though the results won’t be the same as using a DSLR).

And regardless of whether you’re using a DSLR or a smartphone, never use the in-built flash. If you know what you’re doing, you can use an external flash. But generally speaking, if your product is too dark, this is a sign that you’re using insufficient lighting.

Also, given the popularity of filters, keep in mind that this can change the color of how the product is perceived, which can result in refunds if the product doesn’t match what the image looks like. So avoid altering the colors of your product photos, so customers are given a realistic picture of what they’ll be getting.

Steady Your Camera

Even if you have the steadiest hands IN THE WORLD, always use a tripod or a smartphone mount. This will ensure that you have track-sharp images, even if you’re working with a slow shutter speed.

A fool-proof method of capturing clear and crisp photos is to use a tripod or mount and set a timer on your camera. When you press down on the shutter, or even lightly tap the capture button on your smartphone’s touchscreen, you apply downward/forward pressure to the camera—setting a timer will allow your camera/smartphone to re-stabilize. I like to use a 2-second timer because I find that it gives my camera just enough time to return to a steady position (and I’m too impatient to sit through the 10-second timer beeps).

Set Up a White Backdrop

When it comes to product photography, the key to a good setup is to shoot against a white backdrop. The white backdrop will reflect white light back onto your product and prevent any color spills. It’ll also ensure that your camera’s white balance calibration is on point, which will result in accurate colors.

Using a sweep is definitely the way to go, which is just a backdrop that seamlessly transitions from the vertical to the horizontal surface. For smaller products, definitely opt for a shooting table and do tabletop photography; it’ll give you more flexibility with how you position the backdrop in relation to the light source because of how portable it is. Buy a shooting table online or make your own with an old table, some scrap wood, a hammer and nails, spring clamps, and the sweep itself. I like to use white wrapping paper as my sweep because it’s smooth and reflective, but you can use anything you have on hand.

For larger products, it gets a little trickier. If you’re going to shoot frequently, buying a sweep with a stand will make your life a lot easier. If it’s a one-off shoot, grab an old sheet and find something to drape it over. I’ve used a DVD rack before!

Shoot Near a Window

Unless you know what you’re doing, avoid using artificial light sources. They require a lot of skill and expertise to use and it’s not worth the time or money if you’re just starting out.

Natural lighting is the way to go, just make sure you use it indirectly. Taking photos by a window and in a well-lit room tends to work best. In terms of positioning, the window should be to the left or right of the product, never behind or facing the camera. Natural light makes set up much easier as you don’t need to set up as much stuff.

When pairing natural light with a diffuser, you can create some beautiful product photography.

If you find that the lighting is too intense, you can diffuse it by covering the window with a white curtain/sheet or taping over it with white paper. You can also buy a diffuser for product photography online.

It’s also important to be prepared and get through the shoot as quickly as possible. The color and intensity of natural light changes throughout the day, so for consistent images, you need to be organized and work fast. Having an extra pair of hands will definitely help!

If natural light is your go to lighting source, aim to take all product photos at the same time every day, so your photos have a consistent look on your online store. However, you can edit your images in post production to help with a consistent branding.

Grab a Reflector

The only problem with shooting by a window is that the light will only hit the product on one side. To avoid harsh shadows and evenly distribute light across the product, you should use a fill light or a reflector. You can buy a reflector or create your own fill light with a white piece of card. Covering the card with aluminum foil will make it extra reflective.

You should place the reflector on the other side of the product, opposite the window. You’ll just need to play around with the angle of it to find what works best for your product and setup.

Part 2: How to Optimize Your Product Photos for Ecommerce

Remove the Background

A white background will really make your images POP. It’ll draw attention to the product and give the image a clean, professional look. Furthermore, white doesn’t clash with any other color, so you can reuse this same shot regardless of the website theme or platform design.

In post production, you’ll want to remove backgrounds for your images to maintain a consistent look on your professional product photography. The most accurate way of removing the background is to use the pen tool in Adobe Photoshop. It’s not the only way; there are a number of background removal tools online and you can try using the magic wand and quick selection tools in Photoshop too, but you’re unlikely to get a clean cut around the product.

To use the pen tool, select the pen tool and mark an anchor point on the edge of your product. The idea is to work your way around the product, creating what’s called a “clipping path” until you get to the first point and complete the path.

If you’re new to the pen tool, you’ll quickly realize that the tricky part is when the edge of the product isn’t straight. If you click and hold, you’ll see these two funny lines with dots at the end appear; these are called “bezier handles” and can be used to manipulate the curve of the line. You’ll have to play around with the pen tool yourself to get the hang of how they work.

Once you’ve completed the path, click “Selection” at the top and hit enter. You’ll see that the product has been selected.

Swap to the selection tool, right-click the selected area and click “Layer via Cut,” which will separate the background and product onto two separate layers. Delete the background layer and you’ll have the product on a transparent background (represented by grey and white checkers). If you’d like a white background, simply add a new layer and fill it in with white.

Although the results are amazing, unfortunately, background removal does take time and it is quite a fiddly process, particularly when it comes to more intricate and detailed products such as jewelry. It’s a good idea to outsourcing the editing so that you (or your graphic designer) can spend time on more growth-related tasks.

For those looking for budget ways to remove backgrounds, you can find Shopify Apps like Pixc which will remove backgrounds. However, if you’re looking to do it yourself affordably, you can find a background removal tool on Canva’s Pro Plan. All it takes is a quick one click button. The technology has come a long way, making it possible without Photoshop.

Keep the Editing Simple

There’s nothing more annoying than receiving your online purchases and discovering that they’re nothing like what you imagined. You’d probably return the item and never shop on that store again. Your product photography and post production editing needs to mirror what the product actually looks like.

Adjust the color balance of the photo to ensure that the colors in the photo match those in real life, and only tweak the brightness and contrast (or the levels if you’re Photoshop savvy) to give it a more professional product photography look.

Note: Learn more great ways to edit your product photography for your ecommerce store with our Step-by-Step Photoshop Tutorials for Ecommerce article and create perfect product pages with our guide to Product Page Design!

Apply a Template

Creating a product image template is an easy and efficient way to make your product images look consistent. Start by choosing a size you’ll use across your ecommerce store—anywhere between 1200px and 1600px on the longest side is ideal because it’s large enough for an effective zoom function and to use across social media.

Note that the size you choose will be applied to all your product images, so you should think about the shape of your product when you’re choosing your dimensions. If your products are longer vertically, a portrait template might be better. Similarly, if you have really wide products, a landscape template will help you reduce the unnecessary amount of space at the top and bottom.

Note: If your products are all different shapes and sizes, stick to a square template.

The easiest way to create a template is to create a blank file in Adobe Photoshop and to resize it to the dimensions you want. Use guides to identify the center-point by creating a vertical and horizontal line at 50%, which will help you position your products later.

Your products should take up around 90% of the canvas, so it’s also good to create equal guidelines around the edges. When you drag each individual product into the canvas, resize it until either the top and bottom or left and right sides of the product touch the guides.

Doing so will allow you to align your products, which is a lot more noticeable when they’re all next to each other on a white background. If you look at the two rows of product images below, it’s easy to see that the first row has been created without a template; the shirts are all different sizes within their own canvases. This is likely to happen when you resize your products by eye. On the other hand, it’s clear that the products in the bottom row were resized using a template, as the top and bottom of each shirt is aligned.

Reduce the File Size

As can be expected, large images take longer to load. When I say large, I’m referring to file size rather than the dimensions of an image, i.e. the value in KB, MB, GB, etc. Seeing as 47% of users expect a webpage to load in under 2 seconds, and 40% will abandon a page that takes more than 3 seconds to load, it’s important that your images are small enough to ensure a speedy site.

It’s possible to reduce the file size without significantly reducing the quality of your images. My favorite method of reducing file size without significantly reducing the quality of the image is to use Photoshop’s “Save for Web” function. Open your image in Photoshop and go to File > Export > Save for Web (Legacy)… A window will appear which will allow you to choose your export quality. I find that a quality of 60 works best because it drops the file size down to below a megabyte and there’s no noticeable difference in quality.

Note: ImageOptim (Free) is a great little app that will further compress your images just by dragging and dropping them on the ImageOptim application icon. It will re-save the file and can save you another 20-40% in file size on average.

If you take a look at the photos below, the left shot of the earrings was saved as a regular JPEG image, with the quality level set to 12 or “Maximum.” The shot on the right is an exported web JPEG, where the quality level was set to 60 or “High.” The difference between the two is barely noticeable; the right is simply a little less saturated in terms of color. Learn more about optimizing images for the web in this step-by-step article (that also includes a video walkthrough!).

A Few More Product Photography Tips

1. Take A lot of Product Photos

Product photography requires multiple angles and photos to help people clearly see the product they want to order. Taking photos of a product’s sheerness in clothing will help reduce unnecessary refunds. Every product has it’s quirks. It’s important to capture the many sides of a product, so customers aren’t surprised when it finally arrives. Taking multiple product photos will also help you find the best photo to use to best represent the product. Plus, if you aren’t hosting video on the product page, you’ll want product photos of the sides and back.

2. Take Lifestyle Shots

Depending on the product, lifestyle photos might be a great addition for your collection. It could work well for fashion, beauty, or even outdoors products. When it isn’t clear what exactly a product is, a lifestyle shot can help people see an item being used to better understand its purpose. Alternatively, lifestyle shots can be used on social media to promote the product on your website. So while you don’t need to use lifestyle shots for your online store, you might use it to promote the product visually in other marketing channels.

3. Group Other Products

While this doesn’t work for all product photos, in some niches like fashion, combining other products in a single photo can help with a buying decision. Taking photos of a two-piece outfit, with footwear, and jewelry can help you sell more products on your online store. It can also create a better visual appearance seeing an entire look put together, so that people want to add all those items to their cart. Plus, great photos aren’t always about a singular product. Sometimes, mixing and matching other products together can create high quality images that push sales, which is what you want your product photos to do anyway.

4. Avoid Mixing Lighting Types

If you’re using artificial product photography lighting, you won’t want any sunlight in the photo. Mixing lighting types can create an unappealing product photo. So choose: natural or artificial light. If you use artificial light, take your photos in a dark room. If you use sunlight, turn off artificial lighting. It’ll just make photo editing that much easier.

5. Show Scale

One of the challenges of shopping online is that you can’t see an item in person. Ultimately, showing an item’s scale can be a great way to accurately represent your product. You don’t need a fancy product photography setup to do this. Even having a ruler or common object in the photo to show the item’s size can help people understand how big or small the item truly is. Don’t do photo editing that tricks people into thinking something is bigger or smaller than it is. It’ll only result in refunds. Be as transparent as possible for your product photography.

Product Photography Conclusion

So what are you waiting for? Grab your camera, set up your studio, and snap away! Although optimizing your product photos for ecommerce may seem like a lot of extra work, the results are worth it!

Take the time to get them right, because amazing photos will make your ecommerce store look a lot more professional and you’ll also be able to use them across social media to drive traffic to your store. Plus, once you get into a routine, you’ll be pumping out retail-ready product images in no time. Once you master the art of taking great product photography, take the next step and write great product descriptions, too!

The post Product Photography: The Ultimate DIY Guide in 2022 appeared first on A Better Lemonade Stand.

In this post, we’ll show you the best t-shirt templates as well as t-shirt mockup generators for your clothing line. We’ll also provide you with a tutorial to show you exactly how to use Photoshop for t-shirt templates.

Note: Are you in the process of getting your t-shirt line started? Don’t forget to check out our article on How We Started a T-Shirt Business in 24 Hours with 24 Dollars and our video webinar walking you through How to Start a T-Shirt Business from Scratch. Plus, if you’re totally new to the clothing industry and aren’t sure what next steps you should take, check out our How to Start a Clothing Line post and our corresponding How to Start a Clothing Line Video Webinar for all the information you need. You can find icons to use on your t-shirt design on Noun Project.

The Best T-Shirt Mockup Generators

Mockup generators are usually online services that make customizing t-shirts and adding your t-shirt design as simple as selecting a shirt color and uploading your image. The tradeoff when using a pre-made template rather than a software program like Adobe Photoshop is that t-shirt mockup generators are usually less customizable. This can make it difficult to get your image exactly like your final printed t-shirt and, in general, gives you fewer options on your final design, especially when it comes to clothing tags, fabric texture, the background, etc.

Placeit

Placeit has a wide variety of apparel for creating mockups including t-shirts, tank tops, polo shirts, and activewear for both men and women. Generating images is as simple as selecting a blank t-shirt apparel template and uploading your design. The generator will take care of the rest, including applying all shadows and curves.

The wide variety of images and scenes makes Placeit a noteworthy option for creating your clothing mockups.

This paid tool is free to try out and includes a variety of designs for t-shirts all on one platform.

Check out Placeit’s T-Shirt Template & Mockup Generator

Printful Clothing Mockup Generator

The Printful clothing & apparel mockup generator is definitely one of the best, especially if you plan to use Printful as your clothing printer. Not only will Printful easily create a great-looking product image with your designs on it but it will also properly prepare the print file which your printer will need to actually print your designs. The biggest benefit of using free t-shirt templates like Printful is that you can make alterations to the custom t-shirt design to ensure it looks flawless.

The Mockup Generator from Printful allows you to choose from t-shirts, sweatshirts, posters, tote bags and many more different types of products. To learn more about Printful’s entire product selection and the other features and services they offer merchants, check out our Printful Review. The stock images are all high-resolution. It also includes various print on demand products beyond t-shirts.

There are many print on demand services available, such as Custom Ink, Printify, Gooten, and more that allow you to try out their free tshirt mockup generators.

CHECK OUT PRINTFUL’S T-SHIRT TEMPLATE & MOCKUP GENERATOR

InkThreadable Mockup Generator

You can find the InkThreadable Mockup Generator where you’ll be able to add and save logos or designs on t-shirts. If you’re on Shopify, the InkThreadable app can be installed on your store for free. The mockup tool allows you to choose different brands of t-shirts and change the color with ease. If you’re looking for resources that allow you to sell the t-shirts you mock up, InkThreadable is one of the best print on demand tools in the world. The app is free so you won’t need to pay for a subscription, however, you’ll need to pay for the cost of goods and shipping. Your creativity can go far with this all-in-one print on demand service.

The Best T-Shirt Templates for Photoshop

T-shirt templates are different from mockup generators as they require a bit more work on your end, but are usually much more flexible and customizable. This customizability allows you to adjust texture, color, typography, and placement of your design.

USING ADOBE PHOTOSHOP

Most (nearly all) t-shirt templates require Adobe Photoshop or an equivalent image editing app that can handle PSD files with layers. Adobe Photoshop can seem complicated to many new users, but it’s actually really easy to use with t-shirt templates. It’s usually as simple as opening the file, double-clicking the layer where you need to add your design and then clicking save.

With Photoshop you can add your t-shirt design to a free stock photo and make it look like the person is actually wearing your clothing. You can generate many lifestyle images to add some personality to your business and ensure the mood and tone of your business is accurately represented.

WHERE TO GET PHOTOSHOP

You can view all the plans for all Adobe programs here, however, the only plan you need is the Creative Cloud Photo Bundle which is currently available for $9.99/month. This bundle comes with Adobe Photoshop CC, which you can read more about here. Photoshop also comes with a free trial so you can get familiar with it.

BONUS: Get your free trial of Adobe Photoshop CC. Click here.

HOW TO USE ADOBE PHOTOSHOP WITH T-SHIRT TEMPLATES & CLOTHING TEMPLATES

Where to Find the Best Clothing Templates for Adobe Photoshop

By far, Creative Market is the best marketplace to find t-shirt templates that are editable with Adobe Photoshop. They feature many different styles and all are very high-quality. Below, we list several of the best templates for each different style — like t-shirts laying flat, 3D models, t-shirts isolated on white backgrounds, people wearing them, etc. — but it’s also worthwhile to conduct your own search for “t-shirt templates” or “clothing templates” on Creative Market.

The Best Flat T-Shirt Templates

This is our favorite template and the one used in the 24 hour t-shirt business. It comes with a white t-shirt template but the files also have an additional 8 colors you can easily switch to. The design is clean, simple, and easy to use which is why its a favorite.

CHECK OUT THE REALISTIC TEMPLATE ON CREATIVE MARKET

Best Clothing Mockup Resources

If your business sells more than just t-shirts, you can also browse apparel mockups that you can add your designs to. You won’t need a team of people to help you add your designs to these items. You can do everything yourself and from scratch. Bring your design to life on any clothing item you can imagine. You’ll have access to over 3,500 mockups with this set, which includes t-shirts, hats, tote bags, tank tops, sweaters, and more. You’ll also find various brands including American Apparel, Anvil, Bella + Canvas, and much more. This comprehensive set of mockups includes everything you’ll need if you’re looking for flat mockups.

CHECK OUT CLOTHING MOCKUPS ON CREATIVE MARKET

The Best Hanging Shirt Template

The Majestype Mockup is easily one of the best hanging shirt templates. It has a lot of depth created by the highlights and shadows which gives it a very realistic look. This template also features the ability to remove the hanger, the tag on the back of the shirt, the ability to change the color of the neckline and it comes with 4 different stylized backgrounds. This template allows you to change colors, remove the hanger, and even change the background.

CHECK OUT THE MAJESTYPE T-SHIRT TEMPLATE ON CREATIVE MARKET

The Best Ghosted Template

Name: Ghosted T-Shirt Templates

These ghosted black & white t-shirt templates are super high-resolution and include both men’s and women’s shirts (6 unique shirts in total). Like the previous example, you can also add this ghosted t-shirt to a hanger. This style is available in both men’s and women’s t-shirts so you can design your clothing for anyone in the world.

CHECK OUT THE GHOSTED T-SHIRT TEMPLATE ON CREATIVE MARKET

The Best Model Shirt Mockup, Isolated

This is a great template if you’re looking for images that have a model in but with no background. This template features both crew and v-neck shirts and the skin color of the man is interchangeable between light-colored skin and dark-colored skin. This t-shirt template comes in both men’s and women’s versions. You can change and choose the shape of the neck collar on this t-shirt. Also, you can choose between loose and fitted t-shirt designs.

Men’s: Men’s Template

Woman’s: Women’s Template

CHECK OUT THE MEN’S T-SHIRT TEMPLATE ON CREATIVE MARKET

T-shirt Design Templates with Models

You can create a custom t-shirt design with professionally designed templates that include models. Bella + Canvas has new templates with lifestyle photography that you can customize. People will likely wear a t-shirt that they can visualize what it looks like on or with a pair of jeans. Lifestyle photos create the ability to help people envision your custom t-shirt on. With t-shirt design templates like this one, you get photos in a beautiful outdoor setting that truly looks social media ready.

CHECK OUT THE BELLA + CANVAS MOCKUP ON CREATIVE MARKET

Professionally Designed Templates with the Same Model

A blank canvas allows you to add your own images onto a t-shirt. However, customers love seeing your designs worn by models. In design templates like this, you’ll be able to customize the t-shirt while also benefiting from having the same model in different styles. Brands often hire a model for more than one item so it’ll help you establish your brand in a fun way. You can add your logo or design for this model to wear in six different photos. This PSD mockup can be edited in Photoshop.

CHECK OUT THIS MOCKUP IN MOKKA COLORS ON CREATIVE MARKET

Outdoors Lifestyle Design Templates

If you’re selling a lot of t-shirts in your collection, you might want to mix it up by adding some adventure photos, especially if you’re in the outdoors business. You can purchase or design logos, fonts, or typography from Creative Market to create one-of-a-kind pictures that highlight your brand’s style. You don’t need many tools for this mockup, all you need is Photoshop. You can add filters to your design or use the design as is. With Photoshop and a bit of creativity, you can do anything. This set includes 25 unique images you can download in the outdoors category. You’ll be able to choose from three colors: black, white, and heather grey. The designs include both the front and back of t-shirts.

CHECK OUT THIS ADVENTURE TEMPLATE ON CREATIVE MARKET

The Best Comprehensive Clothing Template Bundle

Name: Storefront Apparel Mockups Bundle

At $79, this is by far the most expensive clothing template bundle, but for good reason. This bundle has over 120 clothing templates and includes both men’s and women’s versions of t-shirts, long-sleeve shirts, sweatshirts, hoodies, tank tops and much more. If you’re looking for a full range of blank clothing templates that all match, this is the bundle for you.

CHECK OUT THE COMPREHENSIVE T-SHIRT TEMPLATES BUNDLE ON CREATIVE MARKET

Conclusion

Choosing images for your apparel brand can be challenging. Not only do you have to pay attention to the style, texture, and details of the template, but you also need to consider your brand and the image you are trying to portray to visitors and customers. This guide should have given you a better idea of the available t-shirt templates and styles that are available and will hopefully make your choice easier!

The post 10+ Best T-Shirt Templates & Mockup Generators appeared first on A Better Lemonade Stand.

How to Choose a Domain Name For Your Ecommerce Business

Once you’ve decided you’re going to build an ecommerce store, it’s time to figure out what you’re going to sell. If you’re selling trending products on a general store, you’ll want your domain name to be generic. If you’re planning on sticking with a singular niche, you might want to include it in your domain name, such as beauty.

You can do a domain name search on Shopify where you test out different names to see which is available. Since most .com domains are usually registered, a .store domain will likely have an available custom domain for you. The domain registration process isn’t hard, but finding a free domain name can take some time.

You also need to choose a domain registrar. In ecommerce, some people choose Shopify, but there are many other options to choose from too. Namecheap is a popular domain registrar that specializes in domain names, that you can keep all your domain names on.

Once you’ve decided on your business name, you need to pick a domain name to begin domain registration. This consists of a domain name and a domain extension.

abetterlemonadestand.com
[domain name].[domain extension]

Domain Name vs Domain Extension: What’s the Difference?

A domain name is what comes before the period in a domain name. It’s the name that you choose for your website address.

A domain extension is what comes after the period in a domain name. The technical name for it is a “top-level domain” (TLD).

Originally there were only a few domain extensions, including .com, .net, and .edu. There were also country-code domain extensions, like .gb for Great Britain or .es for Spain.

However, over the last few years, descriptive domain extensions have become available, including .store, .tech, and .online.

It’s important to consider what your domain name and domain extension express about your brand separately, and what they convey when paired together.

When choosing a domain name, it’s best to make it match the name of your business as closely as possible.

Unfortunately, it can be difficult to secure a domain name that matches your exact business name if you want a traditional domain extension like .com. A lot of names are already in use (or preemptively purchased by a company that wants to sell it to you at a ludicrous mark-up).

While the same domain name can be registered with various domain extensions, duplicate domain names cannot exist. There can only be one, yourbusinessname.com. But, yourbusinessname.net or yourbusinessname.store may still be up for grabs.

But before you can decide on a domain name — you need to start with a brand name.

How to Pick a Name for Your Business

A business’ name is more than just a name. It plays an important role in marketing, brand recognition, and search engine optimization (SEO). The right name can make it easier for you to sell more products, while the wrong name can confuse customers.

When you’re deciding on a name for your company, consider these popular business name types:

• A Descriptive Name: A business name that describes what your business does or sells is simple and powerful, like General Motors, MailChimp, or Burger King.
• An Emotive Name: Some brand choose a name that makes you feel an emotion, like Hugo Boss or Triumph Motorcycles.
• A Person’s Name: Many companies are named after a person. This can be based on someone’s first name, last name, or a nickname, like Johnson & Johnson, McDonald’s, or Tesla.
• An Acronym: You can turn a descriptive name into a memorable acronym. Did you know that CAPTCHA stands for “Completely Automated Public Turing test to tell Computers and Humans Apart?” Examples of this include H&M, AMC, and KFC.
• A Simple, Modern Name: Your business’ name doesn’t have to have anything to do with the products you sell. Instead, it can just be catchy and memorable, like Zoom, Google, or Tumblr.
• A Compound Name: You can combine two or more words that describe what you sell or do, like MySpace, Facebook, or WordPress.
• A Playful Name: Brands with tons of personality sometimes choose to register a domain name that has nothing to do with their business, like Frozen Lemons, Dynamite, or Smashbox.
• A Metaphorical Name: Brands who want to have a special meaning behind their brand name will typically choose a metaphorical name, such as Nike, Jaguar, Amazon, and Target.

Sit down and brainstorm ideas for your business’ name. When you’ve come up with several options, answer the questions in this checklist to narrow down your options:

• Is the domain name general enough that it doesn’t limit your ability to expand your business in the future? For instance, a name like “Just Sneakers” tells customers that you only sell one type of footwear
• Is the domain name simple? Remove any extraneous words
• Is the domain name memorable? If not, try making it more memorable by using alliteration or repetition, like Lululemon
• Is the domain name unique? Do an internet search to make sure your name doesn’t infringe on any copyrights or trademarks
• Have you incorporated an SEO keyword into the name? Let’s say your name is Sarah and you specialize in selling vintage Persian rugs. Rather than choosing a generic name like Sarah’s Rugs, pick something more specific, like Sarah’s Persian Rugs or Sarah’s Vintage Rugs. Keywords are descriptive, help with marketing, and boost SEO efforts. You want it to be easy for people to find your ecommerce business through an online search

After you’ve chosen the perfect name for your company, it’s time to select the perfect domain name. Choosing a domain name for your ecommerce business shouldn’t be an afterthought. A domain name search will help you find an available domain you’ll love. So, let’s move onto the domain name registration process.

How to Buy a Domain

1. Make it easy to remember

Domain name registration is important because while you can always pick another domain name, it’s better to get it right the first time around. You want your domain name to be memorable so that it comes top of mind when someone wants a product from your website.

For instance, let’s say you want to name your business Kathy’s Super Duper Delicious Fudge Brownies.

Before you register your name with any legal entities, think about how difficult it would be for customers to remember. Consider how annoying it would be for them to have to type kathyssuperduperdeliciousfudgebrownies.store into their browsers.

However, something like Kathy’s Brownies or Brownie Heaven is much easier to remember.

2. Register a short domain name

If you can take a word or more out of your business’ name, do it.

Instead of Kathy’s Super Duper Delicious Fudge Brownies, consider shortening your business name to simply, Kathy’s Delicious Brownies. Then, you can buy the sweet and simple domain name, kathysdeliciousbrownies.store.

If your business’ name is long, figure out if it could be turned into a memorable acronym. If that’s the case, you can use the acronym as your domain.

Say your business is called Beach Umbrellas For the Sun. You could turn that into the acronym BUFTS (which is short and easy to remember) and buy the domain bufts.store.

If possible, avoid having and in your acronym. For example, if you want to type in the domain name for H&M, you might not be sure whether the domain name is just the letters hm.com or handm.com. So, think through your acronym carefully before domain registration.

3. Avoid adding words that aren’t in your brand name

Adding extra words could make it easier for you to get a traditional domain extension, but it hurts branding.

If your company is called Bloom Flower Delivery, but bloomflowerdelivery.com isn’t available, you may be tempted to buy inbloomflowerdelivery.com.

But, will your customers be able to remember that domain name when they think of your company’s name? Probably not.

So, consider using a new domain extension, like .store, instead. However, if you’re set on domain registration of a .com, then you’ll need to do some more domain name searches until you find something catchy and available.

4. Avoid dashes

Let’s say that your ecommerce business is called The Best Soap Company. Don’t include “The” in your domain name.

If bestsoapcompany.store isn’t available, don’t add hyphens to make it best-soap-company.store. Come up with another alternative.

5. Choose the right domain extension

If your company’s name is Online Cheese Store, consider registering onlinecheese.store rather than onlinecheesestore.com. However, if you are going to add the word store in the url, you should only do this for .com domains.

Factors to Consider When Choosing a Domain Extension

When it comes to domain registration, choosing your domain extension is just as important as choosing your domain name. With new extensions appearing daily, your options are growing. The domain extension “.store” is an optimal choice for ecommerce businesses, particularly when the .com is unavailable.

While selecting the domain extension for your ecommerce website, consider the following factors.

1. Domain Extension Availability

Traditional domain extensions, like .com or .net, have been around for years. This means the chances are higher that the domain name you want won’t be available with one of those domain extensions.

With a domain extension like .store, however, you likely won’t encounter the frustrating “that domain name is already taken” message since it hasn’t been around as long as .com or .net.

2. Domain Extension Cost

Traditional domain extensions tend to be the most expensive.

If the domain you want has a traditional domain extension and is available on the marketplace, you’ll likely have to drop a pretty penny for it.

If it’s not available and you desperately want it, you’ll have to negotiate a price with the current owner. Some domains can go for thousands or even millions of dollars.

3. Domain Extension Marketing Power

A traditional domain extension is generic and doesn’t tell website visitors anything about what they’re going to see.

A .store domain extension, however, is descriptive. It tells people that they’re going to end up at an online shop.

4. Domain Names SEO

A common misconception is that a new domain extension is bad for SEO.

However, Google has stated that they treat new domain extensions the same as traditional domain extensions. So don’t fret about your domain extension hurting your SEO.

The most important factor in determining SEO rankings is the quality of the content on the website.

A new domain extension like .store is a great option for ecommerce businesses. Not only is it more likely to be available.

Ultimately, you need to build brand trust. If you’re creating content, adding new products often, and getting backlinks to your .store domain names then you will have no problem with SEO.

Best Practices for Registering a .STORE Domain Name

Before you finalize your domain name registration and other concerns around how to buy a domain name, follow these final tips.

1. Avoid .Store Domain Name Lawsuits

Do your due diligence to avoid registering a domain name that is copyrighted, trademarked, or belongs to a well-known brand. A proper domain registration process will require you to do a domain name search for any trademarks or brand names under other domain extensions. By making sure no one else has your domain name, you’ll be able to prevent lawsuits based on domain names.

2. Protect Your .Store Domain Privacy

Anyone can look up the name and address of the person who has registered a domain name. If you run your ecommerce business out of your home, anyone can find your personal address.

If you want to avoid creepy solicitations from strangers, consider purchasing domain privacy from your domain registrar. You may also want to look into setting up a P.O. box to use as your address where required in business communications (like mass email sends to customers).

3. Keep an Eye on .Store Domain Name Renewals

When you register a domain name, you don’t own it.

Rather, you pay for the right to use it over a certain period of time. When this period ends, your access to the domain name gets revoked.

Take worrying about how to buy a domain name (in terms of domain renewals) off your plate by maximizing your registration time (you can register a domain name for up to 10 years at a time) and signing up for automatic renewals through your domain registrar.

After you’ve made sure that your domain name won’t trigger any lawsuits, you’ve protected your personal contact information, and you’ve automated renewals, you’re ready to lock down that perfect domain name by registering it.

How to Build an Ecommerce Website

Once you have a business and domain name, it’s time to build your online storefront. You have several options depending on how tech-savvy you are.

If you know how to code, you can develop an ecommerce website from scratch. If you’re not so savvy or don’t have the time, you can hire a web developer or website designer instead. These are professionals who can create your dream website from the ground up.

Keep in mind, website design services (especially for ecommerce) can be very expensive, depending on the skill and experience level of the person or firm you hire.

If you’re short on both time and financial resources, you’re in luck. There are a variety of excellent ecommerce platforms on the market that can help you build and launch an online shop quickly, easily, and on a budget. Shopify (Shopify Review), WooCommerce for WordPress, and BigCommerce are all popular options.

If you create your own site, make sure you create product pages with detailed product descriptions and high-quality images. You should also make sure you have a homepage, About page, and a Contact page.

How to Market Your Ecommerce Business

If you build it, they will come… right?

Wrong.

Once you launch your ecommerce website, the real work begins. Invest time into marketing your business. Read books and articles that will teach you how to reach your target audience and identify your ideal client.

Investigate companies and resources that can help you in your marketing efforts. You’ll need to put time and money into making sure potential customers can find your online shop and choose to buy your products.

For ecommerce stores, digital marketing tactics can work best. Focus your efforts on SEO, social media, email marketing, and digital advertising.

You can implement marketing tactics on your own, or hire a marketing expert to do it for you.

Note: Not sure how to start marketing? Check out the 52 Week Marketing Plan. It guides you through 52 weeks of marketing ideas so you can test out different strategies in your first year of business to find what works best for you.

Final Thoughts

Choosing a domain name for your ecommerce business shouldn’t be an afterthought. It’s an important decision to make while launching your company. It should factor into the name you ultimately choose for your business.

Your domain name will be an integral part of your brand identity when your business operates exclusively online and a new domain extension, like a .store domain, can help you get a domain name that matches your business’ name as closely as possible. It can also work wonders for your company by bolstering brand recognition and driving people to your website.

Are you ready to take the next steps? Search for a .store domain extension and lock in your perfect .store domain name!

The post How to Buy a Domain Name in 2022: The Ultimate Guide appeared first on A Better Lemonade Stand.

Shopify Review: History

Shopify was founded in 2006, its headquarters are based in Ottawa, Ontario and they reportedly support over 1,750,000 merchants with their hosted ecommerce platform software. This ecommerce solution makes it easy for people who know nothing about programming, coding and web development to run their own online store. They do this so entrepreneurs can focus on building the aspects of their business they excel at without having to worry too much about the technical stuff.

Who Is Shopify For?

When doing your own Shopify review, it’s important to know whether or not Shopify is a good fit for you. Shopify has the unique capability to support both small businesses run by sole-proprietors just starting out and large corporations that achieve high traffic and revenues. No matter the specific needs of the business, the fundamental ability of Shopify to just work translates itself effectively to any business, large or small. The biggest benefit of Shopify is that you can scale your pricing plan to reap more benefits as your business grows. That means, your Shopify account will grow with you, so you don’t need to replatform in a few years when your business become a large company.

1. Small Businesses

Shopify is a great ecommerce solution for small businesses. If you woke up today thinking about side hustles and wanting to take the plunge into entrepreneurship, you can literally start a Shopify store in the next few minutes. Shopify has pricing plans for businesses of all sizes. The Basic Shopify plan starts at $29 USD/month. This is the most popular entry-level plan for new store owners. With it, you can browse the Shopify App Store to find apps that’ll allow you to find products to start selling, such as Spocket, Printful, or Gooten. Depending on the app, you’ll find products that you can design yourself or that are ready to ship. With a little time spent on store design and a bit of time spent on designing or importing products, you can have a ready-to-go website by the end of today.

Knowing marketing will be important to get sales rolling in, though. So don’t expect to run your first ad and become an overnight success. However, a lot of the tools professional marketers use for their website are actually free, such as social media, writing your blog content, optimizing your website for SEO, and more.

These days, most Shopify apps automate order processing and shipping, which makes Shopify a great choice for store owners with 9 to 5 jobs, side hustlers, people just starting out, or people looking to put their retail business online.

2. Large Companies

Since Shopify is so efficient at handling things from their end, corporations have migrated their businesses over to Shopify so they can handle the technical stuff and the corporations can focus their attention elsewhere. It’s the same as it is for small businesses, just on a larger scale. Companies like Red Bull, Kylie Cosmetics and Gym Shark operate via Shopify Plus, which is a subset of Shopify’s ecommerce platform made for high-volume and fast-growing merchants. If it works for them, it can work for you too. For more examples of Shopify stores, check out our list of 50 successful Shopify stores and what you can learn from them. Shopify is a great platform for large companies due to its reliable uptime during peak seasons like Black Friday weekend.

Shopify Review: Easy-to-Use Interface

One of the highlights of this Shopify review, is the fact that Shopify’s interface is user-friendly and so easy to use. This ecommerce solution is no-code friendly so you can develop your own unique ecommerce store. You can customize any aspect of your online store, too. They give you options, you pick what you want, fill in the blanks and you get your own customized store. Of course, if you’re completely new to using Shopify there will be a bit of a learning curve figuring out exactly where everything is located on the backend, but everything is laid out in a completely accessible way so you can just move step by step making adjustments as you go.

Following is an overview of how the Shopify administration dashboard is set up.

HOME

Get an overview of what’s going on with your business. See today’s sales and visitors, view recent activity, and get an overview of Shopify announcements.

ORDERS

Manage, track and view orders that have been made and draft up orders for customers who place them over the phone.

PRODUCTS

Add your products into this section, import your existing product inventory, manage inventory transfers, enable inventory tracking, organize products through collections and sell gift cards.

CUSTOMERS

Whenever a customer places an order this section will show their details and their purchase history.

ANALYTICS

Get an overview of your store’s sales, refunds, taxes, payments and view your dashboard that details your visitors over time, your conversions and other specific information.

ONLINE STORE

Make adjustments to the look and feel of your store by editing pages, navigation, and customizing your theme.

APPS

Access Shopify’s app store for tools that will help you manage aspects of your online business such as marketing, sales, social media, shipping, inventory, accounting, customer service, and more.

SETTINGS

View your store details, payment gateways, checkout settings, shipping preferences, tax settings and more.

Shopify Review: Hosting

When setting up a website for your ecommerce business there are essentially two choices: Set up a self-hosted website, or set up a hosted website. All websites are hosted by a hosting provider, but some platforms include hosting in their subscription fees whereas others don’t. What does this mean?

• Self-Hosted Websites: These websites are entirely managed and maintained by the creator of the website. All upkeep, troubleshooting, and security systems are implemented by the creator of the site and it’s their responsibility to keep them up to date, secure and working properly. People who want to use their own hosting provider will typically self-host their website. WordPress and WooCommerce are two platfoms which use self-hosted websites.
• Hosted Websites: These websites have all the maintenance managed by an experienced and expert third party that handles the upkeep, troubleshooting, and security for the people who create websites via their service. Shopify is an example of a hosted website that includes hosting in the monthly subscription fee.

For people who aren’t super savvy with technical computer and programming skills, it’s highly recommended that you build your website on a hosted platform. Starting a business has a learning curve. With self-hosting websites, you’ll need to spend time fixing technical issues occasionally when you could be working on other aspects of your businesses instead. When your business grows, you might lose your hosting for a couple days until you upgrade your plan as there are typically caps on how much traffic your site gets. That’s why most people prefer self-hosted ecommerce solutions.

These are the advantages of using Shopify’s platform to build your ecommerce business:

• You have nothing to set up
• You don’t have to worry about your customers’ or your own security
• You don’t have to monitor your website’s up and downtime
• You can host a new or existing domain through them
• Your customers can load your website quickly no matter where they are in the world
• You have unlimited bandwidth on all of Shopify’s plans
• Your store’s data is automatically backed up
• You don’t need to know how to code
• You don’t have to worry so much about the technical side of running a website
• You won’t need to upgrade your plan as your site grows unless you want to

It really just saves you stress and frustration from dealing with complex technical issues that are better left to an expert team so the security and reliability of your ecommerce website will never be compromised. Shopify’s hosted ecommerce service gives that peace of mind.

Shopify Review: Shopify App Store

Due to Shopify’s popularity, there are thousands of apps created by third-party developers to simplify aspects of running an online store. This means that Shopify’s App Store has the most up-to-date and innovative tools available to help you run your ecommerce business more efficiently.

Shopify’s app store offers all types of different services you can use to amplify your Shopify store’s abilities. You’ll find apps for Shopify features, such as product sourcing, marketing, sales, social media, shipping, inventory, customer service, accounting, reporting and more, there’s an app to help make your business better at anything.

If you ever think to yourself, “I wish my website had [fill in the blank],” consider searching for it on the Shopify App Store first. You’ll likely find an app that allows you to add an email pop-up, find products to sell, or even add sales badges. There’s literally an app for everything.

BOLD Apps and Out of the Sandbox both create apps exclusively for Shopify stores and they’re renowned for their quality, so they’re worth checking out.

App integration capability may not sound like a make-it-or-break-it reason to choose an ecommerce platform to build a business on, however, it means you’ll always have access to the most up-to-date tools you can use to operate your business in the best way possible. If you’re just starting out this may not seem like a big deal but, further down the line, you might find you need a tool to help you run your business better and if you have easy access to it, like you will through Shopify’s app store, then your problem can easily be solved. Not all ecommerce platforms have app stores. Shopify even has some exclusive apps you won’t find anywhere else, so if you’re interested in having access to the most relevant and innovative app integrations, Shopify is the easy choice to make.

Shopify Pricing

Shopify pricing is one of the most important parts of a Shopify review, so let’s talk numbers. Shopify has three core pricing plans: Basic, Shopify, and Advanced. There’s also two less common Shopify plans: Shopify Lite and Shopify Plus.

Shopify’s Basic Plan gives you access to all of their security and updates plus most of their features for $29 (USD) per month. For better credit card rates and access to more features, their Shopify Plan is priced at $79 (USD) per month. Finally, they also have an Advanced Shopify Plan aimed towards providing advanced features for scaling businesses which is priced at $299 (USD) per month. Shopify Lite is only $9 (USD) per month, however, it’s for people who want to sell without a Shopify website. Shopify Plus starts at $2,000 (USD) per month and is most commonly used by large corporations.

For most new businesses just starting out, the Shopify Basic Plan is usually the best option. It gives you access to all of the most important features at a very manageable monthly price.

Shopify Supports Many Types of Business Models

No matter what kind of store you’re running, or want to run, Shopify can handle it. Whether your business model is based on dropshipping, subscriptions, affiliates, occasional in-person sales, “Buy Buttons” embedded into blog posts, selling on Facebook, or any combination of these options, Shopify supports it all.

1. Dropshipping

Dropshipping is a popular business model where you sell a manufacturer’s products on your website, and the manufacturer creates the inventory, stores it, and ships it to your customers on your behalf, while you focus on marketing and customer support.

Creating an online store with Shopify and pairing it with a dropshipping app on the Shopify App Store is easy to do and you’ll have the ability to run it completely autonomously. This way you won’t have to forward orders to your dropshipper every time you receive one, it just happens automatically. Read more about how Shopify supports dropshipping business models here.

2. Subscription Models

With one simple app integration, you can turn your regular Shopify store into a subscription service so your customers can have recurring orders placed automatically with no fuss. While Shopify doesn’t inherently offer subscription model pricing capabilities, the ReCharge App is your best option if you’re looking to operate a subscription service.

3. Blog Post Buy Buttons

Monetize your blog without having to create an entirely separate platform just by adding Shopify Buy Buttons to your blog posts. You’ll be able to access all the usual Shopify features such as your order history, customer contact information, tracking information, sales analytics and Shopify Apps, but the entire shopping experience can take place on your blog so your customers don’t have to be re-directed anywhere else. For more information regarding blog or website buy buttons, check out this page. You can use Shopify Lite, the most affordable Shopify plan if your blog is hosted on outside of Shopify, so that you can sell products using Shopify on your blog.

4. Selling on Amazon

Believe it or not, those who have their own Shopify store can actually start selling on Amazon from their Shopify account. On Shopify, you can find Amazon as a sales channels. You’ll need to create an Amazon seller account to sell on Amazon using Shopify. Considering Amazon is one of the biggest online stores you’ll find, it’s a great place to sell more of your products. So, the thing to realize is that the Shopify platform isn’t only for selling products on your own website. You can sell on countless popular websites, social media sites, and more using sales channels on Shopify. That’s what makes Shopify one of the best ecommerce platforms you’ll find online. The Shopify plan is loaded with much more than just a simple website builder for ecommerce platforms.

5. Selling on eBay

With eBay’s massive active customer base of over 180 million people, don’t count it out as a viable and valuable sales channel for your Shopify store. Shopify’s integration with eBay makes it easy to sell your products directly to eBay customers through your Shopify dashboard as you can manage listings, track inventory, reconcile your revenue, communicate with customers and more, all within your Shopify dashboard. Save time, sell to a larger customer base and earn more revenue seamlessly within Shopify. Learn more about how to sell on eBay with Shopify here.

6. Selling on Facebook

Similar to how you can monetize your blog with Shopify Buy Buttons, you can sell just as easily on Facebook so your customers don’t even have to switch platforms. You have access to all the Shopify features that you normally would but you don’t have to redirect your customers to another website, let them shop right on Facebook. By selling on Facebook you’re also exposing your business to an online area with lots of organic foot-traffic that you can take advantage of to grow your reach. For more information regarding selling on Facebook with Shopify, check out this page. Plus, as more social media sites become popular, you’ll find sales channels added for them, such as Instagram, which is also available on the Shopify platform.

7. Affiliates

Similar to dropshipping, if you’re interested in selling online without investing a lot of time and money into it, running an ecommerce store selling products via affiliate links can be an attractive option.

If you’re new to selling via affiliates and want to know more about how it works, we wrote a blog post all about how to set up an affiliate store for beginners that discusses how to set one up on Shopify, so we recommend checking that out. Shopify supports affiliate stores through simple app integrations that allow you to promote a product from another store, like Amazon, and link to it via your affiliate link.

8. Shopify Channel Integrations

If you’re selling your products across multiple channels such as your online store, POS system, buy button, Facebook, and more, Shopify makes it easy to house all your information and data on one unified platform. You’re able to keep track of sales and inventory easily so you don’t make mistakes, and when it comes time to measure analytics and accounts, all the necessary info is in one spot. Shopify currently integrates with popular channels such as Amazon, Pinterest, Facebook, TikTok, Walmart, Google, and many more. For more information regarding Shopify’s Sales Channel Integrations, check out this page.

Shopify Plus

If your Shopify store gets a high volume of sales, Shopify Plus offers a scalable ecommerce platform that can fit your individual business’ needs. Shopify supports high volume businesses by providing the same hosted service they do for every other business, just on a much larger scale, making it a much simpler process to manage. Shopify also places an emphasis on partnering with Shopify Plus merchants to help them better strategize their growth and maintain their competitive edge. For more information regarding Shopify Plus, check out this page.

Shop Pay & Shopify POS

Use Shopify’s convenient payment processing system, Shop Pay, to help your customers check out faster. Using this secure system all shoppers will have to do is enter their email and an expirable 6-digit verification code to make a purchase, which shortens the checkout process from several fields down to two. No longer will your customers have to fill out repetitive information like their shipping and billing information, Shop Pay will have the necessary information pre-filled so all it’ll take is a couple of clicks or taps to completion.

As a merchant, this will make your checkout completion time lower which will help to increase your conversion rates as customers have a limited amount of time to exit out of the shopping cart. It also gives your customers a better experience as they can use Shop Pay across all Shopify stores, so checking out will be a lot less hassle for them, too, and it works on any device or browser.

For more information regarding Shop Pay, check out this blog post.

Shopify POS System

Suppose you want to hold a pop up shop, or maybe your store has a booth at an event or festival where you want to sell your products in person. Or maybe you own a brick and mortar shop and need to upgrade your POS system. Shopify’s POS System makes it possible to integrate your ecommerce sales with your in-person sales easily and efficiently with their special POS software.

With this system you can accept credit card payments anywhere, on any device, your inventory is updated in real-time and your data is stored online just as it normally would be. This way your business can move with you wherever you go and support you and your customers wherever it’s most convenient.

For a seamless on-the-go payment experience, use Shopify’s wireless Chip & Swipe Card Reader to sync effortlessly with your Shopify store when you’re selling in person. It has certified EVM chip technology, industry-leading encryption, and accepts all major credit cards. You’ll need to pay for the equipment, which varies in price depending on the model you choose. However, Shopify POS as a service is bundled into the cost of your monthly subscription.

For more information regarding Shopify’s POS System, check out this page and for more information about the Chip & Swipe Card Reader, check out this page.

Shopify Blog, Support & Experts

Shopify recognizes how powerful their ecommerce software can be when their customers know how to properly use it, so they focus on educating Shopify users through their blog and support pages and offer additional assistance through their Shopify Experts directory.

For any and every ecommerce related topic or question, Shopify has most likely covered it on their blog. With everything from knowledge, inspiration, announcements, and updates to case studies, analytics, experiments and how-to’s, there’s something on their blog to pique everyone’s interests.

Their support pages give detailed instructions to help any Shopify user with even the smallest amount of computer know-how create their own store on Shopify. This is the best place to get answers to any technical questions that occur when setting up a store and it’s a great place to browse around as you’ll likely to find tips, tricks, and solutions for design and development preferences you hadn’t yet considered. You really can take your store to the next level with the Shopify support pages and Shopify provides instructions so you can do it all yourself.

To make changes to your store that are more complex and you either can’t find your questions answered on the Shopify support pages or it has been listed as an advanced procedure, you can make use of the Shopify Experts team. These experts are, well, experts in their field and, for a fair price, they can help you solve any technical issues to turn your store into what you want it to be, or to fix any issues you might be having. These experts are super handy to have around as they make the experience with Shopify an even higher caliber.

To solve any setup, design, development, marketing and photography problems you may have, check out the Shopify Experts Directory. For even more Shopify specific help, check out Carson.

Shopify Burst

Burst provides free stock photos for either personal or commercial use that you can use on your Shopify store. Considering that there are so many stock photo resources available on the web, some are free and some you need to pay for, some of the images can be used for personal and commercial use, some only for personal use, etc. so it can get a bit confusing. Shopify Burst makes finding stock images a little less confusing and a little more accessible for businesses and entrepreneurs to use on their websites as you can use any photo in any way, for free.

Check out their various collections of images ranging from coffee, fitness, flowers, food, flat-lays, and more. Beyond that, Shopify Burst also profiles trending business ideas and provides case studies on each idea that include supplier information, marketing tips, business model insights, and free images. It’s definitely worth checking out!

Shopify Exchange

Shopify also has an ecommerce store marketplace known as Shopify Exchange where you can buy or sell Shopify stores. You can sell your Shopify store at any stage: whether you’ve just finished designing it or gotten your first few sales or even generated over $1,000,000 in sales.

If you’re looking to purchase a store just browse on the Exchange website, speak directly with sellers and get access to the revenue and traffic data that’s available to Shopify. To sell your store on Shopify Exchange simply download the Exchange app to your store and wait for buyers to contact you. Even though this marketplace has just rolled out we already anticipate it being one of the most trusted ways to buy and sell Shopify stores.

Conclusion

There you have it, our comprehensive Shopify review detailing the reasons why we think Shopify is the best ecommerce platform for any entrepreneur to use, no matter the business model, size or experience level. It’s inexpensive, easy to manage, hosted, and supports startups, large companies and every kind of business in between.

Their blog provides thorough support for users, plus they have a dedicated team of Shopify Experts available for hire to help you with various tasks related to your business. Their app store boasts the most innovative, relevant and up to date apps available for ecommerce stores, and they’re easy to integrate into all Shopify stores, making them operate more efficiently and effortlessly. Shopify is our preferred ecommerce platform, but don’t just take our word for it, try it out for yourself.

The post Shopify Review: Is Shopify Still the Best Ecommerce Platform to Use in 2022? appeared first on A Better Lemonade Stand.

As a Shopify merchant, your website itself is one of the first places that a potential customer will interact with your brand. It is no longer sufficient to just have a simple site with a checkout system in place, it now has to be a fresh and exciting experience for the customer that they’ll truly enjoy. Furthermore, the better your website looks, the more credible it seems. No one wants to shop on an illegitimate-looking website, not even you. So why would your customers?

It’s important to remember that your ecommerce website is your primary form of owned media. No matter how many affiliated social media pages, strategically placed ads, and brilliantly presented YouTube channels you may have, they all ultimately lead back to your website. This is why your Shopify theme is so incredibly important: It’s the ultimate landing spot for your traffic!

In today’s online world a website is judged by its cover, so you have to make sure your store’s Shopify theme reflects your brand’s personality and the values of your business while still being functional and easy to navigate. With an ecommerce platform such as Shopify, however, creating a beautiful and functional online store is as easy as browsing through all the available Shopify themes. The platform provides over 100 free and premium Shopify themes to pick from featuring designs that are clean, responsive, and have been created by leading website designers.

Let’s dive into everything you need to know about picking the perfect Shopify theme for your online store.

About Shopify

Shopify is undoubtedly the leader in the ecommerce platform space. As an online ecommerce platform, Shopify allows store owners to sell all kinds of products and services online. Since the platform presents itself as a fully integrated ecommerce solution, it features an “out of the box and ready to use” interface, with several interesting and useful features for ecommerce merchants to build their own online store with, which we discussed thoroughly in our Shopify Review. But ultimately, the platform has customizable Shopify themes that merchants can use to truly make their online store their own and make their websites beautiful and functional by displaying products as they wish, tracking and fulfilling orders, accepting online payments, and much more.

Shopify’s pricing plans are based on a monthly billing system and there are various payment plans to suit individual needs starting from $9 and progressing to $29, $79, and ultimately $179. However, Shopify also provides a 14-day free trial so that any new merchants can test out all the features of the platform before making a commitment.

Shopify has been created to be as hassle-free as possible for merchants, so it’s relatively easy to set up an ecommerce store and get it running in no time. The service itself is quite intuitive: After signing up you can pick from over a hundred online store designs to find the right Shopify theme for you and then you can customize your chosen theme to your liking, which eliminates the need for you to hire a designer or have any prior design knowledge on your part. The website designs that are offered are visually impressive and claim to be as optimized as possible to boost your customer conversion rates.

As Shopify is a cloud-based platform, it also conveniently offers web hosting on a server structure that is specifically built and optimized for ecommerce. As a business owner, this just means one less cost as you don’t need to host your website elsewhere.

Another great feature, which is extremely useful if you are already a business owner with an actual brick-and-mortar store, is that Shopify also offers offline solutions that can be easily integrated with your current operations.

The infrastructure that the platform provides is great for scaling your business as Shopify can handle everything from an increase in the products you sell to an increase in the number of sales you make, seamlessly. This means that you can directly sell on platforms such as Facebook, Pinterest, Twitter, and other social networking sites, or you can even have a brick-and-mortar store with a point of sale (POS) system and its own payment processing service, too.

Shopify is truly a user-friendly platform which makes it perfect for both beginners in the ecommerce space as well as seasoned professionals. The multipurpose aspects of this platform make it an ideal solution for any ecommerce merchants looking for a great ecommerce platform with useful features they can use to create a beautiful and functional ecommerce website.

The platform’s ease of use, affordable pricing structure, and its variety of features are what make Shopify one of the most attractive ecommerce platforms out there.

What is a Website Theme & Why is it Important?

Unlike the usual way of building an online store from scratch, a website theme (also occasionally referred to as a “website template”) is a set website design that can be used to create a new online store or it can be applied to an existing one. As a merchant on Shopify, all you need to do is download one of the Shopify themes and install it onto your website and then you can customize the colors, fonts, layouts, and options of the theme to make it your own.

Upwork defines website templates as:

“A website template is basically a premade web page — or set of webpages — that can be customized with images, videos and other style elements to create a complete website.

Often created by web developers, the template includes everything needed (i.e. HTML, CSS, and any other code required) for it to function. It simplifies the whole web development process, making it easy for people who have little or no programming experience to build their own websites.

Website templates are also used by bigger enterprises to present a large amount of content on standardized web pages. Whether for mass production or personal use, they can help shorten the time needed to go from idea to launch.”

Anyone who knows even the basics of web designing will tell you that at the core of the website making process, the goal is to create a clean, good looking website that has accessibility at its crux and a simple and fluid interface, especially when it comes to navigation. The look of your website is the first impression of your brand in the customer’s mind and essentially determines whether they will be attracted to what you have to offer them. Picking a Shopify theme for your online store is as important as the products you sell, as it represents what you and your brand stand for and will also have an impact on factors such as brand recall and customer experience.

While getting custom website themes designed can set merchants back monetarily quite a bit, top brands and companies still sometimes opt for custom themes which can often cost them thousands and thousands of dollars. If, however, you are a small business owner or are fairly new to the ecommerce industry, your best option is to look into pre-designed themes that are provided by platforms such as Shopify on the Shopify theme store. Don’t be fooled by Shopify themes being free or reasonably priced since they provide an equally professional look as custom themes do, and are much more simple when it comes to application and installation which is an advantage for new merchants with no programming experience.

Like every step of building your ecommerce store, trying to make the right choice can be overwhelming due to its importance, but finding the right Shopify theme is a crucial aspect to your brand’s success. This is also why you should pay attention to the smaller details while picking a theme, such as the budget you have set and if your chosen theme falls within it, the kind of experience you have with web design so that you can pick a theme with more scope for personalization, and of course, the inbuilt customization options. While putting so much importance on the theme might seem like overkill, it will eventually form the basis of the public perception of your brand.

Examples of Beautiful & Creative Ecommerce Websites Hosted on Shopify

Death Wish Coffee Co.

The website for Death Wish Coffee Co. embodies the company’s spirit. The website claims that their brand of coffee is the strongest in the world due to its unique blend and roasting technique, while also being smooth to taste. The web design is robust and uses colors like red, large bold letters, and imagery that is consistent with the brand name and logo. Due to the product being one of the focal points of the entire business, the homepage opens to a large image of it with an option to buy/subscribe to it. There is no lag in getting to the product page, which makes this a very “in-your-face” approach, but it suits the brand very much and definitely works for them. Additionally, the black, white & red is a classic color scheme and complements the product packaging theme as well.

All Birds

This website has a casual yet sleek feel to it, which is what the brand aims to promote its products as. It uses a brilliant mix of gifs, images, and illustrations along with videos to showcase the brand’s youthfulness. The playful vibe definitely makes the user want to explore the website more. Another great feature is the way the website features testimonials from Instagram users who have bought and reviewed the products.

Pipsnacks LLC

Following the standard ecommerce website pattern, Pipsnacks incorporates its own charming fonts, colors, and designs while highlighting their products with large imagery and text. The product packaging compliments the website’s theme and is really soothing to the eyes.

Commander Deer

Almost everything—from the logo to the product photography—has a very western and rustic feel to it which aligns with the company since they produce and sell “American Made Goods.” The website follows the standard format of ecommerce websites, getting right to showcasing the products, but the product images introduce a little of the brand character to the user, which is basically the entire point.

Leif

Pastel watercolor brush strokes make up the header and the footer of Leif’s ecommerce website. Muted colors highlight the dainty font and give the website a delicate feel. In contrast, the product photos are bolder, truly stand out, and draw the user’s eye to them. The handwritten logo style and banners give a personalized feel to the web design. This website is beautifully simple yet eye-catching.

Fifty Three

The company’s website aims at a sale right off the bat. The visuals of the product are large and stand out against the subdued background. There is also a direct link to the Amazon shopping page for the product, which is highlighted in a brighter orange color to stand out against the rest of the homepage.

Beardbrand

Beardbrand, just with its name and logo already defines its niche. The company’s Shopify theme is clean yet robust. The homepage itself basically encompasses several different aspects—from products to merchandise to social media and even tutorials and testimonials. Heavy on imagery that is aesthetically appealing, with just enough text to contextualize what one is looking at, this website aims and definitely succeeds at keeping the user engaged.

Greats

The home page opens with a quirky message that’s likely to grab the attention of visitors and appeal to their target market. The quirky copy reflects the fun nature of the brand and the types of products you’ll find there – fun and quirky ones. Their calls-to-action are prominently placed on the page, with one at the center of the page for the promoted product, plus collection pages for both men and women clearly placed directly below.

What to Consider When Choosing a Shopify Theme for Your Online Store

Shopify Themes & Your Product

One of the best aspects of using Shopify themes is the fact that you can preview how your website and products will look with your new theme before you download the theme to your site. When creating Shopify themes, the designers use high-definition, aesthetically appealing, and color-coordinated images to make their designs stand out in the Shopify theme store, so while you initially might think your own products and branding will fit into the mold, they might not seem exactly right and as if they were “matched” to the theme once you actually set up the theme onto your store. Being able to preview the theme, however, helps you mitigate any mismatched themes with your branding so you can be sure that you download the right Shopify theme for your store.

Shopify Themes & Speed

If you don’t want visitors to lose interest in your website and/or brand, then it would be wise to choose a Shopify theme that is void of any unnecessary multimedia elements such as animations or live banners as well as any atypical navigational elements. While these kinds of elements might make your website seem more attractive, they will only add bulk to your website and slow down the speed at which the website will load.

The “lighter” your Shopify theme is, the more focus there will be on improving the customer’s experience on your website which, in turn, will improve conversion rates. If you are reluctant to pick a “fast” loading Shopify theme, here is a fact that will likely change your mind: If Amazon’s website loaded one second slower than it normally does, it would cost them 16 billion dollars in sales, annually. Visitors don’t like to wait for sites to load and on average, they’ll wait 3 seconds and then click away if the site doesn’t load.

While the stakes may not be as high for you and your brand, this information should tell you how the loading speed of the theme on your website can impact your sales, so be sure to keep that in mind while picking a template for your store.

Mobile-Friendly Shopify Themes

Since the advent of the smartphone, the number of sales on ecommerce websites has increasingly come from mobile devices (phones, tablets, etc) and these days, almost half of the sales on Shopify are through mobile devices! This information should most certainly factor into the type of theme you choose for your Shopify store. It must have a mobile version, or at least, should be compatible.

Due to how critical it is that you have a mobile-friendly website, avoid making the mistake of checking the mobile-friendly version after you’ve installed the theme already. This step should be done before to save time, resources, and avoid losing out on potential customers. It’s also important to check both the mobile version, as well as the desktop version of the website to make sure there are no glitches if and when used on different devices.

Another great reason to work with free Shopify themes is that they are already optimized to be used on both desktop and mobile platforms. This means that you don’t have to worry about whether your website will look great on mobile devices because it has already been optimized to! This means less work for you and a better experience for your customers.

Factoring in Your Budget, Experience & Other Resources

How much design experience do you have? Do you have someone on your team who has expertise in web or graphic design? Or perhaps a friend who is willing to help you out? While these may not seem like your primary concerns when choosing a theme for your website, it could affect your business in the long run.

If you are lacking in budget and/or experience, choose a Shopify Theme that’s simple, easy to edit, and comes with support and documentation you can use for any troubleshooting down the line. Some Shopify themes will be better suited for merchants who already have experience customizing themes, so if that’s not a skill set you possess then consider steering clear of any especially complicated themes. Luckily enough, however, Shopify themes are generally designed to be used by merchants of all experience levels, so there should hardly ever be a Shopify theme that a new Shopify merchant can’t use for their store. If there ever comes a time that your Shopify theme is too complicated for you to customize, or you’d just rather have a professional do it, then services such as Carson Shopify Experts, Storetasker or TaskHusky can complete the task for you.

Remember, a good theme will take up minimal resources and still give you high conversion rates whether it’s a free Shopify theme or a premium one, so even if you don’t have the resources or experience, you don’t need to worry. Just pick the right theme for your experience level!

Documentation & Support for Shopify Themes

While looking for a Shopify theme, be sure to also check for the relevant support and documentation that comes with every theme on the Shopify Theme Store. If you are downloading a theme from another marketplace (like the ones we discuss in the section down below) be sure that they also provide you with similar support and documentation.

As a business owner, you constantly have multiple responsibilities and tasks to juggle at any given time, however, technical issues and problems with your Shopify theme should not be something you deal with often. Having a community of developers supporting you if things go wrong (as they sometimes do) who are able to fix any issues as they arise is very important.

This community of technical support is also important to discuss theme issues with so you can learn from experts and resolve any potential issues you face in the future. Make sure to note how detailed the documentation for your Shopify theme is and the ways that you can get in touch with the theme developer if need be.

Just as you might collect product reviews on your website, many Shopify themes also include reviews from other merchants. These reviews can be useful to check out to see if there are any bugs or issues that other merchants encounter after installing the theme. Another thing to look out for is the customer support team and how they handle queries and complaints. If they are prompt and offer solutions to others, it might be a good choice of theme to go with!

Are Free Shopify Themes Worth It?

Absolutely! The free Shopify themes that are available incorporate all the necessary elements for creating a gorgeous and intuitive online storefront. The majority of the free Shopify themes still provide great customization options so you can also match them to your own branding. The best part is that all of the free Shopify themes are still easy to install on your Shopify store without any knowledge or experience in web design.

While it’s understandable that you would want the best of the best for your business, thus the free Shopify themes may not be your first choice when it comes to picking a theme for your own website, take into consideration that it might not be the smartest idea to spend your budget on fancy themes right away. This stands true, even more so, if you have just started your first ecommerce business and may not have a good understanding of what you want and need from a working Shopify theme. You can always start with a free theme and then switch up the theme to a more premium one later once you know what you need in a theme and once your business picks.

Using a free Shopify theme will in no way hinder your website: All free themes will still enable you to add hero images, play around with multimedia elements, include blog posts and, most importantly, provide the ability to add products and create correlating product landing pages.

Free Shopify themes are great for entrepreneurs on a budget and seasoned ecommerce business owners alike as they provide all the necessary elements at no cost and yet can help merchants create a beautiful and functional ecommerce store just like premium Shopify themes can.

James Holland, a Shopify Ecommerce University member posted some great advice on a discussion forum regarding playing around with free Shopify themes if you have some experience with, or would like to learn about, website design:

“I’ve chosen the Radiance theme (which has been a great foundation). I spent the last 3 months altering the liquid, CSS and javascript to add a number of different features and functionality not out of the box.

Themes in Shopify come with a settings menu to help you change various components like color, font, images easily – of course if you want to dig into the code then the theme editor is available also. Themes might offer different features and capabilities, like ‘quick add-to-cart’ from a collection grid, or easy implementation for product personalization (think monograms) – which can all be differentiated by the way the developer set up the cart/data. Dig into theme descriptions to see what features they’re talking about.

Here’s the approach I’ve taken, I’ve got the time and interest to learn how to make these functions for my site – and we probably won’t ever find the ‘perfect’ solution with all the various capabilities we want – so pick a basic theme, get cosy and start searching and reading. The Shopify platform is remarkably flexible and you can see great stuff being done on it all the time… that’s because they make a lot of the code available for developers to adjust. The preview function in Theme Manager is great for testing code and changes and then seeing them on Refresh without affecting current customer shopping.

But if you’d rather focus on selling, SEO and running your business (instead of web development) then there are some great themes that might provide the initial UI, site functionality you need.

One note of caution, and I hope I don’t make enemies of theme developers on this, Shopify is continually listening to feedback and improving functionality, the team usually caters implementation of that functionality around the most popular and most used themes – if you pick a non-Shopify/less-common theme, you might want to make sure there’s development support and you might want to be conscious how much altering of the code you do – because when Shopify makes adjustments to the back-end to add new capability to front-end you don’t want to miss-out, and if your developer does make an update, you might have to re-do much of your customization again. But change is going to happen, embrace it.”

Shopify Themes for Blogs & Content Marketing

One of the most overlooked features when picking a Shopify theme is blog functionality and content marketing. It’s important because all of the content you create will be showcased in this section of your website, it’s the part of your website that will help your brand become more discoverable and it’s also where customers will go when they’re looking to engage with your brand beyond a transaction. It’s blog content that helps build an emotional connection between your customers and your brand, so don’t overlook this feature.

A well-designed blog is essential when you choose a Shopify theme. Make sure to preview the blog page of the Shopify themes you review instead of tacking it on after installation. The way the blog section is put together will also determine how some of your written content will come across, so pay attention to the details.

You should ideally be able to include tags with your posts, which not only make it easy to locate content pieces but they are also important for the SEO side of things. Having the ability to post pictures along with the written text on your blog is also crucial. Make sure that the blog’s aesthetic matches well with your brand’s imagery to ensure a good fit.

Editorial: Agency

Editorial: Adventure

Label

Shopify Themes for Product Pages

It’s crucial to understand that your website’s product pages are technically your money maker. They are where purchases will be made on your site, they’ll be one of the top-visited pages by your customers and they will also have an impact on your conversion rates. The focus of your product pages should be solely on making sales which is why they need to be one of the best looking and best-optimized landing pages on your site. The decision of which Shopify theme you pick for your ecommerce store should be based on these factors.

Here are some aspects of great product pages to keep in mind when choosing your Shopify theme:

One feature of a great product page is the incorporation of high-quality multimedia elements. Look out for Shopify themes that let you post multiple high-quality product images from different angles, as well as any video content about the product qualities if you have one. Not only should the theme allow you to do so, but it should highlight these multimedia elements in such a way that it captivates your visitors. Themes with these interactive elements often have a higher conversion rate than ones that present static images.

The second most important feature of a product page is the copywriting space that your theme allows, specifically for the product title and the product description. These need to be engaging and, most importantly, SEO friendly so that your SEO efforts aren’t futile due to not having enough space for your copy. The product title needs to be short and to the point while being amply descriptive, while the product description should be as detailed as possible. Consider picking a Shopify theme that showcases part of the product description (60-80 words) and hides the rest under the drop-down menu on the page. This will help keep the look of the page clean and you can use the rest of the page’s real estate to incorporate additional elements of the product page.

Speaking of which, another important driving factor for your conversion rates are customer reviews. Be sure to include them on your product pages as they provide visitors with an added incentive to stay on the page for longer and also provide social proof and credibility for your brand.

Incorporating social share buttons on your product pages is another way to encourage visitors to share your products with their peers and social followings, which can potentially help target demographics or customer bases that you may not have otherwise been able to reach.

It is also important that you have a clear call-to-action that stands out on all product pages so the visitor knows exactly where to proceed to purchase your product. The placement should ideally be immediately next to or around the price display of the product and should be repeated once again at various points of the page if your product pages are lengthy.

While all the above-mentioned points discussed on-page elements, the other factors that make up a good product page include the load time and its mobile-friendliness. You want to pick a Shopify theme that loads quickly on mobile devices as well as desktop devices alike. For this purpose, minimalistic themes are likely the absolute best as they let your products speak for themselves while being lightweight and mobile device friendly, too.

Jumpstart

Empire

Vantage

Shopify Themes for Category Pages

Almost every point mentioned in the above product pages section is also applicable to category pages. This includes making your products the focal point of every page on your website, using mobile-friendly themes, choosing minimalistic themes to showcase your products better and even using well-written copy – it all applies.

The majority of Shopify themes have three major elements displayed on each category page: Crisp titles, a fluid and intuitive navigation bar and of course, your list of products.

Let’s start with the first element: Crisp titles. The titles of a category page are also called “Heading Tags” or “H-Tags” and need to be customized according to your products. One of the major mistakes that are made on the category pages is having little to no indicator about what the page is actually about. While you might want to play around with words, come up with a funny pun or have an “out-there” category name, you’re maybe missing the point completely. While that tactic could certainly work sometimes, if a visitor can’t even tell the theme of the content or what they are looking at exactly, then there is no point in them staying on your website. The heading tag should reiterate that the visitor has landed on exactly the page they were looking for and then entice them to stay there for as long as possible.

As mentioned earlier in the product pages section, the copy and content also matter when it comes to your category pages. Your content needs to be perfectly optimized on your category pages because that’s another one of the locations on your website where customers learn about your products and connect with your brand. Think about it: Would you buy a product from a website that provides no product descriptions, customer reviews or any other such information? Would you actually spend your hard-earned money on something so vague? The same principle applies to your category pages, too.

“Visitors think they just want the products, but the content is a mechanism to provide them valuable information about the products in that category. Some will read it; some won’t. Those who don’t need it don’t care that it’s there, provided it doesn’t impede their shopping experience. Those that do need it will be less likely to buy without it.” –Search Engine Journal

Getting the right amount of products per category page is another balancing act. Too many on one category page can slow down the page load speed. Too few on one category page means that there are several pages that the customer has to go through to see all the products that you have to offer. Not only is this a tedious process, but the chances of the customer leaving before they see everything you have to offer is higher.

To strike the perfect balance, you need to find a Shopify theme that provides filtering options on the category pages where all the products can be listed. This format tackles several issues: All the products on the page get crawled and ranked by search engines and yet the page load speed is not compromised. Only the images that the viewer is currently viewing will load, the rest will load once the viewer scrolls down the page.

Even though the page load time issue is more or less resolved, customers might not want to scroll through hundreds of products, if that’s how many products you have on your site. This is where the filter becomes extremely useful; customers that aren’t looking for anything specific and are just browsing will be more likely to scroll through the products at their leisure, while those who are looking for something, in particular, can make use of the many filters to get them to the products that truly match their purchase intent. However, this will require your Shopify theme to allow for multiple filters to be placed on the category pages, so choose wisely!

Colors

District

Galleria

Shopify Themes for Homepages

Your homepage can be where you weave and tell your brand’s story. This will give the user an essence of what you and your brand stand for – and this will most definitely reflect throughout your Shopify theme as well. This is also the page that will attract the most returning customers or any referrals. Referrals will “get the feel” of your brand by exploring your website but will be most likely to base their first impression on your homepage.

This is why your homepage needs to have engaging content, portray the best that your brand has to offer, and overall have a welcoming and warm feel to it. The more comfortable a newcomer is on your website, the higher the chance of them turning into a customer.

Be sure to strike a balance on your homepage of the different types of customers you cater to. Your Shopify theme’s homepage should keep your returning customers happy and encourage them coming back over time—this means that your homepage should be frequently updated and show offers, sales, and new collections throughout the year. At the same time, new visitors to your site should be captivated enough by the homepage that they stay and look around.

Motion

Boundless

Parallax

The Importance of A/B Testing Your Shopify Theme

Online business owners are increasingly skipping A/B testing due to the excess time it takes, however, they are potentially missing out on several advantages that the method provides.

A/B testing is one of the best ways to plan digital marketing and online strategies for your business as it is applicable to everything, from email newsletters to copy for your website to the theme of your store, etc.

The reason an efficient A/B test can be so effective is that it highlights differentiating components from your variables, which gives you a unique advantage of combining the most successful elements from both of these variables to make it a super-successful one! Determining through A/B testing which variation of your theme will improve your customer conversion rates the most and which, in turn, will churn out the most revenue for your business, is obviously useful data to have.

A smart marketer will know that it’s always good to have empirical data backing up the reason for the success or failure of a business endeavor. Consistently conducting A/B tests has been proven to improve the bottom line of businesses as they have data insights into what works. Then, being able to combine that insight with experience and other elements that work is definitely the key to a well-executed website.

Almost any part of your Shopify theme can be A/B tested: The homepage headline, sub-headers, images, content, call-to-action buttons, product and category pages, etc. So how do you conduct A/B tests on Shopify?

“You can use tools like Optimizely to do A/B tests on Shopify. That said, I haven’t heard of anyone A/B testing different themes, but I really do like the idea. The only caveat is that you often need at least 100 conversions on both A and B before you can see any significance. That means you’ll need to wait for over 200 orders before you can figure out which theme works best.” –Craig, Shopify Staff

Elements of a Good Shopify Theme

All good Shopify themes have similar core elements. Apart from the obvious ones—such as the price, content and image layouts, and individual product and category pages—the mark of a truly impressive Shopify theme is that while it displays all the copy, content, and necessary information that is crucial to present to the customer, it will still be minimalistic and leave your website uncluttered. The design could incorporate tabs, hamburger menus, or drop-down tables to present secondary data but ultimately, all the important information is one click away from the homepage and everything else can be accessed by neatly tucked away menus.

To retain even more customers, a good website theme will ensure that there are no “dead-ends.” What does this mean? Well, once you go past the homepage, pick a category, go onto the category page, pick a product and then land up on the product page, should that be the end? Is the only way out from there the checkout page? A well-designed website theme will link out to other relevant pages of the website or will feature other products that are relevant to the visitor’s search in the attempt to upsell or cross-sell them to different products. By having a theme that supports these different functions you’ll be able to create a stronger web of pages for your visitors to peruse, which will keep them on your website longer and make them more likely to purchase a product.

How to Customize Shopify Themes

The thing about Shopify themes is that even though they provide you with a strong structure or foundation for your website, there will still be a certain degree of customization needed on your part to make your theme your own. The advantage to this is that you don’t need to be a web designer, developer or programmer to customize any Shopify themes; Shopify itself has a simple edit panel that has preset customization options from where you can modify your theme from.

The steps are as follows: In your Shopify dashboard click Online Store > Themes > Customize Theme, and on the sidebar, you’ll see each section of your theme that you can customize: The Header, Body, Footer, etc.

You can get a pretty good idea of how the customization process works just by playing around a little. If you have experience with web development and programming, you can use the Advanced Editing feature, however, if you don’t have the experience, you should steer clear of those settings to avoid publishing errors and bugs.

Where to Find the Best Shopify Themes

Most people will tell you that the Shopify theme store is, of course, the first place to look for Shopify themes and that almost no one has had the experience of downloading and installing a poorly designed theme from the official store.

However, there are of course some other marketplaces you can go to for Shopify themes if you’re looking for a Shopify theme that’s different to the ones already featured on the Shopify theme store. Apart from the original Shopify theme store here are two other popular marketplaces to source Shopify themes from:

Out of the Sandbox

Out of the Sandbox is an award-winning seller of premium Shopify themes for Shopify store merchants. They create robust and flexible Shopify themes for merchants so they can create beautiful and functional ecommerce stores that can handle every aspect of their store from products to content and everything in between.

They provide 20 premium themes and offer full documentation and support so they’re an ideal choice for merchants looking for sophisticated themes that will help their store stand out from the competition.

For merchants looking for optimized themes with powerful performance, Out of the Sandbox’s themes are worth checking out.

Pixel Union

Pixel Union is another highly regarded Shopify theme provider because they service both budding entrepreneurs and Fortune 500 companies alike. They’ve earned one of the biggest names in Shopify theme design and for good reason—their themes are created to harness the power of the Shopify platform and merchants’ selling potential all within their premium themes.

With 10 premium themes to choose from, there’s something for every merchant whether you sell one product or a marketplace of them, and they even have the capabilities to create custom themes for merchants looking for something more bespoke.

If elegant themes with functional features are what you’re looking for, then Pixel Union is a must.

The Best Shopify Themes of 2021

Here are a few of the top-rated and recommended Shopify themes from the Shopify theme store that you can use for your own Shopify store right now:

Narrative

Prestige

Split

Vogue

Grid

Loft

California

Ira

Mobilia

Debut

Conclusion

While narrowing down and picking the perfect Shopify theme for your online store might seem like a daunting task, when you see the effort, time, and resources that you have put into the process and get a return on your investment through high customer conversion rates, it will all be worth it.

Are there any specific elements that you like to focus on when selecting a Shopify theme? Any advice or tips that you have learned from your experiences? We hope this article has helped simplify the Shopify theme selection process for you so that you can focus your energy and resources on other parts of your business and let your Shopify theme do the talking.

The post How to Pick the Perfect Shopify Theme for Your Online Store: 2021 Edition appeared first on A Better Lemonade Stand.

Let’s dive in!

Improvements to Your Online Store

#1: Change Your Popup Copy

Popups are fantastic marketing tools for driving sales and generating leads, but have you thought about switching up your popup messages? Frequent visitors to your website are sure to take a second look at an unfamiliar popup. And who knows—a new message could boost your conversion rate.

#2: Update Your Product Descriptions

Do your product descriptions speak directly to your target customers? If not, improving them can better position your products and/or services in the minds of your audience. Or, you could update your product descriptions with more high-performing keywords in order to improve your SEO.

#3: Add Ratings & Reviews to Your Product Pages

Nothing sells products quite like positive product reviews, so if you have positive feedback from customers, be sure to showcase it on your product pages.

#4: Sell on Other Marketplaces

Multi-channel selling is the way forward, so if you haven’t already, list your bestsellers on other sales platforms to drive sales. If you’re unsure where to begin, social media sales channels like a Facebook Shop or Instagram Shop are great places to start.

#5: Update Your About Page

It’s not uncommon for a website’s About page to go unedited for months (or even years), even though it’s often one of the top-visited pages of pretty much any website! So, if you have some extra time on your hands and haven’t refreshed your About page in a while, why not update it!

#6: Add Video Content to Your About Page

Video media is hugely popular because it connects with audiences in ways the written word just can’t. You can speak directly to customers and convey your personality, giving visitors a better idea of who you are and what your brand stands for.

#7: Update Your Homepage

Usually, your homepage is the first thing people see on your website, so it’s imperative to keep things fresh by changing up the content, copy, images, and calls-to-action. Make some changes, edit the arrangement of different sections, move around what’s above-the-fold, and overall just make it more convenient for your visitors to navigate as well as a more highly-converting page arrangement for your store.

#8: Update Your Shipping & Returns Page

Have there been any changes to your shipping or returns policies, or can you make them more clear and easy for your customers to understand? Head over to your shipping and returns page to make any content or aesthetic changes.

Not sure what to write on your shipping and returns page? Check out this Shipping Policy Template and this Returns and Refund Policy Generator for some ideas.

#9: Update Your Meta Descriptions

Did you hastily throw together your meta descriptions when you first launched your site? Do all of your webpages even have meta descriptions? Are all of them SEO optimized? Review your meta descriptions and add in any outstanding ones so you can improve your site’s SEO and boost your click-through rate.

#10: Optimize Images for Page Speed

If your site’s a little on the slow side, it could be making visitors click away from your site and thus, increasing your bounce rate. Use tools like ImageOptim and ShortPixel to optimize your images and help your site perform better. Check out this post for detailed instructions on how to optimize your website images, and check out this post for more tactics to help you minimize your site’s bounce rate.

#11: Test Your Checkout Process

Place a test order on your site to ensure that everything works and looks as you want it to so that customers enjoy the very best experience from start to finish.

#12: Send a Weekly Email Newsletter

Keep loyal customers in the loop with a weekly email newsletter. Tell them about the latest industry news, new product releases, company announcements, or whatever is relevant to them! Email lists are an easy way to keep in close contact with your best customers, so keeping an active newsletter is valuable to your business.

#13: Add a Website Newsfeed (Using Beamer)

You can use a tool like Beamer to add a newsfeed to your site where you can announce big news, new launches, exclusive offers, and exciting updates. It’s a useful way to engage visitors and keep their eyes on what you want to highlight!

#14: Create Product Upsells & Cross-Sells

Upselling and cross-selling are two of the best strategies you can use to increase average order values on your site and bring in more revenue and profit overall. If you aren’t already harnessing this power, find ways to incorporate it into your site! Whether it’s by adding upsell or cross-sell opportunities directly on product pages, during the checkout process, or even in order confirmation emails—a little bit of work here can drastically boost your store’s sales.

#15: Install Your Facebook Pixel

Are you running paid Facebook Ads? If so, it’s imperative to install your Facebook Pixel onto your store to see how successful your ads are and to gather more data about your customers. With this data, you’ll be better positioned to fine-tune your ads for maximum conversions.

Put your Facebook Pixel to good use with the Facebook Ad retargeting strategies discussed in our Facebook Retargeting Ads: A Step-by-Step Guide article and our Scaling Facebook & Instagram Ads by Retargeting Someone Else’s Website article.

#16: Integrate Google Analytics

Google Analytics is a must-have for any ecommerce store. It makes light work of tracking your traffic and conversions, and provides helpful insights into consumer behavior. Plus, if you ever decide to sell your website or get funding for your business, prospective buyers or investors will want to review your site’s data.

#17: Create Product Bundles

Creating bundles of complementary products is an excellent way to boost sales—after all, everyone loves a bargain! Is there a way you can bundle some of your products together?

#18: Add FAQ Sections to Your Product Pages

FAQs not only help answer customer questions, but they can also improve your SEO (when you optimize them for targeted keywords), and even minimize time spent on customer support. Check out your FAQ page and see if it covers everything your audience is asking, and if you don’t have FAQs anywhere on your site, add them to your Contact page or Help page, or to a dedicated FAQ page.

#19: Create Free Shipping Offers

Whether it’s in-line with a specific holiday or just a means of treating your customers, free shipping is great for enticing website traffic and driving sales. Check out this article to learn how you can offer free shipping to your customers.

#20: Add a Banner to Your Homepage

If there’s one page to focus your efforts on, it’s your homepage—and a banner at the top of the page is useful for both you and your visitors. Use it to announce new products, important shipping information, seasonal promos, etc. to ensure that visitors don’t miss important information that could lead them to make a purchase. This post shows you how to code your own announcement bar on your website.

#21: Update Your Thank You Page Copy

Saying thank you is hugely important, but a generic “thank you for ordering” page isn’t very memorable. So, why not update your copy, so it’s more engaging? Use this as an opportunity to further develop the relationship you have with your customers.

#22: Create a Fun 404 “Oops” Page

Is there anything more frustrating than the dreaded 404 error page? Make yours a fun one so that if customers accidentally find themselves there, at least you have an opportunity to bring a smile to their face. Plus, remember to add links to your homepage, product collection pages, or Contact page so visitors can easily navigate back to another page on your site.

#23: Add Social Proof Notifications

ProveSource is a valuable solution you can use to implement social proof notifications on your site. What’s a social proof notification? If someone purchases a product, it’ll notify your website visitors through a little popup! This creates a sense of urgency and can help to boost conversions. It’s like creating a busy-store-feeling, but online.

#24: Add Product Unboxing Videos to Your Product Pages

Product unboxing videos are a great way to instill customer confidence and build trust and credibility with your audience. Plus, it’s a fun way for potential customers to see the product in action and picture the unboxing experience for themselves!

The more information you can give about your products on your product pages, the better. And if a picture is worth a thousand words, imagine how many words a video is worth!

#25: Add Product Review Videos to Your Product Pages

What’s better than a positive customer review? A video version of that review! Authentic and relatable video reviews on your product pages can go a long way in boosting sales, so if you have some brand evangelists who love your products, ask if they’ll record a little video snippet explaining why. Don’t forget to offer them free products, a discount code, social media shoutout, and/or payment in return!

#26: Add Product Assembly Videos to Your FAQs

If you sell products that require any amount of assembly, include a product assembly video on your FAQ or Help page. Not only will it be beneficial for your customers, but it will also reduce the amount of customer support you have to provide. Plus, it also elongates the time visitors spend on your site, which is great for SEO.

#27: Add a Blog

Content is a hugely important way to attract and keep visitors on your site, so add a blog if you don’t already have one! You don’t have to publish content on your blog all the time—as long as you keep a somewhat consistent schedule and maintain quality over quantity, you can see meaningful results. Our Content Strategy: The Ultimate Guide to Preparation, Production, Publication & Promotion article has tons of valuable information on how to run a blog.

#28: Repurpose Your Best Blog Posts on Social Media & Medium

Already have a blog up and running? Repurpose your best content on social media and syndicate your content on platforms like Medium! This is a super simple yet effective way to bring the content back into the limelight and in front of fresh audience eyes. Don’t let great content get buried—repurpose it for all its worth!

#29: Update Your Transactional/Shipping Emails

Obligatory emails like purchase confirmations and order shipment notifications don’t have to be boring—keep your copy fun! You might have just launched by using generic templates for these emails, so if you have, go back and customize the content to make it more accurately reflect your brand.

#30: Set Up & Launch an Automated Abandoned Cart Email Campaign

We’ve all been there. We’ve filled up our carts and then either forgotten to check out or had a moment of self-control and abandoned the whole shopping process in general. This is where abandoned cart email campaigns come in to save the day (for ecommerce stores). They’re a great way to draw customers back to their abandoned carts and get them to complete the checkout process again, which means more sales and profit for you!

This is one of those easy things you can set-and-forget for your online store that’ll run in the background and bring in sales without you having to lift a finger.

#31: Update Your Shipping Provider/ Shipping Process

There’s always room for improvements, so if you’ve been with the same shipping provider for several years or you just picked one when you first launched and didn’t assess any other options, then why not browse the market to look for a better deal? Or, if you’re loyal to your provider, it may be worth approaching them to negotiate a better deal or shipping process to ensure faster delivery.

#32: Ask Someone to Test Your Website’s Navigation

You can test your own website to ensure the navigation runs smoothly, but if you’ve spent hours looking at it, you might accidentally miss some issues. Getting a fresh pair of eyes on things can really help to highlight any problems that need fixing so you can create a better online experience for your audience.

#33: Create an Online Course

Creating and selling online courses are fantastic for engaging customers, bringing in new revenue streams, and making you an authority in your industry. If you don’t already have an online course on your site, why not create one!

#34: Plan Your Content Calendar

As we’ve previously mentioned, blogging is essential for any website. It attracts and retains an audience, improves SEO, and helps inject personality into your online brand. Why not get ahead of the game and plan out your blog topics in advance? Your future self will thank you! Check out our Content Strategy article for ideas on how to plan your content.

#35: Get a Private Business Phone Number

Having a contact number makes your business that much more professional—and you can easily get one without having to set up another phone or landline. Instead, you can download an app like OpenPhone and select your desired phone number for an affordable monthly fee.

#36: Get a Business Mailbox

Much like opting for a business phone number, getting a P.O. Box helps you appear professional and receive work-related letters and deliveries without divulging your personal address online. You can use a service like Anytime Mailbox to set up a business mailing and forwarding address. With your permission, they can even open and scan your letters for you so you don’t have to constantly pick up your mail from them all the time.

#37: Get a VPN

A Virtual Private Network (VPN) is basically standard internet security practice at this point, so if you don’t already have one, it’s time to get on it. We covered why it’s so important to have a VPN in our How to Bulletproof Your Online Business article, but essentially it prevents hackers from being able to access your devices, and it can also help you get around geo-blocking firewalls. And it’s easy to use! Just install a VPN (like NordVPN) onto your devices and enjoy an encrypted internet connection. Simple, right?

#38: Add 2FA to Important Accounts

2-factor authentication (2FA) should be another standard security measure you undertake. It’s easy to set up and provides an effective line of defense against hackers. How? Anyone attempting to sign into one of your accounts must provide an additional numerical code in addition to the username and password—and this code changes about every 30 seconds or so, making it trickier for unauthorized persons and bots to access your data.

You can activate 2FA security within the dashboard of most accounts that you use (like your email account, banking account, Facebook account, Instagram account, etc.) and you can use a tool like Authy to generate 2FA codes to unlock each account.

• Shopify: Enable it in your profile settings, or check out the Shopify documentation
• Google/Gmail: You can enable it here, or check out Google’s documentation for more info
• Apple: You can enable it here, or check out Apple’s documentation for more info
• Facebook: You can enable it here, or check out Facebook’s blog for more info
• Twitter: You can enable it here, or check out Twitter’s blog for more info
• Dropbox: You can enable it here, or check out Dropbox’s documentation for more info
• Evernote: You can enable it here, or check out Evernote’s blog for more info
• PayPal: You can read more about it and enable it here
• Microsoft Accounts: You can enable it here, or check out Microsoft’s documentation for more info
• LinkedIn: You can enable it here, or check out LinkedIn’s blog for more info
• WordPress: You can enable it and read more about it here

For a more complete list of services that offer 2FA, check out the Two Factor Auth List.

Marketing

#39: Launch an Instagram Ad

Instagram is one of the most popular social networks out there, so launch an engaging Instagram Ad to drive more traffic to your store and boost brand awareness!

#40: Place a Facebook Ad

Depending on what you’re looking to achieve, Facebook ads can be an incredibly affordable and effective way to market your business. Best of all, the platform makes it simple to get started.

#41: Create a Pinterest Ad

Pinterest is an effective way to market online businesses through unique, visual ads. Pinterest’s platform empowers you to publish beautiful imagery, making it perfect for online merchants selling beautiful-looking products.

#42: Place a TikTok Ad

Marketing on TikTok can amount to huge brand awareness, as the platform has over 500 million monthly active users, and exposure and virality is easily achievable on the platform. A short video could reach millions of viewers worldwide, and lead to more sales and growth for your brand! If your target market is the Gen Z audience, this is a particularly good platform to advertise on.

#43: Place a YouTube Ad

Video marketing, including Youtube Ads, is an excellent way to connect with prospective customers more memorably and more in-depth than other advertising methods.

#44: Place a Snapchat Ad

Snapchat is different from some platforms because the vast majority of its users are of a younger demographic, so if you’re looking to target this distinct audience, it’s a great ad platform to consider.

#45: Host a Flash Sale

Are you looking for a way to create a buzz about your business? A flash sale is one way of achieving precisely that while generating a considerable rise in sales. Surprise your audience with appealing discounts for a short period of time, and it can generate buzz around your brand.

#46: Offer Exclusive Discount Codes as a Lead Magnet

To grow your email list, offer visitors an incentive to sign up. A discount code can go a long way in encouraging visitors to sign up to your email list, which can land you with more sign-ups and potentially more sales as people make use of the discount code, which can really boost your brand.

#47: Create “This or That” Polls on Your Instagram Stories

Are you seeking quick customer feedback about your products? If so, a “This or That” poll on Instagram is one of the most effective ways to engage your audience. Plus, it helps boost engagement on your brand’s social account, which can help grow your following.

#48: Host an Instagram Live

Getting to know the face behind a business appeals to many consumers, so try hosting an Instagram Live! Not only will your audience feel a greater sense of connection with you, but it’s also a great way to build brand awareness and credibility, too.

#49: Host a Facebook Live

Facebook still remains the most popular social media platform comprising the most diverse range of users, so hosting a Facebook Live is certainly worth considering if you’re looking to connect with your audience in a new way.

#50: Host an Instagram Q&A

Does your brand get asked the same questions regularly? If so, hosting an Instagram Q&A (using the Instagram “Question Box” feature) helps to answer those frequently asked questions and provide real value for your audience.

#51: Create & Sell Merch

If you’re building a personal brand and have a loyal following, consider adding merch to your online store! This is a great way to grow your relationship with your audience, helps establish a sense of community, and is another revenue stream for your company—win-win! You can use a platform like Printful to launch merch super easily.

#52: Run a Giveaway or Contest

Who doesn’t love a freebie? A social media giveaway or contest helps promote your business through the comments and shares it generates—and you’re bound to bring a smile to the face of the lucky winner! Check out our ViralSweep review to learn more about running sweepstakes, giveaways, and contests.

#53: Create Behind-the-Scenes Content

Behind-the-scenes social media content shows the inner-workings of your brand so you can connect more deeply with your audience. It can help your audience appreciate and love your brand even more—and it can entertain them too!

#54: Write a Guest Post for Another Blog

Having your name appear on another reputable blog is an excellent way to extend your reach and establish yourself as an authority in your industry.

#55: Feature as a Guest on a Podcast

Like publishing a guest post, getting your voice heard on a reputable podcast can expand your reach, grow your audience, and get your brand more exposure.

#56: Feature as a Guest on Another Brand’s Instagram Live

Instagram Lives are exciting and engaging, so if you have the opportunity to feature on someone else’s—do it. This is a super simple way to engage with a new audience.

#57: Collaborate with a Brand or Influencer

Nothing ignites consumer excitement more than a collaboration with another much-loved brand or influencer. Collaborating on a collection with another brand or influencer can make your brand more discoverable to more people.

#58: Hand-Write Thank-You Cards to Customers

Customers appreciate a personal touch, so this little extra effort goes a long way to encourage future business.

#59: Join a Community of Like-Minded Entrepreneurs

Joining a community of similar entrepreneurs is a useful way to expand your professional network. Not only can this bring more business your way, but it can also unlock fresh collaboration opportunities!

#60: Attend a Tradeshow

You don’t have to exclusively sell your products online. Getting your name out there in the real world at a tradeshow is an effective marketing method too—especially if you’re looking to attract B2B or wholesale customers.

#61: Start Selling Products at a Local Store

There are still plenty of people who prefer shopping in brick-and-mortar stores rather than online, so if you can get your products on the shelves of any local stores, do it! It may be worth the effort.

#62: Join Forces with a National/International Chain

One sure-fire way to build a reputable name for your brand is to get your products in a well-known store! See if you can get your products stocked online or in-person in a national or international chain.

#63: Create a Webinar or Video Series

To get more eyes on your brand and products, consider creating insightful webinars or video series that provide actionable advice and valuable content to your customers.

#64: Ask Customers for Testimonials

Reviews are a massive part of online business success, but we rarely ever request feedback. Don’t be afraid to ask customers for testimonials—and showcase what they say on your site!

#65: Start Planning Your Holiday Marketing Schedule

Be prepared in advance for Christmas, bank holidays, Thanksgiving, and other national holidays by scheduling your marketing tasks and creating your marketing collateral ahead of time.

#66: Send Loyal Customers a Gift Card

Rewarding loyalty can go a long way with your customers, so identify your most loyal shoppers and give them a gift card to show your appreciation!

#67: Create a Charity Event

Social responsibility and awareness are essential contributions every business should be making, so if you aren’t already contributing to your community, create a charity event. It doesn’t have to be anything complicated—and you can run it completely online, too!

Social Media

#68: Update Your Instagram Bio

Keeping your Instagram bio updated and relevant is essential. After all, it might be the first time someone encounters your brand, so be sure to make a great first impression.

#69: Update Your Facebook Page

If in doubt, the information on your Facebook page could always do with a refresh. Why not post exciting brand updates, product releases, or any other business news that’s worthy of sharing.

#70: Update Your Pinterest Bio

Does your brand’s Pinterest account have an accurate bio? If you haven’t added one or haven’t updated it in a while—go over there and give it a refresh.

#71: Update Your TikTok Bio

Switching up your TikTok bio to keep it fresh and unique is always a good idea—you never know how often people are landing on your account page.

#72: Update Your Twitter Bio

Your Twitter bio is a great place to showcase what you do and link back to your site, so keep it updated.

#73: Update Your Social Media Profile Pictures & Cover Photos

If your brand accounts have had the same profile and cover photos for months or even years, maybe think about switching things up. Keeping them fresh is a great way to keep your brand relevant.

#74: Poll Your Twitter Followers

Twitter polls are an effective way to gauge your audience’s preferences, which makes them a powerful tool for you! Use them to your advantage and get insights into your audience’s wants, needs, and pain points.

#75: Create Instagram Highlights

Instagram Highlights display your most memorable Stories in one place for your audience to find easily. They can help drive engagement and encourage repeat visits to your profile, so keep them up-to-date with popular content and regularly requested content.

#76: Create a Twitter Story

Like Instagram, Twitter now has a Stories feature (called “Fleets”) so use them how your brand would use Instagram Stories! Since they’re still being adopted by many users, you have fewer people to compete against and it puts your content at the front and center of your followers’ newsfeed, which makes them more likely to view your content.

#77: Publish a Facebook Story

Again, people respond well to likable live videos and interactive stories, so creating a Facebook Story is another effective way to interact with your following and get your content seen by more people.

#78: Publish a Creative TikTok Using Your Products

Creating a TikTok video to showcase your products can yield lots of attention and fantastic results, so it’s worth a try!

#79: Create an Instagram Reel with One of Your Products

Instagram Reels are another excellent way to show off your product in a unique way, which can again, make your content more easily discoverable to more people!

#80: Sponsor an Instagram Influencer

Influencer marketing on Instagram can bring in massive amounts of traffic and sales, so if you have the available budget, sponsor an influencer (even a micro-influencer) to mention or review your products.

#81: Sponsor a Twitter Influencer

Like sponsoring an Instagram influencer, collaborating with a Twitter influencer can be hugely beneficial for driving sales.

#82: Sponsor a TikTok Influencer

With TikTok being such a popular platform, it’s another great place to sponsor an influencer to mention or review your products. Find one that’s a great fit for your audience and it can drive valuable traffic and engagement back to your site.

#83: Host an Instagram Live with an Industry Expert or Influencer

Reach out to your network and ask an industry expert if they’ll be a guest on an Instagram Livestream with you! This enriches the content you provide to your audience and can help build interest and buzz around your brand, as well as the person you bring on.

#84: Follow Your Competitors’ Followers

Your competitors are likely targeting the same demographic as you, so following their followers is a strategic way to make your brand more discoverable to your target market.

#85: Post to Reddit for Website Feedback

Looking for honest feedback about your website? Look no further than Reddit, home to unbiased opinions! Find the right subreddits to ask for feedback, though—it won’t be welcome in just any subreddit.

#86: Create a Reddit Subreddit

Creating your own subreddit can help you build your own community of brand evangelists, and it can be a place to bond with your audience and develop more of a relationship with them.

#87: Use Twitter Advanced Search to Reach Out to Your Audience

Use Twitter Advanced Search as a “social listening” tool to find consumers who are discussing problems that your product can solve. Provide genuine suggestions and don’t be too sales-y, and you may help more people discover your products.

#88: Record a Podcast

Have you ever considered creating a podcast? They’re a great way to put a voice to your brand and establish credibility and authority in your niche. Plus, it’s another way to make your brand more discoverable!

#89: Post Customer Testimonials on Your Socials

Have you just received some positive customer feedback? Great! Shout it from the rooftops (or from your socials, at least)!

#90: Take New Photos for Your Socials

Could your Instagram theme use a refresh? Take new photos or use new image templates! Keeping things fresh keeps things interesting for your audience.

Branding

#91: Create Brand Guidelines

Creating branding guidelines helps your brand stay consistent across all your platforms, so if you haven’t established any branding guidelines or made a media kit, make one! Our Branding Guide can help with this.

#92: Create a New Logo

Creating a fresh logo is a great way to revamp your business. If you don’t have the budget to commission one, create your own using Looka or TailorBrands. If you have the budget to commission a logo designer, check out our Logo Designers Directory to find some great logo makers.

#93: Update Your Brand Packaging

Business trends evolve quickly, so consider updating your brand’s packaging if it’s outdated or could use a refresh. Check out our Shipping & Packaging Manufacturers Directory to find packaging suppliers that can make beautiful shipping boxes or mailers for your brand.

#94: Upgrade Your Social Media Posts with Templates

There are so many useful social media templates out there that can improve your social media content. Take a look at Creative Market for social media templates that can kick your social media posts up a notch.

#95: Update Your Website’s Branding & Layout

Does your store’s website theme say what you want it to say? What kind of impression is it giving your audience? If it’s not quite perfect, make adjustments until it is.

#96: Make Your Shipping Packaging Sustainable

Sustainability is at the forefront of many businesses now—is there a way you can make your packaging more eco-friendly? Reach out to your packaging supplier and see if they have more sustainable options, check out other businesses to see how they make their packaging more eco-friendly, and brainstorm ways that you can change your product or its presentation to reduce waste.

#97: Create Buyer Personas

Have you created buyer personas for your brand? Have you ever updated them during your brand’s lifetime? It’s an essential way to hone-in on your target market, so make sure your brand personas are up-to-date.

Personal & Professional Development

#98: Take an Online Course to Further Your Skills

Take an online course to further your skills and improve your business knowledge! Check out our roundup of the top online courses for entrepreneurs here.

#99: Attend a Networking Event with Entrepreneurs in Your Field

Networking with other industry professionals in your field is a great way to share ideas and expand your professional network.

#100: Join a Slack Group for Entrepreneurs

If you’re not a fan of online or traditional networking events, why not find a networking group on Slack? It can help you establish new connections over time without having to take part in an event.

#101: Join a Facebook Group for Local Businesses

Connect with other businesses in your area by joining a Facebook group of other local entrepreneurs! You’ll likely learn about a lot of different businesses and you’ll create opportunities for growth and collaboration.

#102: Interact with Other Entrepreneurs on Twitter

Establish connections with other entrepreneurs on Twitter! It’s a great platform to get to know people since you can drop quick likes, comments, and DMs which can build valuable business relationships. Remember to keep things positive and professional!

#103: Read a Relevant Personal Development Book

There are hundreds of thousands of excellent business books out there so find one that interests you and get stuck in! You’ll likely never regret learning something new.

#104: Use a Time Management App

Are you guilty of procrastinating? Don’t worry, you’re not alone! But, opting for a time management app is a valuable way to keep yourself on-track. Check out our article on the 10 Best Productivity & Time Management Apps to get some helpful strategies!

Conclusion

There you have 100+ ideas for things to do when you don’t know what to do. When you launch a business, it can sometimes leave you with an “Okay, what next?” feeling, and these ideas can help you work on those little things that we as entrepreneurs often forget about.

For more ideas on what to do after you’ve launched your business, and for valuable marketing strategies you can use to grow your traffic and sales, check out our 52 Week Marketing Plan.

The post 100+ Store Updates to Do When You Don’t Know What to Do appeared first on A Better Lemonade Stand.

Depending on what kind of clothing line you want to create, there are likely going to be many different steps involved in the process. The more involved you want to be in the sourcing and production of your line, the more time, effort, and money you’ll have to invest. If you’re just interested in starting something quick and easy, there are options for that too. In this post, we’re going to show you step-by-step how you can start your own clothing line whether you have a budget of $100, or if you have more than $10,000 to invest.

If you’ve ever been thinking about starting a clothing brand, look no further. This post has been in the works for nearly a year and along the way, we’ve included the knowledge and experience of dozens of entrepreneurs and companies from the clothing industry.

This industry knowledge ranges from:

• A small brand that managed to launch a successful crowdfunding campaign that raised $300,000 which they put towards manufacturing their high-end merino wool clothing line
• A private label wholesaler of blank apparel who targets the B2B market
• A pattern maker and tech pack designer who works with aspiring clothing line creators to help bring their visions to life
• And finally, we’ve gone right to the source to get insight from a factory that dyes yarn and weaves textiles

There’s a lot involved when it comes to starting your own clothing line, so let’s jump into it.

Deciding on Clothing Products You Want to Sell

You have a lot of choices when it comes to creating apparel and fashion products.

If you’ve always wanted to start a clothing line, you likely already have a good idea of the particular products you want to create and sell. For others, creating a clothing brand may represent a unique and interesting opportunity to design a product that represents your personal style—but you may be unsure of which products to sell.

Regardless of which category you fall into, it’s important to carefully consider all clothing and apparel options before deciding to move forward on one of them.

Some clothing and apparel products you may want to consider for your brand are:

• Short-Sleeve Shirts
• Long Sleeve Shirts
• Hoodies
• Pants/Leggings
• Dresses
• Lingerie/Underwear/Socks

Each of these clothing products presents their own opportunities and challenges when it comes to building a clothing brand around them, so it’s important to consider them carefully. Keep this in mind as you continue through this article.

Below, we will look into some of the most common clothing line business models to get a better sense of the work, time, and monetary investment required for each.

Choosing a Clothing Line Business Model

If you’re ready to start your clothing brand, you’ll have some important choices to make at this point.

There are several directions you can take to create your own brand which are all pretty different from one another. And most importantly, the difficultly, costs, and time input vary dramatically between each option.

Let’s take a look at the most common options:

• Print-on-Demand
• Private Label Clothing Line
• Custom Cut & Sew Clothing Line

Let’s dig into the advantages and disadvantages of each one below.

Option #1: Print-on-Demand Clothing Line

The first and easiest option for starting your own clothing line involves printing your designs or logo on standard blank apparel.

This is an attractive option for people with a low budget (less than $1,000) and those wanting to benefit from being able to set up a nearly fully-automated business. The biggest drawback of this type of business model is the lower profit margins and the lack of ability to differentiate your product on things like material, stitching, and fit since you’re using standard wholesale clothing.

The print-on-demand or direct-to-garment printing process uses a special digital ink-jet printer to print ink directly onto clothing and apparel. These digital printers are able to produce full-color images on clothing items with extreme accuracy.

Print-on-demand printing produces high-quality printed apparel quickly and efficiently. Because of this, there are no setup costs, unlike screen printing. This means that it’s easy and cost-effective to print small orders (including just 1 unit).

Pros

• No set-up costs
• High-quality prints
• Unlimited color options
• Perfect for low order quantities or one-offs
• Many clothing options (shirts, leggings, socks, dresses, etc.)

Cons

• Not cost-effective for large production runs
• Generally no volume discounts
• Limited print product selection
• Limited finishing options (tags, labels, etc)

Option #2: Wholesale/Private Label Clothing Line

When sourcing clothing products through wholesale or private label suppliers, you are essentially purchasing clothing products from other brands and then selling them to customers from your own store. When you source clothing products this way, you’ll purchase pieces in bulk from a supplier at a discounted price, and then sell the items to your customers at a markup.

With this option, you won’t be manufacturing your own clothing items from scratch, but you’ll be curating a selection of pieces that suit your customers’ tastes. You won’t be able to customize each clothing piece like you would if you were manufacturing clothing items, but you also don’t have to go through the lengthy and expensive process of having your own clothing items manufactured. The main disadvantage with this option, however, is that you have to purchase many stock-keeping units (SKUs) of clothing items in bulk and upfront, which means you’ll need cash flow.

Pros

• Don’t need to manufacture your own items
• Can keep up with changing trends more easily
• Get to curate your own range of products
• Volume discounts
• Potential for good profit margins
• You can brand items with your own hangtags, packaging, etc.
• When working with a private label supplier, you will be able to customize the clothing tags with your own brand name

Cons

• When working with a wholesaler, you won’t be able to customize the clothing tags with your brand name
• Usually, minimum order quantities start at (at least) 10 units per color/size, if not 100 or 1,000 units
• You’ll have to manage inventory and shipping yourself
• You’ll need cash flow to purchase many products upfront

Option #3: Custom Cut & Sew Clothing Line

Custom cut and sew clothing means you’re doing everything. We’re talking about designing sketches, turning them into patterns, sourcing fabrics and manufacturers, and paying for a full production run (which could be thousands of units).

Making your own clothing isn’t for the faint of heart. It can be an intensive process that can take months (at minimum) to get up and running. You’ll need to find a manufacturer, you’ll need to work with a pattern maker, you’ll have to create tach packs, you’ll have to source and test fabric, and you’ll also likely have to create and test many samples before you even come close to a finished product.

Depending on the exact clothing items you’re looking to produce, just to get a few samples as finished products can cost thousands.

Once you have a finished product, you’ll also need to produce a full run with your manufacturer, you’ll need to stock your inventory, and even develop a shipping strategy to get your clothes to your customers.

Pros

• You’ll get a 100% custom product
• Potential for increased perceived value from customers
• Potential for increased margins
• You’ll be 100% in control of branding

Cons

• Very high startup costs
• It’s a complex process involving several moving parts
• It can take months or more to launch

The Elements of a Successful Clothing Brand

Great clothing brands are great for a reason. Usually, they do one thing very well, and sometimes they do multiple things really well. Before starting your own clothing line, there are four important factors to a successful clothing line that you’ll want to consider:

• Niche
• Design
• Quality
• Brand

Let’s dive into each one of these elements a little more below:

Selecting a Clothing Brand Niche

Selecting a specific niche is important—and many times, vital—for success in the clothing and apparel industry. Blindly trying to target large groups of people will leave you with a brand that speaks to no one.

Focusing on a specific group of people has several major benefits:

• It’s easier to market (since you can hone in on your target market more specifically)
• It can be more affordable (since you aren’t targeting the wrong audiences)
• There’s potential for less competition (the more you niche down, the smaller your competitive pool gets)
• You can attract greater customer loyalty (because your audience knows that you’re focused on them)

For example: “Clothing with funny slogans” or “hoodies for men” are both too broad to attack since the markets are very developed. Niching down will help you better target your market, allow you to reach them more easily, and be able to create more value for them. So instead of “clothing with funny slogans” you might cater to a specific and passionate market like “clothing with slogans for nurses or firefighters.” Or, instead of “hoodies for men” you could focus on manufacturing ultra-thick/warm hoodies for people in cold climates.

Clothing Designs

Your designs—whether they’re printed, embroidered, or the design of the actual garment itself—are critical. Not only do your clothing pieces need to look great, but they also need to look great specifically in the eyes of your target market.

Ultimately, you’ll be the one who loses if your clothing designs aren’t aesthetically pleasing and appealing to your buyers. Your designs don’t necessarily need to be complex—in fact, many of the best-selling clothing designs are very simple—however, they do need to connect with your specific audience/niche.

Clothing Quality

You can fool someone once, but you can’t fool them twice. A pattern that fades and cracks over time or a piece that comes apart at the seams after one wash won’t create raving fans that’ll come back and repurchase.

Not all clothing is the same, there can be huge variances in the quality of clothing items. The quality and composition of the materials you choose will affect how the clothing wears, how it washes, how it fades, shrinks, and ultimately how long it lasts. As we mentioned above, quality is paramount to your brand and its success, so it’s important to educate yourself and choose your materials carefully.

It will always be tempting to sacrifice quality for higher profit margins but you need to consider how the quality will affect customer’s decisions to share your brand with others and repurchase in the long run.

Clothing Brand

Many clothing companies are built on a strong brand. Beyond the clothes themselves, a strong brand encourages and reinforces your target market to purchase, represent, share, and repurchase your clothing pieces. Your brand extends way beyond the product itself and encompasses what the brand stands for and the lifestyle associated with it.

Differentiating Your Clothing Line

The clothing design and apparel industries are some of the most saturated industries to be in. In order to effectively compete, you’ll need to have a point of differentiation that sets you apart in the market from all the rest.

Working out of a factory has also given me an upfront view of how many people get into this industry with absolutely no clue what it’s going to take to build a brand that is even remotely successful. Blaming ignorance isn’t entirely fair… We had absolutely no clue how hard it would be either. However, we started Stock with a clear reason of what differentiated us, why people would be interested in buying our stuff, and how we would go about selling. This is a step that I see a lot of aspiring makers skip. –Jim Snediker | Stock Mfg. Co.

The good news is that there are multiple ways to set yourself apart from the crowd…

Design

If you plan to have graphics or images on your clothing pieces, the designs (the style of designs and quality of designs) can help set you apart from others.

Example: Blackmilk Clothing made their name known and became one of Shopify’s largest merchants by creating uniquely designed leggings, while also partnering with major brands, in the case below, Dr. Who:

Fit/Style

If you plan to create your own clothing from the ground up, the actual fit and style of the clothes can be an important point of differentiation.

Example: Sharp Casualwear provides upscale clothing to men 5’8” and under who are seeking stylish staples that fit well. Perhaps the original online brand that became famous and known for a better fit is Bonobos. Bonobos decided that they wanted to create a better-fitting men’s pant. Their better fit helped establish them early on and turned their brand into a 100 million dollar company.

Brand

With all else being the same, people are more likely to buy from a brand whose story they can relate to most. Furthermore, a strong brand alone that connects with consumers can allow you to demand a higher price point, even if the quality is relatively the same as other common or less expensive brands.

Example: Billionaire Boys Club throughout the early 2000s sold t-shirts for nearly $100 that simply said “Billionaire Boys Club.” Although arguably, their t-shirts were the same quality as hundreds of others on the market, consumers bought into the young, urban brand and its story.

Niche

The niche you choose to operate in and your target market (if defined well enough and if it’s under-served) can be in itself a point of differentiation.

Example: Unbound Merino targets digital nomads that work remotely and travel the world. Even with thousands of clothing brands on the market, there are very few, if any, targeting this particular group of people.

80s Tees sells exclusive designs from 80s movies and TV shows. Not only are the designs appealing and nostalgic, but many of the designs are licensed making them exclusive and nearly impossible to find elsewhere.

Finally, Canada Threads focuses on clothing and accessories that uniquely resonate with Canadians, including designs related to the beloved Canadian House Hippo.

Performance/Material/Quality

The type of material plays a part in differentiating your clothing pieces from the rest out there. How they perform for the wearer (are they comfortable, itchy, restricting, warm, light, airy, do they wrinkly easily, etc.) and their overall quality (including any seams, buttons, the weight of the fabric, etc.) will all play a role in your customer’s satisfaction.

Example: Unbound Merino ran a successful crowdfunding campaign raising $300,000 and are building their brand based on the performance of their clothing: Casual wear made from 100% super-soft merino wool which has superior breathability and odor-blocking abilities, allowing this line of travel clothes to be worn many times without washing.

Developing a Business Plan for Your Clothing Line

With some of the basics out of the way, the next step is for you to develop a basic (but critical) business plan to map out your decisions and the direction for your clothing company.

Some of the major elements you’ll want to consider when putting together your ecommerce business plan are:

• Your Business Model
• Customer Personas
• Competitor Strengths & Weaknesses
• Costs & Margins

Crafting a Brand for Your Clothing Line

The next step is to develop a brand for your new clothing company.

Crafting a brand for your new clothing company is paramount. With so many clothing companies and brands out there, you’ll need to differentiate yourself. Your brand will be a big part of that.

Ultimately, every business has a brand and every new business will have a brand. Crafting your brand upfront gives you the chance to better define and communicate your message and story.

If you’re planning on creating a custom cut and sew clothing line, you may want to consider hiring a dedicated branding agency to help you craft your brand. If you’re planning on a print-on-demand or a private label brand where your investment and budget are much smaller, developing your own brand can be a worthwhile and low-cost option.

At this stage you need to identify:

• Who your market is
• What brand would speak best to this market

Below, we will quickly introduce you to several key elements of developing your clothing company brand, however, for a complete breakdown of all brand elements, as well as the guide and worksheets to define all your brand elements, check out our branding guide, A Better Brand.

Defining Your Market

Defining your market is important for any brand, but especially for brands in the clothing and apparel market because it’s extremely saturated. By broadly targeting large groups of people, you’re setting yourself up for failure right from the beginning. What you want to do is niche down and create segments.

Some critical questions to ask yourself at this stage is:

• What type of clothing and apparel products do I want to make?
• Who is going to purchase my products?
• What specific value will my product or brand bring these people?
• What will be unique about my product?
• Who is my competition?

Creating Your Brand Pillars

Brand pillars are a few key words or attributes (usually 3-4) that embody what your brand is about, and they serve as a starting point for developing your brand persona. Later, these words are used as a checkpoint against most activities of the brand. For example, when creating your website, an advertisement, or even a conversation with your customer, you should check it against your brand pillars. Ask yourself: Does my design/website/ad/conversation represent the essence behind my brand pillar words?

Your brand pillars act as a simple tool for keeping your brand consistent throughout all of your activities and they serve as the foundation for your brand.

Develop Your Brand Visuals

Your brand visuals are the common brand elements that many people immediately think about when they think about a particular brand. This includes your company’s logo, brand colors, and fonts, as well as your overall design and photography aesthetics.

• Create a Moodboard: A mood board is a perfect way to start pulling together the visual style you’re going for. Essentially a mood board is a collection of images, photos, designs, colors, and any other snippets of multimedia you find from around the web that serves as an inspiration for your brand. While there are many tools available online to help you collect these elements, the easiest way tends to be using Pinterest or Instagram.
• Select a Color Palette: Your next step in the branding process is to narrow down a color palette to use. Selecting a color palette up front will help keep your brand looking consistent through all channels. You’ll want to start by paying particular attention to the dominant colors used in your mood board since these are likely colors that immediately caught your eye. From there we also suggest you use a tool like Adobe Color to review other community-inspired and voted color palettes to get some additional ideas. Finally, Adobe also offers a tool for helping choose and refine your color palette, check it out here.
• Craft a Logo: When it comes to crafting a logo for your business, you’ll want a logo that not only represents your brand well but one that speaks to your target demographic, too. While we always recommend working with a respected logo designer to craft the perfect logo for your brand, those with a smaller budget can get started for almost nothing with a tool like Looka.

The Product Development Process for Your Clothing Line

For anyone who is completely new to the fashion business, it’s important to know that this is a hugely important step in the process of starting and running a cut-and-sew clothing line. At this point, we strongly suggest that you consider partnering with a professional who knows what they’re doing and how to do it properly.

Professionals such as pattern makers, tech pack creators, design partners, materials partners, and production partners are highly experienced in their respective fields and it’s their job to make your clothing line a reality in the most efficient way possible. Without the help of professionals, things like pattern making and tech packs can be a nightmare for not only you but for the future manufacturer you plan to work with.

This is where researching your manufacturer in advance pays off for you, though. Some manufacturers offer professional product development services, some will only manufacture for you if they have done your product development themselves, and others don’t provide these services but they have partners who they prefer working with. All of this information will be outlined on the manufacturer’s website or by contacting them directly.

When it comes to the product development of your clothing line, there is generally going to be a common path to follow with some common terminology no matter what types of clothing products you’re developing. First, we will look at what the general process of clothing product development looks like, then we will discuss the process in more detail.

• Designs: This generally refers to the initial design concept and is usually represented as sketches either on paper or digitally. While your patterns might start out as concept sketches, eventually you’ll likely turn them into digital sketches using a program like Illustrator.
• Tech Pack: A tech pack is essentially a blueprint for your apparel product, providing a manufacturer with all the details and technical specifications for production. This includes the designs, measurements, materials, and any accessories (zipper, buttons, etc.).
• Pattern Making & Grading: Pattern making is the process of turning your technical drawings into patterns that can be used for production. Grading is the process of taking a single pattern and grading the pattern up or down to create the additional patterns for all the other sizes in your apparel line.
• Sourcing: Sourcing involves finding, communicating, vetting, and working with multiple manufacturers to determine which one is best suited for the full production of your particular products.
• Samples: This involves manufacturers producing a one-off or small batch of samples to provide you with a proof of concept, as well as for you to identify potential issues or improvements prior to a full production run.
• Production: A full product run is the mass production of your apparel products. Depending on the products and the manufacturer, this can be hundreds of units, thousands of units, or even hundreds of thousands of units.

Below, we will go into greater detail about each of these steps in the process and provide you with more content and resources to get you started. However, it’s important to note that there are other resources available that will guide you through the full process, helping you at each step of the way.

Some of the most popular ones are:

• Maker’s Row
• Sqetch
• Sewport
• CALA

Step 1: Design Your Clothing Line Concepts

Your clothing line will begin as sketches—most likely simple sketches in a notebook. This is usually the best route to get the ideas out of your head. As you begin sketching your clothing pieces, also think about adding any specific notes or unique ideas you have, as well as any special features or functionality. These notes will likely be part of tech packs later.

The initial goal is just to start developing your ideas and bring them to life.

Furthermore, the benefit of sketching out your ideas is that they can be shared. This is important because unless you’re a professional clothing designer, you’re going to likely need to enlist the help of a fashion designer or illustrator to help you pull together and refine your sketches into something more realistic and thought out.

Step 2: Create Patterns & Develop Tech Packs

You will need to enlist the help of a qualified pattern maker to take your idea and turn it into an actual pattern that can then be turned into an actual piece of clothing. A pattern can then be used to help create a tech pack.

A tech pack is essentially a blueprint for each garment. Your tech pack tells your manufacturer all the information required to transform your design into a final product. A proper and complete tech pack will reduce errors in production, save you money, prevent miscommunication, and ultimately, bring your product to life exactly how you envisioned it.

Your tech pack should include all possible details about your product, including (but not limited to) the:

• Design
• Fabrics
• Measurements
• Trim
• Stitching
• Artwork
• Label & Tag Information
• Packaging Instructions

Here’s an example of a tech pack for a better understanding:

(Source: Michael Smith Design)

Here are some pattern makers and technical designers who have been vetted and provided by Maker’s Row, to get you started:

• Nicole Melendez
• Clothier Design Source

Additional places to hire freelancers to help produce your tech packs:

• People Per Hour – Tech Packs
• Upwork – Tech Pack Freelancers

Step 3: Research Clothing Manufacturers

The next step in this process is to research potential clothing manufacturers.

Find out things like their location, capabilities, heritage, reputation, and what other brands they’ve worked with to get an idea of what they can offer you. It’s important at this stage to really be thorough as small things such as location can have a massive impact on communication, turnaround time, and shipping when it actually comes to working with a manufacturer.

Not every manufacturer provides the same services so it’s important to know the pros and cons of as many manufacturers as possible so you can find the services you’re looking for without compromising on your brand values.

• Maker’s Row: Maker’s Row has nearly 10,000 factories to explore, including over 3,000 in apparel, all based in the USA.
• Sourcify: Sourcify has relationships with hundreds of Chinese manufacturers and will work with you to find and vet the right one for you.
• Sqetch: Sqetch is similar to Maker’s Row but focuses on connecting you with European manufacturers.

Step 4: Determine Your Budget

Budgeting out product development and production costs is something you need to determine prior to selecting a factory to work with. You need to understand your budget availability and limits so you can map out all aspects of production, such as what fabric you’ll be able to use and whether producing overseas or in your home country is your best option.

Costs to consider in your budget include:

• The price of professional product development services such as pattern making, tech packs, design development, etc.
• The cost of making samples (bearing in mind that more than one sample is usually made)
• The cost of materials such as fabric, buttons, zippers, hardware, and any other pieces used in the construction of your garments
• The cost of transportation between you and the factory for meetings/visiting the factory
• The cost of labor (determine the difference in labor cost between your home country and overseas labor cost requirements)
• The cost of shipping between you and the factory and the cost of shipping the necessary materials to the factory
• The cost of production and actually creating the clothing items themselves

After considering these factors, you’ll be able to communicate your budget to your future manufacturer and find one that fits your requirements.

Pricing out all of these costs is also helpful in determining whether or not producing in an overseas factory is more realistic for your business—bearing in mind that while the cost of labor may be cheaper, the cost of shipping between you and the factory will increase; as will turn around time. Nonetheless, understanding the cost of product development and production helps you and your future manufacturer make the best choices for your business.

Step 5: Select Clothing Manufacturers

Once you’ve researched a bunch of different manufacturers and have an idea of what’s out there, make a shortlist of manufacturers who seem like they’ll be a good fit for your clothing brand.

Maybe there are some manufacturers who specialize in the kinds of clothing products you want to produce, maybe some operate out of your local area, maybe some have raving reviews from past or current clients, or maybe some fit into your budget range better than others. Whatever is important to you in a manufacturer, narrow down your shortlist to ones who seem like they check off some of your most important boxes.

Step 6: Contact Clothing Manufacturers

By now you should have been able to narrow down a long list of potential clothing manufacturers into a shorter list of manufacturers who meet your needs when it comes down to what you require in terms of professional services, which manufacturers are actually able to create your future garments, manufactures in an accessible location, or ones who meet your budget requirements.

Now is the time to contact your potential manufacturers, but that may be easier said than done. Response rates for manufacturers differ, but producing a well-thought-out initial email can increase your chances of actually receiving a response back from potential manufactures.

Here are some general DOs and DON’Ts when it comes to contacting a manufacturer:

• DON’T come across as a “tire-kicker.” If your interest in manufacturing doesn’t seem to be serious or genuine you may not get a response. Manufacturers don’t want to waste their own time working with people who aren’t serious when they could be working with people who actually want to build and grow their business.
• DO be polite. You and your manufacturer will be working together in this process—they don’t solely work for you—so treat them with respect and be mindful of their requirements, services, and processes.
• DO be clear. In the best interest of yourself and your future manufacturer, it’s best practice to be clear about what you’re looking for, the services you require, your timeline, etc. Be upfront about what you need and don’t leave any room for ambiguities in the event that it will create more confusion down the road.
• DO follow up. It’s okay to follow up after your initial email to ensure the factory received and read the message, so be prepared to send up to three follow-up emails spaced apart by a week or so to prompt a response from a factory. This will make you seem eager and serious to the factory which, if you’re new to this process, is what you want.
• DON’T give them too much information. Introduce your company, the products that you’re looking to create with them, what services you’re looking for, and ask what further information they need from you. Give them enough information to know your intentions and that you’re serious about the inquiry, but don’t overload them with your brand goals, material choices, and timelines yet.

Click here to learn more about how to construct the perfect initial contact email.

Step 7: Screen Potential Factories

If you’re lucky, by this step you’ll have received responses from some of the factories you’ve contacted and now it’s time to narrow down your search.

Even if you only received a response from one factory, it is still important to make sure it’s the right fit for you. At this step, you should communicate further with the factories and learn more about how they conduct business and the quality of their products. You should be looking to evaluate whether or not you will get along with them personally and professionally in order to gauge your potential for success as colleagues.

These are things to look out for:

• How they prefer to communicate with their clients (by email, phone, or personal visits)
• Ask for references from other clients (to get a first-hand evaluation of what they are like to work with)
• Ask for samples of products they’ve made (to judge if the quality of their products is at the level you’re looking for)
• Understand how they charge for samples, services, and what constitutes extra charges
• Get a feel for their timeline and availability

Now is the time to learn more about the factory, see their workspace in action, and communicate further with the manufacturer. This stage will give you an initial glimpse of what it will be like to work with this factory in the long run so it’s important to identify your respective strengths and weaknesses now so you can reduce the possibility of headaches and potential miscommunications in the future.

This is also now the right time to let the manufacturer in on your brand goals, where you see your brand starting off, what you see your brand scaling to, and let them know how you want them involved in that process. All the time you spent defining your brand in the first step should be communicated to the manufacturer to see if they understand where your brand is going and if they can get excited for your brand, too.

Step 8: Get Samples Made

Now that you can see yourself manufacturing your clothing line with a factory or two, it’s time to get some samples made so you can truly experience what your potential product will be like.

No matter how well-designed your patterns and tech packs have been, there are always opportunities for adjustments and corrections so it’s strongly encouraged that the sampling step is never skipped. It can be easy to want to jump straight into production—especially when time and money are on the line—but in the end, a whole line of garments that don’t fit properly will cost you more than just having a few samples done right from the start.

At this stage, it is appropriate to have more than one factory make samples of your garments. Feel free to shop around so you’re absolutely sure the factory you pick will be producing the garments you want at the quality level you want!

Step 9: Start Full-Scale Production

The final step of the manufacturing process is really just the first step of building your own clothing brand.

This is the time to work with your manufacturer and get your garments produced! At this stage, it’s important to stay five steps ahead of everything:

• Make sure deadlines are adhered to
• Be available to answer any questions your manufacturer may have for you
• Be diligent with quality control

Once production for one season of garments starts, the planning for the next season begins—this is only just the beginning! But now that you have the right manufacturer for your business, let their skills and services help you build your clothing brand to where you want it to be.

Step 10: Brand Your Clothing & Packaging

The branding of your clothing line has everything to do with how you’ll be perceived by your customers. Branding tells the story of your company and your packaging is one of the few parts of your brand—besides your clothing items themselves—that your customers will actually be able to touch, feel, and see. It engages your customers, it can make them feel valued, and it can even increase the perceived level of quality your customers associate with your brand and your clothing items.

This is why it’s important to seriously consider how you package and present your clothing items, no matter what items you’re selling.

There are plenty of different ways to enhance your brand’s packaging and presentation and to make it unique and true to your brand.

Let’s learn more…

Step 11: Branded Packaging Options

There are two different types of options when it comes to branding your packaging: The actual elements that you use for the packaging itself, and the additional extras you can include with the package to elevate the unboxing experience.

The package elements are the more functional items that are required to actually ship your clothing pieces, whereas the added extras enhance the experience and help to make your customers feel valued.

Elements of a Branded Package

These are the functional parts of a shipping package that you’ll need in order to ship your items from you to your customers. You won’t need every single one of these items, but they’re all options that you can use depending on what you want your packaging to achieve.

Shipping Boxes

Depending on the clothing items you sell, you may have to ship them to your customers in a shipping box. Shipping boxes are sturdy and are a good option for shipping heavy or bulky items (such as coats) or delicate items that need to be protected throughout the shipping process (such as beaded clothing pieces, or items with 3D appliqué).

Shipping boxes, however, can add weight and size to your package making it more expensive to ship, but if it will protect your clothing items while they’re on their way to your customers, it’s a small price to pay upfront that should decrease the potential of damaged items and returned products in the future.

Keep in mind that your shipping boxes don’t have to be boring cardboard boxes. There are plenty of services available to entrepreneurs and small businesses that can create custom boxes for your products at competitive prices, whether you’re looking for something sleek, simple, and plain or something colorful, bold, patterned, and vibrant.

You can also use these services to get your brand name printed onto the box itself for a more professional unboxing experience.

Where to Source Shipping Boxes:

• Refine Packaging
• Pakible
• Packwire
• Lumi
• Wolfpack Packaging Inc.
• Arka
• Box Geek
• Custom Boxes & Packaging
• Custom Boxes Now
• eSupplyStore
• Fast Pack: Boxes
• Instabox (Canada)
• PakFactory
• Papermart
• ValueMailers

Poly Mailers

Another great alternative for shipping clothing items is shipping bags—otherwise referred to in the industry as poly mailers.

These are an ideal option because unlike shipping boxes, they don’t add much weight or bulk to your package, so you won’t be adding extra shipping costs to your package. They are less sturdy than a box though, so they’re a good option if you’re shipping clothing pieces that aren’t easily damaged and can be bent and folded throughout the shipping process. They do come in plenty of sizes too, so whether you’re shipping one item or a few at a time, you should be able to source a selection of different sized poly mailers to meet your customer’s needs. Plenty of brands ship clothing items to their customers in poly mailers, so it is an appropriate method for the industry.

There are plenty of places online where you can get custom poly mailers made for your business so you’re able to add your logo, brand colors, or fun patterns to make it more exciting for your customers.

Where to Source Poly Mailers:

• Sticker Mule
• Pakible
• Lumi
• Uline: Poly Mailers
• eSupplyStore: Poly Mailers

Bubble Mailers

If your clothing items need a bit more protection but you don’t want to completely upgrade from a poly mailer to a full-on shipping box, you have another option: Bubble mailers. As the name would suggest, they’re like poly mailers but they have a layer of bubble wrap included on the inside of the mailer which helps protect whatever’s inside.

They don’t offer the same sturdiness that shipping boxes do, but they help to cushion the contents of the mailer throughout the process and are less bulky than shipping boxes.

Where to Source Bubble Mailers:

• Pakible
• Uline: Bubble Mailers
• eSupplyStore: Bubble Mailers
• Fast Pack: Bubble Mailers

Tissue Paper

If using packing peanuts and crinkle paper isn’t your style, or if your products don’t need additional protection, or even if you’re using a poly mailer, tissue paper may be an ideal option to enhance the unboxing experience for your customers.

Tissue paper makes the unboxing experience feel more like a gift, which can make your package seem thoughtful and your customers feel valued.

Tissue paper is also an easy way to add to your packaging without adding any extra bulk or weight, and you can have it printed with your logo or choose colored or patterned paper to add some extra flair to the package. Use an everchanging assortment of patterns, colors, and styles to keep repeat customers interested.

Where to Source Tissue Paper:

• Uline: Retail Cushioning
• Uline: Industrial Tissue Paper
• JAM Paper: Tissue Paper
• eSupplyStore: Tissue Paper
• Fast Pack: Tissue Paper
• Papermart: Tissue Paper

Packing Tape

Depending on your brand’s style, using packing tape that’s colorful, patterned, or printed with your logo may be an interesting way to decorate your shipping box or package. Not only is it decorative, but packing tape is functional and adds another layer of security to keep box openings sealed throughout the shipping process.

Where to Source Packing Tape:

• Tape Jungle
• Uline: Tape
• JAM Paper: Packaging Tape
• eSupplyStore: Packing Tape

Stickers

If you don’t need something as heavy-duty as packing tape to seal your boxes or mailers shut, stickers can be an alternative option that can also add to the branded packaging experience. Get your logo printed on them, your brand’s tagline, mission statement, fun facts about your brand, or any other piece of info you want to share with your customers for an added layer of personalization. Alternatively, use stickers to brand plain shipping boxes or mailers, or include them inside your package for customers to use or share as they please.

Stickers are super versatile, so think about how you can use stickers to enhance your unboxing experience!

Where to Source Stickers:

• Sticker Giant
• Sticker Mule
• Sticker You
• Moo

Include Extra Branded Material

These aren’t necessary to include, but if you’re interested in elevating your unboxing experience, making it memorable for your customers, and making them feel valued, then including one or two of the following options can help you to start out in a positive way.

Promotions, Discounts & Deals

Including packing inserts that notify your customer of an upcoming promotion, or share a discount code or deal they can use for themselves or share with a friend is a pleasant surprise your customers will likely appreciate when opening their package. It shows thought and care from your end, and it’s also likely to encourage them to purchase from you again, which is advantageous for you.

Business Cards

If you want your customers to remember you, refer you to a friend, or send you feedback about their experience with your business or your products, consider including your business card so they can hold onto it or pass it on to others. It’s a small token, but it shows that you value their input and experience.

Custom Notes/Personalized Messages

This is the ultimate way to make your customers feel valued and shows an immense amount of consideration and thoughtfulness.

Custom, handwritten notes with personalized messages are a great way to connect with your customers and make them feel appreciated. While it likely won’t be possible to include a handwritten note for all of your customers, consider including them for your very first customers, your most frequent purchasers, for customers who leave glowing reviews on your website, or ones who have taken the time to send you valuable feedback. Your customers will likely feel very touched by your effort and will likely also share their experience with their peers or on their social platforms, which is positive exposure for your brand.

Gifts or Samples

Who doesn’t love to receive a gift?! Using gifts as a way to thank your customers for their purchase is a surefire way to capture their attention and make them feel valued. It doesn’t have to be anything big (some companies include candy bars to treat their customers) as you just want it to be an addition to the package, but something small can be just as appreciated by your customers.

If you don’t want to gift an item from another company, consider including a sample of one of your own products. Again, it doesn’t have to be anything big, but something that complements their purchase could be appreciated.

Step 12: Brand Your Clothing Items

Beyond the packaging of your clothing items, you can also add additional touches of branding to your clothing items themselves to ensure they’re as seemingly high-quality as possible and are presented in the most thought out way possible. The best way to do this is by adding custom labels and tags.

Clothing Labels & Tags

Clothing labels are a piece of fabric that’s attached to the inside of clothing items that typically include the brand’s logo. While it’s required in most countries for clothing items to have care and size labels, brand labels aren’t necessary but they add a thoughtful touch to the clothing piece. They also often help customers to remember where the clothing item is from once they’ve integrated it into their wardrobe, and they can add to the overall feel of the clothing piece.

Some labels can be scratchy and uncomfortable for the wearer, which can make the garment seem cheap, while others can be well sewn into the garment and made of a cloth material that’s much more high quality. Think about how you want your brand to be perceived and choose a type of label that fits accordingly.

Clothing Label Material Options:

• Damask Woven Labels
• Satin Woven Labels
• Taffeta Woven Labels
• Woven Patches
• Cotten Twill Labels
• Canvas Printed Labels
• Nylon Printed Labels
• Satin Printed Labels
• Silicon Clothing Labels
• Leather Labels
• And much more

It’s also important to consider which label types exist and where they can be located on the garment.

If you want to increase your brand’s awareness, you may want to consider placing brand labels on the outside of your clothing items such as on hems or cuffs, but if you want to maintain relatively inconspicuous brand placement, you may just want to include the labels on the inside of your garments.

The types of clothing labels you can include on your garments include:

• Manhattan Fold Labels: These are quite similar to Center Fold Labels in their appearance, except that the top of the label is folded over to give a more finished and high-quality look. This type of label is typically sewn into the collar of a garment.
• The End Fold Labels: These have more of a finished and high-quality look to them because the edges are tucked in at the sides. These types of labels are typically printed with brand logos and they’re quite small.
• Straight Cut Labels: These have no folds at all, which means they’re typically sewn on flat—straight onto the garment. They’re commonly also placed on the outside of a garment as a decorative patch, usually with a brand logo printed on them.
• Center Fold Labels: These are the most common type of apparel labels. They’re usually made of woven materials and commonly attached to the inside of garment collars.
• The Mitre Fold Label: These are similar to the End Fold Label as they’re quite small, shaped like a thin rectangle, and are typically printed just with a brand logo. This type of label, however, hangs down a bit farther than the End Fold Label instead of going straight across.
• Loop Fold Labels: These labels are commonly sewn on the inside of garments, typically close to the hemline in shirts or the waistband in some trousers. This type of label is usually reserved for care and size information, not brand logos.

Clothing Tags

Where to Source Clothing Labels and Tags:

• Custom Labels 4 U
• Uline: Hanging Tags

Step 13: Create Your Online Clothing Store

If you’re serious about building a brand or learning more about digital marketing, search engine optimization, and conversion rate strategies, you need to build your clothing store on a customizable ecommerce platform. We can’t recommend Shopify enough. Not only is Shopify one of the easiest platforms to get started with, but its app store is the most robust and has a host of print-on-demand clothing printers and dropshippers if you choose to go that route (read our Shopify Review to learn more about why we recommend it so highly).

Shopify enables you to build your own online clothing store wherever you are, with the ability to sell to customers all over the world. Setting up your store with Shopify is easy, and you don’t have to worry about your website’s security so you can be sure that you and your customers’ sensitive information is protected when shopping on your site.

Overall, Shopify is the most recommended ecommerce platform out there, and it’s your best option when it comes to starting your own clothing store online.

When setting up your clothing store on Shopify you’ll want to take your brand into consideration and make use of all your brand visuals. Implement your color palette, use your logo, take effective product and lifestyle photos of your garments, and create a glowing “About Page” so your customers can learn more about who your brand is and what you stand for.

These are the types of things that will make your clothing store stand out to your customers, so they’ll be more trusting when it comes time for them to make a purchase. You want your website to install confidence in your customers, so take that into consideration when setting up your online clothing store.

Your Store’s Theme

Another aspect of your online clothing/apparel store to take into serious consideration is your store’s theme. Themes are the general outward look and feel of your website, and depending on the products you sell, some themes may display your products better than others.

Since you’ll be starting a clothing/apparel store, you’ll want a theme that shows off your garments to their full potential so choose a theme that enables you to post lots of images.

Shopify offers plenty of free and premium themes to choose from (see them all in action on the Shopify Theme Store) but if you’re looking for more theme options, Out Of The Sandbox creates premium Shopify themes and they are one of the best, if not the best, place to get them.

Step 14: Create a Shipping Strategy for Your Clothing Company

Figuring out how to ship your products to your customers can be a confusing and daunting process if you’ve never done it before as there’s a lot to take into consideration.

What should you charge for shipping? How much does shipping cost? What about returns? What shipping carrier should you use? Should you start off with a shipping and fulfillment warehouse? Will your customers get charged duty and customs fees? What about shipping labels? What about tracking and insuring your packages?

All these questions, and more, are valid questions to be asking yourself—and we’ll dive into them now:

How to Charge Your Customer for Shipping

These are your options:

• Charge Your Customers the Exact Shipping Fee: This means that your customers will be made aware of the shipping costs while they’re checking out and they’ll have to pay the exact amount it costs to get their order shipped to them.
• Charge Your Customers a Flat Shipping Fee: This means that you can instate a flat shipping fee such as $6 for domestic orders and $12 for international orders, no matter how many items each customer orders and no matter where they’re located domestically or internationally. Some orders will cost you more to ship and some will cost you less, but if you budget it correctly it should even out.
• Offer Your Customers Free Shipping Over a Certain Threshold: For example, you could offer all customers free shipping if they spend over $100. This encourages customers to purchase enough products to meet that amount so they don’t have to pay for shipping. By making sure they spend a certain monetary amount, it makes it more worthwhile for you to ship their package for “free” because the cost of shipping is absorbed into your profit margin on the order. Check out our article on How to Offer Free Shipping & Calculating Your Free Shipping Threshold for more information.
• Offer Your Customers Free Shipping Based on their Location: In this case, you could offer free shipping for all domestic destinations and any international locations will have to pay a calculated rate or a flat fee. This encourages your local customers to purchase from you without having to pay any shipping fees and depending on your domestic shipping rates you should be able to absorb the cost in your profit margin, assuming you price your items accordingly. For international customers, however, you’ll be able to fund the shipping cost fully or in part by their calculated or flat rate fee.
• Offer Your Customers Free Shipping on Any Order: Some businesses choose to offer free shipping to all customers because it’s easier for them to calculate, more attractive to customers, and results in fewer cart abandonments. The cost of shipping will be absorbed by your profit margin, so take that into consideration when pricing your items.

Shipping is never free. No matter what it says on any website, “free shipping” is not free for the business—the cost is just being absorbed in some other way. It’s also no secret that shipping costs are one of the most likely reasons for shopping cart abandonments, so in order to combat that, many ecommerce stores offer free shipping to decrease shipping cart abandonments.

Take both of these things into consideration when pricing your products so you can gauge whether you’ll need to charge higher prices for your items so you can afford to offer free shipping, or at least a subsidized shipping rate.

Calculating Shipping Costs

The cost of shipping depends on your carrier, where you’re shipping to, and where you’re shipping from. There are also other variables involved like the weight and size of the package as well, so your best bet is to use a shipping calculator to determine how much it would cost you to ship your packages. Many carriers have shipping calculators available on their websites so you can price out the cost of your packages on there.

• USPS Postage Price Calculator
• UPS Shipping Calculator
• DHL Shipping Calculator
• FedEx Shipping Calculator
• Canada Post Shipping Calculator
• UK Royal Mail Shipping Calculator
• Australia Post Shipping Calculator

How to Handle Returns

You basically have two options when it comes to handling returns for your customers: You can provide your customers with pre-paid postage in case they need to return an item, or you don’t provide your customers with pre-paid postage and they will have to assume the responsibility to pay for postage in the event that they need to return an item to you.

Providing pre-paid postage for customers offers them a seamless shopping experience with your company, however not offering free returns can actually affect customer’s decision to purchase from you at all.

Check out this blogpost from Shopify that discusses shipping returns in more detail to learn more about it and how it affects your business.

Which Shipping Carrier to Use

Most popular shipping carriers offer a business account program so businesses can get perks such as better order management, discounts on shipping, and/or free shipping supplies. Basically, it makes it a little bit easier and less expensive for you than just shipping packages without a business account.

Check out these popular shipping carrier’s business accounts:

• USPS Customer Gateway
• UPS Business Solutions
• DHL Business Account
• FedEx Business Center
• Canada Post Business Account
• UK Royal Mail Online Business Account
• Australia Post Business Credit Account

Using a Shipping & Fulfillment Warehouse

Shipping and fulfillment warehouses can be a tricky service to use for clothing stores as there are usually many different SKUs (stock-keeping units) such as different sizes and colors for each item of clothing. Although shipping and fulfillment warehouses may be convenient services to use since they handle the entire picking, packing, and shipping service for you, there can be some drawbacks, including:

• Inability to Use Your Own Branded Packaging: Some warehouses require that you use their own shipping packaging, so you won’t be able to use any boxes, poly mailers, tissue paper, stickers, etc. that have your own branding on them. It can also be difficult to add other extras such as promotional inserts, custom notes, samples, etc.
• Cost: Shipping and fulfillment warehouses can take the shipping process off your hands but at what cost? It costs you to store your SKUs on your warehouse’s shelf space so depending on how quickly your product ships out to customers and how much product you’re selling, it may or may not be a worthwhile cost for you.
• Handling Returns: Since your business is just one of many at a shipping and fulfillment warehouse, returned items may be handled in an inefficient manner, depending on the warehouse. Make sure you look into each warehouse’s return policy before you work with them.

However, there are also advantages to using shipping and fulfillment warehouses:

• Shipping Costs: Shipping and fulfillment warehouses generally have to pay less to ship packages, so you’ll likely pay less too.
• Simplified Process: No need to wait in line at the post office or deal with couriers to get your packages shipped.
• Saves You Time: All the time that it takes you to pick, package, and send packages can be put to other uses such as managing customer inquires, advertising, or just growing your business in general.

Generally speaking, if you’re just starting your online clothing store: Handle the shipping and fulfillment process yourself, initially.

This gives you the chance to learn the best practices for shipping your own products, you can put your own personal touch on each package and you can use your own branded packaging materials. If you’re just sending out a few parcels a day, it won’t take up too much of your time to send them through post offices or couriers.

If you anticipate having a large customer base to start off with and predict that you may not be able to keep up with packing and shipping orders yourself, have a look into shipping and fulfillment warehouses to see what your options are.

Shipping & Fulfillment Warehouses:

These are some shipping and fulfillment options to consider, however, we encourage you to do your own research and due diligence:

• Printful Warehousing & Fulfillment
• Shopify Fulfillment Network
• Fulfillment by Amazon (FBA)
• Fulfillrite
• Fulfillment.com
• Red Stag Fulfillment
• ThinkLogistics
• ShipFusion
• WSI Supply Chain Solutions

To learn more about why third-party logistics providers are advantageous for your business, check out our Ultimate Guide to Utilizing a 3PL Provider for Ecommerce Fulfillment article.

Duty & Customs Fees

It’s important to be aware that you as a business are not in control of the duties and customs fees your international customers may be charged on their orders. Customs and duties fees are managed and imposed on your customers by their country itself, you don’t have the power to prevent them or influence their cost.

You do, however, have the ability to warn your customers about potential customs and duties fees they may face so that they’re not unpleasantly surprised when their order arrives.

On your shipping information page, include a section about customs and duties fees and let your customers know that they may be charged these fees by their county and that your business has no control over that.

For more information about customs and duties declaration, required forms, and policies, check out these pages:

• USPS Postal Exporter
• UPS Import/Export Regulations
• DHL Customs and Duties
• FedEx Guide to Customs Forms
• Canada Post Customs Requirements
• UK Royal Mail Customs and Duties
• Australia Post Customs Forms & Regulations

Shipping Tracking & Insurance

Many customers now expect to have their packages tracked and expect to receive email updates on the whereabouts of the packages. If you’re interested in giving your customers a streamlined and professional shopping experience, look into what tracking options your shipping carrier has available. It almost always costs extra or will mean that you’ll have to upgrade to a more expensive service, but it could be very worthwhile for both you and your customers.

Most shipping carriers offer some kind of insurance, but it may not cover the entire cost of your orders—depending on the price of your items. If you sell high-priced items or just want the peace of mind that you’re insured for any lost parcels, it may be worth looking into a third-party shipping insurance provider such as Shipsurance or InsureShip.

It’s important to be aware that the shipping process can be complex, and it can take a while to set up and get used to all the different steps, systems, and processes. It’ll probably be a learning curve at the start, especially if you’ve never shipped a large number of orders before or if you’re launching to an eager audience, so give yourself time to set up your shipping systems properly so it doesn’t affect your business too much. Once you get a system going though you’ll likely get the hang of it and be able to make small improvements or scale your processes as needed.

Conclusion

We hope this post has provided you with very clear insight into the steps, systems, and processes it takes to start a clothing line. It may seem overwhelming at first if this is all new to you, however, just focus on one step at a time and grow from there. No matter what kind of clothing line you want to create—whether it’s just your own line of t-shirts or an entire collection of cut and sew garments—the information, tools, resources, and experiences provided in this guide should help you get where you want to go.

Before you launch your clothing brand, don’t forget to run through our Launch Checklist to make sure you don’t miss anything important, and once you’ve launched, use our 52 Week Marketing Plan to drive traffic to your store.

The post How to Start a Clothing Line: Your Complete Guide to Design, Sampling, Production & Packaging appeared first on A Better Lemonade Stand.

But why start a t-shirt business?

Like a lemonade stand, they’re pretty easy for any novice entrepreneur to start. They can be started quickly with a limited amount of infrastructure and basically no money—so they’re a great first step in any entrepreneur’s business portfolio.

For those reasons, starting a t-shirt business tends to get a bad rap—anyone can do it, it doesn’t take any rocket science! But, that’s why we think t-shirt businesses are an important part of the entrepreneurial ecosystem. They’re like a rite of passage. Ask any modern-day ecommerce entrepreneur if they had a t-shirt business at one point in their career and they’ll likely say yes.

And they’ll also tell you everything that starting a t-shirt business taught them.

Starting a t-shirt business is a great place to learn how to be an entrepreneur—by actually being an entrepreneur! You can read as many books and blogs about entrepreneurship as you want, listen to all the podcasts, and follow all the motivational accounts on social media, but if you aren’t putting anything into practice then you’re still not an entrepreneur.

By starting a t-shirt business, you can put everything you know about building, launching, and growing a business into practice, plus you can figure out everything you don’t know (which will probably be more than you expected) on the way.

When you start a t-shirt business, it may not bring you riches, fame, and glory, but it will teach you important lessons about launching and running a business that you can’t get from books and blogs—which you can apply to any future businesses. For many entrepreneurs, starting a t-shirt business laid a foundation of skills, lessons, and experience that served as a base for every other business they launched in the future.

So, let’s get into everything you need to know about how to start an online t-shirt business.

Starting an Online T-Shirt Store from Scratch

The founder of this site, Richard, started off his ecommerce career with a t-shirt store. It was originally just an experiment to see if he could build and launch an online store in 24-hours, but it quickly blew up to be much more than that.

Sure enough, he created and launched his store in 24-hours, but he also documented the process in a blog post to show others how they could do it, too. And people loved it! The post was shared thousands of times and hundreds of thousands of people read it. Some people wanted to buy his t-shirts and others wanted to start their own t-shirt store, too.

But, that was several years ago, and so much has changed for ecommerce businesses since then.

Now, it’s even easier to start a t-shirt business! And there are so many more creative t-shirt designs and concepts that entrepreneurs are selling. Plus, it’s easier to sell other products too like sweatshirts, ball caps, mugs, phone cases, and so much more. New entrepreneurs aren’t limited to just starting t-shirt businesses as their first store anymore, there are so many other options.

So, let’s rewind a few years and start from the very beginning. What was starting a t-shirt business like back in the day? And how have things changed?

This is Richard’s story…

The Background Story

As an entrepreneur, I find it hard to do nothing. I always want to be building something. I need to be building something. That’s why, during the process of documenting #TheGreatBuild project, I became frustrated so many times.

One evening while I was waiting and I really couldn’t move forward on the project, I made a decision to build another ecommerce business.

For those that are maybe just reading my blog for the first time and don’t know, my new ecommerce business which I have been documenting through a blog series called #TheGreatBuild is called Finch Goods Co. Many people have asked me where the name “Finch” came from and why I chose Finch Goods for the name of my new business. Truth be told, it was the name of the street I grew up on. It was the place I lived, the place I played, and it was the place of my first dozen entrepreneurial endeavors, mostly in the form of lemonade stands, vegetable stands, a makeshift hockey card pawnshop, and garage sales. The name Finch Goods Co. is a tribute to my early entrepreneur days.

Finch is also the name of the closest subway/bus station, and up until I had a car, it was my access point to the rest of the world. If I wanted to go anywhere, I passed through Finch Station.

Because of my sentimental attachment to Finch, I designed a t-shirt based on the typography, colors, and tile pattern of that station in late February.

Fast Forward

Fast forward a few weeks to a night in April. I was working on #TheGreatBuild project (Finch Goods Co.) and was getting close to launching. However, I was stuck. Everything was ready to go except I was waiting on some inventory I intended to launch with. I had nothing to do.

As an entrepreneur, having nothing to do is a terrible feeling. It feels exactly the opposite of progress—probably because it is. Growing anxious to launch Finch Goods Co. and not being able to, I stared blankly at my computer for a few minutes, until my screen darkened and went to sleep. In the reflection of my screen, I saw my shirt… Finch.

Remembering the few compliments I got on the shirt, I wondered if people actually were interested in hyper-local t-shirts that represented their community—right down to their local subway station.

Validation

The idea of hyper-local t-shirts was one I was sure people were interested in. Our city definitely has a lot of pride and after some cursory Google searches, I found nothing similar. The closest was a series of vinyl wall decals with the various stations’ typographies. Searching for that company’s name on Google, I found several online news articles about them. They had been running their business for 5+ years, so in theory, they were doing well.

The thought of getting wrapped up in a new business while still trying to launch Finch Goods Co. was a little intimidating. My time was very limited at this point… Because of this, I came to a decision; if I were to build a new business, there would have to be some rules:

• • I had 24 hours to build it—no more, no less
  • It had to be fully automated once it was live

Under these rules, building the entire business would essentially act in itself as the validation.

It’s Go Time… 23:59

With these rules in mind, there were a couple of things to figure out:

• • #1: Which ecommerce platform was I going to use?
  • #2: How would I print the t-shirts and ship them in an automated way?

For me, #1 was easy. Unless #2 forced my hand in another direction, I would use Shopify (Shopify Review). It’s the platform I know and love, it’s the easiest to use (in my opinion), and it offered the most amount of app integrations, which I knew was likely where I would find a dropshipping company to print and ship custom shirts for me.

I immediately headed to the Shopify App Store and searched for “t-shirts.” The search returned approximately six t-shirt printers/dropshippers. After scanning through all of them, their integrations, their t-shirt options, and pricing, I decided on Printful. Printful, it seemed, had the most seamless integration, the best selection of shirts, and reasonable pricing. They also had the ability to print other products like canvas prints and bags, should I ever decide to expand my product offering.

With my ecommerce platform and t-shirt printer/dropshipper decided upon, it was time to work on the designs. Now, Toronto has over 60 stations and I completely underestimated how grueling and exhausting it would be to design all 60. Luckily, many of the designs had a similar style. Over the next 6 hours, I cranked out almost all 60 t-shirt designs for the stations.

With all 60 designs complete, I thought I was done. However, I quickly realized that very few people would buy a design without knowing how it looked on a t-shirt. With that in mind, I headed over to my favorite graphic design marketplace, Creative Market. I searched for “t-shirt template” and quickly found a really slick template for $8.

Now that I had the t-shirt template and all my t-shirt designs, it was once again a manual process of applying all 60 of my designs to the t-shirt template and saving each file.

With all my t-shirt designs completed, it was time to build the website. I signed up for Shopify’s 14-day trial and got to work. I already had a Shopify theme I had purchased for Finch Goods Co. so I figured I might as well use it for this project as well. When it comes to naming a business, I know it can sometimes take weeks, but I didn’t have that long. I decided to allocate 3 minutes to naming this business. As confusing as this was (mostly for my friends and family) I decided to call this business, Finch’s. Again, this was named after the street I grew up on, the subway station closest to my childhood home and, it just so happens that Finch Station is the first station on the subway line.

I designed the website to be as simple as possible, even keeping the same color scheme from Finch Goods Co. The most time-consuming part was creating each of the 60 products and uploading the right photos for each. Organization was key.

Finally, after 5 coffees and close to 14 hours straight, Finch’s was born:

The last step before I launched and marketed my new online store was to integrate my store with Printful (Printful Review). This was an easy enough process. I installed the Printful Shopify App, and from there it automatically pulled in all my products. All I had to do at that point was upload the design file to each product and select the type/style of shirt I was going to use.

Marketing

At this point, I was pretty tired and really had no idea what I was going to do for my marketing. However, I did remember that just in the previous week, the subway celebrated its 60th anniversary. Could I use this to my advantage? I did some searches on Google to see who covered this event. One stuck out immediately: It was a pretty popular local online blog and they just wrote an article about the subway system’s 60th anniversary. I figured the author of that post might want to hear about my newly released shirts.

I found the author on Twitter and asked for his email address. Later that evening, I emailed him the following:

Within the hour he replied asking a few more questions. It was late and I was exhausted. I decided to leave my response until the morning. Besides, I still had a few things left to set up in my Shopify account before launch.

The next day, I woke up to the dinging sound of emails coming through to my phone, *ding*… *ding*… *ding*. After ignoring the first few, I finally rolled over and checked my phone. To my surprise, it was a bunch of emails from customers asking about my shirts, shipping, and pricing… Customers? I haven’t even officially launched yet!

I quickly opened my laptop and discovered a big spike in traffic to my site. Although I had not “officially” launched, my site was live. However, I still had not turned on checkout, so no one could actually buy a t-shirt.

My first priority was to turn the checkout on and complete a test order to make sure everything was working properly. After I did that, I checked to see where the traffic was coming from. Turns out, the writer went ahead without my email responses and published a post about my store anyways!

Here was his post:

I also received a handful of other emails from people interested in collaborations and promotions with my line of tees.

Furthermore, that day I also received some favorable social media mentions from BlogTO as well as a local Hip Hop radio station and a handful of other locals.

Costs & Sales

I’ve broken down my total costs below for this 24-hour business. My fixed costs amounted to a staggering $24. My variable costs were $13 per shirt to print each one. My revenues for the first 24 hours of business were $347.71 for a total profit (in the first 24 hours) of $210.71

Total Costs:
$16 font for typography (Fixed Cost)
$8 t-shirt mockup template (Fixed Cost)
$104 for printing 8 t-shirts at $13 per t-shirt (Variable Costs)
____________________________
$137 Total Costs

Total Revenue In The First 24 Hours:
$347.71

Admittedly, after the spike in sales from the initial media coverage, sales dropped. In fact, since that first 24-hour sales period, I’ve only made a few hundred more dollars, however, I have done ABSOLUTELY NOTHING and everything is 100% automated. I have not, and I have no need to login to anything for sales and orders to be taken care of.

Going Forward

Since my initial email that sparked my initial sales, I haven’t done anything else for marketing. That one blog post continues to deliver a small trickle of sales each week.

Most of my time now is spent on my new project, Finch Goods Co. so I have almost no time left for this project. However, when I do get some time, I’m going to focus on SEO around some keywords I uncovered that I believe have the potential to deliver a steady stream of high-quality traffic for people looking for localized Toronto t-shirts. Again, I want to keep this project as automated as possible so SEO is going to be the biggest opportunity to achieve that.

So as you can see, starting a t-shirt business is a valuable way to learn the ropes around building, launching, and growing an online business. It worked for Richard, and it can work for you, too.

Why You Should Start an Online T-Shirt Business Right Now

The biggest problem we find among online entrepreneurs is:

• They don’t know what to sell online so they spend months and months looking for product ideas, before giving up
• If they do find a great product idea and start their first business, they have no idea how to properly market their product and business to drive traffic and convert that traffic to sales—thus a great product or idea is squandered

Starting a t-shirt business helps with both of these factors.

First, if you’re struggling to find a product to sell, you will automatically have a product—t-shirts. It makes choosing a product idea simple.

Second, an online t-shirt business gives you a way to start understanding and experimenting with online marketing before you sink some real time and money into a more serious business.

Remember, and never forget, you’ll learn 100x more from actually starting a business than you ever will from just consuming articles, blogs, books, and podcasts. There is no substitution for the real-world experience of building traffic and learning to convert it, and starting with a t-shirt business can be one of the best places to begin.

Who Can Start a T-Shirt Business

One of the best things about starting an online t-shirt business?

Pretty much anyone can start one!

There’s a much lower barrier-to-entry because you don’t have to purchase a bunch of t-shirts from a wholesaler, learn how to screen print designs on them, and then figure out how to ship the t-shirts to your customers. Oh no—selling t-shirts online is a much more streamlined process now, to the point that you don’t even have to see your t-shirts in-person at all. They can be made and sent directly to your customers without you having to lift a finger.

This is great news for new entrepreneurs because it means that they can start t-shirt businesses and get their foot in the door more easily.

You can start a t-shirt business if:

• You want a small side project
• You want to start your first business
• You’re a student
• You’re a stay-at-home parent
• You work another job
• You have some free time
• You want to experiment with marketing
• You have a cool t-shirt design idea
• You want to start a business and then sell it
• You want to start a business and then grow it
• You want to make your own merch
• You don’t have much money to spend on starting a business
• You have virtually no money to spend on starting a business
• You want to start and run a business that takes minimal effort to upkeep
• You don’t have the ability to commit full-time to starting and running an online business

Whatever your reason, pretty much anyone can start a t-shirt business! Read on to the next sections to find out how you can start a completely automated t-shirt business for very little upfront investment, and without purchasing any inventory upfront.

Remember, Richard started his t-shirt business for less than $150, so it’s possible!

How to Start an Online T-Shirt Business Right Now

Alright, let’s get into the details.

This is how you can start an online t-shirt business right now:

• You need a niche
• You need a t-shirt supplier
• You need a website
• You need t-shirt designs

That’s it! Just three main steps.

Let’s dive in further.

Pick a Niche

Before starting your online t-shirt business, there is one important thing to consider—your niche.

Choosing a niche is absolutely vital for success in the over-saturated t-shirt industry. If you don’t focus on your niche, your t-shirt designs and marketing may not appeal to your core audience and you also might not stand out in the market.

What is a Niche?

A niche is a group of people joined together by a common interest that is typically a subset of a larger market.

Think of it like this: Every person in the world has interests and those interests categorize them—consciously or not—into niches. Niches are specific enough to account for a substantial amount of people, while not being too large or too broad.

For example, picking “women” as a niche is too broad. Women are interested in many different things, they are a broad range of ages, activity levels, geological locations, and have varying skills and values. “Women” are a market, but not a niche market. “Women who rock climb” is more specific, without being too broad. There’s a substantial portion of the world’s population who fit the description of this niche market without it being too limiting.

Why Pick a Niche?

The purpose of picking your niche is to define a target group of people that your t-shirts will appeal to.

If you have no niche market, then you’ll have too broad a range of people to try to sell to which can become overwhelming and fruitless. Targeting ad campaigns becomes difficult, your branding can become directionless and there will be no identifiable passion fueling your business.

Niche markets are passionate about their interests because, well, they’re interested in them! If you feed into their interests then their community is likely to extend their passion to your business.

Find a T-Shirt Supplier

Once you have an idea of what your target niche is, you need to source your products! A business is nothing without products to sell.

So, in this case, you need to find t-shirts.

Luckily, there are lots (and we mean lots!) of t-shirt suppliers out there. You can find suppliers in all kinds of countries selling all kinds of t-shirts in all kinds of materials at all kinds of price points.

But what you need to narrow down your search to is a supplier that meets your specific criteria.

Do you want your t-shirts to be a certain style (cropped or long?), a certain color (neutrals or brights?), a certain fabric (cotton or a poly-blend?), or to meet certain specifications (eco-friendly or sweat-wicking?). If so, you’ll have to find a supplier that can meet the standards you’re setting.

If price is a big factor for you, you might want to focus on finding a t-shirt supplier that’s located in an area where manufacturing costs are low, so the cost to produce your products will be low, too. If fast-shipping is a priority for you, you might want to work with a supplier that has fulfillment warehouses in locations where most of your customers live so they’ll get their products faster.

Above all else, for new entrepreneurs, we recommend working with a t-shirt supplier that offers dropshipping.

What’s dropshipping?

It’s when the t-shirt supplier handles the entire process of making, printing, packing, and shipping your t-shirt products for you. They handle all the backend stuff, so you get to focus on creating your t-shirt designs, marketing your t-shirts, and helping your customers. It makes the process of starting and running your business super easy, and it’s how you can start a t-shirt business with no money upfront.

When you work with a t-shirt dropshipper, you just purchase a t-shirt from them when a customer purchases one from you! And most t-shirt dropshippers integrate with the most popular ecommerce platforms (like Shopify) so the entire process can be completely automated, meaning that you don’t have to forward customer orders to your dropshipper. The orders will go straight through from your site to your dropshipper!

Dropshipping is one of those things that sounds too good to be true—but it’s a tried-and-true process. Richard used Printful to dropship his t-shirts when he started his t-shirt business several years ago, and it’s only gotten better since then! Now, Printful is one of the top dropshipping services in the world, they have warehouses all over the globe in countries like the USA, Canada, Australia, Mexico, Spain, Japan, and Latvia so customers get their orders fast. They also ship worldwide, they offer tons of different products so you can dropship more than just t-shirts, and they have a team you can work with to create your designs if you want help bringing your product ideas to life.

They’re a full-service dropshipping service and they’re adding new products all the time, so they’re our top recommendation when it comes to starting your t-shirt business. If you want to learn more about them, check out our Printful Review.

But, if you’re looking to explore all your options, check out the following t-shirt dropshippers:

• Printful (Printful Review)
• Spocket
• Gooten
• Kite.ly
• Inkthreadable
• Amplifier
• Print Aura
• Printify
• Shirt Monkey
• Tee Talkies
• T-Shirt & Sons
• Teespring

Or check out our Dropshipping Suppliers Directory for even more suppliers.

Once you’ve picked a t-shirt supplier, you can move on to the next step.

Create Your T-Shirt Business Website

There are plenty of available platforms that you can sell your t-shirts on.

Marketplaces like Teespring have become popular lately, however, options like this aren’t ideal if you’re trying to learn more about digital marketing and branding. Choosing a marketplace platform like Teespring means that your products live on the Teespring platform so you don’t have the option to brand your own website, get deep into your site’s analytics, or implement sophisticated conversion optimization tactics.

There’s a time and a place for ecommerce marketplaces like Teespring—there definitely are some advantages to them like being able to draw in traffic and sales quickly—but if you’re looking to really learn the ropes of ecommerce, we’d recommend the next option…

Which is to choose a hosted ecommerce platform. If you’re serious about building a brand or learning more about digital marketing, website optimization, and sales strategies, then you need to go with a more customizable option like Shopify, BigCommerce, or Squarespace.

There are plenty of hosted ecommerce platforms out there, but our top pick is Shopify. They’re the best choice for pretty much any online business, and since they’re the biggest player in the game, it’s highly likely that whichever t-shirt dropshipper you work with will integrate directly with Shopify so you can automate your sales process.

It’s also super easy to get your site set up on Shopify. You don’t need to know how to code or even know much about how to set up a website—Shopify walks you through the entire process. They’re built to help people who know nothing about online businesses get their online business set up quickly and easily, but they’re also powerful enough to scale along with businesses as they grow. Any size of online store can be set up on Shopify, whether it’s a local mom-and-pop shop, to a Fortune 500 company—they’re a good fit for pretty much any business.

So, for your t-shirt store, we recommend setting it up on Shopify. You can make use of their 14-day free trial to get started before committing. But, if you want to explore all your options, check out our roundup of all the best ecommerce platforms here before making your choice.

Create Your T-Shirt Designs

Once you have a t-shirt supplier and you have an idea of where you’re going to set up shop, it’s time to figure out what you want your t-shirts to look like.

Your t-shirt designs are a super important part of your business—they’re essentially what’s going to set you apart from all the other t-shirt stores or retailers out there so it’s worth putting effort into your t-shirt designs.

These are your options:

• Create your own t-shirt designs
• Purchase designs from artists/creatives
• Commission an artist/creative to create designs for you

Depending on your budget and design ideas, one of these options might be a better fit for you than the others, so consider them carefully.

Creating Your Own T-Shirt Designs

If you’re an artist or creative, you might want to create your own designs or already have designs that you can print on your t-shirts. If that’s the case, then create your own t-shirt designs!

If you want to create your own t-shirt designs but aren’t sure how, check out classes on Skillshare to learn how to make your own designs. You could create designs on paper and then scan them onto your computer to make a digital file, or you could create digital designs right from the get-go.

Purchasing T-Shirt Designs

If you don’t want to create your own designs but don’t want to hire a designer to create them, you can purchase designs from creators on sites like Creative Market, GraphicRiver, or Designious. There are so many different options to choose from, and in most cases, you can even make small edits to the designs to tailor them to your needs. But keep in mind that you’ll need to purchase the commercial license option in order to include the designs on t-shirts that you’re selling, and you’ll have to abide by the licenses’ rules.

Also keep in mind that these marketplaces are open to anyone, so it’s possible that other people will be using the same designs and selling their own products with the designs on them—so they won’t be unique to you or your business.

Hiring a T-Shirt Designer

The final option is to hire a designer that can create t-shirt designs for you. This is likely to be the most costly option out of all three, however, it will likely give you great results and will ensure that your designs are more bespoke than if you were to purchase them from a public marketplace.

If you want to hire a designer, try these services:

• Dribbble
• Behance
• Fiverr
• Upwork
• Freelancer
• Elance

A graphic designer will be able to take your design ideas and bring them to life so you can sell the exact kind of t-shirts you want to sell. There are all kinds of designers out there so whether you want abstract t-shirt designs, t-shirts will cool fonts, illustrations to print on your t-shirts, patterns to print on your t-shirts, or whatever else you can think of—you’ll likely be able to find the perfect designer to create what you’re looking for.

To keep your t-shirt designs consistent from one to the next, work with the same designer for each design. It will help give your t-shirts a certain look which can help you establish a recognizable brand. On the other hand, if you want more varied options to keep things fresh and interesting, work with different designers for each design to give your customers more options! It’s your t-shirt business, so you can do what you want.

Finding T-Shirt Mockups

Another part of setting up your t-shirt store is creating product images to sell your t-shirts to your customers. You can always order samples from your t-shirt supplier so you can see your t-shirts in person and shoot them on a model (Printful lets you print off samples at a discounted price so you can do this!) but if you’re under time or budget constraints, there is another option.

Use a t-shirt mockup to bring your t-shirt designs to life—without actually having to purchase or photograph your t-shirts yourself!

This is a great option if, like Richard, you’re launching soon and you don’t have time to order your t-shirts and wait for them to arrive, or if you want to keep your startup budget low and not order samples of your t-shirts.

A t-shirt mockup enables you to bring your t-shirt designs to life without seeing them in person.

If you’re looking for a free t-shirt mockup option, Printful’s Mockup Generator is your best option. It can create t-shirt mockup flat lays, t-shirt mockups on models, and even lifestyle t-shirt mockups. It’s a super quick, budget-friendly option and it’s the option Richard chose when he was getting his product photos ready for his t-shirt store.

You can also purchase t-shirt mockups for a nominal fee (usually less than $10) from sites like Creative Market, Fiverr t-shirt mockups, GraphicRiver T-Shirt Mockups, and Design Bolts—50 T-Shirt Mockups if you can’t seem to find what you’re looking for on Printful’s Mockup Generator.

There are literally hundreds of t-shirt mock-up templates available online, both free and paid, so you should be able to find something that works for your business and your budget!

Should I Copyright My T-Shirt Designs? Should I Trademark My T-Shirt Designs?

First of all, what are copyrights and trademarks?

• Trademarks apply to identifying elements of a brand such as a logo
• Copyrights apply to literary and artistic works such as designs, books, and video

Should I Copyright or Trademark My T-Shirt Designs?

The super common questions of whether to copyright your t-shirt designs or trademark your t-shirt designs can be answered simply: In our opinion, no.

If you’re wondering whether you should copyright your t-shirt designs or trademark your t-shirt designs, we suggest not doing so. Why? The short answer is that you automatically own any copyrights to designs you’ve created without having to officially register that copyright, and trademarks are expensive, time-consuming, and don’t give you benefits in all jurisdictions.

Plus, when you register a trademark you have the obligation to defend that trademark, so you have the responsibility to hold people/businesses accountable if they infringe on your trademark which can lead to taking legal action (aka, more time and money) in future.

Copyrights and trademarks may be a good fit for you if you have something really important to protect, in which case seek advice from local counsel, however, for the average person we don’t suggest pursuing official copyrights or trademarks.

Can I Use Copyrighted or Trademarked Designs on My T-Shirts?

Again, the answer is likely no.

If you want to use copyrighted or trademarked designs on your t-shirts, you need to have express written permission from the owner of the copyright or trademark. Printing copyrighted or trademarked material on your t-shirt without the owner’s permission could possibly lead to legal action, which can be costly and time-consuming.

If you’re not sure whether a design you want to use is copyrighted or trademarked, reach out to the owner to see if it’s in the public domain or if you can use the design on your own products. If you can’t find the owner or when in doubt, don’t use the design. It’s not worth any legal ramifications for infringing on a copyright or trademark.

It’s worth remembering that copyrights and trademarks can extend not only to images and works of art, but to fonts, icons, illustrations, memes, quotes, and sayings, as well as brands. Just because you don’t know the source of a quote, image, meme, illustration, or something like an icon or font character seems too simple to be copyrighted or trademarked, it doesn’t mean that it’s free game to use.

The general rule of thumb here is if you haven’t created it, then don’t use it on your products.

This extends to your product photos and marketing materials, too. If you haven’t paid for a t-shirt mockup, or used a t-shirt mockup that you know is free to use, or worked with a model to create your product photos, then don’t put your t-shirt design on an image and use it on your site.

People own the copyright to their own images, even if they’re on Instagram or Pinterest and even if you don’t know who the original source is, so don’t overlay your t-shirt design on someone else’s image and then upload it to your site because that’s also likely an infringement on someone’s copyright.

This might seem confusing or like a lot of information but again remember:

• Don’t use a design, image, illustration, font, or icon on your t-shirt if you haven’t created it
• Don’t use a design, image, illustration, font, or icon on your t-shirt if you didn’t purchase the commercial rights to use it
• Don’t use a design, image, illustration, font, or icon on your t-shirt if you didn’t commission a designer, artist, or creator to create them for you for commercial purposes
• Don’t put your designs on images that you don’t own or haven’t created (even if the images come from Instagram or Pinterest or Google and/or you don’t know who the creator of the image is)
• Don’t use quotes that you haven’t created (yes, quotes are copyrighted work, even sometimes if they come from unknown sources)
• Memes can be copyrighted works, too
• Don’t use copyrighted or trademarked brand slogans, images, logos, or assets of any kind
• When in doubt, err on the side of caution and don’t use a work that isn’t yours
• If unsure, try to contact the owner/creator of whatever asset you want to use in your design

It’s better to be safe than sorry in the matters of copyright and trademark infringement, so conduct your own due diligence and contact qualified professionals if need be.

Check out these online legal resources for qualified legal advice, if need be:

• Lawtrades (USA)
• Clarity (Worldwide)
• Ownr (Canada)
• Rocket Lawyer (USA, UK, Spain, France, The Netherlands)

The Cost of Starting a T-Shirt Business

If you’re new to ecommerce or just starting a t-shirt business for the first time, you might be wondering how much it costs to start a t-shirt business.

Let’s get into it.

How Much Does it Cost to Start a T-Shirt Business?

T-shirt businesses can be started on a very small budget, especially if you’re working with a t-shirt dropshipper to supply your products.

These are the main costs:

• The cost of setting up your website (an ecommerce platform like Shopify costs $29/month but remember that they offer a 14-day free trial)
• The cost of making your t-shirt designs (this can be free if you make them yourself)
• The cost of t-shirt product photo mockups (this can be free if you use the Printful Mockup Generator)
• The cost of marketing (this can be free if you use social media)
• The cost of your t-shirts (if you use a dropshipper, you only have to purchase t-shirts once a customer has actually placed an order, meaning you don’t have to purchase any inventory upfront

How Can I Start My Own T-Shirt Business with No Money?

To start a t-shirt business with no money or very little money, you’ll need to create your own t-shirt designs, use a dropshipper like Printful so you don’t have to purchase any inventory upfront, and you’ll have to make your own product photos.

You can make your own product photos for free by using Printful’s Mockup Generator. All you have to do is upload your t-shirt designs to one of their t-shirt mockups and you’ll have a product photo-ready in seconds!

You’ll also have to have some sort of website to sell your t-shirt on, which will be hard to find for free. Shopify offers a 14-day free trial, but after that, you’ll have to commit to a paid plan (which costs $29/month).

Alternatively, you could use WordPress.org if you can figure out how to set up your own self-hosted website, but you’ll have to pay for hosting (we recommend Kinsta. Read our full Kinsta Review here to find out why). You could also use a site like Carrd (Carrd Review), which may not give you all the ecommerce functionalities that a Shopify site would, but it costs $19.99/year instead.

Is a T-Shirt Business Profitable?

Yes, t-shirt businesses can be profitable! Like any business, you control the expenses that cost your business money and the prices you charge your customers, so all it takes is some basic bookkeeping and smart business financial strategies to make your t-shirt business profitable.

If you want your t-shirt business to be profitable, minimize your expenses and make sure your t-shirt prices cover all your expenses. Don’t forget to leave room for profit to be leftover!

If you use a t-shirt dropshipping supplier like Printful, they will tell you the recommended retail price (RRP) for each product, so you’ll have an idea of how much to charge for each item and how much profit you’ll make from it. This is a great guideline to go off of, but still keep your own expenses in mind! You’re in control of your expenses and product prices—so make sure you have a good handle on those so you can keep your profits in good standing.

For business pricing strategies, check out this post.

How Much Can You Make Selling T-Shirts?

There’s no limit to how much you can earn selling t-shirts! How much you earn will be directly impacted by how many t-shirts you sell and what your product prices are, so keep those factors in mind.

If you want to earn a lot selling t-shirts online, set some goals! Market your products and your store so you can get more traffic to your site because the more people you have landing on your site, the more products you’re likely to sell. And by keeping your prices at a point where you can cover all your business expenses and still have profit left over, the more likely you’ll be to earn even more.

These are the considerations it takes to run a business—any business, not just a t-shirt business—so this creates a great learning opportunity. If you’re a new entrepreneur, these are great questions to be asking and important things to be implementing on your site, so pay particular attention to the lessons you learn here.

How to Get Your First T-Shirt Sales: Marketing Your T-Shirt Business

Once your t-shirt business is up and running, it’s time to get some traffic!

These are some tactics you can use to drive traffic to your t-shirt store so you can get your first sales…

Build an Audience

Don’t underestimate the power of social media! Platforms like Instagram, YouTube, and TikTok are free to use and by simply posting great content, you can build up an audience around your t-shirt business. If you aren’t sure what to post, check out your competitors to see what they’re doing and not doing so you can fill in the gaps.

Sell to the Audience You Already Have

If you’re already on social media, then you already have an audience (no matter how small!) so share your products on your social channels. This might not grow your business, but it might get you your first sale.

Sell to Your Friends & Family

Most entrepreneurs got their first sales from their friends and family—so reach out to yours and get them to shout you out to their social media followers!

Find Your Niche Online & Hang Out There

Where do your customers like to hang out online? Do they congregate in certain Facebook groups, in specific subreddits, on Discord channels, or particular websites or social media channels?

Find out where they hang out and make your presence known!

Don’t be spammy, but rather try to make genuine connections with the people there. Eventually, they may become your customers.

Pay for Ads on Social Media

If you have the budget, throw up some ads on social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, or TikTok and see how they go! Make sure that you know your niche well so you can target them as accurately as possible.

Work with Influencers (& Micro-Influencers)

Influencers are a powerful way to get your product in front of your target audience, so make use of it!

Working with influencers requires some kind of budget, but if you don’t have a marketing budget right now, you could always send your t-shirt to an influencer no-strings-attached and see if the influencer wears your shirt in one of their posts, or recommends it to their followers. There’s no guarantee they’ll share it with their followers, but it might be worth a try! It’s worth reaching out to micro-influencers too (influencers with less than 50,000 followers) as they can often have very engaged followings, even if they are small.

Optimize Your Site for SEO

SEO is one of the best organic marketing tactics you can use on your site, so make sure you optimize it. Plus, SEO is free and once you learn the ropes, it’s easy to implement so there really is no downside.

Check out our post on SEO Optimization for Ecommerce Stores to learn what you can do to boost the chances of your t-shirt store landing on the first page of Google search results.

What to Do if Your T-Shirt Business Isn’t Getting Any Sales

If this is your first t-shirt business then it’s possible that you might have difficulties getting some sales at first—but, don’t get frustrated. Every business goes through these growing pains.

To get more sales coming in when you aren’t getting any, all it might take is some small edits or changes to get the ball rolling! It’s a learning process, so don’t get too discouraged.

Here are some ideas…

Regroup

First, try to identify the problem. It could be anything from poor product photos, expensive shipping fees, a confusing website, poor-quality t-shirt designs, overpriced t-shirts, lack of exposure, poor SEO, inauthentic content, an unconvincing brand story, or a combination of any of these factors.

Take a hard look at every aspect of your business and figure out what changes can be made. Figure out what’s not working so you can fix it!

Retarget

Next, ask yourself if you’re targeting the right market.

Re-examine your chosen niche and figure out if your t-shirt products directly add value to it, or if you’ve begun to stray away from your niche in any way. Or, perhaps you’ve been marketing to the wrong niche entirely and need to pick a new one, or narrow-in even further.

Figuring out whether you’re targeting the right niche might take some time but finding out where your brand fits in the market can be the difference between getting no sales, and getting a lot of sales. So, it’s worth your while!

Remarket

It’s easier and cheaper to sell to current customers than it is to acquire new ones. You have a t-shirt business and people typically wear more than one t-shirt in their day-to-day lives so that means you have the opportunity to sell more than one of your products to your customers.

Utilize that opportunity!

Create an incentive for your customers to purchase again from you whether that be a stellar unboxing experience, a packing insert with a discount code for their next order (Printful enables you to send branded packing inserts), or create fun new products often so your customers can get excited about them. Do what you need to do to make your audience want to purchase from you again.

Online T-Shirt Business Success Stories

IconSpeak

This is perhaps one of the most clever t-shirt designs created in recent memory.

Before you travel, pick up a t-shirt from IconSpeak to help you communicate with the locals no matter where you are. Languages may not be universal, but oftentimes we can figure out what others are trying to say based on pictures, and the t-shirts from IconSpeak come with 39 of the most essential travel icons so you can break through any language barrier and get directions to wherever you need to go.

Including universally recognizable icons for Wi-Fi, coffee, food, lodgings, and washrooms (to name a few), the IconSpeak t-shirt can be one of the best things you wear on your travels.

IconSpeak started just by selling t-shirts, but they’ve expanded to selling other products like tote bags, phone cases, hats, and more!

Gymshark

Did you know that Gymshark started off selling t-shirts? The brand’s founder, Ben Francis, started printing t-shirts himself in his mother’s garage when he was just 19 years old and since then, has grown the brand into something much more—a fitness clothing empire valued at over 1 billion British Pounds.

While Gymshark sells more than just t-shirts at this point and is a fully-fledged direct-to-consumer brand and one of Shopify’s most successful stores, selling t-shirts is how the brand started—proving that starting a t-shirt business can lead to something much bigger and better.

Point 5cc

Another brand that started by the founder printing t-shirts by hand, Aydian Dowling started Point 5cc as a t-shirt brand that shares trans-positive messages.

Dowling originally started selling t-shirts with the intention of raising money for his own gender-affirming surgery and planned to close up shop when his goal was reached. However, after a few months, he built up a community of customers so supportive and enthusiastic that he’s kept Point 5cc up and running ever since.

Due to all the support, Dowling also set up a non-profit that supports transgender people in need, showing that t-shirt brands can contribute to a mission and community far bigger than themselves.

More inspiration for t-shirt brands can be found here:

• Kickstarter T-Shirt Campaigns
• Redbubble Popular
• SnorgTees Best Sellers
• Teespring
• Zazzle Popular

T-Shirt Business FAQs

Still have questions about how to start a t-shirt business? Check out these FAQs.

How Do I Start an Online T-Shirt Business? Quick Step-by-Step Breakdown

1. Pick a niche market
2. Pick a t-shirt supplier
3. Create your t-shirt designs
4. Build a website
5. Drive traffic to your site
6. Make your first sales
7. Build an audience
8. Continue building your t-shirt brand & business

We cover these steps throughout this post, so scroll up to each section to find out more.

Do You Need a Business License to Sell T-Shirts Online?

This can vary depending on where you’re located, but in general, most businesses whether online or not, need a business license. In some areas, however, you may not need to apply for a business license until your business reaches a certain revenue threshold.

If you operate a business without the proper license you may be subject to fees or fines. Obtaining a business license should be fairly easy in most areas, so check the necessary authorities in your area to find out where to get a business license.

We’re not qualified professionals in this area and business license requirements will depend on your area or region, so conduct your own due diligence and consult the relevant authorities in your jurisdiction for more information.

• USA: US Small Business Association
• Canada: Canadian Government Website
• UK: UK Government Website
• Australia: ABLIS

What Do I Need to Start a T-Shirt Business?

To start a t-shirt business, you need these things:

• A website (like Shopify)
• T-shirt designs
• A t-shirt printer or dropshipper (like Printful)
• Product photos (t-shirt mockups)
• A marketing plan (like our 52 Week Marketing Plan)

You don’t need a lot to start a t-shirt business—basically just t-shirts and a website to sell your t-shirts on. It’s possible to start a t-shirt business with the bare minimum and working with a dropshipper like Printful makes it even easier to do that.

How to Start a T-Shirt Business at Home?

To start a t-shirt business from home, work with a t-shirt dropshipper so you don’t have to stock any inventory or ship any orders.

A t-shirt dropshipper makes starting and running a t-shirt business from home super easy, so if that’s your plan then we recommend working with a dropshipper like Printful.

How to Start a T-Shirt Business: Step-By-Step Video

Learn how to start a t-shirt business in this step-by-step video!

Resource Roundup

These are the resources we mentioned in this post so that you can find them easily and build your own online t-shirt store, fast!

• Build your t-shirt store with:
  • Shopify (use their 14-day free trial)
• Check out these other Shopify resources:
  • Shopify App Store
  • Printful Shopify App
  • Shopify Theme Store
  • Shopify Review
• Build your t-shirt store on a self-hosted website with these resources:
  • WordPress.org
  • Why Use WordPress for Ecommerce Stores
  • Kinsta (Kinsta Review)
  • Carrd (Carrd Review)
  • The Best Hosted & Self-Hosted Ecommerce Platforms
  • 12 Open-Source Ecommerce Platforms
• Choose a t-shirt printer/dropshipper:
  • Printful (Printful Review)
  • Spocket (Spocket Review)
  • Gooten
  • Kite.ly
  • Inkthreadable
  • Amplifier
  • Print Aura
  • Printify
  • Shirt Monkey
  • Tee Talkies
  • T-Shirt & Sons
  • Teespring
• Find more dropshippers and learn more about dropshipping here:
  • Finding Dropshipping Suppliers + Free Dropshipping Supplier Directory
  • Dropshipping 101: What is Dropshipping?
  • Dropshipping Suppliers Directory
• Use these t-shirt mockup and product photo generators:
  • Printful Mockup Generator
  • Fiverr T-Shirt Mockups
  • GraphicRiver T-Shirt Mockups
  • Design Bolts 50+ T-Shirt Mockups
• Create t-shirt designs with these resources:
  • Creative Market
  • GraphicRiver
  • Designious
  • 200+ Free & Premium Graphic Design Resources
• Or hire freelance artists to create t-shirt designs for you:
  • Dribbble
  • Behance
  • Fiverr
  • Upwork
  • Freelancer
  • Elance
• Take these Skillshare courses to learn more:
  • A Staple of Branding: How to Start Your Fashion Company by Jeff Staple
  • Hey, Cool Shirt: Designing Effective T-shirt Graphics by Chris Delorenzo
  • Skillshare
• Get business license information here:
  • USA: US Small Business Association
  • Canada: Canadian Government Website
  • UK: UK Government Website
  • Australia: ABLIS
• Get legal advice and resources here:
  • Lawtrades (USA)
  • Clarity (Worldwide)
  • Ownr (Canada)
  • Rocket Lawyer (USA, UK, Spain, France, The Netherlands)
• Check out these t-shirt business success stories:
  • IconSpeak
  • Gymshark
  • Point 5cc
• Get more t-shirt business inspiration here:
  • Printful’s Customer Success Stories
  • Kickstarter T-Shirt Campaigns
  • Redbubble Popular
  • SnorgTees Best Sellers
  • Teespring
  • Zazzle Popular
• These resources from us might make building your t-shirt business even easier:
  • How to Start a T-Shirt Business Webinar
  • 500 Ecommerce Niches Guide
  • Build a Better Brand: Ecommerce Branding Guide
  • Dropshipping Suppliers Directory
  • Clothing Suppliers Directory
  • Manufacturers Directory
  • Wholesale Suppliers Directory
  • How to Find and Work with Private Label Suppliers
  • Private Label Suppliers Directory
  • START: The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Getting Started in Ecommerce
  • One Page Ecommerce Business Plan
  • 52 Week Marketing Plan
  • Ecommerce SEO Strategies to Get Your Online Store in the SERPs

Conclusion

There you have it. Richard built a new t-shirt business in 24-hours with only $24 and was able to generate over $300 in sales in the first day. He did it with the bare minimum on a tight time schedule, and you can do it, too!

Granted, a t-shirt business alone may never make an entrepreneur rich and famous. However, as we pointed out before, we firmly believe that a t-shirt business serves its purpose in the entrepreneurial ecosystem, even if that purpose is just to practice for something bigger and better.

Now it’s your turn. If you’ve been thinking about starting an online business but have been stuck in the “I don’t know what to sell” stage for more than a few months, then we are challenging you to build a t-shirt business, for no reason other than to start. Start building something, start marketing something, start converting something. Just start something.

Start. Go!

The post How I Built An Online T-Shirt Business In 24 Hours With $24 That Made $347 The First Day (And How You Can Too) appeared first on A Better Lemonade Stand.

Use the Table of Contents below to jump from section to section to find the exact kind of Instagram captions you’re looking for.

Happy posting!

Instagram Captions for Success

• Own what’s yours
• We rise by lifting others
• Do what you like, like what you do
• I want to see what happens if I don’t give up
• Don’t quit your daydream
• Working like a boss
• Old ways won’t open new doors
• Waking up blessed not stressed
• Take the risk or lose the chance
• The only way you win is if I quit
• Aspire to inspire
• I wasn’t made to fall in line
• The secret of getting ahead is getting started -Mark Twain
• Work until you no longer have to introduce yourself
• I don’t have dreams I have goals
• Dream big. Work hard. Stay focused & surround yourself with good people
• Discipline is choosing between what you want now and what you want most -Abraham Lincoln
• I never dreamt of success, I worked for it -Estee Lauder
• Fuck excuses. You either want it or you don’t.
• If not now, then when? If not you, then who? -Hillel the Elder
• Never plan a future with people who don’t have future plans
• Make more moves and less announcements
• You can’t win if you’re losing in your mind. Change your thoughts and it will change your life -Tony Gaskins
• Stop doubting yourself. Work hard and make it happen
• Never give up on something you can’t go a day without thinking about
• Success is a series of small wins
• Success is maintained & achieved by those who try and keep trying -W. Clement Stone
• Working on myself, for myself, by myself
• Hustle until your haters ask if you’re hiring -Steve Maraboli
• Success is nothing more than a few simple decisions practiced every day -Jim Rohn
• Sometimes you win, sometimes you learn -John C. Maxwell
• I didn’t come this far to only come this far -Mick Kremling
• The temptation to quit will be the greatest just before you are about to succeed -Chinese Proverb
• All progress takes place outside the comfort zone -Michael John Bobak
• Your opinion will never cut me a check
• Failure is not the opposite of success; it’s part of success -Arianna Huffington
• Don’t call it a dream, call it a plan
• Don’t watch the clock. Do what it does: Keep going -Sam Levenson
• Success is not built on success. It’s built on failure. It’s built on frustration. Sometimes it’s built on catastrophe. -Sumner Redstone
• Attitude of a champion. Hustle like an underdog.
• When you feel like quitting think about why you started -Zig Ziglar
• The comeback is always stronger than the setback
• Either I will find a way or I will create a way but I will not create an excuse
• Success is liking yourself, liking what you do, and liking how you do it. -Maya Angelou
• Success occurs when opportunity meets preparation -Zig Ziglar
• If you don’t sacrifice for what you want, what you want becomes the sacrifice
• Your life is as good as your mindset
• If you can do better, then do better
• Underestimate me. That’ll be fun.
• Hustle beats talent when talent doesn’t hustle
• Follow your own footsteps
• Fuck what others think, do what makes you happy
• I don’t need your approval, I got mine
• A champion is someone who gets up when he can’t
• A year older, a year bolder
• Be a game changer, the world is already full of players
• I heard you’re a player. Nice to meet you, I’m the coach.
• I don’t have an attitude problem, I just have a personality you can’t handle
• We age not by years, but by stories
• Follow your own footsteps
• You can’t insult me, I don’t value your opinion
• I don’t have voicemail so you’ll have to say it to my face
• You will never be ready, just start.
• Become the hardest working person you know
• Each day you must choose: The pain of discipline or the pain of regret?
• If you’re tired, then do it tired.
• Don’t wish for it—work for it
• Your only limit is your mind.
• If you get tired, learn to rest not quit. -Banksy
• Growth is growth no matter how small
• If not now, then when?
• See what happens if you don’t give up
• Today is another day to get back on track
• Success is not easy and certainly not for the lazy
• I don’t just survive, I thrive
• Don’t mind me, just over here practicing what I’m preaching
• Take it or leave it…
• I’m better than I’ve ever been, better than you’ve ever been
• Unbothered
• Real recognizes real
• Be who you want to be, not what others want to see
• Whatever is good for your soul, do that
• Stress less and enjoy the best
• Get out there and live a little
• Life is better when you’re laughing
• Be a voice, not an echo
• Get lost in what you love
• Minds are like parachutes: They only function once open
• A bad attitude is like a flat tire: You can’t go anywhere until you change it
• Work harder, then work harder
• Say yes, take risks, and live life on your own terms
• Perseverance pays a lot
• Warriors aren’t the ones who always win, they’re the ones that always fight
• Spend time with you who bring out the best in you, not the stress in you
• Laying low & bossing up
• Be more concerned with your character than your reputation
• You glow differently when you’re actually happy
• If you want to fly, give up everything that weighs you down
• Obsessed with my own potential
• The best investment? Yourself.
• Be addicted to the feeling of having your shit together
• Be bold enough to design your own life
• Success = 20% strategy, 80% mindset

Instagram Captions for Friends

• Let me tell you about my best friend…
• The yin to my yang
• The peanut butter to my jelly
• Always better together
• What a legend
• We’ve been friends for so long I can’t even remember which one is the bad influence
• I don’t see another squad tryna cross us
• Can’t do epic things with boring people
• You’re the avocado to my toast
• Friends who slay together stay together
• We go together like eyebrows
• You’re my favorite notification
• Girl power
• Nobody really likes us except for us
• Friends like we’re family
• I like you because you join in with my weirdness
• My ride or die
• You must be a diamond because you’re my best friend
• Life is better when we’re together
• A good friend knows all your stories, a best friend lives them with you
• We can’t relate
• If you know, you know,
• You can’t sit with us
• Opposites attract
• We ain’t even getting older
• We will be the old ladies causing trouble in the nursing homes
• My team is my family
• My main squeeze
• Partners in crime
• We go together like coffee and donuts
• You are hands down, my favorite person
• Double trouble
• True friendship is always agreeing on what to eat
• I never thought I’d like you this much
• The uglier the snapchat, the closer the friendship
• They hate us ‘cause they ain’t us
• When I say I won’t tell anyone my best friend doesn’t count
• We’ll be friends forever because you already know too much
• You don’t have to be crazy to be my friend—I’ll train you
• We will be the old ladies causing trouble in the nursing home
• You are the “She” to my “Nanigans”
• Friendship is about finding people who are your kind of crazy
• Curls run the world
• If you’re lucky enough to find a weirdo, never let them go
• I used to be normal until I met these losers
• I’m the friend you have to explain to your other friends before they meet me
• I don’t know what’s tighter, our jeans or our friendship
• Blessed with the best
• I hit the bff jackpot for sure
• We’re gonna be really cool old ladies
• He/She always has me smiling
• Only a fool for you
• Been about you since I met you
• We were meant to be
• Always tired, but never of you
• The realest
• Playing for keeps
• Wish you were here
• True friends don’t judge each other… They judge other people, together

Question Instagram Captions

• What will you do with this one crazy life?
• When’s your birthday?
• What’s your favorite place you’ve ever traveled to?
• What’s the weather like where you are?
• What do you prefer, coffee or tea?
• What are your top 3 favorite movies?
• What’s the best TV show you’ve seen recently?
• What’s your favorite kind of weather?
• Where in the world do you call home?
• Who else is having a good day?
• What are you up to this weekend?
• Have you worked out today?
• Where are you traveling to next?
• What’s at the top of your bucket list?
• What’s your favorite memory?
• What’s your favorite comfort food?
• What’s your least favorite food?
• What did you get for Christmas?
• What are your New Year’s Resolutions?
• What’s your biggest goal in life?
• How do you say “love” in your language?
• What are you thankful for today?
• What are you up to today?
• What’s an emoji for your mood right now?
• What made you laugh today?
• What’s better, pizza or burgers?
• What’s your most used emoji?
• What’s your favorite song right now?
• Where’s your favorite place to shop right now?
• What’s the best book you’ve read lately?
• Are you a dog person or a cat person?
• What’s your favorite season?
• What’s one lesson you learned today?
• Who inspires you?
• What’s your favorite quote?
• What’s your biggest fear?
• If you could trade lives with anyone, who would it be?
• What’s the funniest movie you’ve ever seen?
• What’s one word that describes your day?

Instagram Captions About Food & Coffee

• Eat spaghetti to forgetti your regretti
• Good food = good mood
• I followed my heart and it lead me to the fridge
• You gotta nourish to flourish
• When you’re downie eat a brownie
• It’s coffee o’clock
• Caffeine & kindness
• I don’t need an inspirational quote, I need coffee
• I love the smell of coffee in the morning
• Drink some coffee & pretend you know what you’re doing
• A party without cake is just a meeting -Julia Child
• All the coffee, please
• If you are what you eat I’m (blank)
• Penne for your thoughts?
• You guac my world
• Eat like you love yourself
• Weekends are for brunch
• But first, coffee
• Squeeze the day
• I scream for ice cream
• Never settle for just one scoop
• Wine + dinner = winner
• Life is too short for celery sticks
• Be a cupcake in a world of muffins
• If we weren’t meant to have midnight snacks why is there a light in the fridge?
• Cool as a cucumber
• I am thankful for all the different ways there are to eat potatoes
• I’m on a seafood diet. I see food, and I eat it.
• Just peachy
• Surround yourself with tacos, not negativity
• I’m a lady in the street but a freak in the buffet
• Nacho cheese
• Let them eat cake
• Espresso may not be the answer but it’s worth a shot
• I don’t want to taco ‘bout it
• An apple a day…
• Eggscuse me?
• Extra fries? Oh, you said exercise…
• I eat cake because it’s somebody’s birthday somewhere
• Okie dokie, artichokie
• Pizza is the only love triangle I ever want
• There’s no “we” in fries
• In pizza we crust
• First I drink coffee, then I do the things
• I’m crazy pho you
• Eating just in case I get hungry later
• I’m soy into you
• Lunch hour is the best hour of the day
• Surround yourself with pizza, not negativity
• What’s a snack to an entree
• Just a general life update: Hungry again
• Cooking rule: If at first you don’t succeed, order pizza
• Donut kill my vibe
• You’re one in a melon
• Be a Fruit Loop in a world of Cheerios
• No one is lonely while eating spaghetti, it requires so much attention
• Don’t be eye candy, be soul food
• Espresso yourself
• I love you berry much
• Whisk me away
• If you’ve lost your appetite today I think I have it
• Spaghetti can be eaten most successfully if you inhale it like a vacuum cleaner -Sophia Loren
• Looking for a snack
• It’s cake o’clock
• Ice cream is cheaper than therapy
• Abs aren’t made in the kitchen but cookies are
• I would love you if you were pizza
• You can’t live a full life on an empty stomach
• All I want is food and affection
• You can’t please everyone, you are not an avocado
• Spread love as thick as nutella
• Waffles are just pancakes with abs
• I enjoy long, romantic walks to the fridge
• How do I like my eggs? Umm, in a cake?
• A balanced diet is chocolate in both hands
• Cupcakes are muffins that believed in miracles
• It’s hard to be sad when you’re eating a cookie
• Resting coffee face
• Adulting is soup but I am a fork
• I’ll steal your snacks, not your man
• I’m thankful for all the different ways to eat potatoes
• I’m just a girl, standing in front of a donut, asking it to be a salad
• Torn between looking like a snack and eating a snack
• Ice cream is cheaper than therapy
• Eat pasta, run fasta
• Waffles are just pancakes with abs
• People disappoint but Queso is forever
• Just a general life update: Still hungry.
• You’re one in a melon
• They call me ranch ‘cause I be dressing
• Roses are red, pizza sauce is too. I just ordered a large and none of it is for you
• You must be one spicy dish because you’re making my heart burn
• She believed she could, sushi did
• We make a great pear
• Stay brewtiful
• If you were a vegetable, you’d be a cutecumber.
• If it involves pasta or sunsets, count me in.
• Lettuce turnip the beet
• Me: eats a snack while looking for a different snack
• Life is uncertain, eat dessert first
• Age and glasses of wine should never be counted
• A balanced diet is a cookie in each hand
• My weaknesses have always been food and men—in that order
• Life is a combination of magic and pasta
• Promises and pie crusts are made to be broken
• If we’re not meant to have midnight snacks then why is there a light in the fridge?
• The secret ingredient is always cheese
• Anything is good if it’s made of chocolate
• Soup of the day: Champagne
• Never settle for just one scoop of ice cream. You’re a two-scoop of ice cream kind of person.
• It’s never too cold for ice cream
• You’re the sprinkles to my ice cream
• Life happens. Coffee helps.
• You can’t live a full life on an empty stomach
• Coffee is always a good idea
• I like hashtags because they look like waffles
• Don’t go bacon my heart
• If only taking a picture made this meal last longer
• Party like a guac star
• Cheese is the glue that holds my life together
• I followed my heart and it lead me to the buffet
• Have a cup of positivitea
• Chocolate is cheaper than therapy
• Food before dudes
• Pasta la vista, baby!
• You can’t please everyone, you are not cake
• Whatever sprinkles your donuts
• Last name, Hungry. First name, Always.
• No matter what happens, pizza will always be there for you. Through thick and thin, in crust we trust.
• “Did you eat?” Has to be one of the most romantic questions ever
• Me: Do that thing I like. My husband/wife: *Orders pizza*
• Beauty comes in all shapes and sizes: Small, large, circle, square, thin crust, thick crust, stuffed crust, extra toppings.
• I may act like I’m okay but deep down, I’m hungry again
• Don’t tell me you miss me, tell me you’re outside with tacos. Actions > words.
• My rap name is Lil Hungry.
• Blood is thicker than water but maple syrup is thicker than blood so technically pancakes are more important than family
• Let’s wine about it
• Coffee in one hand, confidence in the other

Instagram Captions About Pets

• A house is not a home without a dog
• What did we do to deserve dogs?
• Gotta stay in school so I can provide for my future dog
• Those who teach the most about humanity aren’t always humans -Donald L Hicks
• The best therapist has fur and four legs
• The cat is in charge, we just live here
• The dog is in charge, we just live here
• Life’s short, spoil your dog
• Home is where my dog is
• Sorry, I can’t tonight, I have plans with my dog
• Based on my wardrobe, my favorite color is dog hair
• Collect moments not things, unless those things are cats
• Sorry, I can’t. My dog and I have plans
• Cats know how we feel. They don’t care. But they know.
• I wonder what my dog named me
• Sometimes I meet people and feel bad for their dog.
• I’m in a really good place right now. Not emotionally or spiritually, I’m just on the couch with my dog
• You don’t get to tell me what to do, you’re not my dog
• I’d love to go but my dog said no
• Let’s be honest, if dogs could talk there’d be no need for people
• One thing my dog and I have in common is that we never want me to go to work
• Leave me alone, I’m only speaking to my cat today
• The fine line between love and hate is one negative comment about my dog
• Sometimes you just gotta lay on the floor with your dog
• If you want the best seat in the house you’ll have to move the dog
• Sorry, I can’t, I have to walk my dog
• Pets: Life’s apology for every crappy day ever
• Not to brag or anything, but I’m kind of a big deal to my dog
• I wish I could text my dog
• Tell your dog I say hi
• Who adopted who?
• Dogs have a way of finding the people who need them

Party Instagram Captions

• Lost in the thrill of it all
• One night is all we got
• Nights we won’t remember with people we won’t forget
• I’m here for a good time not a long time
• Stop and drink the rosé
• Drinks well with others
• Forever young
• Trust me, you can dance. -Vodka
• Bad choices make good stories
• I’ll drink to that!
• These are the nights we live for
• Cheers to the freakin weekend
• Alcohol you later
• Fri-nally!
• Twinkle, twinkle, little star, point me to the nearest bar
• Why be moody when you can shake your booty?
• These are the days we live for
• When in doubt, dance it out
• Cocktail in my hand, confetti in my hair
• Over-planning kills magic
• When life gives you lemonade, add vodka
• Whiskey makes you frisky
• 1 tequila, 2 tequila, 3 tequila, floor.
• Live for the moments you can’t put into words
• You can’t sip with us
• I’ll be ready in a prosecco
• This senorita need a margarita
• Alcohol you later
• Save water, drink champagne
• A friend of wine is a friend of mine
• Wine not?
• We didn’t realize we were making memories, we just knew we were having fun
• When the sun goes down, I glow up
• Life’s better in the moonlight
• You’re alive but are you living?
• I doubt vodka is the solution but I’m willing to give it a shot
• I stayed up all night to see where the sun went, and then it dawned on me
• Take a pitcher, it’ll last longer
• Why be moody when you can shake your booty
• Great minds drink alike
• Lettuce turnip the beet
• We age not by years, but by stories
• Weekends, are you still there?
• Alexa, skip to the weekend
• Long weekend love
• I’ll call you when the party’s over
• Casual Friday, every day
• Party like a guac star
• I followed my heart and it lead me to the bar
• Let’s wine about it
• Have you got the time? Oh, I thought you said, “Have you got the wine?”
• If life gives you lemons, add vodka

Funny Instagram Captions

• Maybe she’s born with it, maybe it’s caffeine
• Namaslay
• Humble with a hint of Kanye
• I look better on Instagram
• It was me. I let the dogs out.
• Just in case you forgot what I looked like
• The difference between pizza and your opinion is that I asked for pizza
• This must be the Monday-ist Thursday ever.
• I get ignored so much my name should be terms & conditions
• Today I will be as useless as the “g” in lasagna
• I just can’t adult right now
• Creepin’ it real
• That awkward moment when you’re wearing Nikes but you can’t do it
• Wearing all black today to mourn the loss of my motivation
• The human body is 90% water so we’re basically just cucumbers with anxiety
• Just burned 2000 calories. That’s the last time I leave brownies in the oven while I nap
• I spend a lot of time holding the refrigerator door open looking for answers
• I have the emotional stability of an Ikea table
• They say good things take time that’s why I’m always late
• You know what I like about people? Their dogs.
• The first 5 days after the weekend are always the hardest
• My middle finger salutes you
• Sometimes I wonder what happened to the people who asked me for directions
• I hope you step on a lego
• With great power comes a great electricity bill
• I came, I saw, and forgot what I was doing
• I wish everything was as easy as getting fat
• Nothing is really lost until your mom can’t find it
• I’m not insulting you, I’m describing you
• I’m not stubborn my way is just better
• Shoutout to all the plants growing through concrete
• I think I’m allergic to mornings
• I came, I saw, it got awkward
• I wonder how many miles I’ve scrolled with my thumb
• You say 4 hour car ride, I say 4 hour concert featuring me
• Alexa, turn my feelings off
• Pretty rude that it’s not Friday but okay.
• Confidence level: Kanye West.
• Which essential oil is best to get people to stop talking to you?
• Just dropped my new single. It’s me. I’m single.
• No offence but wtf am I doing
• I only dress up for mirror selfies these days
• Team mysterious leg bruise
• Turns out adulting is just Googling how to do stuff
• Siri, remove my makeup
• My mood depends on how good my hair looks
• These eye bags are designer
• I’m not weird, I’m limited edition
• Where can I download motivation
• What (and I cannot stress this enough) the fuck
• Not wearing glasses anymore, I’ve seen enough
• Last night, I got asked out by not one, not two, but zero people
• I’m so lucky people can’t hear what I’m thinking
• Don’t trust atoms, they make up everything
• I prefer my puns intended
• I’m not lazy, I’m on energy saving mode
• Hey, I still want to be invited but I’m not coming
• Stop petting my peeves
• There’s nothing I can’t do… Except reach the top shelf. I can’t do that.
• I’m a social vegan. I avoid meet.
• Life feels like a test I didn’t study for.
• Don’t let anyone treat you like tap water, you are Fiji water, okay?
• If it involves pasta or sunsets, count me in.
• Life would be easier if you could mark people as spam
• Later is the best time to do anything
• If you ever need nothing, I’m here for you
• I have big plans for the weekend. Update: I have no plans
• It’s nothing an episode of Friends can’t fix
• *sprays Febreze on your attitude*
• With great power comes a great electricity bill
• Do you ever want to cuddle your boyfriend and then realize you don’t have one?
• We all have a favourite eyebrow
• Sometimes I find a screw lying around my house and I just assume it’s from my life falling apart
• Me: Sometimes I talk to myself. Me: Omg same!
• Yeah break ups suck, but have you ever left a to-go box at the restaurant?
• My soulmate is out there somewhere just pushing a pull door, I know it
• Home is where the water doesn’t taste weird
• Will the semester end, or will the semester end me? Stay tuned.
• If we’re not meant to have midnight snacks then why is there a light in the fridge?
• I’m smiling… That alone should scare you
• You never know what you have… Until you clean your room
• I stopped fighting my inner demons… We’re on the same side now
• You can’t please everyone, you are not cake
• Whatever sprinkles your donuts
• Last name, Hungry. First name, Always.
• I love talking to myself, she gets me

Instagram Captions About Nature

• The higher the mountain the greater the view
• Always take the scenic route
• Just around the riverbend
• Ain’t no mountain high enough
• Just keep swimming…
• Altitude > attitude
• Keep your eyes on the stars and your feet on the ground
• Nature does nothing uselessly -Aristotle
• It’s so strange that autumn is so beautiful yet everything is dying
• The best views come after the hardest climbs
• Sky above me. Earth below me. Fire within me.
• All I want is to plant some trees, save some bees and protect the seas
• Leave nothing but footprints, take nothing but pictures, kill nothing but time
• Let’s find a beautiful place to get lost
• Not all wanderers are lost
• Beautiful things don’t ask for attention
• I love places that make you realize how small you really are
• There are no shortcuts to any place worth going
• Sometimes all you need is a change of scenery
• Wind in our hair, sun on our faces, love in our hearts
• It’s not the mountain we conquer but ourselves
• All good things are wild and free
• Life should have more mountains and less stress
• Hike more. Worry less
• If you never go, you’ll never know
• Every mountain top is within reach if you keep climbing
• Nature never goes out of style
• Perfectly imperfect
• The higher you climb, the better the view
• We have nothing to lose and a world to see
• There’s no wifi in the forest but you’ll find a better connection
• Life starts all over again when it gets crisp in the fall -F. Scott Fitzgerald
• Sleeping under the stars
• Nature does not hurry, yet everything is accomplished -Lau Tzu
• Some beautiful paths can’t be discovered without getting lost -Erol Ozan
• If we were made to stay in one place we’d have roots instead of feet -Rachel Wolchin
• It feels good to be lost in the right direction
• No rain, no flowers
• Live in the sunshine, swim in the sea, drink the wild air -Emerson
• On top of mountains and beneath the stars
• As free as the ocean
• There’s no time to be bored in a world as beautiful as this

Instagram Captions for Summer

• Suns out, guns out
• I’m on a boat
• How to have a beach body: 1) Have a body 2) Go to the beach
• Food, friends, sunshine
• Sunkissed
• Vacation mode on
• Nothing but blue skies
• The smell of ocean water…
• Salty, sandy & happy
• Girls just wanna have sun
• Vitamin sea
• Beach days!
• Salt water therapy
• That summer feeling
• Beach please
• You used to call me on my shell phone
• The ocean has my heart
• Happy as a clam
• In a summer state of mind
• Catchin rays
• Surf’s up
• Lake life
• Sun chaser
• The tans will fade but the memories will last forever
• Life’s better in a bikini
• Seas the day
• 50 shades of summer
• These are the golden days
• Summertime fine
• Salt in the air, sand in my hair
• Never crabby
• Resting beach face
• Good times and tan lines
• Stay wavy, baby
• Summer should get a speeding ticket
• I don’t need a man, I need tequila and a tan
• Only dead fish go with the flow
• If it involves pasta or sunsets, count me in.
• City lights got nothin’ on country nights
• It’s bad manners to keep a vacation waiting
• Not every paradise is tropical
• Find me under the palms
• That crazy little sun of a beach
• Let the sea set you free
• Life is just better barefoot
• Summer lovin’, happened so fast
• I’d rather shovel sand than snow
• Sunny hunny
• Souls of sunshine
• A golden state of mind
• Sunshine on your mind
• A bikini kind of life
• Just another beach pic for your newsfeed
• Mermaid kisses and starfish wishes
• Smell the sea and feel the sky, let your soul and spirits fly. –Van Morrison
• Tropic like it’s hot
• No one likes shady beaches
• Water you doing?
• The ocean made me salty

Instagram Captions for Winter & Christmas

• Had myself a merry little Christmas
• Walking in a winter wonderland
• I’m icy
• Sweater weather
• Snow cozy
• Meet me under the mistletoe
• Santa baby…
• Cozy nights…
• You, me & a cup of tea
• Mentally on the beach
• Oh deer
• On Saturdays we wear pyjamas
• Baby, it’s cold outside
• Does shivering count as exercise?
• Make it a December to remember
• Ho, ho, ho
• Hotter than a cup of cocoa
• Up to snow good
• Let is snow
• Alexa, skip to summer break
• Santa’s little elf
• There’s snow place like home
• All I want for Christmas is food
• Don’t get your tinsel in a tangle
• Sorry for what I said when I was cold
• Naughty or nice?
• Meet me under the mistletoe
• Pumpkin spice and everything nice
• Resting Grinch face
• Merry everything and a happy always
• Hot chocolate weather
• ‘Tis the season
• Thankful, grateful, blessed
• Hey pumpkin
• Dear Santa, I can explain…
• Hello gourd-geous
• Merry elfin Christmas
• Don’t get your tinsel in a tangle
• Feast mode activated
• I’d rather shovel sand than snow
• The elf did it
• Dear Santa, define “nice”
• I can’t do this anymore —me, every winter
• Icey
• It’s never too cold for ice cream

Fitness Instagram Captions

• Just do it -Nike slogan
• Eat better, not less
• Sorry for what I said when I hadn’t been to yoga in a while
• 70% of the people who start a fitness plan quit. Except not you. Not this time.
• The greatest wealth is health
• Did you work out today?
• One workout is 4% of your day — no excuses
• Sore today, strong tomorrow
• Create healthy habits, not restrictions
• You may not be there yet but you’re closer than yesterday
• If you get tired, learn to rest not quit -Banksy
• Excuses don’t burn calories
• Keep your squats low and your standards high
• 3 months from now you’ll thank yourself
• Good things come to those who sweat
• You don’t get the ass you want by sitting on it
• You are stronger than you think
• Actually, I can
• I will, just watch me
• Once you see results, it becomes an addiction
• See what happens if you don’t give up
• Fall in love with taking care of yourself
• You don’t get what you wish for, you get what you work for
• The body achieves what the mind believes
• Strive for progress, not perfection
• Every workout is progress
• I don’t find the time for exercise, I make the time
• It’s a slow process but quitting won’t speed it up
• If it doesn’t challenge you, it doesn’t change you -Fred DeVito
• Do it for the people who want to see you fail
• Pain is just weakness leaving the body -Chesty Puller
• Someone busier than you is working out right now
• Focus on your health, not your weight
• The only bad workout is the one that didn’t happen
• You don’t have to go fast, you just have to go
• I got 99 problems but I’m going to go to the gym and ignore them all
• Excuses are for people who don’t want it bad enough
• Life has their ups and downs, we call them squats
• On good days, work out. On bad days, work out harder.
• Instructors who say “Last one!” are the reason I have trust issues
• Focus on your goal — don’t look in any direction except ahead
• If you want better results, make better choices
• A little progress each day adds up to big results
• Be stronger than your excuse
• Your legs are not giving out, your head is giving up. Keep going.
• Don’t tell people your plans, show them your results
• Stronger than yesterday
• Eat, sleep, exercise, repeat.
• The only bad workout is the one that didn’t happen
• It hurts now, but one day it will be your warm up
• Unless you puke, faint, or die then keep going
• Keep your squats low and your standards high
• I heard you’re a player. Nice to meet you, I’m the coach.
• See what happens if you don’t give up
• Today is another day to get back on track

Instagram Captions for Couples

• You make my heart race without even trying
• We all start as strangers
• Is it hot in here or is it just you?
• If loving you is wrong I don’t want to be right
• What’s on the menu? Me-n-u.
• Always better together
• Like Cheerios, you’re good for my heart
• I know I’m a handful but that’s why you’ve got two hands
• You’re my favorite notification
• My ride or die
• I wanna spend the rest of my sunsets with you
• Life is better when we’re together
• So many of my smiles begin with you
• Alone together
• For now, for ever, for always
• You are my favorite notification
• I think we’re alone now…
• I like me better when I’m with you
• What’s life without you?
• Playin’ for keeps
• Forever isn’t for everyone, but it’s for us
• I’ll never let you down
• All that you are is all that I’ll ever need
• I’m so down for you
• Loves me like I’m brand new
• Never settle
• The love of my life
• Wild horses could not drive me away from you
• There’s no limit to your love
• At least we’re under the same sky
• I broke my rules for you
• I pick my poison & it’s you
• Happy wife, happy life
• Forget the past, you’ve got me now
• Kissing you > missing you
• Fools rush in
• That 90s sitcom kind of love
• Can’t share won’t share
• Never easy, but always worth it
• It’ll always be you
• I’m his bad habit
• To the moon and back
• The goal is to laugh forever with someone you take seriously
• I’m not an organ donor but I’d happily give you my heart
• There isn’t a word in the dictionary for how good you look
• I’m not a photographer but I can picture us together
• Relationships are just about finding someone who is your kind of crazy
• You don’t have to be extreme, just consistent
• Becoming strong doesn’t start in the gym, it starts in your head
• If you don’t make time for your wellness, you’ll be forced to make time for your illness
• On good days, work out. On bad days, work out harder.
• Don’t be afraid of being a beginner
• Forever isn’t for everyone, but it’s for us
• I used to have heart eyes for you, but now I mostly just roll my eyes at you
• Summer lovin’, happened so fast
• If you’re lucky enough to find a weirdo, never let them go
• Blessed with the best
• I hit the bf/gf jackpot for sure
• He/She always has me smiling
• Only a fool for you
• Been about you since I met you
• We were meant to be
• Always tired, but never of you
• The realest
• Playing for keeps
• Wish you were here
• 7 billion smiles and yours is my favourite
• Even the stars are jealous of the sparkle in your eyes
• [i] am [l]ucky t[o] have [you]
• Never easy, but always worth it
• Love bugs
• You’re such a dream to me
• Spend time with you who bring out the best in you, not the stress in you

Travel Instagram Captions

• Eat. Pray. Love.
• Wanderlust
• Free your mind, free your life
• Always a good time in (blank)
• Just making friends with the locals!
• I haven’t been everywhere but it’s on my list
• Let life surprise you
• Paris is always a good idea
• Where to? Anywhere.
• Escape the ordinary
• Head for the hills
• My kind of town
• Vacation mode on
• Go where you feel most alive
• Aloha!
• Holiday in the sun
• Saying yes to new adventures
• Catch flights, not feelings
• Wanderlust and city dust
• I fell in love… His name is New York
• London calling…
• Find me under the palm trees
• Watch more sunsets than Netflix
• Welcome to the Hotel California
• Adventures are forever
• Carpe diem (seize the day!)
• Take me to the sea
• Living like a local
• Vacation calories don’t count
• Ready for take off
• You had me at Aloha!
• Paradise found
• Uptown girl
• Back where I belong
• 90% happy, 10% burnt
• I’d say I’m homesick but I’m not
• Only travel can tame my wild heart
• Adventure begins at the end of roads you know
• I’m not lost, I’m exploring -Jana Stanfield
• Come get lost with me
• Let’s wander where the wifi is weak
• Escape and breathe the air of new places
• Life is not meant to be lived in one place
• So why don’t we go somewhere only we know
• I’d rather have a passport full of stamps than a house full of stuff
• Travel far enough to meet yourself
• She wasn’t bored, just restless between adventures -Atticus
• Life is short and the world is wide
• So much of who we are is where we’ve been
• If you never go, you’ll never know
• Running to the gate is my cardio
• Yeah working is great, but have you tried travelling?
• It’s bad manners to keep a vacation waiting
• Good things come to those who book flights
• It feels so good to be lost in the right direction
• Not every paradise is tropical
• Find me under the palms
• Catch flights, not feelings
• My goal is to run out of pages in my passport
• That crazy little sun of a beach
• Where to next?
• If you look like your passport photo, you probably need the trip
• Making memories all over the world
• I choose to collect memories instead of things -Elena Leron
• Let the sea set you free
• Life is just better barefoot
• Just another beach pic for your newsfeed
• Mermaid kisses and starfish wishes
• Smell the sea and feel the sky, let your soul and spirits fly. –Van Morrison
• Tropic like it’s hot
• No one likes shady beaches
• Water you up to?
• The ocean made me salty

Entrepreneur Instagram Quotes

• There are two types of people in life: Entrepreneurs, and people who work for entrepreneurs.
• 6 months of hardcore focus and alignment can put you 5 years ahead in life.
• Focus on being productive instead of busy. -Tim Ferris
• Price is what you pay, value is what you get. -Warren Buffett
• People don’t buy what you do; they buy why you do it. And what you do simply proves what you believe. -Simon Sinek
• Hire character. Train skill. -Peter Schutz
• If people like you they’ll listen to you but if people trust you they’ll do business with you. – Zig Ziglar
• Be a resource, not a sales pitch
• In most cases, being a good boss means hiring talented people and then getting out of their way. -Tina Fey
• Done is better than perfect. -Mark Zuckerberg
• If you just work on stuff that you like and you’re passionate about, you don’t have to have a master plan with how things will play out. -Mark Zuckerberg
• Stop selling, start helping. -Zig Ziglar
• Sometimes you gotta create what you want to be a part of. -Geri Weitzman
• Don’t find products for your customers, find customers for your products. -Seth Godin
• People do not buy goods and services. They buy relations, stories and magic. -Seth Godin
• Stop being afraid of what could go wrong and start being excited about what could go right. -Tony Robbins
• Your time is limited so don’t waste it living someone else’s life. -Steve Jobs
• It’s fine to celebrate success but it is more important to heed the lesson of failure. -Bill Gates
• Failure defeats losers. Failure inspires winners. -Robert T. Kiyosaki
• Happiness is the secret ingredient for successful businesses. If you have a happy company, you will be invincible.
• First, think. Second, believe. Third, dream. And finally, dare. -Walt Disney
• The way to get started is to quit talking and start doing. -Walt Disney
• Timing, perseverance, and ten years of trying will eventually make you look like an overnight success. -Biz Stone
• So often people are working hard at the wrong thing. Working on the right this is probably more important than working hard. -Caterina Fake
• If you’re not making mistakes then you’re not making decisions. -Catherine Cook
• It takes 20 years to build a reputation and 5 minutes to ruin it. If you think about that, you’ll do things differently. -Warren Buffett
• I don’t look to jump over 7-foot bars. I look for 1-foot bars that I can step over. -Warren Buffett
• Innovation distinguishes between a leader and a follower. -Steve Jobs
• If you don’t build your dream, someone will hire you to help build theirs. -Tony Gaskins
• Don’t play games that you don’t understand, even if you see lots of other people making money from them. -Tony Hsieh
• I choose a lazy person to do a hard job, because a lazy person will find an easy way to do it. -Bill Gates
• Ideas are easy. Implementation is hard. -Guy Kawasaki
• The biggest risk is not taking any risk. In a world that’s changing really quickly, the only strategy that is guaranteed to fail is not taking risks. -Mark Zuckerberg
• A business that makes nothing by money is a poor business. -Henry Ford
• You can’t just ask customers what they want and then try to give that to them. By the time you get it built, they’ll want something new. -Steve Jobs
• Stay committed to your decisions, but stay flexible in your approach. -Tony Robbins
• If what you are doing is not moving you towards your goals then it’s moving you away from your goals. -Brian Tracy
• It doesn’t matter where you are coming from. All that matters is where you are going. -Brian Tracy
• Successful people are always looking for opportunities to help others. Unsuccessful people are always asking, ‘What’s in it for me?’ -Brian Tracy
• Failure is simply the opportunity to begin again, this time more intelligently. -Henry Ford
• Minutes are worth more than money. Spend them wisely. -Thomas P. Murphy
• There’s no elevator to success, you must take the stairs. -Zig Ziglar
• People often say that motivation doesn’t last. Well, neither does bathing – that’s why we recommend it daily. -Zig Ziglar
• You don’t have to be great at something to start, but you have to start to be great at something. -Zig Ziglar
• What you get by achieving your goals is not as important as what you become by achieving your goals. -Zig Ziglar
• If it’s not impossible there must be a way to do it. -Sir Nicholas Winton
• Never give up on a dream just because of the time it will take to accomplish it. The time will pass anyway. -Earl Nightingale
• It does not matter how slowly you go so long as you do not stop. -Confucius
• If you want something you’ve never had you must be willing to do something you’ve never done. Thomas Jefferson
• No such thing as spare time. No such thing as free time. No such thing as downtime. All you got is lifetime. Go. -Henry Rollins
• If I had asked my customers what they wanted they would have said a faster horse. -Henry Ford
• Failure is an option here. If things are not failing you are not innovating enough. -Elon Musk
• When something is important enough, you do it even if the odds are not in your favor. -Elon Musk
• Persistence is very important. You should not give up unless you are forced to give up. -Elon Musk
• I think it is possible for ordinary people to choose to be extraordinary. -Elon Musk
• I could either watch it happen or be a part of it. -Elon Musk
• When 99% of people doubt your idea you’re either gravely wrong or about to make history. -Scott Belsky
• An idea can only become a reality once it is broken down into organized, actionable elements. -Scott Belsky
• Constant motion is the key to execution. -Scott Belsky
• It’s not about ideas. It’s about making ideas happen. -Scott Belsky
• There’s a way to do it better – find it. -Thomas Edison
• Do the work. Be the prize. -Unknown
• Success isn’t owned. It’s leased. And rent is due every day. -J.J. Watt
• The best time to plant a tree is 20 years ago. The second best time is now. -Chinese Proverb
• While you’re scrolling past this someone else is getting shit done. -Unknown
• Long term consistency trumps short term intensity. -Bruce Lee
• Adapt what is useful, reject what is useless, and add what is specifically your own. -Bruce Lee
• Knowing is not enough, we must apply. Willing is not enough, we must do. -Bruce Lee
• Always be yourself, express yourself, have faith in yourself, do not go out and look for a successful personality and duplicate it. -Bruce Lee
• The only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven’t found it yet keep looking. Don’t settle. -Steve Jobs
• Entrepreneur is just French for “Has ideas, does them.” -Alexis Ohanian
• You can go to work or you can be the boss. -William James Adams Jr.
• Chase the vision not the money. The money will end up following you. -Tony Hsieh
• Winners never quit and quitters never win. -Vince Lombardi
• The only place success comes before work is in the dictionary. -Vince Lombardi
• Whatever you’re thinking, think bigger. -Tony Hsieh
• Don’t find customers for your products, find products for your customers. -Seth Godin
• In a crowded marketplace, fitting in is a failure. In a busy marketplace, not standing out is the same as being invisible. -Seth Godin
• Being aware of your fear is smart. Overcoming it is the mark of a successful person. -Seth Godin
• Your most unhappy customers are your greatest source of learning. -Bill Gates
• Be so good they can’t ignore you. -Steve Martin
• Entrepreneurs must be willing to be misunderstood for long periods of time. -Jeff Bezos
• A brand for a company is like a reputation for a person. You earn reputation by trying to do hard things well. -Jeff Bezos
• Start before you’re ready. -Richard Branson
• You don’t learn to walk by following rules. You learn by doing, and by falling over. -Richard Branson
• Do not be embarrassed by your failures, learn from them and start again. -Richard Branson
• One thing is certain in business. You and everyone around you will make mistakes. -Richard Branson
• Work hard until you don’t need to introduce yourself. -Unknown
• Identify your problems but give power and energy to your solutions. -Tony Robbins
• Life shrinks and expands in direct proportion to your willingness to assume risk. -Casey Neistat
• Ideas are cheap. Ideas are easy. Ideas are common. Everybody has ideas. Ideas are highly, highly overvalued.
• Execution is all that matters. -Casey Neistat
• The way to get started is to quit talking and begin doing. -Walt Disney
• Ninety-seven percent of the people who quit too soon are employed by the three percent who never gave up. -Unknown
• Entrepreneurs are willing to work eighty hours a week to avoid working forty hours a week. -Lori Greiner
• An entrepreneur isn’t someone who owns a business, it’s someone who makes things happen. -Tim Ferriss
• Collaborate with people you can learn from. -Pharrell Williams
• You can’t build a reputation on what you’re going to do. -Henry Ford
• Great things are done by a series of small things brought together. -Vincent van Gogh
• The fact that you aren’t where you want to be should be motivation enough. -Unknown
• Too many people are thinking of security instead of opportunity. They seem to be more afraid of life than death. -James F Byrnes
• Remember that the seven most expensive words in business are: “We have always done it that way.” -Catherine DeVrye
• You never fail until you stop trying. -Albert Einstein
• Insanity: Doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. -Albert Einstein
• Being realistic is the most commonly traveled road to mediocrity. -Will Smith
• If you do what you’ve always done, you’ll get what you’ve always gotten. -Tony Robbins
• Life is a gift, and it offers us the privilege, opportunity, and responsibility to give something back by becoming more. -Tony Robbins
• Do what you have to do until you can do what you want to do. -Oprah
• Surround yourself with only people who are going to lift you higher. -Oprah
• No pressure, no diamonds. -Thomas Carlyle
• Life is 10% what happens to you and 90% how you react to it. -Dr. Charles Swindle
• We are all faced with a series of great opportunities brilliantly disguised as impossible situations. -Dr. Charles Swindle
• You keep pushing because you believe in yourself and in your vision, and you know that it is the right thing to do. Success will come. -Arnold Schwarzenegger
• You never want to fail because you didn’t work hard enough. -Arnold Schwarzenegger
• The formula to success is really, really, really simple however the journey the grind the hustle is by no means easy. -Rafael Eliassen
• If you want to make something big happen it is going to take a while. If you want something that is worth something to you that is going to take effort, hard work and dedication. Stop looking for the overnight success. Stop Googling, stop looking at Facebook, stop checking all of this sh*t that you don’t need to be checking. Focus on what is important in order for you to get your goal. -Rafael Eliassen
• He who says he can and he who says he can’t are both usually right. -Confucius
• Choose a job you love, and you will never have to work a day in your life. -Confucius
• I don’t expect you to believe in my dream like I believe in my dream. And the problem with some of y’all is you want someone else to support your dream. It’s yours! I don’t owe you a dime. -Eric Thomas
• When you want to succeed as bad as you want to breathe, then you’ll be successful. -Eric Thomas
• Everybody wants to be a beast, until it’s time to do what real beasts do. -Eric Thomas
• Pain is temporary. It may last for a minute, or an hour or a day, or even a year. But eventually, it will subside. And something else takes its place. If I quit, however, it will last forever. -Eric Thomas
• The difference between those who succeed and fail: not taking advantage of opportunities. -Eric Thomas
• You don’t learn to walk by following rules. You learn by doing and by falling over. -Richard Branson
• The fastest way to change yourself is to hang out with people who are already the way you want to be. -Reid Hoffman
• You shouldn’t focus on why you can’t do something, which is what most people do. You should focus on why perhaps you can, and be one of the exceptions. -Steve Case
• In the future, there will be no female leaders. There will just be leaders. -Sheryl Sandberg
• The master has failed more times than the beginner has even tried. -Stephen McCranie
• Genius is one percent inspiration and ninety-nine percent perspiration. -Thomas Edison
• Leaders are made, they are not born. They are made by hard effort, which is the price which all of us must pay to achieve any goal that is worthwhile. -Vince Lombardi
• You had a purpose before anyone had an opinion. -Unknown
• Ask yourself if what you’re doing today is getting you closer to where you want to be tomorrow. -Unknown
• If what you are doing is not moving you towards your goals then it’s moving you away from your goals. -Brian Tracy, Author & Motivational Speaker
• Nothing changes if nothing changes
• Don’t work 8 hours for a company then go home and not work on your own goals. You’re not tired, you’re uninspired.
• I have not failed, I’ve just found 10,000 ways that won’t work. -Thomas Edison
• Screw it. Let’s do it. -Richard Branson
• Don’t worry about failure. You only have to be right once. -Drew Houston
• You miss 100% of the shots you don’t take. -Wayne Gretzky
• Whether you think you can or you can’t — you’re right. -Henry Ford
• When you’ve exhausted all possibilities remember this: You haven’t. -Thomas Edison
• Many of life’s failures are people who did not realize how close they were to success when they gave up. -Thomas Edison
• Opportunity is missed by most people because it is dressed in overalls and looks like work. -Thomas Edison
• Most people are fast to stop you before you get started but hesitate to get in the way if you’re moving. -Tim Ferriss
• Where focus goes energy flows. -Tony Robbins
• Setting goals is the first step in turning the invisible into the visible. -Tony Robbins
• Motivation is what gets you started, habit is what keeps you going

Inspirational Movie Quotes

• I hope you live a life you’re proud of, and if you’re not, I hope you have the courage to start all over again. -The Curious Case of Benjamin Button
• Great men are not born great, they grow great. -The Godfather
• Every man dies, not every man really lives -Braveheart
• Why do we fall, sir? So that we can learn to pick ourselves up. -Batman Begins
• You can change, or stay the same. There are no rules to this thing. -The Curious Case of Benjamin Button
• It’s what you do right now that makes a difference -Black Hawk Down
• It’s supposed to be hard. If it wasn’t hard everyone would do it. The ‘hard’ is what makes it great. -A League of Their Own
• I solemnly swear that I am up to no good -Harry Potter
• Some people can’t believe in themselves until someone else believes in them first. -Good Will Hunting
• Nothing is gone forever, only out of place -Mary Poppins
• What we do in life echoes in eternity. -Gladiator
• No one ever made a difference by being like anyone else -The Greatest Showman
• We buy shit we don’t need with money we don’t have to impress people we don’t like -Fight Club
• I know, it’s almost impossible to succeed, but who cares, really? The answer must be in the attempt. -Before Sunrise
• The past can hurt but, the way I see it? You can either run from it or learn from it. -The Lion King
• The only thing standing between you and your goal is the bullshit story you keep telling yourself as to why you can’t achieve it. -Wolf of Wall Street
• Every passing minute is another chance to turn it all around. -Vanilla Sky
• Don’t ever let somebody tell you you can’t do something, not even me. Alright? You dream, you gotta protect it. People can’t do something themselves, they wanna tell you you can’t do it. If you want something, go get it. Period. -The Pursuit of Happiness
• Don’t tell me I can’t do it; don’t tell me it can’t be done! -The Aviator
• Normal is an illusion. What’s normal for the spider is chaos for the fly. -The Addams Family
• Some birds aren’t meant to be caged. Their feathers are just too bright. -The Shawshank Redemption
• Courage is not the absence of fear but rather the judgment that something is more important than fear. -The Princess Diaries
• Sometimes it is the people who no one imagines anything of who do the things that no one can imagine. -The Imitation Game
• Get busy living, or get busy dying. -The Shawshank Redemption
• No matter what anybody tells you, words and ideas can change the world. -Dead Poets Society
• Somewhere along the line we stopped believing we could do anything. And if we don’t have our dreams, we have nothing. -The Astronaut Farmer
• Just keep swimming -Finding Nemo
• We are who we choose to be -Spider-Man
• Don’t think you are, know you are -The Matrix
• When you decide to be something, you can be it –The Departed
• A flower that blooms in adversity is the rarest and most beautiful of all -Mulan
• Nobody is gonna hit as hard as life, but it ain’t how hard you can hit. It’s how hard you can get hit and keep moving forward. It’s how much you can take, and keep moving forward. That’s how winning is done. -Rocky Balboa
• Do or do not, there is no try -Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back
• Give a man a mask and he will become his true self -The Dark Knight (original iteration of the quote by Oscar Wilde)
• The past is just a story we tell ourselves -Her
• Well, all I’m saying is that I want to look back and say that I did the best I could while I was stuck in this place. -Dazed and Confused
• Life is not the amount of breaths you take, it’s the moments that take your breath away. -Hitch
• The truth is a matter of circumstances, it’s not all things to all people all the time. -Captain America: The Winter Soldier
• It is not our abilities that show what we truly are, it is our choices. –Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets
• Life moves pretty fast. If you don’t stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it. -Ferris Bueller’s Day Off
• If you’re going to try, go all the way. Otherwise don’t even start. -Factotum
• Don’t dream it, be it. -The Rocky Horror Picture Show
• It’s only after we’ve lost everything that we’re free to do anything -Fight Club
• Freedom is not just a dream. It’s there, beyond those fences that we build all by ourselves. -Instinct
• Heroes get remembered but legends never die -The Sandlot
• Never be in a hurry. You’ll miss the best parts in life -Around the World in 80 Days
• You’re nothing to me until you’re everything -American Hustle
• Now you’re looking for the secret, but you won’t find it, because of course you’re not really looking. You don’t really want to know. You want to be fooled. -The Prestige

Sassy Instagram Captions

• I am fucking gold but you prefer silver and that’s okay
• I am too full of life to be half loved
• Oh, honey, you can’t break a broken heart
• If I can’t have you, my love, then I’ll destroy you
• I want to cry but I have shit to do
• Killed my old self but the new me isn’t much better…
• Are you afraid to fall in love? I’m afraid of being the only one who falls
• Be real with me or get the fuck out of my face
• Why play tag when I’m already it?
• NO girl is me. She may be cute but she’s not me
• Stuck in a generation where love is just a quote and lying is the new truth
• Too smart to play your stupid games
• If you think loving her was hard, try forgetting her
• My biggest mistake wasn’t falling for you, it was thinking you had fallen for me too
• My standards are high, your chances are low
• You can try, but you’ll never do it like me
• Why chase you when I’m the catch
• Chill babe, we’re all bad in someone’s story
• I lost someone who didn’t care, you lost someone who did
• Put me on your wishlist
• Everything is temporary
• She’s the goddess of her own hell
• You were my cup of tea but I drink champagne now
• Stop chasing the wrong one, the right one won’t run
• What if who I hope to be was always me?
• Sometimes being a bitch is all a woman’s got to hold on to -Stephen King
• Oh hun, I don’t argue. I just explain why I’m right
• So I’m invisible to you now? That’s cool, I’ve always wanted a superpower
• The moon dances with me in ways the sun will never know
• Oh honey, you can’t break me
• I love me enough for the both of us
• She looks like heaven but she’s born to sin
• Some days I can’t stop thinking about you and other days I wonder why I’m wasting my time
• Thank u, next (semester)
• I don’t always have time to study but when I do I still don’t
• Go disappoint the next bitch, I’m busy
• I’ll get over it I just gotta be dramatic first
• Let’s just live. What happens, happens.
• I like that we say “Oh man…” to express disappointment. Because men are, in fact, disappointing.
• My silence doesn’t mean I agree with you, it just means your level of stupidity rendered me speechless
• Not heartless just using my heart less
• Black like my soul
• I miss what we had but I don’t miss you
• I’m Prada you’re nada
• Behind every bad bitch is a sweet girl who got tired of everyone’s bullshit
• Losing you was actually my win
• Aren’t we all sinners?
• Keep your fake love away from me
• Throwing shade like it’s sunny
• Wave it in his face, say “Boy, bye”
• My only regret? I didn’t tell enough people to fuck off
• If I leave, I’m sorry for your loss
• Losing you was a nightmare but loving you was even worse
• It’s not fair to toy with people’s emotions
• It’s okay if you don’t like me, not everyone has good taste
• You’re the piece of me I wish I didn’t need
• They say I’m an acquired taste. If you don’t like me, acquire some taste
• I may not be perfect but at least I’m not you
• I’m loyal but I ain’t stupid
• I kissed more bottles than boys and honestly, a hangover hurts less than heartbreak
• It’s not selfish to do what’s best for you
• I gave it all and you gave me shit
• We all do things we said we would never do
• I hate you because I have to wonder for the rest of my life why I wasn’t good enough
• She wears black but she has the most colorful mind
• I’m nicer when I like my outfit
• If I’m not the greatest love of your life then I’ll be your greatest loss instead
• Me chasing you? Bitch, read it backwards
• Too beautiful to live, too wild to die
• Don’t make her fall in love if you can’t love her
• Girls just wanna have funds
• You don’t miss the person, you miss the feeling
• Don’t be a lady, be a legend
• This is life, not heaven. You don’t have to be perfect.
• All she wanted was someone to look at her and see the person she hid so well
• Don’t chase anything but drinks and dreams
• Maybe my problem is that when I’m lost I look for you and not myself
• Feelings? Fuck them.
• Love is like cigarettes — it’s fun at first but eventually, it kills you
• I’m trying to make people smile but none of them try to make me happy
• Treat me like a game and I’ll show you how it’s played
• What happened to me? I grew up.
• Faked it.
• She has that power no one can ignore — she loves herself
• Only a fool for you
• I don’t see you in my dreams anymore
• Wasn’t born to please you, boy
• I don’t want feelings I want new clothes
• Why would I be mad? He chose trash over treasure.
• Monsters in our head are scarier than monsters under our bed
• I am not a second choice
• Not a secret, just not your business
• I’m glad you stopped talking to me, it’s like the trash took itself out
• Brown eyes are just brown eyes until you love someone with brown eyes
• She made the devil pray to God
• Head in the clouds and I’m not coming down
• I don’t have time for idiots
• The more unhappy we are the more fake we become
• No boyfriend, no problem
• I just shouldn’t be allowed to make decisions anymore
• Whatever happens tomorrow, we’ve had today
• They save love is pain, well darling, let’s hurt tonight
• Lusted by many, loved by none
• I feel bad for the people who never go crazy
• If karma doesn’t get you, I sure will
• People change. Satan used to be an angel.
• Do you ever just miss a feeling?
• I’m a girl. I should do as I like.
• Don’t be average be savage.
• We’ve all caught feelings for someone we wish we haven’t
• I don’t take shit personal from a person who don’t know me personally
• We loved each other at the wrong time
• You put me in a bad mood.
• To the moon and never back
• It’s like you’re screaming and no one can hear
• What is it, asshole day?
• Not giving a fuck is better than revenge
• You look 100% better when I can’t see you
• We blame society but we are society
• Best way to not get your heart broken? Pretend you don’t have one.
• If I have to fight to get your attention then I don’t want your attention
• I’ll find somebody else like you
• I deserved a better goodbye -Perry Poetry
• Baby, why you bullshittin?
• You hurt me and I said sorry
• Too glam to give a damn
• The one thing I learned that night is maybe I should have stayed home
• Don’t be someone’s “sometimes” -Bridgett Devoue
• I want to fall in love but I’m bored of everyone I meet
• I simply had to call you and tell you that I couldn’t care less
• I’m in control of everything except love
• At least we’re under the same sky
• Ya’ll hate me but ya’ll still watching
• I’m not wondering if I’ll impress you, I’m wondering if you’ll impress me
• Sometimes the world sucks so I go to my own
• Girls just wanna have fun(damental human rights)
• The sun watches what I do, the moon knows all my secrets
• Wait a sec? Why am I stressin?
• Don’t ask. I was always like this.
• Words can’t hurt me these shades are gucci
• You said you wouldn’t and you did
• How long is forever? Sometimes just one second.
• I’d wish you the best but you already had it
• I wanna be the person on your mind
• She looks naive but she’s a monster
• I kissed him twice already and he still hasn’t turned into a prince
• Bad choices make good stories
• Young, broke & fabulous
• We’re all suckers for something
• I think I’ll always be some type of in love with you
• Pretty eyes and a mouthful of lies
• You never know the last time you’ll see a place or a person
• Sometimes you win, sometimes you learn
• Princess? Nah bitch, queen.
• All my flowers grew back as thorns
• You don’t always have to be who they want you to be, you know?
• I’ll survive. Somehow, I always do.
• I’m sad about shit that never happened.
• I really don’t need you.
• She’s what you want, I’m what you need
• I don’t understand anything about my entire life
• You look like a woman in love going through hell
• She was not for everyone, but she was for me. -Atticus
• Sometimes you make choices in life, sometimes choices make you
• You deserve the best and that’s me
• Pathetic but aesthetic
• And this is me expressing myself, okay?!
• Do you tell me lies because they sound better?
• Did it for the memories
• You turned the page, I burned the book
• Sad, lonely, and bad at math
• Half devil, half goddess
• Baby, this is not wonderland
• I’m fire, don’t touch me if you’re scared to burn
• If I had known better, I still would have done it
• You cannot spell awesome without ME
• Play with my hair, not my feelings
• Down to earth but still above you
• Haven’t posted a selfie in a while but I’m still cute, just to keep you updated
• I don’t make mistakes I date them
• 1-800-HIS-LOSS
• Alexa, play everyone who played me
• I know I’m a handful but that’s why you’ve got two hands
• I miss you like an idiot misses the point
• Hold on, let me overthink this
• Wait, what if everyone else is just underthinking…
• You couldn’t handle me, even if I came with instructions
• I don’t have an attitude problem, I just have a personality you can’t handle
• I’ve got a 90s R&B kind of heart
• Attention? You caught mine.
• I put you in a win-win situation, and you still lost
• Let me show you what you’re missing out on
• Sending this selfie to NASA because I’m a star
• Down to earth, but still above you
• When you see me less, I’m doing more
• Only a fool for you
• Know your worth
• Keeping it simple
• Gotta move different when you want different
• Thank you, next
• I ain’t worried
• Promise me no promises
• Talk to me nice
• Just a little pillowtalk
• Playing for keeps
• Take it or leave it…
• I’m better than I’ve ever been, better than you’ve ever been
• Unbothered
• Real recognizes real
• Even the stars are jealous of the sparkle in your eyes
• Stress less and enjoy the best
• Get out there and live a little
• Life is better when you’re laughing
• A sass a day keeps the basics away
• Issa look
• Half heaven, half hell
• Don’t study me, you won’t graduate
• Don’t trust everything you see, even salt looks like sugar
• I’m smiling on the inside
• Get lost in what you love
• Never easy, but always worth it
• Icey
• Stay wild, moon child
• You’re such a dream to me
• I’m smiling… That alone should scare you

Conclusion

There you have our roundup of 900+ Instagram captions and Instagram quotes that you can use to make your brand or business stand out on the platform. Remember, great Instagram captions can be the difference between users scrolling past your photos or users engaging with your photos so make sure you get your captions right! Once you find the right Instagram captions, don’t forget to check out our Instagram Templates for Ecommerce Businesses, Brands & Bloggers article to find the right Instagram templates to make beautiful images for your feed.

The post 1200+ Instagram Captions and Instagram Quotes for Influencers, Brands & Businesses appeared first on A Better Lemonade Stand.