There has never been a better time for creative people to make money. If you are sufficiently motivated, you can create a product and take it to the market in a matter of days.

The internet also makes it possible to reach your target audience directly without having to go through retailers. Another beauty of using the internet to sell is that you can test ideas fast to see if they are viable or not.

One of the businesses you can start right now is designing t-shirts, mugs and promotional items. You probably have already bought branded items from websites run by influencers you like. Here’s how you too can make money from the same industry.

Starting with an Audience in Mind

To succeed in this market, you will have to create trendy products. Not many people will find a reason to buy a mug from you if it is not cool enough.

When creating trendy products, you have to start with the customer in mind. What may be cool for one online community may not even inspire a reaction from another. You have to tailor your designs to the particular audience you want to target.

You don’t create a design first then decide the audience you want to sell it to. You identify a particular community and then design something you are confident they will connect with.

Hot Niches to Target

There are certain online communities that are bound to buy well-designed t-shirts, mugs and promotional items that speak to them.

If you are an influencer and you already have an audience, you are in luck. You probably already have an idea what will connect with your audience given the jokes and memes that get most shares.

If you are starting from scratch, here are some niches that will yield decent results:

Political Groups: People have a need to belong and political groups such as parties give them a sense of belonging. Politics also tends to inspire a lot of passion. If your designs are provocative, funny, or inspire some conversations, you won’t have any trouble selling them.

Online Communities: The internet is huge and it houses every kind of person. There are communities for pretty much every hobby you can think of. One of the most active communities you can sell to is the gaming community.

Within the gaming community, you will find several sub-communities. You are better off targeting sub-communities than targeting gamers in general. Some of the designs you can create include merchandize with gaming heroes, puns, or gaming figures. Take care not to break any copyright laws when you use such details.

Trending Topics: Remember when President Trump sent out the ‘covfefe’ tweet? People actually made money off that tweet. Some people quickly designed ‘covfefe’ shirts, mugs, and other merchandise and were pushing them heavily on Twitter as the topic trended. If you can catch such trends, you can make money off them.

Forming Partnerships

If you are just a good designer but you have no interest handling the business side of things but still want to retain some level of ownership of your work, you can partner with people who already have an audience.

Content creators such as YouTubers and popular bloggers usually sell merchandise on their platforms. You can offer to design amazing stuff for them and enter into a partnership where you get paid a portion of each sale made.