Wow. Its a really impressive business model, what these t-shirt people have. All I needed to do was upload some images, choose a few t-shirts to publish the images on, and link to the purchase page from ambisonia.com. For about 1 hour’s effort, 24 hours later I have sold 3 tshirts.
My markup on the tshirt is 10 USD. That’s how much I make on each sale. A friend bought one in Sydney, and frankly, it was bloody expensive. Around 25USD for the tshirt… then 10USD for the delivery. I’m using Printfection.com but I reckon I might try one of the others, like cafepress.com, to see if it comes out any cheaper.
Its a great concept though…. very similar to Google ads … it is all about facilitating revenue. ‘bring the people and we’ll take care of the rest’… they take care of all the difficult stuff, and skim off some profit for themselves.
Actually, that really is what ambisonia.com is about. Its a platform for surround sound artists to publish + earn from their work (well, that’s what it is organically morphing into). Artists upload their tunes, and if the tune is good, they will earn… ambisonia will take care of everything else… printing, graphics, blurbs, licensing issues (tricky!), sales, fulfillement, etc.
Actually, ambisonia.com is more ‘bring your work and we’ll take care of the rest‘. Probably more similar to youtube’s up and coming business model (where popular videos will earn) than Google advertising.
Yeah, the licensing business really is tricky. Havn’t solved that one yet.
6 responses so far ↓
dion // April 17, 2007 at 1:12 am
i think $25 for the shirt is expesive if you look around and see what you can buy printed T’s online for elsewhere. Sure the model works, anything works for the right amount of $$$’s.
Etienne Deleflie // April 17, 2007 at 1:17 am
I agree, I think the t-shirts should sell for maybe USD15
its a matter of finding a service that prints tshirts for less … i’m looking around
Aristotel Digenis // April 18, 2007 at 5:13 pm
I bought a shirt to support the site, but $25 is on the steep side of things, especially after adding posting. Even if you find companies making them for less, it might be at the cost of quality. I have not received my shirt yet so I don’t know how the quality of the current ones is. Will let you know.
Ciao
Etienne Deleflie // April 18, 2007 at 10:46 pm
Hi Aristotel,
that’s great, thanks for the support … I actually have no means of knowing who is buying the t-shirts, nor where in the world they are etc. etc.
There is actually one service that has a shop in the UK and a shop in the US … for cheaper delivery to Europe and US, but their service is not so well designed in that the 2 shops are not coordinated.
Please _do_ let me know what the quality is like.
Aristotel Digenis // April 26, 2007 at 11:52 pm
I have received the shirt! I was aware that their sizes would be larger than European standards, and even after following their “size guide” and measuring my shirts, it stills turns out to be too big. The quality is to be honest, rather poor. The material is so thin that one can see the back through the front and vice versa. The print isnt very well doen either. I guess it will have to do as a “home” only shirt
Etienne Deleflie // April 30, 2007 at 9:50 am
bummer … cafepress.com didn’t seem to be any cheaper, but at least perhaps they will be slightly better quality.
What I’ll do is I’ll switch over to cafepress.com and reduce my markup to 5USD instead of 10 … that will bring the price down a bit.
Its also the heavy delivery cost that makes the purchase a bit painful. What these t-shirt people need is a printing shop in each of their primary delivery destinations. From what I’ve seen cafepress.com isn’t really any cheaper for delivery.